"Pit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... upon frivolous or no Occasions. A Friend of mine the other Night applauding what a graceful Exit Mr. Wilks made, one of these Nose-wringers overhearing him, pinched him by the nose. I was in the Pit the other Night, (when it was very much crowded) a Gentleman leaning upon me, and very heavily, I very civilly requested him to remove his Hand; for which he pulled me by the Nose. I would not resent it in so publick a Place, because I was ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... goals, Failing whereof they may sit Scholarly to judge the souls That go down into the pit, And, despite its certain clay, Heave a new world towards ...
— The Years Between • Rudyard Kipling
... constitution has changed since "the good old times," for we read in an old medicine book, that bleeding at the nose, and cramp, could be effectually prevented by wearing a dried toad in a bag at the pit of the stomach; while for rheumatism and consumption, a snake skin worn in the crown of your hat, was a sovereign remedy! Dried toads and snake skins are quite out of use around these settlements, and we think the Esculapius who would recommend such nostrums, would be looked upon as a poor ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... with a sigh. "Well—there's prayer and fasting; but there'll be considerably more fasting than prayer, I should imagine. I assure you, I do pray that he doesn't make a fool of himself and marry some woman out of the bottomless pit of Bohemia." ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... he repeated after me. "Bress yer, it come up inter my mout, an' I'se swaller it agen, an' him go right down to de pit ob my tumjon! Lor', Cholly, I'se tink I wer drown, fo' suah, an' nebbah come up no moah, fo' de wave come ober my head an' ebberyting! Den, jest as I'se scrape along de side ob de ship an' wash away aft in de wake astern, I'se catch holt ob de end ob de boom-sheet, ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... chose my road very careful and walked night-times only till we come to this house. The old Betsy was agone, and the house was nigh failed to pieces, and I've a-heard since that she was found drowned in a lime-pit some years back. But I digged under the table as the old Betsy had said, and there deep down was a box wrapped up in a sheepskin, full of silver money, and a little gold too. How she got it, I can't tell, unless she ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... to that region of social life in which the behavior of the individual is most individualistic and least controlled, namely, the market place. The economic man, as the classical economists conceived him, is more completely embodied in the trader in the auction pit, than in any other figure in any other situation in society. And the trader in that position performs ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the sail for oars, and it took every ounce of strength and skill on the part of the rowers and Seventh Man to avoid shipwreck. Each breaker as it passed tossed the frail craft skyward, and we fell into the abysses as a rock into a bottomless pit. Every instant it seemed that we must capsize. While we fought thus, in a frenzied effort to keep off the rocks, the sun rose, and every curl of water turned to clearest emerald, while the hollows of the leaping waves were ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... then, "one other friend who might assist us, and who has the power perhaps if he but has the will. He is the Governor of Cesena, and for all that he holds service under Cesare Borgia, yet he seems much devoted to me, and I do not doubt that to further my interests he would even consent to pit his wits against those of the ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... good dinner gives great pleasure to a circle of gourmets. Even enjoyment, a higher word than pleasure, should, when applied to poetry, be conjoined with some elevating qualification; for all the feelings impart enjoyment through their simple healthy function, and there are people who enjoy a cock-pit, or a bull-fight, or an execution. But poetry causes that refined, super-sensuous delight which follows the apprehension of any thought, sentiment, act, or scene, which rises towards the best and purest possible in the range of that thought, sentiment, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... lantern discovered a great pit in the field behind the lane and the crowd quickly surrounded it. From their limited knowledge of the facts the explosion seemed unaccountable, but there was sufficient intelligence among them to determine that dynamite had caused it and dug this gaping hole in the stony soil. Bob West ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... "Spanish Student." Edgar Allan Poe entered upon his new journalistic venture "The Stylus." For this he wrote his stories of "The Tell-Tale Heart," "Leonore," and his "Notes upon English Verse." For other publications he wrote "The Pit and the Pendulum," and the striking poem, "The Conqueror Worm." His fearful tale of the "Black Cat" was published in the "Saturday Evening Post." At this time he was ailing in health, while his young wife, Virginia, was dying. During these trying months his principal income was a hundred dollar ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... in the Eleusinian mysteries. One of the prisoners, taking him for a king because of his long hair and fillet, fell on his knees before him, and having received his hand as a pledge for his safety pointed out to him a great store of gold concealed in a pit. Kallias now acted most cruelly and wickedly. He took the gold, and killed the poor man for fear that he should tell it to the others. It is said that ever afterwards the descendants of Kallias were jeered at by the comic poets, as being of the family of the ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... to Blithedale with the one thrifty and laudable idea of wearing out our old clothes. Such garments as had an airing, whenever we strode afield! Coats with high collars and with no collars, broad-skirted or swallow-tailed, and with the waist at every point between the hip and arm-pit; pantaloons of a dozen successive epochs, and greatly defaced at the knees by the humiliations of the wearer before his lady-love,—in short, we were a living epitome of defunct fashions, and the very raggedest presentment of ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... pit" of North America, impressed him most strongly. He could feel the bursting strength of the young city—a David amongst cities. He could feel it growing under his feet to its kingdom of the granary of Britain. The epic of the wheat pulsed its stately poetry into him—thrilled him with ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... felt much as if he had suddenly been dropped down a bear-pit, and, avoiding welcome and observation as well as he could, got away into a corner, from which he observed his new companions with ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... social sorrow loses half its pain. Our anxious bard without complaint may share This bustling season's epidemic care; Like Caesar's pilot, dignified by Fate, Toss'd in one common storm with all the great; Distress'd alike the statesman and the wit, When one the borough courts, and one the pit. 10 The busy candidates for power and fame Have hopes, and fears, and wishes just the same; Disabled both to combat, or to fly, Must hear all taunts, and hear without reply. Unchecked, on both loud rabbles vent their rage, As mongrels bay the lion in a cage. The offended burgess hoards his angry ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... the arm-pit, press in a pad and tie the arm down to the side. It may be necessary here to compress the artery with the thumb. The artery here lies behind the inner bend of the collar bone lying on the ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... many points of structure in common. Among these families of higher plants, over two hundred in number, is one known as the rose family. Notwithstanding their close relationship, the modes of seed dispersion are varied. The seeds of plums and cherries and hawthorns are surrounded by a hard pit, or stone, which protects the seeds, while animals eat the fleshy portion of the fruit. When ripe, raspberries leave the dry receptacle and look like miniature thimbles, while the blackberry is fleshy throughout. The ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... this hour Ken happened to glance into a lecture-room. It was a large amphitheatre full of noisy students. The benches were arranged in a circle running up from a small pit. Seeing safety in the number of students who were passing in, Ken went along. He thought he might hear an interesting lecture. It did not occur to him that he did not belong there. The university had many departments and he felt that any lecture-room was ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... reduced the Blessed Virgin herself to the status of an idol, concentrated Salvationism to a point at which the most execrable murderer who believes in it when the rope is round his neck, flies straight to the arms of Jesus, whilst Tom Paine and Shelley fall into the bottomless pit to burn there to all eternity. And sceptical physicists like Sir William Crookes demonstrate by laboratory experiments that "mediums" like Douglas Home can make the pointer of a spring-balance go round without touching the weight suspended ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... saw inside was a loaded revolver, the sudden view of which sent a little qualm through the pit of his stomach. He took it out gingerly, holding it at arm's length, throwing open the cylinder and spilling out the cartridges on the bed, very careful to let none of them fall on the ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... as that, and victory would have rested with the bear! Ian resolved to make sure work. He would put missing out of the question. The tremendous claws that had already worked a small pit in the earth reminded him of the collar and of Elsie. Leaping forward, he thrust the point of his gun into the ear of the infuriated animal and pulled the trigger. He was almost stunned by the report and roar, together with an unwonted shock that ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... military Justice, we were led up to the fatal Pit or Hole, down which many had been cast headlong. There we found one poor Soldier alive, who, upon his throwing in, had catch'd fast hold of some impending Bushes, and sav'd himself on a little Jutty within the Concavity. On hearing us talk English he cry'd out; and Ropes ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... with his shining spear, and smote Amphius, son of Selagus, who, exceedingly rich in property and crops, dwelt in Paesus. But fate had led him as an ally to Priam and his sons. Him Telamonian Ajax smote on the belt, and the long-shadowed spear was fixed in the pit of his stomach. Falling, he made a crash, and illustrious Ajax ran up to him, about to spoil [him of] his armour; but the Trojans poured upon him sharp spears, shining all around, and his shield received many. But he, pressing on him with his heel, drew from the ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... are much respected by their subjects, almost to adoration, as they are believed to have originally descended from heaven. When the king of Benin dies, his subjects assemble in an extensive plain, in the centre of which a vast pit or sepulchre is dug, into which the body is lowered, and all the friends and servants of the deceased are sacrificed and thrown into the same grave, thus voluntarily throwing away their own lives in honour of the dead. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... both have come back with our clothes spoiled, and our arms full of the splendid hartstongue ferns that cover the sides and edges of the ravine. But they are dangerous places for any but miners or schoolboys; and I shrank from encouraging an enthusiastic American to risk being killed in a Roman pit, even with the ideal advantage of afterwards being buried with his own ancestors in England! So I said but little ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... my pit, with the dull whir of my propellers alone breaking the silence of the night, I pondered the startling events of the past few hours. Above me the stars and planets gleamed in the deep purple of an almost cloudless sky. Venus had long since dropped below the horizon. But Mars was up ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... left upon the field, I fell the prey Of Britain? To a loathsome prison-ship Confin'd, soon had I sunk, victim of death, A death of aggravated miseries; But, by benevolence urg'd, this best of men, This gallant youth, then favour'd, high in power, Sought out the pit obscene of foul disease, Where I, and many a suffering soldier lay, And, like an angel, seeking good for man, Restor'd us light, and partial liberty. Me he mark'd out his own. He nurst and cur'd, He lov'd and made his friend. I liv'd by him, And in my heart he liv'd, till, when exchang'd, Duty and ...
— Andre • William Dunlap
... be above them: only by the strength of my own rising can I help to raise them, for we are bound together by one cord. Then how shall I rise? Whose uprising shall lift me? On what cords shall I lay hold to be heaved out of the pit?' And then I thought of the story of the Lord of men, who arose by his own might, not alone from the body-tomb, but from all the death and despair of humanity, and lifted with him our race, placing their tomb ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... to meet the bravery of true champions of the pit, stood for a little while and stared at this shifty foe. He must have decided that he was dealing with a poltroon with whom science and prudence were not needed. He stuck out his neck and ran at Long-legs, ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... subsecundum, acutifolium, squarrosum, and cymbifolium. Tetraphis pellucida occurs in Sherrard's Park Wood, and Polytrichum urnigerum in Hitch Wood. Seligeria pusilla has been found in an old chalk-pit in Brocket Park, and S. paucifolia on chalk nodules in the Tunnel Woods near Watford. Campylopus pyriforme occurs in Berry Grove Wood, Aldenham, and C. flexuosus in Dawley's ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... steam. Wind was extremely inconvenient for the purpose of pumping, because in these latitudes it is inconstant: it was costly, too, because at any time the labourers might be obliged to sit at the pit's mouth for weeks together, whistling for a gale or waiting for the water to be got under again. But steam had already been used for pumping upon one or two estates in England—rather as a toy than ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... have sworn to die rather than surrender. The bourgeois, when he goes off to the ramparts, embraces his wife in public, and assumes a martial strut as though he were a very Curtius on the way to the pit. Jules is perpetually hugging Jacques, and talking about the altar of his country on which he means to mount. I verily believe that the people walking on the Boulevards, and the assistants of the shops who deal out their wares, in uniform, are under ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... you, sir!" He turned to the immovable figure of the detective. "I will soon show you what it means to meddle with matters which do not concern you—to pit yourself arrogantly against the biggest power ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... did not sound solid, so I commenced to scrape away the earth. Six inches down I came to branches of trees spread crosswise, as though to form a roof to a cellar. Pulling these aside, after another hour of labour, I looked down into a pit which had been hollowed out. It was getting dark now, so ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... my hungry heart My hero whose hand is in mine If we fall let it be to the pit, For to-day we have touched the divine. Time has stood still to-day.... This day which has squandered its sun. It has been all glory and gold All perfect days in ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson
... chains to eternal darkness.... I boldly challenge thee with thy six-foot God and all the host of Luciferian spirits, with all your commissions, curses, and sentences, to touch and hurt me. And this know, O Muggleton: on you I trample, and to the bottomless pit are you sentenced, from whence you came, and where the endless worm shall gnaw and torture your ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... to thy derision? Here admonition and entreaty are vain. Thou knowest him already, for a murderer and thief. I had thought to have been the first to disclose to thee his infamy; to have warned thee of the pit to which thou art hastening; but thy eyes are open in vain. O foul ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... spot is selected and several deep holes are dug in one end. Back of them, and leading toward them, is a high tight fence made in a V. By beating the grass with boughs as they walk toward the trap, the people drive the grasshoppers before them until they are finally forced into the pit, from which they are collected ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... out a huge fissure or break in the rock, which they said was the platform in front of the grotto. At the further end of this cavern, behind a vast stalactite, reaching from the roof to the ground, and suggesting to the imagination the idea of some gigantic sentinel before the pit of Acheron, yawned a low narrow opening, the interior of which presented to the view a more than Egyptian darkness. Around this spot were assembled a band of kirtled Greeks, provided with ropes, ladders, and flambeaux. Our appearance ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... observed on my right hand, moving slowly along by my side, changed its direction, and went directly before me, with about the same degree of swiftness. I thought this very odd; but I still continued the chase, and just as I thought I had approached very near, I tumbled into another pit ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... was so powerful that no one, not even a Frost Giant, could resist its force, and it would smash a mountain as easily as it would an egg-shell. So Brock, when he knew all that was to be known, took the three gifts and hastened away to Asgard to pit them against those of Loki, ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... the Lord added to his days fifteen years. Verse 5. For this he praised the Lord, and gave his reasons for so doing in the following words (verses 18, 19): "For the grave cannot praise thee, death cannot celebrate thee: they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth. The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I do this day." This is a clear affirmation that in death he would not be able to do what he was able ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... the most astounding anomaly. Who, either, that had the faintest perception of the forces that sway opinion and frame systems, could believe that the fair fabric of Christian morality was built on the sand of a lie, and cemented by the slime of deceit bubbling up from the very pit of hell? Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? That insolent ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... justified. For the enemy hath persecuted my soul; he hath made me to dwell in darkness. Therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me; my heart within me is desolate. Hear me speedily, O Lord; my spirit faileth; hide not Thy face from me, lest I be like unto them that go down into the pit. Cause me to hear Thy loving kindness in the morning; for in Thee do I trust; cause me to know the way wherein I should walk, for I lift up my soul unto Thee. Bring my soul out of trouble, and of Thy mercy cut off mine enemies; for I ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... so trusted him that, when the dark days at Valley Forge were over, he placed him in command of the recaptured federal capital. Today the name of Arnold would rank high in the memory of a grateful country had he not fallen into the bottomless pit of treason. The same is in some measure true of Charles Lee, who was freed by the British in an exchange of prisoners and joined Washington at Valley Forge late in the spring of 1778. Lee was so clever with his pen as to be one of the reputed authors of the Letters of Junius. He had served as ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... the Valley itself, which is as dark as pitch; we also saw there the hobgoblins, bogies, and dragons of the pit; we also heard in that Valley a continual howling and yelling, as of a people under unutterable misery, who there sat bound in affliction and chains; and over that Valley hang the discouraging clouds of Confusion; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... levelled her brows at him, and said gravely, 'This is the temptation thou art falling into, as have thousands before thy time. Give him the rein a second time, and he will bear thee to the red pit, and halt upon the brink, and pitch thee into it among bleeding masses and skeletons of thy kind, where they lie who were men like to thee, and were borne away ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... right. There's no joke about this. Mrs. Goring is as deep as the Bottomless Pit! There's something back of those big violet eyes of hers that burns clear through you. She's coming to see you presently. What d' ye think about ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... the library when a soft pit-pat, pit-pat at our heels caused me to turn. The quiet, disturbing footfalls were made by a beautiful blue Angora cat, which was accompanied by George, the pug, who had made his presence known at the dinner table. Both Sultan, the cat, and George ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... grow wool, and build mighty dams, and sink artesian wells, as the French have done with some success I believe in Algiers. If railways were run up to the diamond-fields, adventurous diggers would crowd in hundreds to the great pit of Kimberley; some would succeed; those who failed would gravitate into the positions for which they were fitted by nature in a land where the want of labourers is a confessedly perplexing evil. The population would not ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... They have helped that which they meant to hinder. The university will get the money. Joseph's brethren took counsel together and said, "We will see what will become of his dream," and they thought they had a sure thing when they put him in a pit, but they discovered {89} some years after that this was but a way-station on the direct road to the Viceroyship of Egypt, and they saw what became ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. XLII. April, 1888. No. 4. • Various
... is, that the strata of rocks which lie beneath the ground in all this region consist, in a great measure, of beds of coal and of iron ore. The miners dig down in almost any spot, and find iron ore; and very near it, and sometimes in the same pit, they find plenty of coal. These pits are like monstrous wells; very wide at the mouth, and extending down four or five times as far as the height of the tallest steeples, into the bowels of the earth. Over the mouth of the pit the workmen build a machine, with ropes ...
— Rollo in Scotland • Jacob Abbott
... for the multitude an evil that exists not in the savage state. The poor man sees daily and hourly all the vast disparities produced by civilized society; and reversing the divine parable, it is Lazarus who from afar, and from the despondent pit, looks upon Dives in the lap of Paradise: therefore, his privations, his sufferings, are made more keen by comparison with the luxuries of others. Not so in the desert and the forest. There but small distinctions, and those softened ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... write, my heart goes pit-a-pat, thinking of you, Rosarito; and I'm sure that if we had over again that charming time, I should fall head over ears in love. Oh, you know we were both fibbing when we vowed we adored one another; I am a romancer by profession, and you by ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... sought his brothers at Dothan; {Joseph was {Was cast into a pit, and afterwards {cruelly used by {Sold for a slave. {his brothers, {His brothers concealed the crime, and { {His father mourned him as dead. And although { he was { {Joseph was carried to Egypt, and long in {And was made {Was a slave in Potiphar's house; affliction, {a slave to {Where ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... here want to ask me any questions? I'll tell him what he wants to know in perfect confidence between him and me and the pump. If my answer pleases him, he can give me a silver piece. If my reply make his heart go pit-a-pat with joy he can give me a gold piece. If he doesn't like my answers, he needn't give me anything. Now that's fair, ...
— The Faery Tales of Weir • Anna McClure Sholl
... nourished him. Nor can he help but weep and sigh at this. But his own self, he's not forgotten him, He owns his faults, and God's forgiveness bids: "Very Father, in Whom no falsehood is, Saint Lazaron from death Thou didst remit, And Daniel save from the lions' pit; My soul in me preserve from all perils And from the sins I did in life commit!" His right-hand glove, to God he offers it Saint Gabriel from's hand hath taken it. Over his arm his head bows down and slips, He joins his hands: and so is life finish'd. God sent him down His angel cherubin, ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... a darksome pit With water to the brim, They heaved in John Barleycorn, There let him ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... risen!" said Matriena Pavlovna, leaning her head forward and smiling. By the intonation of her voice she seemed to say, "All are equal to-day," and wiping her mouth with a bandana handkerchief which she kept under her arm-pit, she extended her lips. ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... quarry, now a rabbit warren, which gave the locality its name; they followed the rising edge of the excavation, treading on a broad strip of turf, purposely freed of encroaching briers lest any wandering stranger might plunge headlong into the pit. Near the highest part of the rock wall there was a slight depression in the ground; and here, except during the height of a phenomenally dry Summer, the surface ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... with that gun! Why the blazes couldn't you have come home and brought me a bit of peat from the pit? A fine hunter you are! I might as well have married the devil.—And his wife turned ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... entrance the ebb had set strong out and ran with much force; however, by dint of warping we brought up under the island for the night within pistol shot of the shore. At daylight we proceeded up to a saw pit (made for the purpose of cutting cedar of a large size and excellent quality, which is growing in abundance on the banks of the river) and came to abreast of it in 3 fathoms water, steadying the vessel by a hawser made fast to a tree on the shore. The harbour is of several miles extent and ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... Cricket had hardly taken practical shape, but representative contests did take place in the favourite pastime of cock-fighting—or "cocking" as it was always called in the last century—in which contests the Hertfordshire side of the town brought its birds into the pit against those of the Cambridgeshire side. Of this the following is a ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... lions, with horrid laughing jaws; They bit, they glared, gave blows like beams, a wind went with their paws; With wallowing might and stifled roar they rolled on one another, Till all the pit with sand and mane was in a thundrous smother; The bloody foam above the bars came whisking through the air; Said Francis then, "Faith, gentlemen, we're better ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... an uncomfortable heat at the pit of your stomach, sir? and a nasty thumping at the top of your head? Ah! not yet? It will lay hold of you at Cobb's Hole, Mr. Franklin. I call it the detective-fever; and I first caught it in ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... of the castle finally fell asleep in a bed in the lodge, made mercifully unconscious by the heavy and stupefying slumber of exhaustion, without fright nor nightmare. He seemed to be falling, falling into a bottomless pit, and on awaking fancied that he had slept but a few minutes. The sun was turning the window shades to an orange hue, spattered with shadows of waving boughs and birds fluttering and twittering among the leaves. He shared their joy in the cool refreshing dawn of the summer day. It certainly ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... do in fancy, a causal being can do in reality. The most colossal imaginative human intelligence is able, in mind only, to range from one extreme of thought to another, to skip mentally from planet to planet, or tumble endlessly down a pit of eternity, or soar rocketlike into the galaxied canopy, or scintillate like a searchlight over milky ways and the starry spaces. But beings in the causal world have a much greater freedom, and can effortlessly manifest their thoughts into instant objectivity, without ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... that she mustn't scream, whatever happened, experienced an instant of shuddering suspense, then an instantaneous eternity wherein, paradoxically, part of her seemed still to be clinging to the window-ledge while most of her was spinning giddily down through a bottomless pit, saw the grinning moon reel dizzily in the blue vault of heaven—and with a little shock landed squarely in the arms ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... blood to have been spilt, and treasure expended, so many tears to have been shed, and vows offered in vain. If they "hoped to look with confidence the King of terrors in the face, if they sought to save themselves from the bottomless pit, it was necessary to espouse once more the cause of Him who had called them forth in their generation to assert the freedom of the people and the privileges of parliament."[1] Under these different impressions, pamphlets were published exposing the hypocrisy ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... sound which had alarmed him, he reassured himself and resumed his flow of spirits as if a little ashamed even of his panic. He stopped the Countess to look at the pretext of this excursion. This was the rocky wall of the deep excavation of a marl-pit, long since abandoned. The arbutus-trees of fantastic shape which covered the summit of these rocks, the pendant vines, the sombre ivy which carpeted the cliffs, the gleaming white stones, the vague reflections in the stagnant pool at the bottom of the pit, the mysterious light ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... peculiar light had appeared in the old surgeon's face, the dawn of a strange idea; a gloomy ray, strayed from the fires of the bottomless pit; the baleful light that illumines the way of the enthusiast. The old man remained a moment in profound abstraction, gleams of eager intelligence bursting momentarily through the cloud of sombre meditation that covered his face. Then broke the broad light of a deep, impenetrable determination. ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... Demidoff and of Major Frazer, the obstreperous fooleries of Lord Henry Seymour, the studied extravagances of Comte d'Alton-Shee, created in the public mind the impression that the club was nothing less than a sort of infernal pit, peopled by wicked dandies like Balzac's De Marsay, Maxime de Trailles, Rastignac, etc. Even the box of the club at the opera was dubbed with the uncanny nickname loge infernale, and the talk of the town ran upon the frightful ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... they, like their great forbears, For mony a year come thro' the shears; So wives will gie them bits o' bread, An' bairns greet for them when they're dead. [weep] 'My poor tup-lamb, my son an' heir, O bid him breed him up wi' care! An', if he live to be a beast, To pit some havins in his breast! [put, behavior] An' warn him, what I winna name, [will not] To stay content wi' yowes at hame; [ewes] An' no to rin an' wear his cloots, [hoofs] Like ither menseless graceless brutes. [unmannerly] 'An neist my yowie, silly thing, [next] Gude keep thee frae a tether string! ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... hearts of the people back. It was as though the whole nation were rushing towards the edge of the precipice which overhung the bottomless pit, like a herd of frightened horses on the prairie, and these men with their unaided hands turned them back. It would be impossible for one man to turn back a whole army in mad flight—he would necessarily be swept ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... skill as a climber that when I first heard of hell from a servant girl who loved to tell its horrors and warn us that if we did anything wrong we would be cast into it, I always insisted that I could climb out of it. I imagined it was only a sooty pit with stone walls like those of the castle, and I felt sure there must be chinks and cracks in the masonry for fingers and toes. Anyhow the terrors of the horrible place seldom lasted long beyond the telling; for ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... came to the spot whence the flashes darted thickest, and all the time the bullets whirred over their heads. At last Ken was able to see through the gloom a low parapet of earth which was evidently the front of a regular rifle pit. ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... jungle, fell into a pit. He could not get out, so he waited patiently for some passer-by. Presently a Pig passed by the mouth of the pit. The Mouse-deer called out to him, and he looked in and asked the Mouse-deer what he was doing at the bottom of ...
— Children of Borneo • Edwin Herbert Gomes
... gained; it is the des- perate ventures and unscrupulous swindles that the public are mostly pressed to support — only to lose their money. It is to be hoped that the dupes are at length awake to the pit-falls dug for them by the mining company promoter and speculator, whose seductive paragraphs are everywhere in evidence in the advertising sheets ...
— Everybody's Guide to Money Matters • William Cotton, F.S.A.
... disgraced, insulted! Horrible man, Remembered be your laugh in lowest hell, Dragging you to the nether pit! Forgive me; You are my friend—take me from here—unbolt Those iron doors—I'll crawl upon my knees Unto my father—I have much to tell him. For but the freedom of one hour, sweet Prior, I'll brim the vessels of the ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... kill her I don't know, for she set down. And jest then somebody yells, "Here we go down to the bottomless pit." ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... over Daudet when it compares his later novels with the promise of Lettres de Mon Moulin and Le Petit Chose. Naturalism demands nothing more severely than an impersonal treatment of its themes. Of three very personal and romantic writers, our own Stevenson escaped the pit into which both Bjoernson and Daudet stumbled. You may say the temptation came later to him. But the temptation to follow an European fashion does, as a rule, befall a Briton last of all men, for reasons of which we need not feel proud: and the date of Mr. Hardy's ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the manner of boys. The wardroom was large and airy, and there was ample space for the party. At meals they consisted of the three lieutenants, the surgeon, purser, and seven midshipmen. As he had never been accustomed to a rough life in the cock-pit of a British man-of-war, the contrast to his former condition was not so strong as it would have been to a midshipman in the royal service; but the somewhat stiff courtesy that prevailed among the Chilian officers in their relations to each other differed widely from ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... blue whilst hanging; he had an awful appearance, because his eyes were open and terror-stricken, his mouth was also open as though in the act of trying to catch his last breath. They quickly dug a pit near by and pushed therein the corpse of Zygfried with the handles of their pitchforks; they laid him with his face downward and covered it first with dust, then they gathered stones and placed them upon it, because it was an immemorial ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... in the Strangers' Gallery, and heard your great speakers; I have been in the pit of the opera, and seen your fine ladies; I have walked your streets; I have lounged in your parks, and I say that I can't fall in love with a faded dowager, because she fills up her wrinkles ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wood above thee, and oxen shall draw thee, the singers going before thee, and they shall dance the funeral dance. The weepers crouching at the door of thy tomb shall cry aloud the prayers for offerings: they shall slay victims for thee at the door of thy pit; and thy pyramid shall be carved in white stone, in the company of the royal children. Thus thou shalt not die in a strange land, nor be buried by the Amu; thou shalt not be laid in a sheepskin when thou art buried; all people shall beat the earth, and lament on thy ...
— Egyptian Literature
... well—happy or miserable. Do you boys find it pretty hard to wash your necks—and you wish your mother hadn't such a sharp eye on you—be glad you have some one who thinks enough of you to want your neck to be clean. You hate to fill the wood-box, do you? O, I know what a bottomless pit it is—and how the old stove just loves to burn wood to spite you. But listen! By having to do what you do not want to do, you are strengthening the muscles of your soul—and getting ready ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... apartment sufficiently spacious to receive the hundreds which thronged to them. At length the Chevalier de Bouillon conceived a plan of converting the opera house into a ball room, and a friar named Sebastian invented the means of elevating the floor of the pit to a level with the stage, lowering it at pleasure. The project succeeded, and the first masked ball at Paris was held on the 2d of January, 1716. They are now given both before and during the carnival, at nearly all the theatres in Paris, as well ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... night! be friendly to her and me!— To box and pit and gallery swarm The expectant throngs;—I am there to see;— And now she is bending her radiant form To the clapping crowd;—I am thrilled and proud; My dim eyes look through a misty cloud, And my joy mounts up on the plaudits ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... be the prevailing fashion in vengeful murder. Sometimes the bed sank into the oubliette; sometimes the floor gave way and cast the victim into the oubliette; sometimes the whole room sank slowly into the oubliette; but death for the victim always lurked in the pit. ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... frowning black rampart of the fir-trees, touched grimly with red flashes from his fire. He knew well—none better than he—the savage and implacable sternness of the wild. He knew how dreadful the silent adversary against whom he had been called, all unprepared, to pit his craft. There was no blinking the imminence of his peril. Hitherto he had always managed to work, more or less, with nature, and so had come to regard the elemental forces as friendly. Now they had turned upon him altogether and without warning. His anger rose ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... read that "Jesus answering spake unto the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day?"[951] No one ventured to reply. Jesus forthwith healed the man; then He turned to the assembled company and asked: "Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out on the sabbath day?"[952] The learned expositors of ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... into a pit of thought. I did not remark at first the change that was creeping over his face. He lay back on his pillow, made a faint zzzing sound that ceased, and presently and quite quietly he died—greatly comforted by my assurance. I do not know when he died. His hand ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... suit, my madness vain; Tho' gladly, from her eyes to gain One earthly look, one stray desire, I would have torn the wings that hung Furled at my back and o'er the Fire In GEHIM'S[4] pit their fragments flung;— 'Twas hopeless all—pure and unmoved She stood as lilies in the light Of the hot noon but look more white;— And tho' she loved me, deeply loved, 'Twas not as man, as mortal—no, Nothing of earth was in ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... the pit, For he'd borrowed a trifle more money, And ventured another large bet, Along with blobbermouth Coney. When Coney demanded his money, As is usual on all such occasions, He cried, — thee, if thee don't hold thy rattle, I'll pay thee as Paul ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... rushes upon the right shoulder. Thou shalt sprinkle the right shoulder; then the Drug Nasu rushes upon the left shoulder. Thou shalt sprinkle the left shoulder; then the Drug Nasu rushes upon the right arm-pit. Thou shalt sprinkle the right arm-pit; then the Drug Nasu rushes upon the left arm-pit. Thou shalt sprinkle the left armpit; then the Drug Nasu rushes upon the chest. Thou shalt sprinkle the chest; then the Drug Nasu rushes upon the back. Thou shalt sprinkle the back; then ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... The opera-house of Milan was one blaze of light and colour. Royalty in field-marshal's uniform and diamonds, attended by decorated generals and radiant ladies of the court, occupied the great box opposite the stage. The tiers from pit to gallery were filled with brilliantly dressed women. From the third row, where we were fortunately placed, the curves of that most beautiful of theatres presented to my gaze a series of retreating ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... of a wager. But I didn't know—then. And so I learned; and by no virtue nor prowess, but simply through good fortune and constitution. Again my constitution had triumphed over John Barleycorn. I had escaped from another death-pit, dragged myself through another morass, and perilously acquired the discretion that would enable me to drink wisely for many ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... holster, which sheltered a formidable-appearing Colt's revolver. Having made sure that the weapon was loaded and in perfect order, Zeke returned it to the holster, which he put on snugly under the left arm-pit. These final preparations complete, he got up, and hastened ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... forty-eight hours they tasted food, and having eaten their meal under these extraordinary conditions they began to talk of plans to build shelters on the homeward route. Every night, they decided, they must dig a large pit and cover it as best they ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... managed, from this moment till the end of this phase of life I am narrating, I had an almost constant sense of the presence of 'genii of the pit,' of vast intelligence, cruel as ever Satan was imagined, relentless as fate, cold as Dante's ice hells could make them. At first, some influence led me to review the traditional history and prospects of my supposed distinguished visitor, at some length. I discussed the state of his case with ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... more now. My heart goes pit-a-pat. When you receive this I shall be packing for my journey. It will be splendid to see Susan in the moment of your triumph. Altogether, dear, I never felt more elated in my life. This great and unexpected excitement has perfectly restored my health. I say to myself—you know, Flo, ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... could Birchill afford to threaten a man who was under the protection of Sir Horace Fewbanks? Would Birchill pit himself against Sir Horace? I think that Sir Horace, knowing the law pretty thoroughly, would soon have found a way to deal with Birchill. If Hill was threatened by Birchill, his first impulse, knowing what a powerful ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... in Ireland," he said. "There the devil, poor lad, bit a chunk out of a mountain and not liking the morsel over well, treated it as you and I would treat a cherry pit." ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... mental habit. We are as elastic as the gas of gunpowder, and a sentence in a book, or a word dropped in conversation, sets free our fancy, and instantly our heads are bathed with galaxies, and our feet tread the floor of the Pit. And this benefit is real, because we are entitled to these enlargements, and, once having passed the bounds, shall never again be quite the ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... had told his uncle that a steward's house was required: and Topandy had dug a lime-pit in the garden, where it would not be in the way. Only yesterday they had filled it to the brim ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... was made by sinking a pit to sub-grade for the full width of the tunnel and advancing the face of the pit in several lifts, the muck being blown over the slope and loaded into ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace and Francis Mason
... arranged; and again in the illusive sense of deliverance, the poor vicar's hopes brightened and expanded. Hitherto his escapes had not led to safety, and he was only raised from the pit to be sold to ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... such as are poisoned, are as follows: A pain of the breast, difficulty of breathing, a load at the pit of the stomach, an irregular pulse, burning and violent pains of the viscera above and below the navel, very restless at night, sometimes wandering pains over the whole body, a reaching inclination to vomit, profuse sweats (which ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... shoutest, He shutteth out thy prayer: when thine heaven above thee is as brass, and thine earth below thee iron: when it seems as if no God were, either to hear thee or to do for thee—that is a deep pit to get in, Helen, and ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... exactly how such a pit would be dug, widening out from the top to the bottom, so that the creatures which fell in would be unable to escape; and he understood the hideous snarling of some beast, for as he cautiously rose to a standing position the moonlight showed him, impaled upon the horribly sharp stake ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... If this cave dweller is a musician like our cheery outdoor fiddler, how the empty walls must ring! We found several of these odd insects near Echo river and on the walls of the cave near the well known as the "Bottomless Pit." White crayfish moved back and forth on the sand at the edge of Echo river and backed away from us when we tried to procure one for a specimen. His subterranean home has seemingly not affected his habits. This cave also contains a fish known ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... of yours!" chuckled Harry Hazelton. Still crouching he let three stones fly one after the other. The first struck the prowler in the mouth, the second on the end of the nose and the third over the pit of his stomach. ...
— The Young Engineers in Nevada • H. Irving Hancock
... are few facts for a biographer to go upon during this period. Nothing with a date happened to Villon till the summer of 1461, when Thibault d'Aussigny, Bishop of Orleans, for some cause or other, real or imaginary, had him cast into a pit so deep that he "could not even see the lightning of a thunderstorm," and kept him there for three months with "neither stool to sit nor bed to lie on, and nothing to eat but bits of bread flung down to him by his gaolers." Here, during his three months' imprisonment in the pit, he experienced ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... feats of defendant, by defendant in his talk leaping from the rostrum to the top of the pulpit, lying prone on the floor of the rostrum on his stomach in the presence of the vast audience and from thence into a pit to shake hands with the so-called "trail-hitters" and the vulgar use of plaintiff's thoughts contained in said books. Said harangues and vulgarisms of said defendant and horns, drums, organs and singing by said ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... close short grass, brocaded with daisies, and gazed across at the cropped sward of Denbies and the long line of the North Downs stretching away towards Reigate. Tender grays and greens melted into one another on the larches hard by; Betchworth chalk-pit gleamed dreamy white in the middle distance. They had been talking earnestly all the way, like two old friends together; for they were both of them young, and they felt at once that nameless bond which often draws one closer to a new acquaintance ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... cadet had carefully gauged the distance between them, and when he heard the rushing steps of the guard immediately behind him, he suddenly spun around, swinging a roundhouse right, catching the guard in the pit of the stomach again. The man stopped dead in his tracks. His eyes bulged and glazed, and he dropped to the floor like a stone. Astro pulled the man to the corner of the empty shop, removed the plastic helmet, and then tied and gagged him. ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... just do as wrong as before, or worse; and their best intentions merely make the road smooth for them,—you know where, children. For it is not the place itself that is paved with them, as people say so often. You can't pave the bottomless pit; but you may the ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... king was. They answered me, that he was the goodliest and the tallest Indian of the countrey, a mighty man, a warrier, and hauing many subiects vnder his obedience. They tolde me moreouer, that he had great store of golde and siluer, so farre foorth that in a certaine village he had a pit full thereof, which was at the least as high as a man, and as large as a tunne: all which wealth the Spanyards fully perswaded themselues that they could cause me to recouer, if I were able to march ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... is mirk, and its very mirk, And by candle light I canna weel see; The night is mirk, and its very pit mirk, And there will never a nail ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... the Spitting Tribe to steal from the English party, their feet were much employed, and they would tread softly on any article, seize it with the toes, pass it up the back, or between the arm and side, and so conceal it in the arm-pit, or between the beard and throat. The hoary old priest of the Spitting Tribe, while intent upon tricks of this kind, chanted an extraordinary hymn to some deity or devil; the act was evidently superstitious and connected with no good principle. Arrangements were probably being made, and ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... groaned in the bonds of bitterness and the darkness of despair! Those who have made up their minds not to receive it must take their departure from among us, and go back to the place whence they came, there to await till summoned to go down into the pit full of fire and brimstone, already boiling up ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... mind was intent upon his collar; at the next he was stricken with a wild surmise, a terror that even at that instant he would persuade himself was exaggerated. He saw before his clouding eyes a black pit. A strong hand striking him in the middle of his back flung him contemptuously forward into it; a gasping cry of protest and all was over. Had time been permitted him he would have stretched out a hand towards the shabby black box that, true ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... Europe, it was remarked at Munich (Bavaria) that among the thousands of its victims there was not a single coppersmith. Hence, it was recommended by the medical authorities of that town to wear disks of thin copperplate (of about 2 1/2 inch diameter) on a string, on the pit of the stomach, and they proved to be a powerful preventive of cholera. Again, in 1867, ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... saw his books scattered about, his furniture defaced, his regular life turned topsy-turvy, he asked himself for the thousandth time why the first year spent in Mademoiselle Gamard's house had been so sweet, the second so cruel. His troubles were a pit in which his reason floundered. The canonry seemed to him small compensation for so much misery, and he compared his life to a stocking in which a single dropped stitch resulted in destroying the whole fabric. Mademoiselle Salomon ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... made in a slope overlooking the bay, and was really a deep square pit in the sand-bank, roofed with corrugated iron and sandbagged all round. Here we talked. I found he knew G. K. C. and Hilaire Belloc. Always he wanted to look at any ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... of their master mariner. He never came on deck absolutely drunk, but he was saturated with rum to the very marrow of his bones. A devil of cruelty, hate, and murder glared from his eyes, and his blasphemies could come from no other place but the lowest depths of the bottomless pit. The mate was comparatively a gentle and inoffensive lamb. He did not curse and swear more than was considered decent and proper on board ship, did his ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... him a shock, and I reckoned to give him another. I wasn't disappointed either. I walked leisurably down the village street, then crossed the hedge and doubled back on the high moors. At length, drawing near the old gravel-pit, where we had fixed to meet in case of separation, I dropped on all-fours and so came up to the ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... palms. If a bricked-up pit is made about the porch, pot palms may be plunged in it in spring and tub conifers in winter; and fall bulbs in tin cans (so that the receptacles will not split with frost) may ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... with his little flat laugh, "I happen to have ascertained—and, curiously enough, only a few weeks ago. It was at the play, between the acts, from my comfortable seat (the first row in the pit). I was looking leisurely round the house when I caught sight of a woman, in a box close by, whose head was turned from me, and who presented the somewhat unusual spectacle of a young neck and shoulders ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... restraint he had proposed to himself, and at dinner he invited the ladies to go to the opera with him. He chose to show himself in public with them, and to check any impression that they were without due protection. As usual, the pit was full of officers, and between the acts they all rose, as usual, and faced the boxes, which they perused through their lorgnettes till the bell rang for the curtain to rise. But Mrs. Elmore, having touched his ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... broken by lumps of rock, bushes, and holes, which made temporary breaks in the ranks as the men had to give way to pass on either side of them, and then run up into their places again. Behind every rock and bush, crouched in every pit or hollow, were Arabs, who seized the opportunity to dash amongst the men, getting into the very ranks, and striking with their spears and sharp swords right and left, and on ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... thousand pounds, and she determined to marry a lover, to whom she had been some time attached. Had it not been for this engagement, I should have invited her to accompany me in my tour; and I might have escaped the pit, so artfully dug in my path, when I was the ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... against the fear which welled up like nausea from the pit of his stomach, Garr Symm ...
— Equation of Doom • Gerald Vance
... much chamferred in the leaves, and so full of resinous juice as to be ready to burst. The chief time of preparing the aloes is in September, when the north winds blow, after the fall of some rain. Being gathered, it is cut in small pieces, and cast into a pit in the ground, which is paved and cleaned from all filth. It lies here to ferment in the heat of the sun, which causes the juice to flow out; which is put into skins that are hung up in the wind to dry and grow hard. They sold it to us for twenty ryals the quintal, or 103 pounds English; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... catch them now and then: —'Why let these gambling clans Of human Cockers, pit liege men From mart and city, dale and glen, In death-mains, but to swell and swell ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... the pits, and were fired upon by soldiers sent to guard it. Many were killed, and the survivors, with their spirits crushed, returned to work. But worse was yet to come. Souvarine, an Anarchist, disgusted with the ineffectual struggle, brought about an inundation of the pit, whereby many of his comrades were entombed. Among them was Lantier, who was, ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... pollution in lagoon of south Tarawa atoll due to heavy migration mixed with traditional practices such as lagoon latrines and open-pit dumping; ground water ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... words to show her confidence in herself or her contempt of the Emperor. Yet she continued to utter them until she was led to the place of execution, and whether she was innocent or not, she certainly appeared to be so. Nay, even when she was being let down into the dreadful pit and her dress caught as she was being lowered, she turned and readjusted it, and when the executioner offered her his hand she declined it and drew back, as though she put away from her with horror the idea of having ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... something definite to do, a battle in which I will pit myself against this employer for the sake of ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... some powder of toads calcined, so that the bag lay always upon the pit of the stomach next the skin, and presently it took away all pain as long as it hung there but if you left off the bag the pain returned. A bag continueth in force but a month after so long time you must ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 39. Saturday, July 27, 1850 • Various
... largely automatic. There was not enough traffic to bother me. The details of leaving the office so hastily had been too engrossing for thought of Alan and Babs. But now, in my little pit at the controls, my mind flung ahead. They had located him. That meant Franz Polter, for whom we had been searching nearly four years. And my memory went back into the ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... far too long to be told here, but which gave them a high place in the legendary lore of the north, in which Ragnar Lodbrok is one of the chief heroes. At length Ragnar was taken prisoner by King Ethelred of England and thrown into a pit full of serpents, where he died. Afterwards Iwar and his brothers invaded England, conquered that country, and avenged their father by putting Ethelred to death by torture. Iwar took England for his kingdom and the realms of the north were divided among his brothers, and ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... evening has always remained with me as one of the moments of illumination which life in a Settlement so often affords. In response to my position that a desire to avoid all that was "tough" meant to walk only in the paths of smug self-seeking and personal improvement leading straight into the pit of self-righteousness and petty achievement and was exactly what the Settlement did not stand for, they contended with much justice that ambitious young people were obliged for their own reputation, if not for their own morals, to avoid all connection ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... crash the trap was sprung, with the pit yawning beneath it. Struggling, striking, grappling with his assailants, Locke managed to hurl three of them to their deaths ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey |
