"Staple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... great liking for that vulgar edible which bore his name, and which used to form the staple of so many good, old-fashioned suppers. To cheese, in the abstract, he could certainly have borne no forcible objection, since he was wont to steal into the larder, between breakfast and dinner, and help himself—as Martha would grumblingly ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... particularly careful to select those who knew the country best, and to make them commit their intelligence to writing. By these means, united to the reports of those whom he employed to survey his conquests, "all the native commodities which to this day form the staple of the East Indian commerce, were fully known to the Macedonians." The principal castes in India, the principles of the Bramins, the devotion of widows to the flames, the description of the banyan-tree, and a great variety of other particulars, sufficiently prove that the ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... atmosphere by means of the creeks which permeate the land in all directions. The seed of this cotton, planted on the upland, will produce in a few years the cotton of coarser texture; and the seed of the latter, planted on the islands, will in a like period produce the finer staple. The Treasury Department secured eleven hundred thousand pounds from the islands occupied by our forces, including Edisto, being the crop, mostly unginned, and gathered in storehouses, when our military ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... itself. For the rich had no advantage here over the poor, as their wealth and abundance had no road to come abroad by, but were shut up at home doing nothing. And in this way they became excellent artists in common necessary things; bedsteads, chairs, and tables, and such like staple utensils in a family, were admirably well made there; their cup, particularly, was very much in fashion, and eagerly sought for by soldiers, as Critias reports; for its color was such as to prevent water, drunk upon necessity and disagreeable to look at, from being noticed; ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... the barn. In that side toward the river there was a door on the first floor, and there was also a window in the chamber above. Not only was the door closed, and closed also was the wooden shutter of the window, but over each iron hook dropped in its staple and securing the door and window were two nails stoutly driven. All this Charlie had noticed before. He now traced these half-obliterated words in chalk on the door: "This is not to be opened." He was standing before this prohibition, wondering who put it there, and for ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... and a man attends). Whilst to his couch himself the prince address'd, The duteous dame received the purple vest; The purple vest with decent care disposed, The silver ring she pull'd, the door reclosed, The bolt, obedient to the silken cord, To the strong staple's inmost depth restored, Secured the valves. There, wrapped in silent shade, Pensive, the rules the goddess gave he weigh'd; Stretch'd on the downy fleece, no rest he knows, And in his raptured ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... farmhouse was, in its proper season, gay with oats and barley, while potatoes and cabbage, the staple food of the peasant, flourished in plenty. With such a desirable home, such a "likeable" face, and steady, upright character, it was no wonder that Dermot O'Malley was the object of much admiration among the people of ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... two, its three or four colonels, half a dozen majors, and captains without end—besides noncommissioned officers and privates, more than the recruiting officers ever knew of,—all with their campaign stories which will become the staple of ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... shadow goes rustically forward. Bucks, and bears, and rattle-snakes, and former mining operations, are the staple of men's talk. Agriculture has only begun to mount above the valley. And though in a few years from now the whole district may be smiling with farms, passing trains shaking the mountain to the heart, many-windowed hotels lighting up the night like factories, and a prosperous city ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Science cook, a real artist if given unlimited materials, and she didn't mind loneliness, as she said that God is everywhere; to which I heartily agreed. I know that He is on this hill-top. So far so good, but her idea of obeying Mr. Hoover's precepts was not to mention that any staple was out until the last moment. At about six o'clock she usually came pussy-footing to my door in the tennis shoes she always wore, to tell me that there wasn't a potato in the house, or any butter. Not so bad in Pasadena, with a man to ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... the male population, as in Zinder, are quite idle, lounging about, or stretched at their full length upon the dust of the ground. A third find something to do, either in working on cotton, or making matting, or in the gardens, where tobacco, pepper, cotton, and indigo are grown. These are the staple products of the gardens in this part of Africa. The women have always something to occupy their time, suckling their children, fetching water, cooking, or else picking cotton. All the males, I imagine, at some seasons ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... mountainous ranges, are peculiarly adapted for the grazing of sheep, and we are destined not only to supply the world with cotton, but may hope ere long to add to our national wealth the other equally valuable staple commodity, that of wool. ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... in this country has more than doubled since the consular ports were thrown open. So also with silk. As we have formerly shown, the demand has been extensive, and China can supply enormous quantities. From a trivial export, silk has become the second great staple of shipment. Although our imports from China have hitherto consisted chiefly of three or four principal staples, there is no reason, looking at the extensive resources of that vast empire, why they should ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... to do it. But how were, we to escape? We could not move from our places on account of the chains that secured us to the walls, and, though I put all my whole strength into it, I found I could not dislodge the staple a hundredth part of an inch from ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... of this threatening danger? Outwardly all now was peaceful. Each waking-time the fishers put forth in their long boats of metal strips covered with fish-skins. Every sleeping-time they returned laden with the fish that formed the principal staple of the community. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... This gave the three of us two meals with some left over for lunch, making the cost per man about three cents. And they made a hearty meal, too. That was a trick she had learned in the country where baked beans are a staple article of diet. I liked them ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... stores, however, was not the lightest of sundry perplexities. Curry and rice had been suggested as the staple diet for the river journey; and we ordered, with no thought to the contrary, a picul of best rice, various brands of curries, which were raked from behind the shelves of a dingy little store in a back street, and presented to us at alarming prices—enough to ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... Guernsey. We must also remember that the Paris market-gardener is forced to work so hard because he mostly produces early season fruits, the high prices of which have to pay for fabulous rents, and that this system of culture entails more work than is necessary for growing the ordinary staple-food vegetables and fruit. Besides, the market-gardeners of Paris, not having the means to make a great outlay on their gardens, and being obliged to pay heavily for glass, wood, iron, and coal, obtain their artificial heat out ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... seldom, as far as I could learn, interfered with by the natives, and I have never seen the people of either the Admiralty Islands, New Ireland, or New Britain touch an eel as food. The Maories, however, as is well known, are inordinately fond of eels, which, with putrid shark, constitute one of their staple articles of diet. ...
— Amona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... lofty, his discourse peremptory, his tongue filed, his eye ambitious, his gait majestical, and his general behavior vain, ridiculous, and thrasonical.... He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.—Shakespeare, Love's Labor's Lost, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... principles apply in selling manuscripts to the magazines and newspapers as in marketing any other kind of produce. The top prices go to the fellow who delivers his goods fresh and in good order to buyers who stand in need of his particular sort of staple. Composing a manuscript may be art, but selling ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... He bears a deadly hate of Mouse and Rat. The other, whom you feared, is harmless—quite; Nay, perhaps may serve us for a meal some night. As for your friend, for all his innocent air, We form the staple of his bill ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... populi, the Poplar Leaf-beetle.—Translator's Note.) distils at the end of its intestine. This fluid no doubt represents to her some highly-flavoured beverage with which she seasons from time to time the staple diet fetched from the drinking-bar of the flowers, some appetizing condiment or perhaps—who knows?—some substitute for honey. Though the qualities of the delicacy escape me, I at least perceive that the Odynerus does not covet ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... staple productions of the Upper Amazon is the guarana. It is a trailing plant, a sort of vine; when full-grown, about eight feet high, and bearing a bean the size of a coffee-bean, two being enclosed in each ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... every trifling circumstance that occurred was twisted into an omen or presage, whether of good or evil, by the highly wrought fancy of Miss Patricia. These absurdities, together with the past grandeur of their house, and the former glories of their religion, formed the staple subjects of conversation when the family was assembled; and as I became more intimately acquainted with the state of my patient, I felt convinced that the atmosphere of gloomy superstition in which she had been reared had fostered, even if it had not altogether been the cause of, her morbid ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Pelle rushed across the Staple Square, and over the long bridge. Only too well did he know the terrible bulk of the "Ark"—and there was no other exit than the tunnel! And the timber-work, which provided the sole access to the upper stories! As he ran he could see it all clearly before his eyes, and his ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... are imported from France!), beans, melons, squashes, and mushrooms. The last are eaten to a limited extent; Terra del Fuego, says Darwin, is the only country in the world where a cryptogamic plant affords a staple article ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... favorable opportunity, we improved it to make soundings. From where we lay moored to the floe, the nearest island was about three leagues to the east, and the northern main from ten to twelve miles. For sounding we had a twenty-four-pound iron weight, with a staple leaded into it for the line. Dropping it out of the stern, we ran out a hundred and seventy-three fathoms before it slacked. The depth of the strait at that place was given at ten hundred and thirty-eight feet. I should add, that this was considerably deeper ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... that you are deluded by men who are either deceived themselves or wish to deceive you. Mark under what pretenses you have been led on to the brink of insurrection and treason on which you stand. First, a diminution of the value of your staple commodity, lowered by overproduction in other quarters, and the consequent diminution in the value of your lands were the sole effect of the tariff laws. The effect of those laws was confessedly injurious, but the evil was greatly exaggerated by the unfounded theory you were taught to ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... pounds sterling enough to purchase an estate and a pardon. Half-a-dozen boats, some of them neat little feluccas with three masts, are drawn up on the beach: there is not much fishing; the vine-disease has raged, and the staple export consists of maize in some quantities; of cantaria, a grey trachyte which works more freely than the brown or black basalt, and of an impure limestone from Ilheu Baixo, the only calcaire used ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... Athens once held by devoting and zealously training all its sons to service in its fleets. In order to man the numerous galleys which she sent out, she necessarily employed large numbers of hired mariners and slaves at the oar; but the staple of her crews was Athenian, and all posts of command were held by native citizens. It was by reminding them of this, of their long practice in seamanship, and the certain superiority which their discipline gave them over the enemy's marine, that their great minister ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... pattern; warps were crossed and wrapped, wefts were omitted and texture changed, so as to produce marvellous effects upon the surface. This composite art reached its climax in Peru, the llama wool affording the finest staple on the whole hemisphere. Textile work in other parts of South America did not differ from that of the Southern states of the Union. The addition of brilliant ornamentation in shell, teeth, feathers, wings of insects and dyed fibres completed ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... out differently, and the planters of the south now deplore their untoward policy and want of foresight, as they have assisted in raising up a formidable rival in the production of their staple commodity, injurious to them even in time of peace, and in case of a war with England, still more ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... my taste for bread Tended to make me much too stout, And all the leading doctors said I should be better far without; Not that my health may be more rude, More svelte my rounded style of beauty, I sacrifice this staple food— But ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various
... as that just removed at Ellerburne, or a big window with decayed wooden mullions cut in a wall, regardless of symmetry, one may be quite safe in attributing it to the early years of the nineteenth century. One of the staple industries of Pickering and the adjoining villages at this time was weaving, and a great number of the cottages had the room on the opposite side of the passage to the parlour ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... to be heard as is unpleasing. I have been told as her describes me as a villin, and speaks in the same terms of you, Reuben. And that's why I advised you to speak out before there should be time to make mischief, if by any chance mischief might be made. And I've seen enough to know as theer's no staple so easy to mannyfacture as ill-will, even betwixt them as thinks well of each other. But, Reuben, even the best of women are talkers, and I look for it to be made a point on between Ruth and you, that no word of this is breathed ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... River carts[3] stood ready for the homeward start, loaded with robes tied down by means of rawhide strips to stand the jolting across the plains. Not far away other women were making pemmican of fried buffalo meat and fat, pounded together and packed with hot grease in skin bags. This food was a staple winter diet and had too a market value for trade to the Hudson's Bay Company, which shipped thousands of sacks yearly to its northern posts on the Peace ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... staple beverages," says The Daily Mail. We feel, however, that an Irishman who was really trying could swear ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 10th, 1920 • Various
... from St. Paul's writings every instance of what he thinks fanciful exposition, illogical reasoning, inexact quotation, and mistaken inference; the result would be altogether unmanageable. For any one who attends to the matter will perceive that such things run into the very staple of the Apostle's argument; and therefore cannot be detached without destroying the whole. The householder's reason for not removing the tares, ("lest while ye gather up the tares ye root up also the wheat with them[425],") ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... value. You can help along a little by wearing high-heeled shoes. So you can do something to encourage yourself in serenity of aspect and demeanor, keeping your infirmities and troubles in the background instead of making them the staple of your conversation. This piece of advice, if followed, may be worth from three to five years of the fourscore which you hope ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... his tastes and habits. We have seen him (p. 66), in the early days of his stay in Rome, at his "plain meal of pancakes, pulse, and pease," served on homely earthenware. At his farm, again, beans and bacon (p. 80) form his staple dish. True to the old Roman taste, he was a great vegetarian, and in his charming ode, written for the opening of the temple of Apollo erected by Augustus on Mount Palatine (B.C. 28), he thinks it not out of place to mingle with his ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... adds much to their health and comfort. The people of India are not unlike the Chinese in many of their habits. The poor of both countries eat sparingly of animal food; rice, and other grains and vegetables, form the staple articles on which they live. This being the case, it is not at all unlikely that the Indian will soon acquire a habit which is so universal in China. But in order to enable him to drink tea, it must be produced ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... times since its settlement, Mesa has prospered, but its prosperity has been especially notable since the development, a few years ago, of the Pima long-staple cotton. Nearly every landowner, and Mesa is a settlement of landowners, has prospered through this industry, though it has been affected by the post-war depression. The region is one of comfortable, spacious homes ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... essentially the presiding deity over fishermen, and was on that account, more particularly worshipped and revered in countries bordering on the sea-coast, where fish naturally formed a staple commodity of trade. He was supposed to vent his displeasure by sending disastrous inundations, which completely destroyed whole countries, and were usually accompanied by terrible marine monsters, who swallowed ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... people were of course many, and their prices for stock were so good, and their speculations in land so profitable and bright, that they could afford the indulgence of a luxury, no matter what price was asked to purchase it. It is very different now. The staple commodity of this colony is wool. Well, so long as all the stations or sheep-runs continued unoccupied, and new settlers arrived, the price of sheep kept naturally very high; but every station that can command a due supply of water, is now in occupation, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... 1879, on opening this magazine, it was found that the venerable bones, box and all had disappeared, the staple of the padlock on the door having been forced. By whom and ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... latitude of 32 deg south, where wheat flourishes so luxuriantly, as to yield from seventy to eighty bushels for one. Coffee also, which they formerly received from Portugal, now grows in such plenty as to enable them to export considerable quantities of it. But the staple commodity of the country is sugar. That they have not, however, learnt the art of making palatable rum, the English troops in New South Wales can bear testimony; a large quantity, very ill flavoured, having been bought and ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay • Watkin Tench
... girl slammed the pen door, jammed the hardwood peg into the staple, ran her fingers nervously through the pale fluff of her hair, and came hurrying across the yard to the door with a smile on ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... illustrated Romances—e.g. the Grail and Lancelot—of great bulk, usually in prose, which served to pass the winter evenings of persons of quality. A few of these, and a book of devotions to take to church (oftenest a Psalter at this time; later on a book of Hours), were the staple books owned by ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James
... from various parts of the world, respecting the possibilities of profitable commercial fruit-growing in this State, and this pamphlet is intended in part to be an answer to such inquiries; but, at the same time, it is hoped that it will have a wider scope, and give a general idea of one of our staple industries to many who are now on the look-out for a country in which to settle and an occupation to take up when they ...
— Fruits of Queensland • Albert Benson
... the frequency of begging by opening accounts and having the bills sent to him. She had found that staple groceries, sugar, flour, could be most cheaply purchased at Axel Egge's rustic general store. She said ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... Another staple dinner ration was ham soup. This was the usual two hundred gallons of water boiled with ten pounds of ham rinds, ten pounds of cabbage and twenty pounds of potatoes. The ham rind had hair on it but we used to fish for ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... himself, he rears a giant structure—which will yet cause the wreck of the ship of state, should its keel grate too closely on that adamantine wall. 'L'etat c'est moi,' said Louis XIV., and that 'slavery is the South' is as true an utterance. Our staple—our patriarchal institution—our prosperity—are one and indissoluble, and the sooner the issue comes ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... of Gray's Inn, in Dugdale's time, were Staple Inn and Barnard's Inn. Originally the Exchange of the London woolen merchants, Staple Inn was a law-school as early as Henry V.'s time. It is probable that Bernard's Inn became an academy for law-students in the reign of ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... will effectually guard, though the dogs should take a liking to his ugly visage, and let him pass. The youth returned to the door, while giving vent to this soliloquy, and completed the fastenings by placing a small chain through a staple, and securing it there by a padlock. He is a pettifogger, and surely must know that there is such a thing as feloniously breaking into ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Naseby and a few friends of his, some "gilded youths" like himself, together with some trade-union officials of a long experience, had done wonders. They had been planning out the industrial reorganisation of a whole district, through its two staple trades, with the enthusiastic co-operation of the workpeople themselves; and the result so far struck the imagination. Everywhere the old workshops were to be bought up, improved, or closed; everywhere factories in which life might be decent, ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... excitement, for during the night the stable had been broken open. I had left it locked up, as it always was locked, after I had made Greylegs comfortable. When Joe came there at about half-past seven, he had found the broken padlock lying in the snow and the door-staple secured by a wooden peg cut from an ash in the hedge. As I expected, Nigger was in his stall, but the poor horse was dead lame from a cut in the fetlock: Joe said he must have been kicked there. I was surprised ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... reckoned by the number of heads of cattle (goats, sheep, and cows) they possess. There are eighteen chiefs in all; selection is made for deeds of bravery, some allowance also being made for hereditary descent. Wheat is their staple food, and with the juice of the grape they make a kind of bread, which is eaten toasted, and is not then unlike a ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... that crops out in their clothes or in their conversation," Norris grumbled. "The staple remark seems to be, ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... a sort of cattle-run for our two milk-cows. He says it's only a small field, but there seemed to be miles and miles of that fencing. We had no stretcher, so Dinky-Dunk made shift with me and a claw-hammer. He'd catch the wire, lever his hammer about a post, and I'd drive in the staple, with a hammer of my own. I got so I could hit the staple almost every whack, though one staple went off like shrapnel and hit Diddum's ear. So I'm some use, you see, even if I am a chekako! But a wire slipped, and tore through my skirt and stocking, ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... the queen among the States of the Union. No other State has so little waste land or is so productive. Her annual output of staple products amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars in value. Her people are intelligent, progressive and just. None are governed more by the precepts of the golden rule, or are more disposed to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's. ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... dialects, and chaunted through all notes of the gamut, till the sound of it had grown a weariness rather than a pleasure. Sceptical sentimentality, view-hunting, love, friendship, suicide, and desperation, became the staple of literary ware; and though the epidemic, after a long course of years, subsided in Germany, it reappeared with various modifications in other countries, and everywhere abundant traces of its good and bad effects are still to be discerned. The fortune of /Berlichingen ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... flannels, stockings, and cloth. The cotton trade, formerly the great staple of the Netherlands, has of late years been ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... presence of whose mistress proved entirely necessary. Dorothy had indeed to put it on him with her own hands, for at the sound of the chain attached to it he began to grow furious, growling fiercely. When the chain had been made fast with a staple driven into a strong kennel-post, and his mistress proceeded to take her leave of him, his growling changed to the most piteous whining; but when she actually left him there, he flew into a rage of indignant affection. After trying the strength of his chain, however, by three or four ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... husband but a moment, when she was torn away by Hartmann and his assistant, and before she realized their intention, the former had slipped about her waist the broad leather strap he had brought from the room above, and was busy securing it to an iron staple fixed in the wall at one side of the room. Then he stood back and surveyed the scene with a smile ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... study and recognition of the active principles which silently mould the national character and history. The double-faced platforms of conventions, the loose manifestoes of itinerant candidates for the Presidency, the rhetorical misrepresentations of "campaign documents," form the staple of our ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... edited by Birkbeck Hill. Vol. i. p. 169. n. 2: "Ralph ... as appears from the minutes of the partners of the Champion in the possession of Mr Reed of Staple Inn, succeeded Fielding in his share of the paper before the ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... turned again to the fence. A superhuman effort brought away a staple. One wire was down and an instant later two more. Standing with one foot upon the wires to keep them from tangling about her horse's legs, she pulled her mount across into the wood. The foremost horseman was close ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a loop at the end of it, then watching her opportunity passed the loop between his hands, noosed the other end through it, and drew the noose tight. The free end of the rope she put through the staple that received the bolt of the cottage-door, and gradually, as he grew weary in pulling against her, tightened the rope until she had his arms at their stretch beyond his head. Not quite satisfied yet, she lastly contrived, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... It is then dried and broken, and afterwards "scutched," and rendered still cleaner and finer by a process called "hackling." It makes no difference in the fineness of the fibre whether the stalks be small or large, since the great coarse stems of the Italian and Indian hemp produce a staple equally as fine as the ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... Listen to this, 'Mr. Quarrington's wonderful creations are evidently not entirely the fruit of the spirit, since we understand that his staple breakfast dish consists of a couple of underdone cutlets—so lightly cooked, in fact, as to be almost raw.' I'm glad I've learned that," pursued Magda earnestly. "It seems to me an important thing for a wife to know. ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... assured me that they had raised tobacco off the same piece of land for thirty consecutive years. The inhabitants, who are generally English, are mostly engaged in this production. It is their chief staple, and the money with which they must purchase every thing they require, which is brought to them from other English possessions in Europe, Africa and America. There is, nevertheless, sometimes a great want of these necessaries, ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... with one foot on a staple below the tin, he twice sawed the conductor's soft metal with the fragments of cup, cutting and tugging out three inches of it, thus isolating the conductor's point atop from its earthing; then he tossed the piece cut out ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... box; but our business is in this world. Right through the thick and thin of this world our path lies. Our strength, our worth, our happiness, our glory, are to be attained through the occupations and advantages of this world. Yet through discipline, and not happiness, is the main staple here, it is not the only product. Six days we must labor and do all work, but the seventh is a holiday. Then we may drop the absorbing now, and revel in anticipated joys,—lift ourselves above the dusty duties, the common pleasures that weary and ensoil, even ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... lake, between Meadow and Spring streets, and this was speedily followed by another, built by Elias and Harvey Murray, which became the centre of business and gossip for the village and the country round about. Of course a full supply of the great staple—whisky—was kept. ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... largely planted, and promised to become a staple of the Islands; but a blight attacked the trees and proved so incurable that the best plantations were dug up and turned into sugar; and the export of coffee, which has been very variable, but which rose to 415,000 pounds in 1870, ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... and corners, and counting on evading notice for the enjoyment of existence. The railroads had gone on combining till a few great syndicates controlled every rail in the land. In manufactories, every important staple was controlled by a syndicate. These syndicates, pools, trusts, or whatever their name, fixed prices and crushed all competition except when combinations as vast as themselves arose. Then a struggle, resulting in a still greater consolidation, ensued. ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... snowy linen; the cooking was entirely done by black boys, and of these the "Chinde" boys from the Portuguese settlements are much sought after, and cannot be excelled as cooks or servants, so thoroughly do the Portuguese understand the training of natives. The staple meat was buck of all kinds; sheep were wellnigh unknown, oxen were scarce and their meat tough; but no one need grumble at a diet of buck, wild-pig, koran,[51] guinea-fowl, and occasionally wild-duck. As regards other ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... formidable characteristics: a restless ambition which coveted his neighbor's throne, and a wise foresight in matters of commerce, which engaged him now in transplanting Flemish weavers and sowing the seeds of what for many years was the staple trade of England. Each of these varied qualities might have been read upon his face. The brow, shaded by a crimson cap of maintenance, was broad and lofty. The large brown eyes were ardent and bold. His chin was clean-shaven, ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... The charm of the whole relation was in its being kept sub rosa. Sub rosa was the term. It should remain under the rose where it had had its origin. It should be a stolen bliss in a man's life and not a daily staple. That was something Thor would never understand, that a man's life needed a stolen bliss to give it piquancy. There was a kind of bliss which when it ceased to be hidden ceased to be exquisite. Mysteries were seductive because they ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... until valued for taxation by the government official. In the dry atmosphere of Cyprus, Syria, Egypt, &c., the straw breaks easily, and beneath the sharp flints of the ancient threshing-harrow in present use is quickly reduced to the coarse chaff known as "tibbin," which forms the staple article of food for horses and all cattle. Taking advantage of the numbers of people congregated in the fields, some itinerant gipsies with a monkey and performing bears were camped beneath the caroub-trees, about half a mile from our position. The bears were the Syrian variety. Throughout ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... logs are placed transversely, and are clipped at the ends, so as to fit each other more compactly. In this way the interstices are made much narrower than they would otherwise be. These, moreover, are filled in with mud, which, as you have probably heard, is a staple production of Virginia. This is a good protection against the cold, though it does not give our dwellings a ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... with an estimated per capita GDP of about $130. The food situation is precarious; during the 1980s famine has been averted only through international relief. In 1986 the production level of rice, the staple food crop, was able to meet only 80% of domestic needs. The biggest success of the nation's recovery program has been in new rubber plantings and in fishing. Industry, other than rice processing, is almost ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... surprising, when we remember how the history which transpires now and here fails of harmonious report. Every battle, diplomatic arrangement, political event, nay, each personal occurrence, which forms the staple of to-day's journalism and talk, is regarded from so many different points of view, and stated under so many modifying influences, that only judicial minds have a prospect of reaching the exact truth. Hence the true way to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... and however they might commence, after the opening or introduction hearers were certain to find the preacher falling gradually into the old channel. The fall of man in Adam, his restoration in Christ, justification by faith, and the terms of the new covenant, formed the staple of each sermon, and without which it was not in fact reckoned complete as an orthodox exposition of Christian doctrine. Without omitting the essentials of Christian instruction, preachers now take a wider view of illustrating and explaining the gospel scheme of salvation ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... shows such a great variety of different kinds of foods put up and prepared in all sorts of ways. Although nearly two-thirds of the actual fuel which we put into our body-boilers is in the form of a dozen or fifteen great staple foods, like bread, meat, butter, sugar, eggs, milk, potatoes, and fish, yet all the lighter foods, also, are needed for ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... right. A careless attendant had hooked the padlock of the monkey cage in the staple, but had not locked it. An observant simian had noticed this, but did not make use of his knowledge until the ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... first derive its tone and colouring from him much more than from any of the other writers. I could not exercise editorial control over his articles, and I was sometimes obliged to sacrifice to him portions of my own. The old Westminster Review doctrines, but little modified, thus formed the staple of the Review; but I hoped by the side of these, to introduce other ideas and another tone, and to obtain for my own shade of opinion a fair representation, along with those of other members of the party. ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... when we bear in mind that the excess charge of 40s. to 45s. per case does not benefit the State, but serves to enrich individuals for the most part resident in Europe, the injustice of such a tax on the staple industry becomes more ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... whipping-post at the river's side, and its rows of houses which hugged the citadel, presented but a mean appearance. Yet before long he described it to the Duke as "the best of all his majesty's towns in America," and assured his royal highness that, with proper management, "within five years the staple of America will be drawn hither, of which the brethren of Boston ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... as Chauntry. Palfreyman, or Palfreman, occurs on several occasions, they were of a respectable family in the county, William Palfreyman being Mayor of Lincoln in 1534; Ralph Palfreyman, clerk, was presented to the Benefice of Edlington, by his brother Anthony, merchant of the Staple, ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... of sand between the Senegal river and the sea, which forms his kingdom, I entered St. Louis, the capital of our possessions on the West African coast. While nobody talks anything but sugar at Martinique, nor cod in Newfoundland, at St. Louis the only subject of conversation is GUM. It is its staple product, and indeed is found nowhere else, ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... Orleans, Miss Helena," was my answer, "a city of some three hundred thousand souls, noted for its manufacture of sugar, and its large shipments abroad of the staple cotton." ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... employed at home in making them. The day will come probably, but does not seem to be hastening very fast, when we shall conclude to make our own linens, as we have within a comparatively few years past determined in regard to all the staple varieties of carpets. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... Chamillart were their brother, they would sorrowfully admit the necessity of removing him! At last, nobody could understand either how such a man could ever have been chosen, or how he could have remained so long in his place! All his faults and all his ridicules formed the staple of Court conversation. If anybody referred to the great things he had done, to the rapid gathering of armies after our disasters, people turned on their heels and walked away. Such were the presages ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... complete economic dependence. Under the new dynasty the little kingdom showed a keener desire to shake off its vassalage and find new markets. The so-called "Pig War"—the breeding of swine is Serbia's staple industry, and the founders of her two rival dynasties were wealthy pig-breeders—proved an unexpected success, for new trade outlets were found in Egypt and elsewhere. But the initial strain hit every peasant in his pocket and thus greatly accentuated the feeling against Austria-Hungary. ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... from the hills above; and this is the reason why land left dry by rivers and by the sea is generally so rich. Then what becomes of the soil? It begins a new life. The roots of the plants take it up; the salts which they find in it—the staple, as we call them—go to make leaves and seed; the very sand has its use, it feeds the stalks of corn and grass, and makes them stiff. The corn-stalks would never stand upright if they could not get sand from the soil. So what a thousand ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... log cabin on the river. The habitation of five or six young miners. A perfect marvel of a fireplace. Huge unsplit logs as firewood. Window of glass jars. Possibilities in the use of empty glass containers. Unthrift of some miners. The cabin, its furniture, store of staple provisions, chinaware, cutlery. The dinner in the cabin. A cow kept. Wonderful variety of makeshift candlesticks in use among the miners. Dearth of butter, potatoes, onions, fresh meat, in camp. Indian-summer ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... Life, the game of politics, the contests and reverses of party, literature in its various forms, and the sports of the field, form topics which make the staple of our dinner-talk. Instead of these the Italians have their one solitary theme—the lapses of their neighbours, the scandals of the small world around them. Not that they are uncharitable or malevolent; far from it. They discuss a ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... against us, we are not to lie still, but to move onward with added diligence on the way that is thus opened to us. If outward success is arrested and reverted, there is only the more reason for improving the staple of our inward being. If those dearest to us have passed beyond the reach of our good offices, there are the more remote that may be brought near, and made ours, by our beneficence. If our earthly life is rendered ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... what Latisan wanted at that moment, but he had not the courage to voice his wishes in regard to her; he had not enough self-possession left to state his actual desires as to food, even. There was one staple dish of the drive; he was heartily sick of that food, but he could not think of ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... his evening meal, he called it his tea, and it was little more than a facsimile of breakfast. Alfred left in time to post the letters before six. Butler then wrote music till about 8, when he came to see me in Staple Inn, returning to Clifford's Inn by about 10. After a light supper, latterly not more than a piece of toast and a glass of milk, he played one game of his own particular kind of Patience, prepared his breakfast things and fire ready for the next morning, ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... the great staple of diet in ancient, as it is in modern, times. The importance attaching to it is shown by the fact that the Sun goddess herself is represented as engaging in its cultivation and that injuring a rice-field was among the greatest offences. Barley, millet, wheat, and beans are mentioned, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... were the staple of conversation on deck and in the steerage among the crew; and some of the better boys heard certain indefinite remarks about "the first step" and "the second step," used by "our fellows;" but no real friend of law and order discovered ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... specifying the would-be congressman's vices. Thus conversation started; and pretty soon the others in the store joined in—"Bob" Johnson, bookkeeper and post-master, and "Jake" Predovich, the Galician Jew who was a member of the local school-board, and knew the words for staple groceries in fifteen languages. ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... my boy," said the Admiral, drawing near his son gradually, for his wrath (like good vegetables) was very short of staple; "and when I do so you may feel quite certain that there is sound reason at the bottom of it"—here he looked as if his depth was unfathomable. "It is not only that I am not myself, because of the many hours spent upon hard leather, and vile chalks of flint that go by me half asleep, when I ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... This also he did—his crowning piece. He caused her to wear round her waist a girdle made of bright steel in which was a staple. To the staple he fixed a fine steel chain—a toy, a mimicry of prisons, but in fact a chain—and the other end of a chain was fixed to a monk's wrist. The chain was fine and flexible, it was long, it ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... very summits. The rock, chiefly old red sandstone, is purple. The heather, of which there are enormous masses, is in many places waist deep." Yachting and fishing, fishing and yachting, were the staple amusements at Derreen. Nothing was more characteristic of Froude than his love of the sea and the open air. Sport, in the proper sense of the term, he also loved. "I always consider," he said, "that the proudest moment ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... let me say here that, while slicing off the victim's ear is a staple situation among novelists who write of bandits, in all my experience with bandits—and I have known a thousand, most of 'em in Wall Street—I have never known it done, and I challenge those who write of South European highway-robbers to produce any evidence to prove that ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... by the Sphinx of the Past to the curious of the new generations. These questions do not greatly concern the scientific historian, who is busy with constitution-making, statistics, progress, degeneration, in short with human evolution. These high matters, these streams of tendency, form the staple of history, but the problems of personal character and action still interest some inquiring minds. Among these enigmas nearly the most obscure, 'The Gowrie ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... from the shore to the ship. The apparatus by which this is accomplished consists, first, of a piece of ordnance called a mortar, made large enough to throw a shot of about six inches in diameter; secondly, the shot itself, which has a small iron staple set in it; thirdly, a long line, one end of which is to be attached to the staple in the shot, when the shot is thrown; and, fourthly, a rack of a peculiar construction to serve as a reel for winding the line upon. This rack consists of a small square frame, having rows of pegs ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... scarcely give it up as hopeless. One day I chanced to observe a nail trodden into the mud floor at no great distance from me. I seized upon this new treasure, and found that I could unlock with it the padlock that fastened me to the staple in the floor. By this means I had the pitiful consolation of being able to range, without constraint, the miserable coop in which I was confined. It became my constant practice to liberate myself at night; but security breeds negligence. One morning I overslept myself, and the turnkey, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... two Lambs at one yeaning: As the Country comes to be open'd, they prove still better, Change of Pasture being agreeable to that useful Creature. Mutton is (generally) exceeding Fat, and of a good Relish; their Wool is very fine, and proves a good Staple. ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... was founded at Skalholt, about the middle of the eleventh century, under Isleif, first Bishop of Iceland; four other schools and several convents soon followed. Poetry and music seem to have formed a staple branch of education. ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... out of the mountains—logs, planks, clapboards, and laths, for which we pay such sinful prices in England—all seeking the sea. There was housing, food, and fuel for millions, on wheels together, and never a grain yet shifted of the real staple which men for five hundred miles were threshing out in heaps ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... abundant carpet in the forest here is the uva-ursi or bear-berry. Its beautiful evergreen leaves and bright red berries cover a quarter of the ground in dry woods and are found in great acre beds. It furnishes a staple of food to all wild things, birds and beasts, including Foxes, Martens, and Coyotes; it is one of the most abundant of the forest products, and not one hundred yards from the fort are solid patches as big as farms, and ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... and I have since verified the information, that the men holding this long line of the Alps receive a special food, particularly during the seven months' winter. Besides the excellent soup which forms the staple diet of the Italian as of the French soldiers, the men receive a daily ration of two pounds of bread, half a pound of meat, half a pint of red wine, macaroni of various kinds, rice, cheese, dried and fresh fruit, chocolate, and ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... understanding succeeded in busying itself with other matters. With concentrated attention he then conceived the idea of a Sraddha. All those articles of his own food, consisting of fruits and roots, and all those kinds of staple grains that were agreeable to him, were carefully thought of by that sage possessed of wealth of penances. On the day of the New moon he invited a number of adorable Brahmanas (to his asylum). Possessed of great wisdom, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... has been well named 'The Cotton Famine,' amongst the imports of cotton from India, perhaps the worst was that denominated 'Surat,' from the city of that name in the province of Guzerat, a great cotton district. Short in staple, and often rotten, bad in quality, and dirty in condition, (the result too often of dishonest packers,) it was found to be exceedingly difficult to work up; and from its various defects, it involved ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... next three years the five novels were issued singly by Chetwood with the help of other booksellers, usually Daniel Browne, Jr., and Samuel Chapman. This pair, or James Roberts, Chetwood's successor, published most of Mrs. Haywood's early writings. The staple of her output during the first decade of authorship was the short amatory romance like "Love in Excess" and the "exemplary novels" just mentioned. These exercises in fiction were evidently composed currente calamo, with little thought and less revision, for an eager and ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... practical value. The tradition is persistent, however, that the real credit of the invention belongs to a Negro on the plantation. The cotton-gin created great excitement throughout the South and began to be utilized everywhere. The cultivation and exporting of the staple grew by leaps and bounds. In 1791 only thirty-eight bales of standard size were exported from the United States; in 1816, however, the cotton sent out of the country was worth $24,106,000 and was by far the most valuable article of export. The current price was 28 cents a pound. Thus at the very ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... home here. The fine hunting counties of Kildare, Tipperary, Kilkenny, and Waterford are familiar to every son of Nimrod. Shooting and fishing, although the preserves are not so many or so well kept as in Scotland, may be called the staple sports of Ireland. Golf has come to stay, and within recent years links have been laid in the vicinity of most of the ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... Was done to make it a success; And marks of female tastefulness, And traces of a lady's care, Were noticeable everywhere. The port was old, the champagne dry, And every kind of luxury Which Melbourne could supply was there. They had the staple Christmas fare, Roast beef and turkey (this was wild), Mince-pies, plum-pudding, rich and mild, One for the ladies, one designed For Mr. Forte's severer mind, Were on the board, yet in a way It did not seem like Christmas day With no ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson |
