"The pits" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... off her cerements—erased her plague-marks. The dead-cart's dreadful bell no longer sounded in the silence of an afflicted city. Coffins no longer stood at every other door; the pits at Finsbury, in Tothill Fields, at Islington, were all filled up and trampled down; and the grass was beginning to grow over the forgotten dead. The Judges came back to Westminster. London was alive again—alive and healed; basking in the ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... comprise more than half the mass. But this is probably due to the fact that a large quantity of earth, mostly, of course, from the upper part of the deposits, has been taken away for fertilizer. Neither in the bank of the little channel nor about the pits left by this digging is any refuse to be seen, and there is none about the entrance. So, in spite of its suitability for residential purposes and its favorable situation, it does not seem ever ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... Remove the pits from a large cup of stewed prunes and chop fine. Add the whites of three eggs and a half cup of sugar beaten to a stiff froth. Mix well, turn into a buttered dish and bake thirty minutes in a moderate oven. Serve with whipped cream. If it is desired to cook this in individual ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum
... and with that congenitally shabby look, in spite of their newness, which seems to belong by nature to all southern buildings. Some stagnant pools alone remained to attest the presence after rain of a roaring brook, the pits in whose dried-up channel they now occupied; over their tops hung the faded foliage of a few dust-laden trees, struggling hard for life with the energy of despair against depressing circumstances. It was a picture that gave Guy a sudden attack ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... going, nor the going made that more slow; but, talking, we went on apace even as a ship urged by good wind. And the shades, that seemed things doubly dead, through the pits of their eyes drew in wonder at me, perceiving that I ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri
... of a generation. Manassas is the work of a man filled with epic memories and epic expectations who saw in the Civil War a clash of titanic principles, saw a nation being beaten out on a fearful anvil, saw splendor and heroism rising up from the pits of slaughter. And in spite of his fifteen years spent in discovering the other side of the American picture Mr. Sinclair in Jimmie Higgins, the story of a socialist who went to war against the Kaiser, showed traces still of a ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... was doing when his back was turned to her, just as if he had been sitting squarely in front of her. Some laughed at this foolish notion; but others, who knew more of the nebulous sciences, told her it was like's not jes' so. Folks had read letters laid ag'in' the pits o' their stomachs, 'n' why should n't they see out o' the backs ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Women stretched themselves on the corpses, mouth to mouth and brow to brow; it was necessary to beat them in order to make them withdraw when the earth was being thrown in. They blackened their cheeks; they cut off their hair; they drew their own blood and poured it into the pits; they gashed themselves in imitation of the wounds that disfigured the dead. Roarings burst forth through the crashings of the cymbals. Some snatched off their amulets and spat upon them. The dying rolled in the bloody mire biting their mutilated fists in their rage; ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... British Association" for 1859. ) On my way through Rouen, I stated my convictions on this subject to M. George Pouchet, who immediately betook himself to St. Acheul, commissioned by the municipality of Rouen, and did not quit the pits till he had seen one of the hatchets extracted from gravel in its natural position.* (* "Actes du Musee d'Histoire Naturelle de ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... oriental pearl, and looked at on the right side seems a very flower of the field; but on the left not quite so fair, for on that side she wants an eye, which she lost by the small-pox; and though the pits in her face are many and deep, her admirers say they are not pits but graves wherein the hearts of her lovers are buried. So clean and delicate, too, is she, that to prevent defiling her face, she carries her nose so ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... that there had once been considerable excavations, but the good layers were now deeply covered by talus, and could only be exposed after much digging. It was about thirty years since the pits had been worked. Dr. Bacmeister found for us a strong country youth, Max Deschle, who dug under our direction all next day in the quarry near the house. The rock is not so easy to work as that at Florissant, and it does not split so well into slabs, but we readily ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... by that wind, and every man of them was suffocated, so that not one survived to carry the tidings to their Lord. When the people of Hormos heard of this they went forth to bury the bodies lest they should breed a pestilence. But when they laid hold of them by the arms to drag them to the pits, the bodies proved to be so baked, as it were, by that tremendous heat, that the arms parted from the trunks, and in the end the people had to dig graves hard by each where it lay, and so ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Penselcoit, was reported in Somersetshire. Habitations sunk deep in the rock, with only a roof above ground. But the spade has cracked these archaeological theories like filberts, and has proved that the pits in the wolds were sunk after iron ore, or those in Somerset were burrowings for the extraction of chert. [Footnote: Atkinson, "Forty Years in a Moorland Parish." Lond. 1891, p. 161, et seq. Some pits are, however, not ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... situation with judgment and courage. He acted as doctor, nurse, and hunter, and daily brought in meat for the hungry and furs to cover the dying. Five pits sheltered the castaways. When examined in 1885 the walls of the pits were still intact—three feet of solid peat. Clothing of sea-otter skins of priceless value, which afterwards proved a fortune to those who survived, and food of the flesh of the great sea-cow, saved a remnant of the wretched crew. During ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... other Animals, lying unburied in the Neighbourhood of Camps, and have in a particular Manner mentioned the Necessity of burying such putrid Substances. Dr. Pringle has very justly recommended the Digging of Deep Pits for Privies in Camp, and covering the Excrements with Earth daily[142] till the Pits are near full, and then to fill them up with Earth, and dig new ones; and to punish every Person who shall ease himself any where in Camp but in the Privies: And he remarks, that when the Camp begins to turn unhealthy, that often the only ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... were very numerous for so small a temple (v. PL. XXVI). Under each corner of the main wall was one of the little pits filled with sand, which have now become so familiar, and at a metre's distance along the side wall was another and larger deposit. The pits were about .60 m. in diameter; in two, there was at the bottom a recess, filled with the small cups of brown clay. The objects are all closely similar to those found in the other deposits of this reign at Koptos and Nubt. One shape of pot, ...
— El Kab • J.E. Quibell
... Also, in summer, the pits are slack. Often, on bright sunny mornings, the men are seen trooping home again at ten, eleven, or twelve o'clock. No empty trucks stand at the pit-mouth. The women on the hillside look across as they shake the hearthrug ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... destroyed. 7. They constructed some pits in the middle of the streets, covered over with broken boughs of trees and grass, completely concealing them: they were filled with sharp stakes hardened by fire which would be driven into the horses's bellies if they fell into the pits. Once, or twice, did some horses fall in but not often, because the Spaniards knew how to avoid them. In revenge, the Spaniards made a law, that all Indians of whatsoever rank and age whom they captured alive, they would throw into the pits. And so they threw in pregnant and confined women, children, ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... it's a bargain," said Ellish; "an' at the end o' the year, if we're spared, we'll see what we'll see. We'll have among ourselves a little sup o' tay, plase goodness, an' we'll be comfortable. Now, Barny, go an' draw home thim phaties from the pits while the day's fine; and Katty, a colleen, bring in some wather, till we get the pig killed and scalded—it'll hardly have time to be good bacon for the big markets at Christmas. I don't wish," she continued, "to keep it back from them that we have a thrifle ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... of the oval, along the line of which the men posted themselves. Inside the oval eight more wagons were drawn up for the purpose of corralling the animals, and there was also a pit provided for sheltering the wounded. Behind the pits ran a path to the nearest bend of Milk River, which was used for obtaining water. The command held its position until 8:30 o'clock that night, when ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... as close to the pits as he could get. He was a chubby, red-faced little man, and he beamed at me as if he were Santa Claus. "Mr. Carboy," he said in a voice that needed roughage badly. "I'm so glad you're here. I'm sure you'll be able to ...
— The Man Who Played to Lose • Laurence Mark Janifer
... been much used was evident from the piles of shells, and the pits in which, as I was informed, sweet potatoes used to be kept as a reserve. As there was no water on these hills, the defenders could never have anticipated a long siege, but only a hurried attack for plunder, against which the successive ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... where they dwelt in the pits; in earth and in stocks they hid them like badgers, in wood and in wilderness, in heath and in fen, so that well nigh no man might find any Briton, except they were in castle, or in burgh inclosed fast. When they ...
— Brut • Layamon
... the pits where the renegades were roasting mescal and judged the distance to the Apache camp at close to ten miles. His gaze swept toward the sunrise horizon and rested upon a cloud of dust. That probably meant a big herd of cattle crossing to the Pecos Valley on the Chisum Trail that led to Fort Stanton. ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... out of the canyon, where shallow pits or holes have been pecked in the rock as an aid in the more difficult places, and similar aids were often employed to afford access to storage and burial cists. Plate LVI shows a site in the lower part of the canyon where such means have been employed. The pits in the rock are so much worn by atmospheric erosion that the ascent now is very dangerous. The cove or ledge to which they lead is about halfway up the cliff, and on it are a number of cists, one of them still intact, with a doorway. ...
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... of Chicago, though it is a Baptist institution, they teach this same silly twaddle of evolution, and I cannot advise any of you to go there for graduate work. But these scientific fellows that are too wise for the Bible fall into the pits they themselves have digged, sooner or later, and they have been so smart in discovering new things about evolution that they have contradicted almost everything that Darwin, who was the high priest of this abominable cult, first taught, and they have turned ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... hair follicles, causing pustules, especially on the neck and shoulders, occurs occasionally among cattle in this country and is of importance on account of the injury to the hide. When tanned, hides infested by this parasite are pitted, the pits, in some cases, being so deep that they form holes. No practicable treatment is known for ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... souls. They are comparatively a fine race of people, and suffer from little but fever and an occasional ophthalmia. Their greatest hardship is the want of the pure element: the Hissi or well, is about four miles distant from the town, and all the pits within the walls supply brackish or bitter water, fit only for external use. This is probably the reason why vegetables are unknown, and why a horse, a mule, or even a dog, is not to be found ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... the giant buildings; the familiar skyline, and mingled with it the ghostly gray outlines of the mountains and valley depths of Tako's world. All intermingled! The mountain peaks rose far higher than the tallest of New York's skyscrapers; and the pits and ravines were lower than the waters of the harbor and rivers, lower than the subways and the tubes ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... insects are killed and eaten by the cedar waxwings, yet these birds are preeminently berry eaters,—choke-cherries, cedar berries, blueberries, and raspberries being preferred. Watch a flock of these birds in a cherry tree, and you will see the pits fairly rain down. We need not place our heads, a la Newton, in the path of these falling stones to deduce some interesting facts,—indeed to solve the very destiny of the fruit. Many whole cherries are carried away by the birds to be devoured ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... the wonder, always, everywhere— Not that vast mutability which is event, The pits and pinnacles of change, But man's desire and valiance that range All circumstance, ...
— Abraham Lincoln • John Drinkwater
... pipe-bowls, cinders, bones, and ordure, indescribable; and, variously kneaded into, sticking to, or fluttering foully here and there over all these,—remnants broadcast, of every manner of newspaper, advertisement or big-lettered bill, festering and flaunting out their last publicity in the pits of stinking dust ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... passage. Colonel Coleman, who was at home on furlough, gave it as his opinion that these precautions must be supplemented and supported by rifle-pits on the north side, or no successful defence could be made. The pits were hastily dug, but, when volunteers were called for, the extreme danger prevented a hearty response. None appeared except a few old soldiers and six or seven school-boys, whose ages ranged from fourteen to sixteen. The Yankees advanced ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... was as yet unknown. Reports soon came in. The enemy had first driven in the pickets in front of Fort Sanders, and had then attacked our line which was also obliged to fall back. The Rebels in our front, however, did not advance beyond the pits which our men had just vacated, and a new line was at once established by Captain Buffum, our brigade officer of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... Layroh. "In the pits where you are going you will have little use for pistols. When I again take you from those pits you will quickly learn why I brought you with me. Yaharigans, I have called you, and yaharigans you shall be—Earthly counterparts of those miserable beasts of Rikor ...
— The Cavern of the Shining Ones • Hal K. Wells
... It is a very unwise plan to spread manure on the land and let it lie, as in such cases, much of the strength of the manure is lost. Young gardeners should be very careful in preparing and collecting manure, and also when they are moving it from the pits to the ground, they should take care and not soil ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... the Welsh collieries it is becoming the habit to go down the pits in rough home-spun, and reserving the top hat, morning coat and check trousers ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... the pits at Hurstbourne was evidently a cooking-hole, where the pit dwellers prepared their feasts, and bones of the Celtic ox (bos longifrons), pig, red deer, goat, dog, and hare or rabbit were found near it. One of the bones had evidently been bitten by teeth. The ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... coffin of plain deal: uncovered by any shroud or pall, and so slightly made, that the hoof of any wandering mule would have crushed it in: carelessly tumbled down, all on one side, on the door of one of the pits—and there left, by itself, in the wind and sunshine. 'How does it come to be left here?' I asked the man who showed me the place. 'It was brought here half an hour ago, Signore,' he said. I remembered to have met the procession, on its return: straggling away at a good round pace. ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... be discouraged, who may upon some accident, be desirous, or forc'd to transplant trees, where the partial, or unequal ground does not afford sufficient room, or soil to make the pits equally capacious, (and so apt to nourish and entertain the roots, as where are no impediments), the worthy Mr. Brotherton (whom we shall have occasion to mention more than once in this treatise) speaking of ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... choice but to obey. When she returned to the pits the stones had been removed and John Frying Pan, with a pair of Sleepy Cat ice tongs, was lifting out the first big chunks of roasted meat. The crowd, being called, ran for the creek whooping and yelling, and while Kate watched John and his helpers dish up the meat, ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... depth of the cross-bars. Traveling was slow, and the dogs became demons; at one time, sullen and stubborn; then wildly excited and savage; and in our handling of them I fear we became fiendlike ourselves. Frequently we would have to lift them bodily from the pits of snow, and snow-filled fissures they had fallen into, and I am now sorry to say that we did not do it gently. The dogs, feeling the additional strain, refused to make the slightest effort when spoken to or touched with the whip, and to ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... main Ritter peak. The surface was pitted with oval hollows, made by stones and drifted pine-needles that had melted themselves into the mass by the radiation of absorbed sun-heat. These afforded good footholds, but the surface curved more and more steeply at the head, and the pits became shallower and less abundant, until I found myself in danger of being shed off like avalanching snow. I persisted, however, creeping on all fours, and shuffling up the smoothest places on my back, as I had often done on burnished ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... to dig the pits in a checkerboard plan, leaving alternate squares and placing a stake in each of them to form a wire entanglement, Fig. 16. One man can make 5 pits on ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... give out in Glendale yit, since we took the cover offen the pits for Old Hickory in my granddad's time," he answered, with a trace of offense in his voice, as he stood over a half tub of butter mixing in his yarbs with mutterings that sounded like incantations. I drew Jane away for I felt that it was no time to disturb him, ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... His parents sent him to work in a coal-pit; people in these days will scarcely credit such a thing, but it is nevertheless true; nor was this an extraordinary case, for children of poor parents were commonly sent to work in the pits at that early age, when Abe was a child. The work which they did was not difficult; perhaps it might be the opening or shutting of a door in one of the drifts; but whatever it was our hearts revolt at the idea of sending a child of such tender ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... on the embankment and from its height looked down upon the earth. A hundred yards away where the pits, holes, and mounds melted into the darkness of the night, a dim light was twinkling. Beyond it gleamed another light, beyond that a third, then a hundred paces away two red eyes glowed side by side— probably the windows of some hut—and a long series of such lights, growing ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... length is 100 miles, its breadth 60. A remarkable bed of coal runs horizontally, at from 6 to 8 feet only, below the surface through a large portion of the island: a fire was once accidentally kindled in one of the pits, which is now continually burning. Cape Breton has been termed the Key to Canada and is the principal protection, through the fine harbor of Louisburg, of all the ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... the specimens are light-brown in color. The former variety were undoubtedly once used in cooking; the latter apparently for containing water or food. In the accompanying illustration (plate CXIX, a) is shown one of the best specimens of indented ware, the pits forming an equatorial zone about the vessel. All traces of the coil of clay with which the jar was built up have been obliterated save on the bottom. The vessel is symmetrical and the indentations regular, as if made with a pointed stone, bone, ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... as they approached the first waterhole, the wachtmeister pointed significantly to a saddled horse cropping quietly near by, whilst as they got nearer the pits, five or six big vultures flapped lazily away. "I knew I hit him," said the ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... Up, brothers! away! a storm is nigh! Smite we the wing up a steeper sky! What matters the hail or the clashing winds, The thunder that buffets, the lightning that blinds! We know by the tempest we do not lie Dead in the pits of eternity! ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... recovered were given over to a squad of soldiers and each placed in a pine box without uncovering the faces. The boxes were forthwith placed in the pits prepared for them, and directly all but the memory of their offense passed from ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... scrambled up the sides of the giant crater. From the pits on both sides of them the other sections ...
— Fighting in France • Ross Kay
... Stephen was right; nothing could keep her from the pronouncement of the words that would free him and bind herself in intolerable ill. Her uprightness was terrible. It would take her fearful but determined into the pits of any hell. His hands slowly clenched, his muscles tightened, in a spasm of anguish. God, why hadn't he recognized the desperation in Essie's quivering face! It would have been already too late, he added in thought; ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... once rang with the picks and hammers of an iron mine; it was one of the centres of a great industry of the Weald. The surface of the common is scarred with the pits from which the ironstone was dug; the hammer ponds lie in a string along a tiny tributary of the Wey. John Ray, in his Collection of English Words not generally Used, published in 1672, and printed in the Sussex Archaeological Collections, gives an account of the methods of the old iron smelters. ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... think we had better take our shovels and dig the pits for the water, and then we shall know by to-morrow morning whether the water is ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the pits and beckoned with waving gauzy garments, and tried to hold fast with moist arms. There was a snatching, a catching, a reaching, a tearing asunder of mists and a treacherous rolling together again, a chaos of whirling, twirling, brewing ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... carefully doubled over and lapped round the heads, instead of hanging them up in sheds or other places, as is the usual practice in preserving them. In performing the work, it is begun at one end of the pits, laying the heads in with the root-stalks uppermost, so as that the former may incline downwards, the roots of the one layer covering the tops or heads of the other, until the whole is completed. The pits are then to be ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... summer-houses in which nearly a whole tribe might be sheltered. The horizon in the background was shut out by pine-clad mountains, having here and there red, barren spots. Columns of smoke rose out of the dark foliage from the pits of the charcoal burners. ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... kind of fascination; he does not understand why other young men with no better brains than his are able to encircle the waists of the most beautiful girls and guide them through difficult evolutions. He vows that he will immediately submit himself to instruction and lift himself from the pits of torment. ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... The moment your army nears the Araxes, we shall depart with our wives and children and seek another home, for we have no fixed dwellings like yours, but are accustomed to rove at will on our swift horses, and to rest in tents. Our gold we shall take with us, and shall fill up, destroy, and conceal the pits in which you could find new treasures. We know every spot where gold is to be found, and can give it in abundance, if you grant us peace and leave us our liberty; but, if you venture to invade our territory, you win nothing but an empty desert and an enemy always beyond your reach,—an enemy who ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... natural operations have a principal effect. The object of this art is to combine a certain principle called tanning with every particle of the skin to be tanned. This, in the ordinary process, is accomplished by allowing the skins to soak in pits containing a solution of tanning matter: they remain in the pits six, twelve, or eighteen months; and in some instances (if the hides are very thick), they are exposed to the operation for two years, or even during a longer period. This length of time is apparently required in order to allow the tanning matter ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... grew, the pits increased in size. At first they were about as large as a threepenny-piece, but ended by measuring more ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... The unsupported bowmen at once fell back in confusion, leaving the cavalry to do its work. Meanwhile the English men-at-arms were advancing in three "battles," the first of which then came into action. Many of the English fell into the pits prepared for them, and the Scottish shields and pikes broke the attack of those who evaded these obstacles. Gloucester fought with rare gallantry, but was badly seconded by his followers. At last his horse was slain under ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... Scotch songs she poured forth without stint, for she sang more for them than for her baby. No wonder they adored her. She was so bright, so gay, she brought light with her when she went into the camp, into the pits—for she went down to see the men work—or into a sick miner's shack; and many a man, lonely and sick for home or wife, or baby or mother, found in that back room cheer and comfort and courage, and to ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... do not mean transmission in the ordinary sense by means of shafting, gearing, or belting, but I mean transmission over long distances. In 1831, we had for this purpose flat rods, as they were called, rods transmitting power from pumping engines for a considerable distance to the pits where the pumps were placed, and we had also the pneumatic, the exhaustion system—the invention of John Hague, a Yorkshire-man, my old master, to whom I was apprenticed—which mode of transmission was then used to a very considerable extent. The recollection of it, I find, however, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... dragons that had wings of brass, and vomited flames from cavernous throats; huge birds, enormous reptiles, flew or crawled in their appointed places. Two-headed men wielded clubs of stone; men with no heads at all, but one great eye in the centre of their breasts, glared malevolently from the pits wherein they had their habitation. The little company in the tavern parlour shivered with affright, and cast uneasy glances at the doorway. Then—wonderful Rob!—a sinewy, thumbless hand swept the air like an enchanter's ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... The pits of gloom about us begin to fill with very faintly luminous films—wreathing and uneasy shapes. One forms itself into a globe of pale flame that waits shivering with eagerness till we sweep by. It leaps monstrously across the blackness, alights on the precise tip ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... wire entanglements with which the war correspondence of the winter has made us at home—on paper—so familiar. "The numerous woods and villages had been turned into veritable fortresses." The deep cellars in the villages, the pits and quarries of a chalk country, provided cover for machine guns and trench mortars. The dug-outs were often two storeys deep, "and connected by passages as much as thirty feet below the surface of the ground." Strong redoubts, mine-fields, concrete gun emplacements—everything ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... table with both hands in his excitement—"God, if that's so, what a chance there's in Barbie! It has been a dead town for twenty year, and twenty to the end o't. A verra little would buy the hauf o't. But property 'ull rise in value like a puddock stool at dark, serr, if the pits come round it! It will that. If I was only sure o' your suspeecion, Weelyum, I'd invest every bawbee I have in't. You're going home ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... variations of the grimace with which the commander screwed up his cheek and snapped his eyes and vented his oath. On this occasion the tone of smothered rage with which he uttered the words made his two friends silent and circumspect. Even the pits of the small-pox which dented that veteran face seemed deeper, and the skin itself browner than usual. His broad queue, braided at the edges, had fallen upon one of his epaulettes as he replaced his three-cornered hat, and he flung it back with such fury that the ends became untied. However, ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... engines making on the average 57.5 revolutions per minute, while the Kovno did only 8.1 knots, or 194 miles per day, the engines making 55.5 revolutions. The coal used was ordinary South Yorkshire, just as it comes from the pits for bunker purposes. The indicated horse power in each case would average about 600. The total coal consumed was 326 tons in the Draco and 405 tons in the Kovno, or a saving of 19.5 per cent. over the ordinary compounds, with an increase of speed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... even emancipate slaves, until on the heels of a victory, or the semblance of such. But he waited in vain for his triumph, nor dare I in my heavy months expect bright days. The book was heartily grateful, and square to the author's imperial scale. You have lighted the glooms, and engineered away the pits, whereof you poetically pleased yourself with complaining, in your sometime letter to me, clean out of it, according to the high Italian rule, and have let sunshine and pure air enfold the scene. First, I read it honestly through for the ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the first gun was fired; and, for an hour and a half, the camp was swept with shell, shrapnel, and Maxim bullets. Most of the Baggara were lying in the pits. Many, however, walked about calmly, as if in contempt of the fire. More than half of the wretched men bound to the ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... under the hill, a rattling discharge poured from the rifle-pits; but the troop had gotten under the fire, and it all passed over their heads. On they pressed, their blood now quickened by excitement, crawling up the steep, while volley on volley poured over them. Within nine feet of the pits was a rim-rock ledge over which the Indian bullets swept, and here the charge was stopped. It now became ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... drew down close to the wide, sluggish river, and where our women gathered berries and roots, and there were herds of deer, of wild horses, of antelope, and of elk, that we men slew with arrows or trapped in the pits or hill-pockets. From the river we caught fish in nets twisted by the women of the bark ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... Howard built a covered, open-sided, compost-making factory that sheltered shallow pits, each 30 feet long by 14 feet wide by 2 feet deep with sloping sides. The pits were sufficiently spaced to allow loaded carts to have access to all sides of any of them and a system of pipes brought water near every one. The materials to be composted were all stored adjacent to the factory. ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... covered with underbrush, and lie there in the dark for hours, waiting for a shot. Then our men took to the rifle-pits—pits ten or twelve feet long by four or five deep, with the loose earth banked up a few inches high on the exposed sides. All the pits bore names, more or less felicitous, by which they were known to their transient tenants. One was called "The Pepper-Box," another "Uncle Sam's Well," another "The Reb-Trap," and another, I am constrained to say, was named after a not-to-be-mentioned ...
— Quite So • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... reaches its final dimensions. If we pass an attentive lens between the two humps at the lower end, we very often see, encrusted in the earthy mass, the remains of the shell of the egg. This is the potter's mark. The arrangement of the spiral ridges, the number and the shape of the pits enable us almost to read the name of ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... hauling gravel from the pits in Henley street to mend the causeway at the bridge, which had been badly washed by the late spring floods, and the fine sand dribbled from the cart-tail like the sand ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... to the East were full of gold mines, but the men who went into the pits to get gold did not live long, because of the foul air. The gold sand was given to women to wash ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... cannon, raking the field right and left. Our sharpshooters gave the cannoneers a telling fire, and as the enemy's infantry in the fort rose above the parapets to deliver their volley, they were met by volleys from our sharpshooters in the pits, now in rear of the assaulting columns, and firing over their heads. When near the fort the troops found yet a more serious obstruction in the way of stout wires stretched across their line of approach. This, however, was overcome and passed, and the assailants soon found themselves on the crest ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... Also he took endless pains to acquaint himself at first hand with the facts. 'In factories,' he said afterwards, 'I examined the mills, the machinery, the homes, and saw the workers and their work in all its details. In collieries I went down into the pits. In London I went into lodging-houses and thieves' haunts, and every filthy place. It gave me a power I could not otherwise have had.' And this was years before 'slumming' became fashionable and figured in the pages of Punch; it was no distraction caught up for ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... any species of manufacture, was already the ordinary fuel in some districts which were fortunate enough to possess large beds, and in the capital, which could easily be supplied by water carriage, It seems reasonable to believe that at least one half of the quantity then extracted from the pits was consumed in London. The consumption of London seemed to the writers of that age enormous, and was often mentioned by them as a proof of the greatness of the imperial city. They scarcely hoped to be believed when they affirmed that two hundred and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... are stripped, the old beds may be used for the growing of various delicate crops, as melons or half-hardy flowers. In this position, the plants can be protected in the fall. As already suggested, the pits should be cleaned out in the fall and filled with litter to facilitate the work of making the new bed in the ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... naught. Many times has my rage almost betrayed my secret; which none knew but my dear child Azalia. Her I could not long deceive. Let the guards drag from our sight these wretches whose fat carcasses are to make a banquet for the royal beasts in the pits beneath ...
— Bright-Wits, Prince of Mogadore • Burren Laughlin and L. L. Flood
... been said, that opening the pock and taking out the matter has not abated the secondary fever; but as I had conceived, that the pits, or marks left after the small-pox, were owing to the acrimony of the matter beneath the hard scabs, which not being able to exhale eroded the skin, and produced ulcers, I directed the faces of two patients in the confluent small-pox to be covered with cerate ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... possess but six square miles out of the 96, as far as we at present know. Turning, however, to that part of the coal-field regarded as precarious, and consisting of first, second, and third-rate household coal, we have for future use 300 square miles. London was formerly supplied from the pits east of Tyne Bridge, where is the famous Wallsend Colliery, which gave the name to the best coal. That mine is now drowned out, and, like the great Roman Wall, at the termination of which it was sunk, and from which it derived its name, is now an antiquity. There ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... effective unless fired from very close quarters, but even its possession made the guerrillas stronger than the people of the country and undoubtedly had much to do with securing their cooeperation, not only as bolomen but also in the digging of the pits which were placed in the trails and also set about the towns. These were required to be constructed by the local authorities. In the bottom was set a sharp spike of bamboo, sometimes poisoned; and the pit was covered with leaves and soil upon a fragile ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... diameter. One and a quarter million cubic feet of gas are manufactured at the works every day. Upwards of 1000 hands are employed. In the shale-pits adjoining, four hundred miners are regularly at work. The pits are conveniently near to the Addiewell Works, none of them being more than two miles off. A network of railway lines communicate with the various shale-pits, and five locomotives are regularly employed in the transit of minerals. A school, under Government inspection, ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... what thou can'st to hide, A bad tree's fruit will be describ'd. For that foul guilt which first took place In his dark heart, now damns his face; And makes those eyes, where life should dwell, Look like the pits of Death and Hell. ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... of the tribes who live in this country, as the Binjhwar, Bhumia, Korwa, Majhi, Kol, Kawar and others, the Dhanuhars themselves being the progeny of Karankot and Maswasi. The bones of the animals killed by Karankot were thrown into ditches dug round the village and form the pits of chhui mithi or white clay now existing in ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... trunk. The tap was repeated. Trina rose and went fearfully to the window. The little court below was bright with moonlight, and standing just on the edge of the shadow thrown by one of the cherry trees was McTeague. A bunch of half-ripe cherries was in his hand. He was eating them and throwing the pits at the window. As he caught sight of her, he made an eager sign for her to raise the sash. Reluctant and wondering, Trina obeyed, and the dentist came quickly forward. He was wearing a pair of blue overalls; ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... was picked off "The Tailor's Needle," but Roughit was found dead on the sand. Lance never forgave himself for having taken his comrade's offer; he disliked the village, he hated the sea; and before long he went away inland to work down in the pits. ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... The pits stretched out in either direction—bitten into the ground by the most miserable men the light of day uncovered—bitten through the snow and then through a thick floor of frost as hard as cement. I heard their ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... skipper once more rowed ashore with the pinnace, and having caused three pits to be dug he at last found fresh water forcing its way through the sand; we used our best endeavours to take in a stock of the same; about 400 paces north of the farthest of the pits that had been dug, they also found a small fresh-water lake, but the water that collected in the pits was found to be ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... poison, is sometimes taken by children in eating the pits of stone fruits or bitter almonds which contain it. The antidote is to empty the stomach by an emetic, and give water of ammonia or chloric water. Affusions of cold water all over the body, followed by warm hand friction, is ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the direction of our march that they were taking me to Phutra. Once there I did not need much of an imagination to picture what my fate would be. It was the arena and a wild thag or fierce tarag for me—unless the Mahars elected to take me to the pits. ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... wetting it to the consistency of cream, and spread on the glass, work as before (using short straight strokes 1-1/2 or 2 in.) until the holes in the glass left by the grain emery are ground out; next use the finer grades until the pits left by each coarser grade are ground out. When the two last grades are used shorten the strokes to less than 2 in. When done the glass should be semi-transparent, and is ready ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... happiness? There are, who mix Pride and ambition with their services Before the altar. Did the tinkling bells Upon the garments of the Jewish priest Draw down his thoughts from God? The mitred brow, Doth it stoop low enough to find the souls That struggle in the pits of sin, and die? Methinks ambitious honors might disturb The man whose banner is the Cross of Christ, And earth's high places shut ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... June, 1834. They erected huts on shore for the whalers. The 'Henry' was wrecked; but the whales were plentiful, and yielded more oil than the casks would hold, so the men dug clay pits on shore, and poured the oil into them. The oil from forty-five whales was put into the pits, but the clay absorbed every spoonful of it, and nothing but bones was gained from so much slaughter. Before the 'Elizabeth' left Portland Bay, the Hentys, the first permanent settlers in Victoria, arrived in the schooner 'Thistle', ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... were respected. All the other bodies, together with the entrails or hearts, enclosed in separate urns, were thrown into large pits, lined with a coat of quick lime: they were then covered with the same substance; and the pits were afterwards filled up with earth. Most of them, as may be supposed, were in a state of complete putrescency; of some, the bones only remained, though a few were in ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... the workers in the pit, exhausted and running with sweat in spite of the cold, began to climb wearily out. Across the Red Square a dark knot of men came hurrying. They swarmed into the pits, picked up the tools and began digging, ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... Kabul to redress my wrongs. Thou must in the meantime prepare for a sporting excursion, and order a number of pits to be dug on the road sufficiently large to hold Rustem and his horse, and in each several swords must be placed with their points and edges upwards. The mouths of the pits must then be slightly covered over, but so carefully that there may be no appearance of the earth underneath having been removed. Everything being thus ready, Rustem, on the pretence of going to the sporting ground, ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... the pits of despondency, even as one that yieldeth without further struggle to the waves of tempest at midnight, when he was ware of one standing over him,—a woman, old, wrinkled, a very crone, with but room for the drawing of a thread between her nose and her chin; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... said Dinass, with a laugh; "you don't call this deep? Why, it's nothing to some of the pits out Saint Just way—is ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... replied Hezekiah—but he forgot to say that he had first make cherries of the red-coats, by putting the pits ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... season, a life of comparative quiet. That they are exceedingly sensitive to warmth, however, may be proven by the fact that when a warm rain comes some night in February or March, thawing out the crust of the earth, the next morning reveals in our dooryards the mouths of hundreds of the pits or burrows of these primitive tillers of the soil, each surrounded by a little pile of pellets, the castings of the active artisans of the ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... an inter-company football match on the ground by the Lens main road, near the little village of Noyelles-les-Vermelles. It is on the borders of the coal country—that village, and all around it rise the great pyramidical slag heaps of the pits. ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... in the dropping of the peach tree is the shedding of the fruit just as the pits are hardening. When they are hard the fruit does not fall. So this June-drop question ties in with the complications of pollination and nutrition. We know from experiments on the sterility of the pear tree, if ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... with David as a center, discredits the statements of De Zeltner in respect to the form illustrated in Fig. 4, and states that generally the graves do not differ greatly in shape and finish from the ordinary graves of to-day. He describes the pits as being oval and quadrangular and as having a depth ranging from a few feet to 18 feet. The paving or pack consists of earth and water worn stones, the latter pitched in without order and forming ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... from ancient mastabas, were set over windows and doors, and stone colossi of kings and gods leered and threatened from dusky corners. Sarcophagi of black basalt, red porphyry and pink-veined alabaster, cunningly carved, were disposed as they had been found in the pits of the dead, with the sepulchral vases and the hideous ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... bow was drawn till the impetuous squadrons, in full charge toward the flanks of the Scots, fell into the pits; then it was that the Highland archers on the hill launched their arrows; the plunging horses were instantly overwhelmed by others who could not be checked in their career. New showers of darts rained upon them, ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... they likewise took to their heels and went hither and thither, to hide themselves in the wood, while old Wolde returned calmly with Sidonia to the convent, and two of the hags got clear off, and were fed by their kinsfolk, I take it, for months in the pits and hollow trees where they had sheltered themselves, for never a trace could Ludecke get of them more, though he searched day and night in every village, and house, and nook, and corner. But Pug-nose, who was half-blind with fright, in place ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... him, was lying upon his side with his face turned away from Ginsburg and his shrapnel helmet half on and half off his head. Ginsburg stooped, putting his hands under the pits of the captain's arms, and gave a heave. The burden of the body came against him as so much dead heft; a weight limp and unresponsive, the trunk sagging, the ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... Bottomless Pit is also deeper than the bed of Green River, and so far as a surveyor's level can be relied on, the same may be said of the Cavern Pit and some others." The rivers of the Cave were unknown at the time of Mr. Lee's visit in 1835, but they are unquestionably lower than the bottom of the pits, and receive the water which flows from them. According to the statement of Lee, the bed of these rivers is lower than the bed of Green River at its junction with the Ohio, taking for granted that the report of the State engineers as to the extent of fall between a point above the Cave and ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt
... pop the pits, children!" said Mrs. Robin, and after the little robin had swallowed the cherry, the cherry pit came popping from his mouth and rattled ...
— Exciting Adventures of Mister Robert Robin • Ben Field
... almost without exception, in the vicinity of a drinking place, and the natives exhibit a great amount of cunning in felling trees across the usual run of the elephants, and sometimes cutting an open pit across the path, so as to direct the elephant by such obstacles into the path of snares. The pits are usually about twelve feet long, and three feet broad, by nine deep; these are artfully made, decreasing towards the bottom to the breadth of a foot. The general elephant route to the drinking place being blocked up, the animals are diverted by a treacherous path towards ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... pockets. "Here, Sergeant-major—this man hasn't the foggiest notion how to use a pick. I've just been showing him." "I've been watching ye, sir. I'm thinking it wad need tae be war time for you to earn ten shillings a day in the pits." ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... no more shells were in our pits we took our dead geese to the camp and returned with a new supply of ammunition. We remained in the pits during the entire day. When the sun had gone behind the mountains we summed up our kill and it amounted ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... of reasoned-out "inventions" at his saddle-bow (labelled "Homogeneity-Heterogeneity," "Unknowable," "Ghost Theory," "Presentative-Representative"), which don't seem, somehow, as helpful as their inventor assumes. And 'tis certain he took tosses into many of the pits of his dangerous deductive method. I don't present this as Mr. ELLIOT'S view. He is respectful-critical, and makes perhaps the best case for his old master's claim to greatness out of the assumption that SPENCER himself, stark enemy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 7, 1917. • Various |
