"Staple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... half of a trunk which the police dredged out of a rather deep pond on the skirts of the forest at Loughton—Staple's Pond, it is called. The bones found were the pelvis—that is, the two hipbones—and six vertebrae, or joints of the backbone. Having discovered these, the police dammed the stream and pumped the pond dry, but no other bones were found; which is rather ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... readers; correct intelligence, sprightly and elegant paragraphs, remarks on men and manners at once free and generous; and local intelligence pertaining to the district, such as please men of the Nith in a far land. These are the staple commodity of a newspaper, and these you can easily have. A few literary paragraphs you can easily scatter about; these attract booksellers, and booksellers will give advertisements where they find their works are noticed. Above all things, write cautiously concerning all localities; if you praise ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... to form her own opinions of character from her own intuition, otherwise she would have held her aunt and mother in somewhat slighting estimation, and she loved them both dearly. They were headstrong, violent-tempered women, but she had an instinct for the staple qualities below that surface turbulence, which was lashed higher by every gust of opposition. These two loud, contending voices, which filled the house before and after shop-hours—for Eva worked in the shop with her brother-in-law—with a duet of discords instead ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... thrown violently open, and out plunged Jim, his hair on fire and his clothes singed and smoking. He brushed the sparks off himself as if they were flakes of snow. Quick as thought, he tore 'Liza's halter from its fastening, pulling out staple and all, threw his smoking coat over her eyes, and backed her out of the shed. He reached in, and, pulling the harness off the hook, threw it as far into the snow as he could, yelling "Fire!" at the top of his voice. Then he jumped on the back of the horse, and beating her with heels and hands ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... murder of James I. by Robert Graeme and his men in the Charterhouse of Perth. The teller of the tale is Catherine Douglas, known in Scottish tradition as Kate Barlass, who had thrust her arm through the staple, in place of a bar, to hold the door against the assassins. A few stanzas of "The Kinges Quair" are fitted into the poem by shortening the lines two syllables each, to accommodate them to the ballad metre. It is generally agreed that this was a mistake, as was also the introduction ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... anthropologists are right, this is a question which need not worry us, for, according to Professor Keith, the eminent English anatomist and a leading paleontologist, and Professor Elliot, of Oxford, nuts were the chief staple of our hardy ancestors of prehistoric times. Professor Elliot, indeed, tells us in his work, "Prehistoric Man," that the first representatives of the human race who appeared in the Eocene Period were fruit ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various
... before they could be laid hold of. Here, however, the two daughters were immediately seized on by order of the commander of the siege, Buck English, and carried out, but not violently, until they came to the stable-door, where the eldest daughter laid hold of the iron bolt staple of the door-post, and so desperately did she hold it, that she did not let it go till her shoulder was dislocated. They were both carried off then to the Galtee mountains, the usual resort of the Buck, who retained the eldest during pleasure. ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... look through the port, he climbed over the gunwhale again, fastened a stern-sheet about his waist and to a staple, and at the risk, if he slipped or if the rope gave way, of plunging head foremost into the icy waters of the Cove, he let himself down until his head was on a ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... Boxes, also, are made of them; indeed, it would be difficult to describe the numberless uses to which they are put. The trunk, however, is the more valuable part, as the pith of the interior is the staple food of large numbers of the inhabitants of these regions. I will not stop here to describe how the sago is made; but I will ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... business lie is a very matter of fact lie. It sounds well. There are some genuine bankrupt sales, of course; there are a few bona fide smoke, fire and water mark-downs undoubtedly, but there are more advertised in a week than there are failures and fires in a year. Good, staple merchandise will usually bring its value, and he who advertises an unheard of bargain has generally set a trap for the unwary. One class of goods in the window marked a certain price, an inferior class on the bargain counter at the same figure. You bargain for a piece of furniture at a surprisingly ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... his cotton-gin of 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 ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... of genius for the sake of aggrandizing the one at the expense of the other are the staple of the meaner kinds of criticism. No lover of art will clash a Venetian goblet against a Roman amphora to see which is strongest; no lover of nature undervalues a violet because it is not a rose. But comparisons used in the way ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... than the combined area of Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri. It is located at the northeast of China and until recently formed a part of the Chinese Empire. While nearly all kinds of grain and vegetables are grown, the one great staple crop of Manchuria is the soybean. Think of growing two million tons of these beans per year! Before the war Manchurian beans were shipped all over the world. In a Manchurian city I asked a business man to tell me the chief sights of the city and he said: "We have ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... We were too busy and too brutally selfish to interfere. The steward was the camp bully and the men were afraid of him. They must not even laugh at his provisions. We had pork for breakfast, we took pork chops to the mines for dinner, and the staple article—the standby—of every supper was pork. Pigs in Alabama are like turnips in Scotland—there are no property rights in them. They breed and litter in the tall dog-fennel; they root around the shanties ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... on the hypothesis that all land throughout the country was the property of the Crown, and that upon the latter devolved the responsibility of equitable distribution among the people. Rice being the chief staple of diet and also the standard of exchange, rice-lands—that is to say, irrigated fields—were regarded as most important. The law—already referred to in connexion with the Daika era but here cited again for the sake of clearness—enacted that all persons, on attaining the age of ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... Aid Societies which at one time or another probably existed in the country, there was in each some master-spirit, whose consecrated purpose was the staple in the wall, from which the chain of service hung and on whose strength and firmness it steadily drew. I never visited a single town however obscure, that I did not hear some woman's name which stood ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... submarine captain lay on a pile of dried grass that had been thrown on a board floor. His hands were still manacled. Worse, one of his feet now had an ankle-ring fastened securely, and this was chained to a stout staple driven in ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... at hand when the combination may be dissolved with impunity. The Oporto Wine Company had no sooner come into existence, than its benefits were felt in every branch of Portuguese revenue. It restored and extended the cultivation of the vine, which is the staple of Portugal. It has been abolished in the revolutionary changes of late years. But the question, whether the country is yet fit to bear the abolition, is settled by the fact, that the wine-growers are complaining of ruin, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... they crushed their coffee by beating it on a flat stone. Their staple food was bully beef and ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... of both hordes were seen flitting like shadows among the tents. Some squatted under camels, or kneeling by the sides of the goats, drew from these animals that lacteal fluid that may be said to form the staple of their food. Others might be observed emptying the precious liquid into skin bottles and sacks, and securing it against spilling in its transport ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... when Muso paused, "is rated the most wonderful place on earth. Rome is my home. Rome rates Sabinum low, except for olives, wines, oaks, sheep and mules. Wonders are not named among the staple products of Sabinum. Yet I come to Sabinum for the first time and hear wonders such as I ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... It had little interest, in fact, for one whose humble salary of one hundred and fifty pounds per annum depended so little upon the great fluctuations of commerce, and I accordingly disposed myself for sleep as soon as the words bills, money, and bankruptcy, became the staple matter of discourse. I had scarcely established a comfortable doze before the coach stopped suddenly, and awoke me. It had halted for the last inside. A gentleman, apparently stout and well wrapped up—it was impossible to speak positively on the subject, the night was so very dark—trod his way ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... "destroy in a great measure the cultivation and production of the great tropical staples, amounting annually in value to nearly $300,000,000." It is a suggestive commentary on Mr. Calhoun's evil foreboding, that the great tropical staple of the South has steadily increased in growth under free labor, and that the development of Texas never fairly began until slavery was ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... more than fifty years actively interested in promoting the use of nuts as a staple food, I have given considerable thought and study to their dietetic value and have made many experiments. About twenty-five years ago it occurred to me that one of the above objections to the extensive dietetic use ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... and pickled salmon—Ratcliff-highway. Here, the wearing apparel is all nautical. Rough blue jackets, with mother-of-pearl buttons, oil-skin hats, coarse checked shirts, and large canvas trousers that look as if they were made for a pair of bodies instead of a pair of legs, are the staple commodities. Then, there are large bunches of cotton pocket-handkerchiefs, in colour and pattern unlike any one ever saw before, with the exception of those on the backs of the three young ladies without bonnets who passed just now. The ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... of yore, was the staple fur of the country; but, alas! the silk hat has given it its death-blow, and the star of the beaver has now probably set for ever—that is to say, with regard to men; probably the animals themselves fancy that their lucky star has just risen. The most profitable ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... Whiggery and Know-Nothingism, while the admission of Kansas as a free State was dealt with as the sole issue, and border ruffian outrages and elaborate disclaimers of "abolitionism" were the regular staple of our orators, who openly declared that the Republican party was a "white man's party." Anti- slavery speakers like Clay and Burlingame were studiously kept out of Southern Indiana, where the teachings of Republicanism were especially needed, ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... in the direct formation of some vegetable substances, such as camphor, the peculiar flavoring substance present in the vanilla bean, and in many other substances. Should such discoveries ever reach to the direct formation of some food staple, the wide-reaching importance and significance of the discovery would be ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... being in English, which he could not so well understand as if they had been in Latin, which they must be put into in conclusion; but he did observe," &c. In fact, he restated his objections to making pitch, tar, hemp, flax, and sails, contraband, as they were the staple produce of Sweden. Lord Fiennes, in reply, premised: "that the Articles were brought in English for the saving of time, and they should be put in Latin when his Excellency should desire," and then discussed the main subject. Whitlocke followed, and the Ambassador again, and Fiennes ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... flask of wine, instead of my former fare. I ate, drank, and was invigorated; when, to add to my good luck, the Sacristan, too totty to discharge his duty of turnkey fitly, locked the door beside the staple, so that it fell ajar. The light, the food, the wine, set my invention to work. The staple to which my chains were fixed, was more rusted than I or the villain Abbot had supposed. Even iron could not remain without consuming in the ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... but, now everything else has been tried and failed, the countenance of la portier suddenly lights up, and he slips quietly around to an adjoining room, and enters mine inside of two minutes by simply lifting a small hook out of a staple with his knife-blade. There appears to be a slight coolness, as it were, between le proprietaire and me after this incident, probably owing to the intellectual standard of each becoming somewhat lowered in the other's estimation in consequence of ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... No curtain falls but on a plighted pair. Thus with the Trilogy's First Part we've reckoned; But now the poet's labour-throes begin; The Comedy of Troth-plight, Part the Second, Thro' five insipid Acts he has to spin, And of that staple, finally, compose Part Third,—or Wedlock's ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... Gaslight was the staple of Hymen's torch the next morning. London was under one of the fogs, of which it is popularly said you may cut them with a knife. The church was in dim twilight; the bride and bridegroom loomed through the haze, and the indistinctness made ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... drunk as much as they desired, the nobleman asked Peredur whether he could fight with a sword? "Were I to receive instruction," said Peredur, "I think I could." Now, there was on the floor of the hall a huge staple, as large as a warrior could grasp. "Take yonder sword," said the man to Peredur, "and strike the iron staple." So Peredur arose and struck the staple, so that he cut it in two; and the sword broke into two parts also. "Place the two parts together, and reunite them," and Peredur placed them together, ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... "insignificant in 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
... hour he trudged along, making hard work of it in his chaps, boots, and spurs, stopping now and then to drive a staple or brace a post. The country was growing wilder and more broken, with cedar timber on the ridges and here and there a pine. Occasionally he could catch a glimpse of the black, forbidding walls ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... a good will. Day after day the boys of the Seventy-seventh reaped and bound in the fields, while the good ladies worked day and night to make bread and cakes for the veterans, who had so long been accustomed to diet on pork and hard tack. Soft bread, milk, poultry and the staple luxury of Pennsylvania, apple butter, was a glorious improvement on the usual bill of camp fare, and kind sympathizing Union people were much better calculated to render our stay among them agreeable, than the bitter rebels among whom we had ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... industry and economy. They live in much comfort on the produce obtained by persevering labour from the small portions of cultivated soil. Numerous flocks of sheep are herded on the vast wastes overhanging the valleys. The olive and vine flourish, and extensive chestnut woods supply at some seasons the staple diet of the poorer classes. The slopes of the hills about the villages are converted into gardens and orchards, in which we find figs, peaches, apples, pears,—with oranges and lemons in the more sheltered spots. The wines are in general sound, and we found them excellent where special care ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... as ample employment to all engaged in the staple manufactures of the town is concerned, trade still continues favourable for the workman, but the manufacturers generally complain that, for the season, sales are late of commencing, and many of them are already rather slackening their operations to keep their ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... capital of Moravia, beautifully situated, 93 m. N. of Vienna, with large manufactures; woollens the staple of the country; about ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... often as interesting as any work of fiction, and need no embellishment from the imagination of a writer, because they are crowded with incidents and situations as thrilling as those which form the staple out of which novels are fabricated; love and adventure, hair-breadth escapes, heart-rending tragedies on the frontier, are thus woven into a narrative of absorbing and permanent interest, permanent because it is part of the history and ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... scale of wages is adopted for each trade. This scale is based upon the price of certain staple articles, and within a certain limit it rises or falls with the price ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... practical affairs: the current values of the great staple commodities; why the corn crop had been light; what wheat promised to bring; how young Burman of the Chicago Board of Trade had been pinched in his own wheat corner for four millions—"put up" by his admiring father; what beef on the hoof commanded; how the Federal ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... was returned in ten minutes, by which time the crude mutton chops, fried in bacon fat, which formed the daily staple of the staff breakfast, were laid upon the packing-case. The Brigadier sat down on his biscuit-tin and took a deep draught of tea. He then seemed sufficiently fortified to give expression to ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... is extensively cultivated throughout the Middle and Southern States, and also in the milder portions of New England. In the State of Connecticut, and on the banks of the Connecticut River in Massachusetts, it is a staple product; and in some towns the value of the crop exceeds that of Indian Corn, and even that of all the ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... and gathering up the corpse by its collar hoisted it up without an effort so that the feet rested on the chair. Then, producing a clasp-knife, he mounted the chair and, with a vigorous slash, cut the coloured strip which had been fastened to a staple projecting from the brickwork above the door on the outside ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... author." And that reminds me: the most fascinating lodgings to hunt, perhaps, anywhere, are called "chambers." These which I mean are in the old Inns of Court in London. And the most charming of these remaining is Staple Inn, off Holborn. I used frequently to hunt chambers in "the fayrest Inne of Chancerie." There are no "modern conveniences" there. You draw your own water at a pump in the venerable quadrangle, and you "find" your own light. But ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... marriage conditions much less favourable than the complete maternal form. The Pelew women have another source of power; their position has an industrial as well as a kinship basis. In this island the people subsist mainly on the produce of their taro fields, and the cultivation of this, their staple food, is carried out by the women alone. And this identification of women with the industrial process has without doubt contributed materially to the predominance of female influence on the social life of the people. Wherever the control over ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... 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 except between your ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... Lady John let drop one or two good-natured phrases—what he had done, his hero-worship, his mother had been a Betham—Yes, he was one of the Farnboroughs of Moore Abbey. Though Stonor made no comment beyond a dry, 'The staple product of this country, young men like that!'—it appeared later that Lady John's good offices in favour of a probable nephew-in-law had not been invoked ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... When they are permitted (as in Flanders and in England) to form a merchant-gild, it is with this body that such bargains are concluded; and the gild usually purchases from the lord a quantity of other privileges—the monopoly of certain staple industries in the town and neighbourhood; rights of pre-emption over all imported wares; and the power of making by-laws to regulate wages, prices, the hours of labour, and the quality of manufactured goods. Where the ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... 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 as high ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... the Grange, and by him distributed to the individual buyers. Such materials as binder twine, salt, harness, Paris green, all kinds of farm implements, vehicles, sewing-machines, and fruit trees are purchased advantageously. Even staple groceries, etc., are sometimes bought in this way. Members often save enough in single purchases to pay all their expenses for the Grange. There is no capital invested; there are no debts imposed upon himself by the purchaser; and there has not been extreme ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... better sort of the country towns in England. It is the seat of considerable manufactures, which throve amazingly under the imperial government, in consequence of the exclusion of the English commodities during the revolutionary wars. The linen manufacture is the staple branch of industry, and affords employment to the peasantry in their own houses, in every direction in the surrounding country, which is probably the cause of the thriving prosperous appearance by which they are distinguished. The great church of St Quentin, though not built in ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... in America; and that she hoped, with God's favour, to be able to take her own part, and to give to perverse customers as good as they might bring. She had a dauntless heart, that same Belle. Such was the staple of Belle's conversation. As for mine, I would endeavour to entertain her with strange dreams of adventure, in which I figured in opaque forests, strangling wild beasts, or discovering and plundering the hoards of dragons; and sometimes I would ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... ineffective, that has been expended in teaching the rudiments of the old 'humanities'. And now a task is propounded to them before which the old one with all its faults seems definite, manageable and formative of character. The classical world which has been the staple of our education for 400 years is a finished thing and we can compass it in thought. It lives indeed, but unconsciously, in our lives, as we go about our business. This new world into which our youth has now to enter, rests also on the past, but ...
— Progress and History • Various
... the Fiji Islands before England had taken them into her keeping, and who gives some extraordinary details of the extent to which cannibalism then prevailed among their inhabitants, pork and human flesh being their two staple articles of food, relates in his deeply interesting record of his voyage that natural pig they called 'short pig,' and man dressed and prepared for food, 'long pig.' There was doubtless an attempt here to carry off with a jest the revolting character of the ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... every way unjust. The nothings, or somethings, which form the staple of the book, are not laboured; and they are presented without the semblance of pomp or pretension. The ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... striped camel's-hair cloth, which had found their way hither from the distant valleys of Turkestan and the warm plains of Bukharia. Nearly fifty thousand camels are employed in the transportation of this staple across the deserts of the Aral to Orenburg,—a distance of a thousand miles. The increase of price had doubled the production since the previous year, and the amount which now reaches the factories of Russia through this channel cannot be less than seventy-five ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... ships, for commerce, for credit, and for capital. Yes; they come for the sinews, the bones—for the marrow and the very heart's blood of Great Britain. But let us examine what we are to purchase at this price. Liberty, it appears, is now their staple commodity: but attend, I say, and examine how little of real liberty they themselves enjoy, who are so forward and prodigal ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... Yet the staple of public opinion was sound, as it must be where women predominate. The best of women could not see why they should not have anything they wanted for less than it cost the maker. To gaze at a sister woman better dressed at half the ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... palliative, seemed to the mass of the Republican coalition, even to the former Democrats for all their free trade traditions, not outrageous. To the Southerners it was an alarm bell. The Southern world was agricultural; its staple was cotton; the bulk of its market was in England. Ever since 1828, the Southern mind had been constantly on guard with regard to tariff, unceasingly fearful that protection would be imposed on it by Northern and Western votes. To have to sell its cotton in England at free trade ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... experimented with tobacco plants in Virginia (he used Virginia plants as well as varieties from the West Indies and South America), and was successful in developing a sweet-scented leaf. It became popular overnight, and for many years was the staple crop of the infant colony. There was a prompt demand for the new leaf in England, and its introduction there was an important factor in popularizing the use of clay pipes. After 1620 the manufacture of white clay pipes in England increased by leaps ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter
... assassins had entered by the scullery door, the simple fastening of which, a hook and staple, had been broken. There were footprints in the soft clay path leading from the side gate to the stone step; but Mary Hennessey had so confused and obliterated the outlines that now it was impossible accurately to measure them. A half-burned match was found under the sink,—evidently thrown there ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... King himself will be loser, and so will the case be formed here; for such is the poverty and meanness of the people (by reason of the length and coldness of the winters, the difficulty of subduing a wilderness, defect of staple commodity, the want of money, etc.), that if with hard labour men get a subsistence for their families, 'tis as much as the generality are able to do, paying but very small rates towards the public charges; and yet if all the country hath ordinarily raised by ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... half-filled with rubbish showed the position of an abandoned mine. Beside it were the crumbling remains of the cottages of the miners, driven away no doubt by the foul reek of the surrounding swamp. In one of these a staple and chain with a quantity of gnawed bones showed where the animal had been confined. A skeleton with a tangle of brown hair adhering to it lay among ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... in the sun, dripping lianas and tufted with orchids, tree ferns, ferns depending with air roots from the steep banks, great arums—I had not skill enough to say if any of them were the edible kind, one of our staples here!—hundreds of bananas—another staple—and alas! I had skill enough to know all of these for the bad kind that bears no fruit. My Henry moralised over this the other day; how hard it was that the bad banana flourished wild, and the good must ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Now she seemed to have found it again. She fairly coquetted with this older woman who loved her, and whom she loved, with that charming coquettishness sometimes seen in a daughter towards her mother. She presumed upon this affection which she felt to be so staple. She affronted Sylvia with a delicious sense of her own power over her and an underlying affection, which had in it the protective instinct of youth which dovetailed with the protective ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... had done so, and there was no answer, the machinist took hold of the lock. To his own surprise and that of Tom, one of the staples pulled out and the door swung open. The place had evidently been forced before, and the lock had not been opened by a key. The staple had been pulled out and replaced loosely in ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton
... joined it. The discovery of the upland pastures beyond the Blue Mountains, which were remarkably adapted to sheep, made an epoch in the history of the colony. Spanish merino sheep were introduced: wool became the chief staple; the production of it, especially after the invention of the combing-machine, became very profitable, and free emigrants poured in. The Australian Agricultural Company was formed in England. Western Australia began to be settled in 1829, but did not thrive. ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... his doing so, by pointing out that they would all keep "yower side o' th' gayut" until the Bull—whose name, strange to say, seemed to be Zephyr—was safe in bounds, chained by his nose-ring to a sufficient wall-staple. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... unfortunately neglected to be born in wedlock, by one of those humorous omissions to be found in the genealogies of most old families. Yes, it was there, almost cynically hung in a corner; for this incident, though no doubt a burning question in the fifteenth century, was now but staple for an ironical little tale, in view of the fact that descendants of John's 'own' brother Edmund were undoubtedly to be found among the cottagers of a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the idlers read Swinburne and Lord de Tabley, I had grown accustomed to the stilted point of view, calling novelettes "trashy" and beneath an intellectual man's consideration. Well, since this particular trash forms the staple brain food in the Mercantile Marine, I must needs look into ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... liable to be exaggerated through sinister designs; they differed in size, in population, in wealth, and in actual and prospective resources and power; they varied in the character of their industry and staple productions, and [in some] existed domestic institutions which, unwisely disturbed, might endanger the harmony of the whole. Most carefully were all these circumstances weighed, and the foundations of the new Government laid upon principles of reciprocal concession and equitable ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... exercised by persons who possessed most of the landed property in the Weald, insomuch that almost all the ancient families of these parts, now of large estates and genteel rank in life, and some of them ennobled by titles, are sprung from ancestors who have used this great staple manufacture, now almost unknown here.' In his list of these families Hasted places the Austens, and he adds that these clothiers 'were usually called the Gray Coats of Kent; and were a body so numerous and united that at county ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... reporter; and it is characteristic that, as he was in prison at the time, he had already to report things seen only by the eye of faith. He tried at an early period to give variety to his 'Review' by some of the 'social' articles which afterwards became the staple of the 'Tatler' and 'Spectator.' When, after the death of Queen Anne, there was a political lull he struck out new paths. It was then that he wrote lives of highwaymen and dissenting divines, and that he patched up any narratives which he could get hold of, and gave them ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... things, or nearly so, and perhaps with more fervour, and his locks are silver. But we forget his person in an hour; nor does his voice ever haunt our solitude. Simonides—Solon—Esop!—why do such lines of theirs as those assure us they were Sages? The same sentiments are the staple of many a sermon that has soothed sinners ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... Much of the original stone contained little lime, and the human race would become nearly helpless if there were no stores of supply in the form of limestone, chalk, marl, etc. The day would come when the surface soil could not produce our staple crops if its loss of lime continued, and a means of replenishing the stock were not at hand. The huge deposits of limestone that have not been disintegrated by processes of weathering are assurance that the soil's need can be met forever. The calcium and magnesium in the stone are in chemical ...
— Right Use of Lime in Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... that was more nourishing and more abundant than the French peasant had at home. Bread was made from both wheat and rye flour, the product of the seigneurial mills. Corn cakes were baked in Indian fashion from ground maize. Fat salted pork was a staple during the winter, and nearly every habitant laid away each autumn a smoked supply of eels from the river. Game of all sorts he could get with little trouble at any time, wild ducks and geese, partridges, for there were in those days no game laws to protect them. In the early ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... Marseilles takes an active part in the French Revolution of 1848. Dramatic and graphic scenes abound, the reader finding startling surprises at every turn. Love, philanthropy, politics and bloodshed form the staple of the novel and are handled with extraordinary skill. Besides the hero, Haydee, Mercedes, Valentine de Villefort, Eugenie Danglars, Louise d'Armilly, Zuleika (Dantes' daughter), Benedetto, Lucien Debray, Albert de Morcerf, Beauchamp, Chateau-Renaud, Ali, Maximilian Morell, Giovanni ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... from two hundred up to eight hundred pounds of clean cotton per acre; and for the last three years the writer has been in the habit of selecting the North Carolina guano-grown cotton, in the New York market, where it has been shipped via Wilmington or Norfolk, on account of its good staple, good color, ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... additional one, and then I fling my banner to the breeze. Faith is sed to be the sun of all religious systems. POST OFFIS is the central figger in all Democratic creeds—the theme uv conversation by day, and the staple uv dreems by night. How long! ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... lions than me, whom when I beheld I thought verily I should presently die: but I turned myself about, and ranne as fast as ever I might to the stable from whence I came. Then the men of the towne called in their dogs, and took me and bound mee to the staple of a post, and scourged me with a great knotted whip till I was well nigh dead, and they would undoubtedly have slaine me, had it not come to passe, that what with the paine of their beating, and the greene hearbes that lay in my guts, I caught such ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... Farm Book; The American Farm Book; or, a Compend of American Agriculture, being a Practical Treatise on Soils, Manures, Draining, Irrigation, Grasses, Grain, Roots, Fruits, Cotton, Tobacco, Sugar-Cane, Rice, and every staple product of the United States; with the best methods of Planting, Cultivating, and Preparation for Market. Illustrated by more than 100 engravings. By R. ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... with all other Shemitic races, a worship of one God as Supreme, though the Arabian Allah, like the Baal of Canaan and Phoenicia, was supposed to be attended by numerous inferior deities. Though Islam undoubtedly borrowed the staple of its truths from the Old Testament, yet there was a short confession strikingly resembling the modern creed of to-day, which had been upon the lips of many generations of Arabians before Mohammed's time. Thus it ran: "I ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... the second leading sector. Agriculture and manufacturing continue to play a lesser role in the economy, constrained by the limited availability of cultivable land and the shortage of domestic labor. Most staple foods must be imported. Industry, which consists mainly of garment production, boat building, and handicrafts, accounts for about 7% of GDP. The Maldivian Government began an economic reform program in 1989 initially ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... assumption of an heroic attitude recurs with sufficient frequency to stamp it as a staple of comic effect. Many passages would become tiresome and meaningless instead of amusing unless so interpreted. The soliloquy of Mnesilochus in Bac. 500 ff. could be made interesting only by turgid ranting. Similarly in Bac. ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... proportionately, and the quality of the lint is equal to American "middling." We are trying to develop a plant that will yield 1,000 pounds of seed-cotton to the acre, with a lint equal in quality to fully good "middling" or to Allen's 1-7/8-inch staple. ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... can get a piano box there's your toolhouse all made," he suggested. "Cover it with tar paper so the rain won't come in, and hang the front on hinges with a hasp and staple and padlock, and ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... real grain or vegetable to the best advantage rather than to show a fancifully arranged display of such products as would be of little or no value to those interested in practical agriculture. With this end in view, each section of the State was drawn upon for the best samples of the staple crops of that section. These samples were carefully inspected by competent judges, and only those of real merit were placed in the collection for exhibit. So thoroughly was this work of selection done that a large proportion of the samples ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... dealings; about half an hour after she had been asleep, who should come snuffing about in the garden but Boxer, the gardener's ugly, old rough terrier. He had no business at all in the garden, but had managed to get his chain out of the staple, and there he was running about, and dragging it all over the flower beds, and doing no end of mischief; then he made a charge at Mrs Spottleover, who was on the lawn, where she had just punched out a fine grub, but she was so ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn
... The very deserts in which they placed themselves for protection, and the agricultural work with which they occupied their hands, brought them the corrupting wealth; in England they were the owners of the largest flocks of sheep which produced the raw material for the staple trade of the country. They accepted ecclesiastical dignities; they became luxurious and magnificent in their manner of life; they strove for independence of the ecclesiastical authorities, until in the middle of the thirteenth ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... of these regions. Near Greenville, a gigantic pair of moose-horns marks a fork in the road. Thenceforth moose-facts and moose-legends become the staple of conversation. Moose-meat, combining the flavor of beefsteak and the white of turtle, appears on the table. Moose-horns with full explanations, so that the buyer can play the part of hunter, are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... what had made Dr. Wilkinson so suddenly take such a decided view of Casson's character as he appeared to have done. They went to the stable and examined it very carefully. They found the door unfastened; but on further consideration, discovered that the staple, which was rusty, had been broken off, so that, though the key had been turned, it could be opened as easily as if it had had no lock. They went up through the trap-door, but found nothing to assist them, till, ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... employing thousands of hands, were shut down for lack of cotton, and the mill-hands were starving for lack of work; while shut up in the blockaded ports of the South were tons upon tons of the fleecy staple, that, once in England, would be worth its weight in gold. It was small wonder that the merchants of England set to work deliberately to fit out blockade-runners, that they might again get their mills running, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... back at Plymouth by late July 1607, and from Plymouth he came on to London in August. For cargo he carried clapboard, and his sailors had picked up so much sassafras root that the leaders of the colony feared that the market for this established staple of the American trade might be ruined. He brought with him also ore which he hoped an assay would prove to be gold, and he declared the country to be rich in copper. With some exaggeration, he announced explorations "into the country near ...
— The Virginia Company Of London, 1606-1624 • Wesley Frank Craven
... disappeared from the brig's stern, was sufficient proof that he had effected his escape in her. I was too much occupied all the time I was at Smyrna, to make many observations about the place. Figs are the great staple produce and subject of conversation for the greater part of the year, enlivened now and then by a visit from the plague, and then people talk about that; but at the time I speak of, I do not know that it had ever occurred to the inhabitants that they had the means in their ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... rough ladder, composed of a single pole with bits of wood nailed on to it a foot apart. This they placed up against the door of the loft. They could see that this was fastened only by a hasp, with a piece of wood put through the staple. It had been arranged that Geoffrey only should go up, Lionel removing the pole when he entered, and keeping watch behind the out-house lest anyone should come round the house. Both had cut heavy sticks as they came along to give them some means of defence. Lionel stood at ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... of the cotton gin worked another revolution in commerce, and rice proved to be an unfailing staple. Armies of negroes tilled the soil, and were happy in their circumscribed sphere, humanely cared for by ...
— Historic Papers on the Causes of the Civil War • Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... perhaps the staple of Amerindian diet, because in scarcely any part of the Canadian Dominion is a lake, river, or brook far away. In the region of the Great Lakes fish were caught in large quantities in October, and exposed to the weather to be frozen at nighttime. They were then stored away in this ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... the [Greek: anax] of publishers, the Anac of stationers, has a design upon you in the paper line. He wants you to become the staple and stipendiary editor of a periodical work. What say you? Will you be bound, like 'Kit Smart, to write for ninety-nine years in the Universal Visiter?' Seriously he talks of hundreds a year, and—though I hate prating of the beggarly elements—his proposal may be to your honour and ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... where does the taint stop? Do you bleach in three or in four generations?—I have many questions to put, but ten Delphic voyages can be made in a shorter time than it will take to satisfy my scruples.—Do you grow your own hemp?—What is your staple trade, exclusive of the national profession, I mean? Your lock-smiths, I take it, are some of your ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... her. The sound of her frightened snivel aged him. He tiptoed to the barn door, eying a light in the farm-house. He reached far up to the latch of the broad door and pulled out the wooden pin. The latch slipped noisily from its staple. The door opened with a groaning creek and banged against ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... figure or geometric symbol of any national meaning. Entwined below the seal proper are an olive branch and a date palm, both of which are intimately associated with the history of the race in Palestine. They are the two most characteristic trees of the promised land, and provided the chief staple foods of the Hebrews during their occupation of the country. The olive, moreover, gave the oil with which the Menorah was lit. There is also much fascinating symbolism in the olive tree and the palm. Both are evergreens—standing for the persistency of the Hebrew race. The date palm, we are told, ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... side. Elizabeth, as usual, was coy and maidenly. She was too old, she said, the thought of marriage was shocking to her; but, withal, the courtship went on actively. Anjou's charms and rumoured gallantries were the staple gossip at her court, and Elizabeth never tired of hearing praises ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... pressed on them to keep them from the fatal habit of perpetually copying from the Greek; and adaptations from the Attic New Comedy, which had been inevitable and proper enough as the earlier essays of a tentative dramatic art, remained the staple of an art which thus cut itself definitely away ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... dogs. They seemed more pleased than he had ever seen them, and the dog responded readily to their advances. He was a splendid specimen of his breed, very large, without a spot on his white coat, and with beautiful eyes. Doctor Gordon had a staple fixed in the vestibule, and the dog was leashed to it at night. "I can't have my patients driven away," he said with ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... stretch a tent, or even to spread a blanket, for there were great numbers already there, landed by previous steamers. The staking of lots on the tide flats at night, when the tide was out, seemed to be a staple industry. ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... forests which originally covered the island have been cut down, and the soil, which is of unusual fertility, is under thorough cultivation, yielding heavy crops of corn and manioc, which latter forms the staple food ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... of the Rhine where the vine is cultivated as the material of a great manufacture, and the staple of a foreign trade, fruit trees of other species are not admitted within the vineyard; but at Botzen in the Tyrol, where the habits of society are more simple and primitive, I have repeatedly seen fig-trees ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... stream of swearing and obscenity. Ridicule of religion, and a hardened triumph in his own iniquitous exploits, illustrated and confirmed by a prodigality of blasphemous asservations, constituted the staple of his thoughts and expressions. According to his own principles he could not look forward to another life, and consequently all that remained for him was to look back upon an unbroken line of seduction and profligacy—upon wealth and influence not merely abused, but prostituted to the lowest ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the form of the long waving weeds that look so innocent, but whose grasp is deadly, or guide the current that utters never a sound as it seizes its victim and bears him into an unfathomed gulf under the pitiless rock. A voice within me cried 'Home!' but home had I none anywhere of the staple sort: mine was ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... in this ward are Bridewell, Serjeants' Inn in Fleet Street, the Temple, the Six Clerks' Office, the Rolls, Serjeants' Inn in Chancery Lane, Clifford's Inn, the House of the Royal Society, Staple's Inn, Bernards' Inn, and Thavie's Inn, Justice Hall in the Old Bailey, and the Fleet Prison, with the churches of St. Bartholomew, and the hospital adjoining, the churches of St. Sepulchre, St. Andrew, Holborn, St. ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... his visitor by the shoulder and pushed him out of the entry. Then he closed and fastened the outer door. This was a matter of main strength, for the gale was fighting mad. When the latch clicked and the hook dropped into the staple he, too, entered the kitchen. Kent had obeyed orders to the extent of going over to the stove, but he had not removed his hat or coat and seemed to be quite oblivious of them or the fire or anything except the words ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... abysses? We may almost fancy that Nature took pleasure in recording by ineffaceable hieroglyphics the symbol of Norwegian life, bestowing on these coasts the conformation of a fish's spine, fishery being the staple commerce of the country, and well-nigh the only means of living of the hardy men who cling like tufts of lichen to the arid cliffs. Here, through fourteen degrees of longitude, barely seven hundred thousand souls maintain existence. Thanks to ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... his wire to post number one, carried the length past post number two, looped the chain around post number three, having the chain long enough so that he might tauten the wire and hold the crankhandle steady with his knee or left arm while he drove the holding staple in post number two. And so repeat, ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... went to Oranmore and its ruins. The poverty of Athenry deepens into still greater poverty in Oranmore. The country is under grass, hay is the staple crop, so there being little tillage, little labor is required. They depend on chance employment to procure the foreign meal on which they live. Some depend for help to a great extent on ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... children, these special bronchoscopes are very rarely used and none of them can be regarded as necessary. For special purposes, however, special shapes of tube-mouth are useful, as, for instance, the oval end to facilitate the getting of both points of a staple into the tube-mouth The illustrated instruments ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... permitted to extend the buildings to the quays provided they did not intercept traffic on the river. By 1224 the drapers had obtained lands in the forest of Roumare for the proper manufacture of their woollen stuffs, which were always a staple of commerce in Rouen, and they used these "Halles" for the exhibition and sale of their wares. The courtyard must have looked very much as it does to-day, with the addition of cloisters and open shop-fronts. By 1325 ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... fetters of slaves who had escaped north, or, it might be, of free negroes in their place; the advertisements for such runaways, which Dickens collected, and which described each by his scars or mutilations; the systematic slave breeding, for the supply of the cotton States, which had become a staple industry of the once glorious Virginia; the demand arising for the restoration of the African slave trade—all these were realities. The Southern people, in the phrase of President Wilson, "knew that their lives were honourable, their relations with their slaves ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... Important as the railway to San Francisco was, it would not yield the prize. To his vision it was even then perfectly clear, as to all the world it has been since the Chino-Japanese war of 1894-95, that the chief American staple which China and Japan needs is cotton, though machinery, petroleum, and flour are in demand. After giving facts, statistics, and well-wrought arguments, he wrote: "Again we say it is easy for America to lay its hand upon the greatest prize of ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... enthusiasm about the social and political problems which were occupying the whole world increased every day, until public meetings and private intercourse, and the shallow platitudes which formed the staple eloquence of the orators of the day, proved to me the terrible shallowness of ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... size of the breed is due to the large consumption of milk by the breeders. (He notes that the cattle of Burmah and Hindostan are identically the same stock, and that in Burmah, where comparatively little milk is used, they are of large size. In Hindostan, on the contrary, where milk forms the staple food of the population, the whole breed is stunted, no calf having, for ages, been allowed its due supply of nutriment.) The Professor also holds that these small oxen, together with the goat, sheep, horse, dog, and swine (of the Asiatic breed), were introduced into Britain by the ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... A rawhide thong tied it fast to a staple in the door jamb. With the bell shrilling its summons inside, the man paused long enough to study the knotting of the thong before he untied it and stepped inside. He went to the telephone slowly, thoughtfully, his cigarette held between two fingers, his forehead drawn down ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... speak harshly, 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 ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... able to discover them. On the subjects of woman's rights, domestic tyranny, sexual equality and all kindred themes she was guarded in speech. She never introduced them herself, and said but little when they formed the staple of conversation. ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... tender and a kindly hearty and he had met her in the houses of the poor near her father's shooting-lodge in circumstances which did her honour. So he loved her, and told her of it as simply as though she had been a penniless lass from one of the small farms that made up the staple of his congregation. They were married, and it is obvious what the countryside would say, specially as there were many eyes that had looked not scornfully at the ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... was a small door. Feeling cautiously about, he found it to be secured by a hook. When he sought to raise the catch, however, it resisted. Evidently it had not been lifted for many years, and had rusted to the staple. Carefully Alex threw his weight upward against it. It still refused to move. He pushed harder, and suddenly it ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... 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 ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... to the Thrieve for two purposes: to deliver a large consignment of goods and gear, foreign provisions and fruits, to the controller of the Earl's household, and to receive payment therefor, partly in money and partly in the wool and cattle; hides and tallow, which have been the staple products ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett |
