"Pit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of mischief, he would run the weary way from Kensington to Shoe Lane on the distant chance of a cock-fight. He was present, so he would relate in after years, when Sir Thomas Jermin's man put his famous trick upon the pit. With a hundred pounds in his pocket and under his arm a dunghill cock, neatly trimmed for the fray, the ingenious ruffian, as Briscoe would tell you, went off to Shoe Lane, persuaded an accomplice to fight the cock in Sir Thomas Jermin's name, and laid a level hundred against his own ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... Paris, had been confined in his fosse nearly twenty years, during which time not a day passed that he was not well fed by the people who amused themselves in the gardens, when a man fell into his pit, he immediately destroyed him. It does, however, appear, that all bears are not so ill-tempered as Monsieur Martin. Leopold, Duke of Lorraine, had a bear confined by a long chain, near the palisades below the glacis. Some poor Savoyard ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... gaining rapidly. In a few seconds matters began to look very serious for the sportsman, for the huge monster was almost on him; but at the critical moment he stepped on to the false cover of a carefully-concealed game pit and disappeared from view as if by magic. This sudden descent of his enemy apparently into the bowels of the earth so startled the elephant that he stopped short in his career and made off into the jungle. As for Waters, he was ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... poisoned the springs, (Priscus, p. 42.) Dubos (Hist. Critique, tom. i. p. 475) observes, that the magazines which the Moors buried in the earth might escape his destructive search. Two or three hundred pits are sometimes dug in the same place; and each pit contains at least four hundred bushels of corn Shaw's Travels, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... clear grass spot is selected and several deep holes are dug in one end. Back of them, and leading toward them, is a high tight fence made in a V. By beating the grass with boughs as they walk toward the trap, the people drive the grasshoppers before them until they are finally forced into the pit, from which they are ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... ocean's busy floor; while tremendous blasts of incandescent gas raved upward, buffeting even the enormous masses of the two space-ships, poised by their breathless crews so high above the site of the explosion. Then the displaced millions of tons of water rushed back into that newly rived pit, seeming to seek in that mad rush to make even more complete the already total destruction of the city. The raging torrents poured into that yawning cavern, filled it, and piled mountainously above it; receding and piling up, again and again, causing ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... hind flippers it digs a hole two or three feet deep, and deposits from eighty to one hundred and sixty eggs (Gibbon says from one hundred and fifty to two hundred). These are covered with sand, and the next comer makes another deposit on the top, and so on until the pit is full. Egg-laying comes earlier on the Amazon than on the Napo, taking place in August and September. The tracaja, a smaller species, lays in July and August; its eggs are smaller and oval, but richer than ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... reassured himself and resumed his flow of spirits as if a little ashamed even of his panic. He stopped the Countess to look at the pretext of this excursion. This was the rocky wall of the deep excavation of a marl-pit, long since abandoned. The arbutus-trees of fantastic shape which covered the summit of these rocks, the pendant vines, the sombre ivy which carpeted the cliffs, the gleaming white stones, the vague reflections in the stagnant pool ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... where every heart is eaten up by an accursed famishing after gold; where dark, gloomy banks come thick on each other, like the black, ugly apertures to the realms below in a mining district, each of them a separate little pit- mouth into hell. Alaric went into the city, and found that the shares were still rising. That imperturbable witness was still in the chair at the committee, and men said that he was disgusting the ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... remember who you are, and whom you rule? That they are kinsmen, that they are brethren by nature, that they are the offspring of Zeus? But I have purchased them, and they have not purchased me. Do you see in what direction you are looking, that it is towards the earth, towards the pit, that it is towards these wretched laws of dead men? but towards the laws of the gods you are ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... persecution, raised by Maximinus, numberless christians were slain without trial, and buried indiscriminately in heaps, sometimes fifty or sixty being cast into a pit together, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... that foci, and probably productive foci, may exist outside the body. It is highly probable, judging from the results of experiments, that every collection of putrescible matter is potentially a productive focus of microbes. The thought, of a pit or sewer filled with excremental matters mixed with water, seething and bubbling in its dark warm atmosphere, and communicating directly (with or without the intervention of that treacherous machine called a trap) with a house, is enough to make one shudder, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... open the door and step back, my heart in my mouth, my eyes flinging themselves into the apartment. Heavens! what do we see? a hideous face projects itself from the bed. Red—black—a face from the pit! A horrible smell is in our nostrils—we hear groans—enough! The colonel staggers back, cursing. I close the door and follow him out to the verandah. My own nerves are shaken, I admit it; it was a thing to shatter the soul. Still cursing, he mounts his horse, and rides away ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... is black, And the pit black, so I must go before To light the candles for your coming hither. No, no, I will not die, I will not die. Love, you are strong, and young, and very brave; Stand between me and the angel of death, And wrestle with him ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... said he, "I'm not going to have the place made a cock-pit. Shut up, Pillans, and don't make an ass of yourself; and you, Cruden, cut off. What did you ever come here for? See what ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... middle or they will bulge sideways; if they are too close together they become red-hot because there is not room enough for the air to pass between them to keep them moderately cool, and if they are too short they will drop down into the ash-pit. ...
— The Stoker's Catechism • W. J. Connor
... another good look round where the lane curved away now, and ran downhill past the big sand-pit at the dip; and then on away down to where the little river gurgled along, sending flashes of sunshine in all directions, while the country rose on the other side in a beautiful slope of furzy common, hanging wood, and closely-cut coppice, ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... in speed from those of the most powerful and elegantly-designed computers. However, no machine or language exactly matching Turing's primitive set has ever been built (other than possibly as a classroom exercise), because it would be horribly slow and far too painful to use. A 'Turing tar-pit' is any computer language or other tool which shares this property. That is, it's theoretically universal —- but in practice, the harder you struggle to get any real work done, the deeper its inadequacies suck you in. Compare {bondage-and-discipline ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... because so far beneath it; he told of his own puny efforts to warn this giant of the storm which he thought he saw approaching, but in doing this he had betrayed his own ignorance, and had prepared the pit into which he himself ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... business weeks, and I should be out of the storm and sailing safer and smoother seas than I had ever known. "To indulge hopes is bad," thought I, "but not to indulge a hope, when one has only it between him and the pit." And I proceeded to plan on the not unwarranted assumption that my coal hope was a present reality. Indeed, what alternative had I? To put it among the future's uncertainties was to put myself among the utterly ruined. Using as collateral the Coal stocks I had ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... down whilst I eat.' He ate, and whilst he ate he thought of a scheme. He rose and said: I My girl, come, and I will show you a pit I have ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... dead and is alive again; she was lost and is found. Myrtle Hazard, rescued from great peril of the waters, and cared for by good Samaritans, is now in her home. Thou, O Lord, who didst let the water-flood overflow her, didst not let the deep swallow her up, nor the pit shut its mouth upon her. Let us return our thanks to the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, who is our God and Father, and who hath ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... omnibuses from the city, and with lumber-wagons from the farms—all laden with passengers. In about two hours we arrived at the Newell farm, and found a gathering which at first sight seemed like a county fair. In the midst was a tent, and a crowd was pressing for admission. Entering, we saw a large pit or grave, and, at the bottom of it, perhaps five feet below the surface, an enormous figure, apparently of Onondaga gray limestone. It was a stone giant, with massive features, the whole body nude, the limbs contracted as if in agony. It had a ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... heavy pollution in lagoon of south Tarawa atoll due to heavy migration mixed with traditional practices such as lagoon latrines and open-pit dumping; ground ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... or wonderful intelligence of this animal. The whole town knew and kindly regarded Miss Betsy Barker's Alderney; therefore great was the sympathy and regret when, in an unguarded moment, the poor cow tumbled into a lime-pit. She moaned so loudly that she was soon heard and rescued; but meanwhile the poor beast had lost most of her hair and came out looking naked, cold, and miserable, in a bare skin. Everybody pitied the ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... gave chase. I followed; but the pace was killing, and very few were in, literally, at the death. It happened in a chalk pit: the man went over the edge quite blindly and broke his neck. They searched everywhere for the other, until it occurred to me to ask whether he had ever left the market-place. At first everyone was sure that he had; ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... down the pit— My sight was bounded by a jutting fragment; And it was stain'd with blood. Then first I shriek'd; My eyeballs burnt, my brain grew hot as fire, And all the hanging drops of the wet roof Turn'd into blood—I saw them turn to blood! And I was leaping wildly down the chasm, When ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... which the London boundary crosses. At a distance of less than half a mile, on some ornamental water near the river, an even more unexpected increase of the bird population has been noted. A pair of kingfishers nested and reared their brood in an old gravel-pit, while several nests of young dabchicks hatched by the pool.[2] There also during the spring a pair of tufted ducks appeared, and remained for some days before going on their journey to their breeding haunts. ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... gratification, the Chief of Police thrust out his right hand with such violence that his skin was ruptured at the arm-pit and a stream of sawdust poured from the wound. He was a stuffed Chief ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... for he was such a skilled magician that he could range over the sea without a ship, and could often raise tempests by his spells, and wreck the vessels of the enemy. Accordingly, that he might not have to condescend to pit his sea-forces against the rovers, he used to ruffle the waters by enchantment, and cause them to shipwreck his foes. To traders this man was ruthless, but to tillers of the soil he was merciful, for he thought less of merchandise than of the plough-handle, ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... hands, which is a very good exercise; holding up their hands and twirling the fingers; holding up the forefinger and bringing it down on the palm, in time to some tune; imitating the action of sawing wood, and the sound produced by the action of the saw; doing this both ways, as it is done in the saw-pit, with both hands, and by the carpenter with the right; imitating the cobbler mending shoes, the carpenter plaining wood, the tailor sewing, and any other trade which is familiar ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... sat in the Strangers' Gallery, and heard your great speakers; I have been in the pit of the opera, and seen your fine ladies; I have walked your streets; I have lounged in your parks, and I say that I can't fall in love with a faded dowager, because she fills up her wrinkles ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... theater was a three-story building of wooden or half-timber construction. The three stories formed three galleries for spectators. The first of these was raised a little above the level of the ground, while the yard, or 'pit,' in which the lower class of spectators stood, seems to have been somewhat sunken. The galleries were supported by oaken columns, often handsomely carved and ornamented. They were roofed and ceiled, but the yard was open to the weather. Although we know that the Fortune was eighty ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... horn of fire Odysseus speaks to us, and when from his sepulchre of flame the great Ghibelline rises, the pride that triumphs over the torture of that bed becomes ours for a moment. Through the dim purple air fly those who have stained the world with the beauty of their sin, and in the pit of loathsome disease, dropsy-stricken and swollen of body into the semblance of a monstrous lute, lies Adamo di Brescia, the coiner of false coin. He bids us listen to his misery; we stop, and with dry and gaping ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... custom to spend several mornings every week chasing the boars which abounded in the mountains a few miles from the city. One day, rushing downhill as fast as he could go, he put his foot into a hole and fell, rolling into a rocky pit of brambles. The king's wounds were not very severe, but his face and hands were cut and torn, while his feet were in a worse plight still, for, instead of proper hunting boots, he only wore sandals, to enable ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... order, and between them are the great targets of manila paper, with their circles and the heavy spot at the centre. As a man shoots his target sinks, its mate immediately rises in the same spot, and then upon its face appears, moved by the markers concealed in the pit below, the record of the shot. A red flag slowly waved—a miss!—a black cross on a white circle, a red disk, or best of all, a white disk that obliterates "the bull." The scorers interpret. "A four at three o'clock," "a three at nine ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... jail was a shallow pit, which had, apparently, been quite recently excavated. In it lay the shovel with which the earth had ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... Constantine a national badge for a party feud. Moreover, they realized that the question of Constantine possessed an international as well as a national aspect, and they did not wish to compromise the future of Greece and their own; which would have been nothing else than stepping into the very pit M. Venizelos had dug for them. But neither could they repudiate Constantine without losing popular support: to the Greek people the main issue of the fight was indeed what M. Venizelos ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... died, and by December, Behring's own condition had become hopeless. Hunger and grief had added to his misery, and in his sand-hut he died. He was almost buried alive, for the sand rolled down from the pit in which he lay and covered his feet. He would not have it removed, for it kept him warm. Thirty more of the little expedition died during that bitter winter on the island; the survivors, some forty-five persons, built a ship from the timbers of the wreck, and ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... fearful outcry. And on this wise mayest thou come to know this. After thou hast returned home, cause the island to be measured in its length and breadth, and in the place where thou dost find the exact central point, there cause a pit to be dug, and cause a cauldron full of the best mead that can be made to be put in the pit with a covering of satin over the face of the cauldron. And then in thine own person do thou remain there watching, and thou wilt see the dragons fighting in the form of terrific ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... hot trail. Twice they had a brush with the rear guard of the flying Utes, during which Bob heard bullets singing above his head. He felt a very unpleasant sinking in the pit of his stomach, and could hardly resist the temptation to slip out of the saddle and take refuge behind the ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... had then never dreamed of ascertaining the condition of a stock while there were bees in the way, but was like the unskilful physician who is obliged to wait for the death of his patient, that he may dissect and discover the cause. I accordingly consigned what few bees there were to the "brimstone pit." ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... Ireland's Son went outside. He found on the right-hand side of the house a deep quarry-pit. Round the edge of it were horns of all kinds, black horns and white horns, straight horns and crooked horns. And below in the pit he saw a young man digging for horns that were sunk in the ground. He had on a jacket made of the ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... at work to find Follet's accomplice; and I will not leave a stone unturned on 'Gravel Pit Hill,' but I will discover him ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... heinous offence as the murder of an innocent girl, it was simply the attempt of a clever attorney to remove the stigma attached to an unfortunate and much-maligned client. The dead body of Mary Ashford was found in a pit of water in Sutton Coldfield, on the 27th of May, 1817, she having been seen alive on the morning of the same day. Circumstances instantly, and most naturally, fastened suspicion of foul play upon Abraham Thornton. He was tried at Warwick, at the Autumn Assizes of the same year, ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... all these imaginary ills come from physical causes. The hypochondrium is supposed to be affected, and as it is located under the "short ribs," the hypochondriac continuously suffers from that awful "sinking at the pit of the stomach" that makes him feel as if the bottom had dropped out of life itself. He can neither eat, digest his food, walk, sit, rest, work, take pleasure, exercise, or sleep. His body is the victim of innumerable ills. His tongue, ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... origin of the potato pit, as we now have it, in Ireland was the following advice given in Pue's Occurrences of ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... indeed, is what you may call golden hair," cried Dona Clara; "these are truly emerald eyes."[67] The senora, her neighbour, examined the gitanilla piecemeal. She made a pepetoria[68] of all her joints and members, and coming at last to a dimple in her chin, she said, "Oh, what a dimple! it is a pit into which all eyes that behold it must fall." Thereupon an esquire in attendance on Dona Clara, an elderly gentleman with a long beard, exclaimed, "Call you this a dimple, senora? I know little of dimples then if this ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... whereat the Old Un, standing upon his chair, hugs himself in an ecstasy, and forgetful of such small matters as five-dollar bills, urges, prays, beseeches, and implores the Guv to "wallop the blighter on the p'int, to stab 'im on the mark, and to jolt 'im in the kidney-pit." ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... and in souls naturally unfeeling, gallantry turns into wickedness. Through ennui and the demand for excitement, through vanity, and as a proof of dexterity, delight is found in tormenting, in exciting tears, in dishonoring and in killing women by slow torture. At last, as vanity is a bottomless pit, there is no species of blackness of which these polished executioners are not capable; the personages of Laclos are derived from these originals.[2306]—Monsters of this kind are, undoubtedly, rare; but there is no need of reverting to them ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... extravagant, almost frenzied expectation he arrived at the Paris Peace Conference. Without hesitation he plunged into that inferno of human passions. He went down into the Pit like a second Heracles to bring back the fair Alcestis of the world's desire. There were six months of agonized waiting, during which the world situation rapidly deteriorated. And then he emerged with ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... "pit," and "chain," symbolize the instruments of restraint and confinement to which Satan is to be subjected; and his being bound and confined ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... founders of the Republic and its victims. Their votes consigned Louis and Maria to the guillotine, and they were the first to follow them. One cart conveyed the twenty-one bodies away, and they were thrown into one pit, by the side of the ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... said one to another. "Come now, therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him into some pit, and we will say, 'Some evil beast hath devoured him!' and we shall see what will become ...
— Joseph the Dreamer • Amy Steedman
... that the blind man escapes a pit, Whilst he that is clear of sight falls into it: The ignorant man can speak with impunity A word that is death to the wise and the ripe of wit: The true believer is pinched for his daily bread, Whilst infidel rogues enjoy all benefit. What is a man's ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... one of us will come between thee and him." Thereupon Nur al-Din, who was stout of heart as he was stalwart of limb, went up to the Wazir and, dragging him over the pommel of his saddle, threw him to the ground. Now there was in that place a puddling- pit for brick- clay,[FN34] into the midst of which he fell, and Nur al-Din kept pummelling and fisti-cuffing him, and one of the blows fell full on his teeth, and his beard was dyed with his blood. Also there were ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... mean to say you don't know that what the people hereabouts call the Bottomless Pit is situated right off that point—the most dangerous spot ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... troops were to lead the assault. At a quarter to five in the morning of the 30th of July the great mine was exploded, blowing two guns, a battery, and its defenders into the air, and forming a huge pit two hundred feet long and sixty feet wide. Lee and Beauregard hurried to the scene, checked the panic that prevailed, brought up troops, and before the great Federal columns approached the breach the Confederates were ready to receive them. The assault was made with little vigor, the approaches ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... in Terce, is called that within the Sword bearing a sloping Point towards your Adversaries Thigh, and as though within it. This observe to do when you perceive your Adversary giving in his Thrust without, or below your Sword, as it were at your Arm-pit, immediately letting the Point of your Sword sink as low as his Thigh, turning your Nails quite round to your Right-side, until they are from you, keeping your Hand as high as your Head, and so put by the Thrust on your Right-side; and when you ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... knowledge of the /ri/shi and so on, 'He who makes another person sacrifice or read by means of a mantra of which he does not know the /ri/shi, the metre, the divinity, and the Brahma/n/a, runs against a post, falls into a pit[205], &c. &c., therefore one must know all those matters for each mantra' (Arsheya Brahma/n/a, first section).—Moreover, religious duty is enjoined and its opposite is forbidden, in order that the animate beings may obtain ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... the terrace at the white bear in his pit, when a high voice came above the moderate tones of the crowd; Henry took Gertie's arm, and began to talk rapidly of Nansen and the North Pole, but this did not prevent her from glancing over her shoulder. The people gave way to the owner of the insistent voice, and ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... below had ceased, and as the Yankees above could not find any enemy plane against which to pit their strength, they, too, no longer scurried this way and that, each one ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... series of masked skirmishes. The battle-ground of rival principles was overshadowed by the baleful wings of the genius of demonic Hate. Vexilla regis prodeunt inferni; the banners of the King of the Pit came forth. The scene at the Cordeliers for a time became as frantic as a Council of the Early Church settling the true composition of the Holy Trinity. Or it recalls the fierce and bloody contentions between Demos and Oligarchy in an ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... Blowing away the remaining dust and ashes, Charley once more began an examination of the little excavation. Inch by inch he scrutinized the surface of the pit. He found it partly baked. Suddenly he gave a cry. He had found the distinct prints of some one's fingers. On the second side of the excavation he found more prints, and the third side yielded still others. Carefully Charley ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... is't t' us, Whether 'twas said by TRISMEGISTUS, 660 If it be nonsense, false, or mystick, Or not intelligible, or sophistick? 'Tis not antiquity, nor author, That makes Truth Truth, altho' Times daughter; 'Twas he that put her in the pit 665 Before he pull'd her out of it; And as he eats his sons, just so He feeds upon his daughters too. Nor does it follow, 'cause a herald, Can make a gentleman, scarce a year old, 670 To be descended of a race Of ancient kings in a small space, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... sunstroke in that weary march, 'twas White who gave him his last sup of water, and brought me his bit Bible. So I'd be fain to tend his daughter in her sickness, if you could spare me, my leddy, and I'd aye rin home to dress Missie Primrose and pit her to bed, and see to ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... feet each way and is two fathoms in depth. Into this they plunge a pole with a myrtle-branch bound to it, and then with the branch of the myrtle they bring up pitch, which has the smell of asphalt, but in other respects it is superior to the pitch of Pieria. This they pour into a pit dug near the pool; and when they have collected a large quantity, then they pour it into the jars from the pit: and whatever thing falls into the pool goes under ground and reappears in the sea, which is distant about four furlongs from ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... I had in mind when punting along the Cam. A man is a fool to pit his little mind against so vast and wonderful an edifice as a great university like Cambridge, but one thought which occurred more than once to me was whether or not a man can be considered educated if he be ignorant of human ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... to be present. He had always loved the actors, especially the old actors, from his youth; and this was the last of the Romans. Accordingly Lamb and his sister went to the Drury Lane; but there being no room in the ordinary parts of the house (boxes or pit), Munden obtained places for his two visitors in the orchestra, close to the stage. He saw them carefully ushered in, and well posted; then acted with his usual vigor, and no doubt enjoyed the plaudits wrung from a thousand hands. ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... consultation, in which Krail showed himself most solicitous on my behalf," the pale-faced girl went on. "Aided by Flockart, I think, he scraped away a hole in a pit full of dead leaves, and there the body must have been concealed just as it was. To me they all took a solemn vow to keep what they declared to be my secret. The bottle containing the wine from which the poor American girl had drunk was broken and hidden, ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... drowned now—quite drowned: all I feel Is ... is, at swift recurring intervals, A hurry-down within me, as of waters Loosened to smother up some ghastly pit: There they go—whirls from a ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... men to be brought before me, and I told them I had had a full account of their villainous behavior to the captain, and how they had run away with the ship, and were preparing to commit further robberies, but that Providence had ensnared them in their own ways, and that they were fallen into the pit which ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... He needed the dark of that dungeon. He crawled in and, searching out the remotest, blackest corner, hidden from all human eyes, and especially his own, he lay there clammy and wet all over, with an icy, sickening rend, like a wound, in the pit of his stomach. He shut his eyes, but that did not shut out what he saw. "So help me God!" he whispered to himself.... Six endless months had gone to the preparation of a deed that had taken one second! That transformed him! His life on earth, his spirit ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... Peter E. Noyes', that queer echo of Emerson whom people are always rediscovering and forgetting again, a phrase that sticks in my mind,—"Every living soul is heir to an empire and has fallen into a pit." It's an image wonderfully apt to describe my change of mental attitude, and render the contrast between those intensely passionate personal entanglements that had held me tight and that wide estate of life that spreads about us all, open to all of us in just the measure ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... processes surround a stellate depression, the primitive buccal cavity or stomatodaeum, from which the mouth and nasal cavities are developed. The buccal cavity is bounded above by the fronto-nasal process, which is divided by a fissure—the nasal cleft or olfactory pit—into a lateral nasal process, and a mesial nasal process, at the outer angle of which a ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... cried. "If I had my hand under your twist, I would send you flying headlong into the bottomless pit." ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... the smallest instance of kindness towards us, but healed the wounds of despair with the salve of consolation, by means of his benevolent and kind behavior, never permitting one of us to sink in the pit of despondence. He supported every one by his goodness, overset the designs of evil-minded men by his authority, tied the hand of oppression with the strong bandage of justice, and by these means expanded the pleasing appearance ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... cry, Mrs. Dr. dear, and that you may tie to, but whether I shall manage to smile or not will be as Providence ordains and as the pit of my stomach feels. Have you room there for this fruit-cake? And the shortbread? And the mince-pie? That blessed boy shall not starve, whether they have anything to eat in that Quebec place or not. Everything seems to be changing ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... not the slightest backwardness about explaining. In fact she always took the greatest pains to be explicit with old Mr. Sommerville about the pit from which she had been digged. "Why, this visit to Aunt Victoria is like stepping into another world for me. Everything is so different from my home-life. I was just thinking, as I sat there behind all this glorious clutter," she waved a ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... wrote Mrs. Stevenson, "found four large fat hogs, which Louis bought, and four cases of ship's biscuit were sent over from the Casco, which is lying at Papeete for repairs.... Our hogs were killed in the morning, washed in the sea, and roasted whole in a pit with hot stones. When done they were laid on their stomachs in neat open coffins of green basket work, each hog with his case of biscuits beside him. Early in the morning the entire population began bathing, a bath being the preliminary to everything. At about three o'clock—four was the hour ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... self-condemnation, his humble acknowledgment of having deserved at the Lord's hand nothing but eternal death. "Ah, poor fellow," said I, "he was like me. How dreadful his end must have been; I will see what he said at last, when on the very brink of the bottomless pit." I resumed the book, and found him in continuation glorifying God that though he was so guilty and so vile, there was ONE able to save to the uttermost, who had borne his sins, satisfied divine justice for him, opened ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... voice which I had just heard, and those which had terminated my dream in the summer-house. There are means by which we are able to distinguish a substance from a shadow, a reality from the phantom of a dream. The pit, my brother beckoning me forward, the seizure of my arm, and the voice behind, were surely imaginary. That these incidents were fashioned in my sleep, is supported by the same indubitable evidence that compels me to believe myself awake ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... see, Lizzie, lass," she said at length, her voice still thrilled with the sorrow of her great motherless, "ye see, lassie, ah've naebody but Wully an' Betsey to look to. Ma Jeams left me a wee bit siller, but it's no enough gin a wes pit oot in the warld, an' if Wully slips awa' ah canna say whit'll happen—so ah must look for a hame, ye ken. An' there's this ane ah kin have." She tossed her head towards the receding farm-house. The ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... cold and her words full of contempt. The white ring of her gun barrel covered him squarely. It was directed at the pit of his stomach, while her eyes, alight with cold purpose, stared unflinchingly into his drunk and ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... grin, for he believed that he was invincible in arms, and that no man could stand against him, in which belief he was somewhat excused by his long record of successes, and it seemed to him no more than a sorry joke that a lad and a scholar like Dante should really pit his pigmy self against Simone's giantship. It was no information of Maleotti's that told Simone the truth about the unknown poet. That, as you know, he found out for himself, and if he did but despise any skill that Dante might ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... course of events, as far as that could be done, which occurred during the progress of the enterprize. Now that it has failed, we must expect these deep politicians to return to the charge, and to beg us to help them out of the pit into which they wanted to help us. But they have as yet been in no hurry to begin this pleasant communication, and most assuredly we are in no disposition to urge them on faster. You have here, therefore, the explanation of the total impossibility ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... or two, began making their bets, both individually and through the agency of the "farmer," who, standing in the centre of the ring, cried out chaffingly in Visayan to faint-hearted gamesters. Then circles were drawn on the earthen floor of the pit, and the money put up on each cock deposited in one or the other of these rings. At the end of the fight some one appointed cried out the name of the victorious bird, and the winners swarmed down into the ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... then chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company, gave him a plough, but it was now broken. He had no cattle when he commenced, but he and his people drew the plough themselves, and made hoes of roots of trees. Mr. Christie also gave him a pit-saw and a grind-stone, and he was still using them. His heart was sore in spring when his children wanted to plough and had no implements. He asked for these as soon as possible, and referring to the Wesleyan mission at that place, he ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris
... Conde.— Pare and cut into halves 1-1/2 dozen large, ripe peaches and boil them with their blanched pits in sugar syrup for about 10 minutes; transfer the peaches to a dish or long tin pan, wipe dry and lay them with the hollow side up; put half a pit in the center of each and pour a spoonful of jelly over each piece (the jelly should be previously stirred on ice till it begins to thicken); next set a plain form into cracked ice, pour in some plain fruit or wine jelly and keep turning the ...
— Desserts and Salads • Gesine Lemcke
... Well need excavation equipment, and labor. Lots of labor," Conn said. "It's a couple of hundred feet below the surface; from the plans, I'd say they just dug a big pit, built the headquarters in it, and filled it in. There are two entrances, a vertical shaft ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... over the bank, and followed the original direction. She was now literally trembling and panting at this her temerity in such an errant undertaking; her breath came and went quickly, and her eyes shone with an infrequent light. Yet go she must. She reached the verge of a pit in the middle of the ferns. Troy stood in the ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... her own courage and calmness through the sordid ordeal of the lengthy inquest and the empty pomp of the funeral of the young wife. Her own heart was bruised and numb within her with the horrors which had been heaped upon her. She was like one who had seen a pit open suddenly at her feet, revealing terrible human obscenities and abominations wallowing nakedly in the depths. It was a poignant shock to her that human nature was capable of such infamy. Her startled virgin eyes saw for ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... issues of the 17th and 18th insts. over the signature of "M" upon the subject of "Woman's Rights," nor does he approve of its admission in the columns of the paper, and hereby disclaims having authorized the publication of any such emanations from the pit during his absence from home. When at his post he sometimes gives publicity to such communications for the purpose of showing up the fallacy of the positions taken, but never does he intend, so long as he has control of its columns, to allow The Star to become the medium of disseminating ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the sensitive and inexperienced Hilda was like a horrible nightmare. She cannot believe her senses, and yet she has to believe them. It seems to her as if the fiery pit has yawned between her and the rest of the human race. Her position is much like that of Hamlet, and the effect on her is somewhat similar. She thrusts Miriam from her with bitterness; yet forms no definite resolutions, and does she knows not what; until, ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... and London are our heroic poets; and if I may single out any passage of their works to commend I shall take notice of that part in the upper garden at Kensington, which was at first nothing but a gravel pit. It must have been a fine genius for gardening that could have thought of forming such an unsightly hollow unto so beautiful an area and to have hit the eye with so uncommon and agreeable a scene as that which ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... Before the end of this reign there were eighteen theatres in London, all crowded with audiences which embraced every class of the people,—from the noble and court gallant who played cards on the stage, to the workmen and apprentices who fought and bandied coarse jests in the pit. The names of Marlowe, of Shakespeare, of Johnson, are sufficient to remind us of the grandeur to which the Elizabethan drama attained, under the influence of prosperity at home, victory abroad, and the quickening of the national intelligence which followed the revival ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... PIT'AKA' (lit. a basket), the name given to the sacred books of the Buddhists, and constituting collectively the Buddhistic ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... adjacent countries, especially in the Bashia branch of that river, the Soosees extract a fermented and intoxicating liquor from a root growing in great abundance, which they call gingingey, something similar to the sweet potatoe in the West Indies. The distillation is commenced by forming a pit in the earth, into which a large quantity of the root is put, and covered with fuel, which is set on fire, and kept burning until the roots are completely roasted: the roots are then put into paloons, and beat, exposed afterwards in mats to the sun, by which they acquire a taste similar to ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... morning. In the afternoon made a damper, baked it, and eat it in company with the others. "Pit a cake, pat a cake, ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... got into a scrape. What the deuce did he do there? Mr. Avenel puzzled them yet more. A middle-aged man, said to be in business, whom they had observed "about town" (for he had a noticeable face and figure)—that is, seen riding in the park, or lounging in the pit at the opera, but never set eyes on at a recognized club, or in the coteries of their 'set';—a man whose wife gave horrid third-rate parties, that took up half a column in the Morning Post with a list of "The Company Present,"—in which a ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... golf that makes it the game it is. The fact that James and Peter, lying side by side in the same bunker, had played respectively one and six shots, might have induced an unthinking observer to fancy the chances of the former. And no doubt, had he not taken seven strokes to extricate himself from the pit, while his opponent, by some act of God, contrived to get out in two, James's chances might have been extremely rosy. As it was, the two men staggered out on to the fairway again with a score of eight apiece. ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... than mineral coal. According to Way, Promptorium Parrulorum, p. 506, note, the Catholicon Anglicanum has "A turfe grafte, turbarium." Grafte is here evidently the same word as the A.-S. grafa, and the Danish Torvegraf, a turf-pit, confirms this opinion. Coal is not mentioned in King Alfred's Bede, in Neckam, in Glanville or in Robert of Gloucester, though the two latter writers speak of the allied mineral, jet, and are very full in their ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... (-orchestra-) with the altar in the middle, on which the Greek chorus performed its part, or, to speak more correctly, the space thus appropriated among the Greeks served with the Romans as a sort of pit; accordingly the choral dance at least, with its artistic alternations and intermixture of music and declamation, must have been omitted in Rome, and, even if the chorus was retained, it had but little importance. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... originating cause of England's greatness and wealth. It has given us a power over other nations, and vast sums of money are yearly brought to our country from abroad in exchange for the coal we send. Nearly L17,000,000 is the representative value of the coal raised every year at the pit's mouth, and L20,000,000 represent its mean value at the various places of consumption. The capital invested in our coal-mining trade, apart from the value of the mines themselves, exceeds L20,000,000 sterling, and the amount of coal annually extracted from the earth is ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... was shot walking by Morpheus, and subsided altogether; for dramatic performances, amusing and exciting to youth seated in the pit, convey a certain weariness to those bright beings who sparkle on the stage for ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... shaking his dart over them, but, in spite of supplications, delaying to strike. What says Dante? "There was such a moan there as there would be if all the sick who, between July and September, are in the hospitals of Valdichiana, and of the Tuscan swamps, and of Sardinia, were in one pit together; and such a stench was issuing forth as is wont to issue ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... skinflint; he'd gie nowt—noa, net as mich as a crumb to a burd; an' if iver any wor seen abaat his haase they used to be sat daan to be young ens 'at hadn't le'nt wit. Well, he once went to buy a seck o' coils, an' to be able to get 'em cheaper he fetched 'em throo th' pit; it wor th' depth o' winter, but as he had to hug 'em two mile it made th' sweeat roll off him.. When he gate hooam he put 'em daan an' shook his heead. "By gow," he sed, "awm ommost done, but aw'll mak' yo' pay for this, for aw ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, Second Series - To which is added The Cream of Wit and Humour - from his Popular Writings • John Hartley
... to accept these conditions for Europe, or for the world, without urging the freer nations to make extraordinary efforts to reach a better solution of the European international problem which, unsolved, has led down to this horrible pit ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... presents so many separate beauties, we must ascend the chalk range that rises immediately from the woods of Nunwell. When the weather is clear, it is impossible to describe the magnificent scene which these hills command, from Brading Downs, by Ashey Sea-mark, and soon quite to Arreton chalk-pit. ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... chains to eternal darkness.... I boldly challenge thee with thy six-foot God and all the host of Luciferian spirits, with all your commissions, curses, and sentences, to touch and hurt me. And this know, O Muggleton: on you I trample, and to the bottomless pit are you sentenced, from whence you came, and where the endless worm shall gnaw and ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... sardonically at an ideal second row in the pit before him, "yes—seemed! There were other differences, social and political. You understand that; you have suffered, too." He reached out his hand and pressed Brant's, in heavy effusiveness. "But," he continued haughtily, lightly tossing his glove again, "we are also men of ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... disposal of the other refuse presents less difficulty, but still a considerable one, because the animal and vegetable refuse is not kept separate from the cinders and ashes, all being thrown together into the ash pit or dust bin. The contents, therefore, cannot be deposited upon ground which may afterward be built upon, although that custom obtained generally in former times. Hence the refuse has been removed to a depot where that wretched ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... I know thee now; thou cam'st But once in thine own form, and ever since Hast been too near me in a worser one. Back to the pit, I say! ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... was found in an old pit near the Minnesota Mine. In removing the accumulated leaves and vegetable mould, the workmen, at the depth of eighteen feet, discovered a mass of copper ten feet long, three feet wide, and more ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... soon as one huge division pressed too close upon the edge of escape, it was dragged back by another and prevented. The wild host was divided against itself. Here dwelt the Shadow I had "imagined" weeks ago, and in it struggled armies of lost souls as in the depths of some bottomless pit whence there is no escape. The layers mingled, fighting against themselves in endless torture. It was in this great Shadow I had clairvoyantly seen Mabel, but about its fearful mouth, I now was certain, hovered another figure of darkness, a figure who sought ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... divil be wanting of me?" cried Betty, tartly. "And isn't there divils enough in the corps already, without one's coming from the bottomless pit to frighten ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... ring the bells of Heaven The wildest peal for years, If Parson lost his senses And people came to theirs, And he and they together Knelt down with angry prayers For tamed and shabby tigers And dancing dogs and bears, And wretched, blind pit ponies, ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... grasped the principle of opera in Italy—it aims not at illusion but at entertainment—and he did not want this great evening-party to turn into a prayer-meeting. But soon the boxes began to fill, and Harriet's power was over. Families greeted each other across the auditorium. People in the pit hailed their brothers and sons in the chorus, and told them how well they were singing. When Lucia appeared by the fountain there was loud applause, and cries ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... for another falls at last into his own pit, and the most cunning finds himself caught by what he had prepared for another. But virtue without guile, erect like the lofty palm, rises with greater vigour when it ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... at once unwieldy and feeble, the fat collecting in masses about the belly and around the joints. Such an increase is sometimes accompanied with fatty degeneration of the heart and muscles, and with a certain watery flabbiness in the limbs, which, however, do not pit on pressure. ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... mind how it came to happen that the earth had been fresh turned. While he stood, the young bulls pressing behind suddenly put their horns to his flanks and urged him forward. Mawoh! The old bull stepped on to the newly turned earth, and went down into a pit that the hunters had dug. He called to the troop to run from the danger, and they crashed through the ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... Mr. Yorke, that Vain-Confidence, not seeing the way before him, fell into a deep pit, which was on purpose there made by the prince of the grounds, to catch vainglorious fools withal, and was dashed to pieces ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... instantly, and for a few minutes the board room was as noisy as the wheat pit with a corner threatening. Brewster, still laughing in his beard, pulled Ford out of the press at the ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... great advantage—cheap coal for their engines. In 1913 the average cost at the pit's mouth was ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... on fair ground, and in fine weather, he has no doubt that he could master him, and hand him over to the quarter sessions. He says that a hundred pounds would be no bad thing to be disbanded upon; for he wishes to take an inn at Swanton Morley, keep a cock-pit, ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... of heavy bodies to the centre of gravity. In order that the prices of admission may be in accordance with the intrinsic value of the lectures, nothing will be charged for the boxes, the entrance to the pit will be gratis, and the gallery will be thrown open for the free entry of the people. The audience will be expected to assume a horizontal position. Persons given to snoring are invited to ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... stars do you suppose I could sleep with hunger and thirst gnawing at the pit of my stomach? Do let me alone: I want to try to think out something—to plan for the future. What under the sun is to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... with cool bright days and a hint of frost at night; the lawyer marshalled his forces and harvested the crops. The storehouses, already stocked with Pontgrave's abundant provision, were filled to overflowing, and they had to dig a makeshift cellar or root-pit under a rough shelter for the last of their produce. The potatoes were carefully bestowed in huge hampers provided by Membertou's people, who were greatly interested in all that the white men did. Old Jacqueline had said that they needed "room to breathe," and Lescarbot was ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... and the nests were built. Mary, warm-cheeked in the sun, and wearing a broad- brimmed hat and a pair of gardening gloves, was thinning out a clump of cornflowers. At one corner of the lawn, shaded by a flowering dog-wood, was a small sand-pit, and in this a yellow-haired two-year-old boy diligently poured sand through a wire sieve. In a white perambulator lay a pink, brown-haired, baby girl, soundly sleeping, a tiny thumb held comfortably in her mouth. Now and then Mary straightened from her task and tiptoed ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... written for children. I have no shame in acknowledging that I, who wrote it, am also a child; for since I can remember my eyes have always grown big at tales of the marvelous, and my heart is still accustomed to go pit-a-pat when I read of impossible adventures. It is the nature of children to scorn realities, which crowd into their lives all too quickly with advancing years. Childhood is the time for fables, ...
— The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People • L. Frank Baum
... should the divil be wanting of me?" cried Betty, tartly. "And isn't there divils enough in the corps already, without one's coming from the bottomless pit to ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... Pavlovna, leaning her head forward and smiling. By the intonation of her voice she seemed to say, "All are equal to-day," and wiping her mouth with a bandana handkerchief which she kept under her arm-pit, she extended ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... Long had he admired her talents. Those were the days of the drama in all its glory: the opera was unfashionable. There were, Horace writes in 1742, on the 26th of May, only two-and-forty people in the Opera House, in the pit and boxes: people were running to see 'Miss Lucy in Town,' at Drury Lane, and to admire Mrs. Clive, in her imitation of the Muscovites; but the greatest crowds assembled to wonder at Garrick, in 'Wine Merchant turned Player;' and great and small alike rushed to Goodman's Fields to see him act all ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... to support and maintain them therein, and the royal chapel at Holyrood-House ordered to be repaired for popish service. By which means a door was opened for that swarm of Jesuits and priests, ascending as locusts out of the bottomless pit, which quickly overspread the lands. But notwithstanding of all this indulgence and royal toleration granted to these three forementioned parties, yet there is no favor nor mercy for the honest and faithful sufferers, ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... That question remains unanswered to this day. I have never been able to reply to it. I only know that it bore the living likeness of the murdered man, whose body had then been lying some ten weeks under a rough pile of branches, and brambles, and rotting leaves, at the bottom of a deserted chalk-pit about half-way between Blackwater and Mallingford. I know that it spoke, and moved, and looked as that man spoke, and moved, and looked in life; that I heard, or seemed to hear, things related which I could never otherwise have learned; that I was guided, as ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... wrote; concerning Bell, he did not write much, but chiefly talked. Concerning Ball, however, he both wrote and talked. It was in vain to muse upon any plan for having Ball blackballed, or for rebelling against Bell. Think of a man, who had fallen into one pit called Bell; secondly, falling into another pit called Ball. This was too much. We were obliged to ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... it ours, Now the ruins of dead things rattle As dead men's bones in the pit, Now the kings wax lean as they sit Girt round with memories of powers, With musters counted as cattle And armies folded as sheep Till the red blind husbandman battle Put ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... waiting for the moment to strike. Sometimes he weaves so tangled a web that he falls into it himself, and one of the stock situations in humor, the novel and the stage is where the cunning schemer falls into the pit he has dug for others. In his highest aspect he is the diplomat; in his lowest he is the sneak. People who are weak or cowardly tend to the use of these methods, but also there is a group of the strong who hate direct force and rather like ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson |
