"Pit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said the vrouw; "but how in the name of God are we to get Allan out of a guarded house into a mealie-pit?" ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... impulse which I could not resist, I still held on my course, over mounds of earth, between rows of headstones, till I reached the other side of the church, under the shadow of which yawned an open pit. To the bottom of it I peered, and there beheld an empty coffin; the lid was laid against the side of the grave, and on a headstone, displaced from its upright position, sat the late occupant of the grave, looking at me with wistful, eager eyes. ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... who affect violent exercise, while golf takes its place with the more sedately inclined. There is no game so fitted to appeal to a hardy and active people as that composite exercise prescribed by the Rugby Union, in which fifteen men pit strength, speed, endurance, and every manly attribute they possess in a prolonged struggle against fifteen antagonists. There is no room for mere knack or trickery. It is a fierce personal contest in which the ball ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was his eye, nor moister Than a too-long-opened oyster, Save when at noon his paunch grew mutinous 50 For a plate of turtle green and glutinous) "Only a scraping of shoes on the mat? Anything like the sound of a rat Makes my heart go pit-a-pat!" ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... accomplish this by novel-writing. And to his honor be it said that for a long series of years he kept sending every penny he could spare, above the barest necessities, to his creditors, refusing to avail himself of the bankruptcy law and accept a compromise. But it was a bottomless pit into which he was throwing his hard-earned pennies, and in the end he had to yield to the persuasions of his family ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... kloweyt, cooking side. M. Keek loot, fireplace built of stone. N. Eegloo, house. O. Kattack, door. P. Nattoeuck, clear space in the apartment. a. d. Eekput, a kind of shelf where the candle stands; and b. c. a pit where they throw their bones and other offal of their provision. Q. Eegl-luck, bed-place. R. Eegleeteoet, bedside or sitting-place. S. Bed-place, as on the other side. T. Kie'gn-nok, small pantry. U. Hoergloack, storehouse ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... the attractions of that circle became daily more difficult to resist. And often when he was enduring the purgatory of the Divan, listening to the snarls of St. Barbe over the shameful prosperity of everybody in this world except the snarler, or perhaps went half-price to the pit of Drury Lane with the critical Trenchard, he was, in truth, restless and absent, and his mind was in another place, indulging in visions which he did not care to analyse, but which were ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... she should do her share of the work. Who once thrashed a boy who said that his sister had a dirty face,—which was quite true, but people do not need to say everything they know, do they? Who went swimming in the gravel pit long before the 24th of May, which marks the beginning of swimming and barefoot time in all proper families, and would have got away with it, too, only, in his haste to get a ride home, he and his friend changed ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... an actress, ma'am, Magdalen's performance will astonish us all." With that reply, Miss Garth took out her work, and seated herself, on guard, in the center of the pit. ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... had not proceeded far when they met a Lion. The Fox, seeing imminent danger, approached the Lion and promised to contrive for him the capture of the Ass if the Lion would pledge his word not to harm the Fox. Then, upon assuring the Ass that he would not be injured, the Fox led him to a deep pit and arranged that he should fall into it. The Lion, seeing that the Ass was secured, immediately clutched the Fox, and attacked ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... to the top of a precipice, nearly fifty feet deep; and standing on the bank, held his head over, and howled in a most distressing manner. They were convinced that the poor man had fallen over; and having gone round to the bottom of the pit, they found him, lying under the spot indicated ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... hear you say it; those doubts prove to me that you recognise the power of your pen. They are fools who hold that a ton of high-explosive is worth all the rhetoric of Cicero. It was not Krupps who plunged the Central Empires into the pit, Paul, but Bernhardi, Nietzsche and What's-his-name. Wagner's music has done more to form the German character than Bismarck's diplomacy. Shakespeare's Henry the Fifth means more to ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... begins describing a small circle on the surface of the sand by jerking himself backwards and flinging the sand away with his flat head and closed forceps, which form a kind of shovel. Each circle is smaller than the last, until the pit is like an inverted cone, and the ant-lion lies buried at the bottom, only his forceps being visible. When an ant has fallen headlong down into the pit it makes frantic efforts to escape, and if the ant-lion sees that it is likely to get beyond ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... elephant, the monkey, the horse, the dog, the parrot, the macaw, the mocking-bird, and many others. The elephant whose mate fell into a pit, and who dumped dirt and rubbish into the pit till bottom was raised high enough to enable the captive to step out, was equipped with the reasoning quality. I conceive that all animals that can learn things through teaching and drilling have to know how to observe, and put this ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... "I am much abused, or you have fallen innocently into the most dangerous hands in Europe. Poor boy, what a pit has been dug for your simplicity! into what a deadly peril have your unwary feet been conducted! This man," he said, "this Englishman, whom you twice saw, and whom I suspect to be the soul of the contrivance, can you describe ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he spoke and proceeded down the yellow sands to a pit at the foot of the rolling slope. Wayland saw him halt, again shade his eyes from the sun glare, and stoop. On his knees, he looked again and rose. He came up the slope shaking his head. "Y'd swear it was water at y'r very feet till you ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... their husbands generally jealous. They give presents to the fathers or relatives of the girls they have wedded. These are the ceremonies and forms observed in their marriages. In regard to their burials: When a man or a woman dies, they dig a pit, in which they put all their property, as kettles, furs, axes, bows, arrows, robes, and other things. Then they place the body in the pit and cover it with earth, putting, on top many large pieces of wood, and another piece upright, painted red on the upper part. They believe in the ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... obstinately closed during the whole of the first act. At last, as Albert was looking at his watch for about the hundredth time, at the beginning of the second act the door opened, and Monte Cristo entered, dressed in black, and, leaning over the front of the box, looked around the pit. Morrel followed him, and looked also for his sister and brother in-law; he soon discovered them in another box, and kissed his ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Virtuosos[153] in five years be writ; Yet not one thought accuse thy toil of wit. 150 Let gentle George[154] in triumph tread the stage, Make Dorimant betray, and Loveit rage; Let Cully, Cockwood, Fopling, charm the pit, And in their folly show the writer's wit. Yet still thy fools shall stand in thy defence, And justify their author's want of sense. Let them be all by thy own model made Of dulness, and desire no foreign aid; That they to future ages ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... hast brought up my soul from the grave; thou hast kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit." ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... At the bottom of the shaft was a pit into which sank the great chains of the car. The pit was full of crude castor-oil, cheapest ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... lighted torches, in the midst of the black night, shining upon tombs. Bowanee smiled in her ebon sky. As I thought of that divinity of destruction, I beheld with joy the dead-cart emptied of its coffins. The immense pit yawned like the mouth of hell; corpses were heaped upon corpses, and still it yawned the same. Suddenly, by the light of a torch, I saw an old man beside me. He wept. I had seen him before. He is a Jew—the keeper of the house in the Rue Saint-Francois—you ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... how Kali became the slave of the dervishes; it appeared that from the night when he was caught in a pit, dug for zebras, he had gone through so many hands that Stas could not tell from his statements what countries he had passed through and by what route he had been conducted to Fashoda. Stas was much impressed by what he said about the "dark water," for if he ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... the grandmother; 'have you not heard, My poor, bad boy! of the fiery pit, And how, drop by drop, this merciful bird Carries the water ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... our age the way Of judging well, than thus have changed your play; You had obliged us by employing wit, Not to reform Pandora, but the pit; For as the nightingale, without the throng Of other birds, alone attends her song, While the loud daw, his throat displaying, draws The whole assemblage of his fellow-daws; So must the writer, whose productions should Take with the vulgar, be of vulgar mould; ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... and occasionally a dried hide. The property intended to be hidden is then laid in, after having been well aired: a hide is spread over it, and dried grass, brush, and stones thrown in, and trampled down until the pit is filled to the neck. The loose soil which had been put aside is then brought and rammed down firmly, to prevent its caving in, and is frequently sprinkled with water, to destroy the scent, lest the wolves and bears should be attracted to the place, and root up the concealed treasure. When ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... and the animal walked slowly on. He glanced upward. The walls of the coulee were steep and high, and far above him, little stars twinkled. Suddenly his heart ceased to beat. He felt weak and flabby and there was a strange chill at the pit of his stomach. He could have sworn that a face looked down at him from the clean-cut rim of the coulee. The next moment it was gone. He proceeded a quarter of a mile, again looked upward, and again he saw the face. His nerveless fingers ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... the old dramatic story. He could see, when he closed his eyes, the local photographers climbing to that cabin and later sending its pictures broadcast, and divers gentlemen of the press, eager to pit their wits against ten years of time and the ability of a once conspicuous man to hide from the law, ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... engine-shed, or "stable." You may, perhaps, have noticed the round houses near the railway—say at York Road, Battersea—those are the engine-"stables." Every engine is placed in its "stall," so that its chimney is just under an opening, or flue. It is also over a "pit," so that the fire can be raked out, or the working examined from underneath before the engine goes into the station next day to take the train away to the seaside, or to carry you to school, or home for the holidays. ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... ourselves about two miles from the common, on the borders of a forest of oak and ash. Our food was chiefly game, for we had some excellent poachers among us; and as for fish, it appeared to be at their command; there was not a pond nor a pit but they could tell in a moment if it were tenanted, and if tenanted, in half an hour every fish would be floating on the top of the water, by the throwing in of some intoxicating sort of berry; other articles of food occasionally were found in the caldron; indeed, it was impossible to ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... of Joseph, in passing through the pit and the prison, on the way to his real mission, the experience of Israel in Egypt from the death of Joseph until the time of their deliverance at the Red Sea, and the experience of Nehemiah and Daniel, captives at Babylon, who were there ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... recovers his senses, Dante finds himself no longer in Charon's bark, but on the brink of a huge circular pit, whence arise, like emanations, moans and wails, but wherein, owing to the dense gloom, he can descry nothing. Warning him they are about to descend into the "blind world," and that his sorrowful expression—which ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... nostrils,[179] and another the effect of thine anger so, The house was filled with smoke;[180] and he that continues his prophecy as long as the world can continue, describes the miseries of the latter times so, Out of the bottomless pit arose a smoke, that darkened the sun, and out of that smoke came locusts, who had the power of scorpions.[181] Now all smokes begin in fire, and all these will end so too: the smoke of sin and of thy wrath will end ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... one end of his stick for the face of another of the boarding strangers. The fellow strove to protect his face, and would have guarded easily enough, but, instead, the other end of Tom's bludgeon struck him in the pit of his stomach, depriving him of ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... hash of things. That's obvious, isn't it? I'm right down at the bottom of the pit and there's no getting out for me. 'Black as the pit from pole to pole.'" I felt him smile as he made the quotation. "And the strange thing is that I don't ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... represented, and shew themselves, in general very good judges of theatrical merit; and the entertainments which please their taste are certainly of a superior order to a great part of those which are popular in England. A great number of the performances which are loudly applauded by the pit and boxes of the London theatres, would be esteemed low and vulgar, even by the galleries at the Theatre Francais. It must be added, likewise, that the morality of the plays which are in request, is very generally more strict than of ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... quarrel, and make it up again, after the manner of boys. The wardroom was large and airy, and there was ample space for the party. At meals they consisted of the three lieutenants, the surgeon, purser, and seven midshipmen. As he had never been accustomed to a rough life in the cock-pit of a British man-of-war, the contrast to his former condition was not so strong as it would have been to a midshipman in the royal service; but the somewhat stiff courtesy that prevailed among the Chilian officers in their relations to each ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... soter, Unto thee my prayer I make, 115 Lucifer, listen to my prayer! By the mists of liquid fire That thy regions drear distil, By the vipers, snakes that fill All its wells, abysses dire, 120 By the pangs relentlessly Given by thee To the prisoners of thy pit, By the shrieks of those in it That unceasing echo still, 125 Beelzebub, I thee invite By the blindness of the Jews Who the wrong in malice choose And thereby thy heart delight rezeegut Linteser 130 ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... wine at dinner, which (as I say) is a pint to consider. Such a conveniants of a man was Munseer de L'Orge—the greatest use and comfort to my lady posbill; if it was but to laff at his bad pronunciatium of English, it was somethink amusink; the fun was to pit him against poar Miss Kicksey, she speakin French, and he our naytif ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Maker? or can the worm of the earth, the property of Heaven, set up itself against the hand that formed it? Had Mahoud engaged to conceal everything but what the law of Mahomet obliged him to reveal, he had behaved wisely; but he who walketh in darkness will undoubtedly fall into the pit. Past errors cannot be recalled; and Mahoud must learn the wisdom of experience. Under the resemblance of the Koran, behold, the genius Macoma instructs thine heart. I perceive evil will attend thee, if thou dost attempt the enlargement ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... found a man in it at his return, who refused to give it back at the first entreaty. Mr. Johnson, however, who did not think it worth his while to make a second, took chair and man and all together, and threw them all at once into the pit. I asked the Doctor if this was a fact. "Garrick has not spoiled it in the telling," said he, "it is very near ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... The post was designed to afford protection to settlers against depredations by hostile Indians. Soon after the arrival of the troops the Captain began to cast eyes of favor on a comely young Indian woman, the wife of a Pit River brave. The Captain had been sent to civilize the Indians, and was not long in taking the woman under his protection. The arrangement was agreeable to the woman, who preferred the favor of the white chief to ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... Greek theatre was composed, like that of our days, of a hemicycle for the spectators, and a rectangular portion that formed the place for dramatic performance. The pit was a semicircle, and was not fitted with seats, but constituted the orchestra. This orchestra among the Greeks formed an inferior stage, and, as its name implies, was reserved for the ballet. It was not till Roman ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... to kill her I don't know, for she set down. And jest then somebody yells, "Here we go down to the bottomless pit." ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... a rattling, unmirthful laugh. "Crullers. I got thinkin' of Pa's one day; an' I went to a pasty shop an' I says, 'Have you got crullers?' The gal behind the counter says, 'Yes: how many?' I, recallin' Pa's, an' feelin' weak in the pit of my stomach frum hunger, I answered back, 'Three dozen!' The gal leaped back a step; then she hauled out a bag 'bout the size of a bushel an' begins shovellin' in round, humpy things, most all hole in the centre but considerable sizable as t' girth. ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... a boy, in going among the savages at this hour, and letting himself fall into their hands like a deer that tumbles into a pit," growled the old man, perceiving as usual the mote in his neighbor's eyes, while he overlooked the beam in his own; "if he is left to pay for his stupidity with his own flesh, he can ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... the opportunity to see the large tanks in which it was stowed. In these huge tanks was to be found sugar from the highest degree of refinement down to the lowest degree of inferiority. But the sight which struck me most of all was the treacle-pit. I might enlarge upon the last sentence, but ...
— From Lower Deck to Pulpit • Henry Cowling
... ravaged the crops. The king sent the cat to attack him. "Alas! I can only do what I am able," again pleaded the cat, but there was no moving the king. While the cat was coming, the elephant fell into a pit and ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... the great occasion is past all telling; finding they agreed so well on that, and on all other subjects, they took up their abode together, and were a most harmonious pair of friends from that time forth. And hadn't Astley's cause to bless itself for their all going together once a quarter—to the pit—and didn't Kit's mother always say, when they painted the outside, that Kit's last treat had helped to that, and wonder what the manager would feel if he but knew it as they ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... the most prominent sculptors ceased to be considered as mere artisans. Hennequin of Liege was attached to the court of the French king Charles V, while Andre Beauneveu (1364-90) remained in Flanders as the sculptor of Louis de Male. The striking sculptures of the pit of Moses, at Dijon, were executed by Claus Sluter of Zeeland. These statues, which bear comparison with those of Ghiberti and Donatello, Sluter's contemporaries, suffice to explain the sense of form and of ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... this world was concerned, was buried with them. I have known (and this was grief indeed) those loved with all the warm and trustful confidence of youth prove false and unworthy of such deep affection; and have wished, in the bitterness of my soul, that the pit had shut her mouth upon me also, so I had but died with my faith in them unshaken. Still, although such sorrows as these may have produced a more deep and lasting effect, I do not remember ever to have felt more thoroughly desolate than upon ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... calculations of that Saturday evening came back to throw an icy feeling into the pit of his stomach. What right had he to hope when housefurnishings ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... they imagined it to have the shape of an inverted round boat or bowl, the thickness of which would represent the mixture of land and water (ki-a) which we call the crust of the earth, while the hollow beneath this inhabitable crust was fancied as a bottomless pit or abyss (ge), in which dwelt many powers. Above the convex surface of the earth (ki-a) spread the sky (ana), itself divided into two regions:—the highest heaven or firmament, which, with the fixed stars immovably ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... They let him pass without saying a word, and then prepared a large pitfall, with the help of some peasants who aided them in the task. The trap was quickly and well made, and it was not long before a wolf, passing that way, fell into the pit. ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... a straw-lined pit would be very expensive. It would invite decay by bruising the fruit, and the result would probably be a worthless mixture of rotten fruit and straw. The fruit should be stored in boxes or shallow trays to reduce pressure ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... would think him to be a traitor, still regarded him as the best of mankind, as one who, in marrying such a one as Lizzie Eustace, would destroy all his excellence, as a man might mar his strength and beauty by falling into a pit. For Lizzie Eustace Lucy Morris had now no forgiveness. Lucy had almost forgotten Lizzie's lies, and her proffered bribe, and all her meanness, when she made that visit to Hertford Street. Then, when Lizzie claimed this man as her lover, a full remembrance of all the woman's iniquities ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... pass that as Mr. Montfort came round one corner in search of his run-aways, the Queen of Sheba came round the other. There seemed but one white flash as the two puppies, recognizing their destiny on the instant, flew to meet it, yelling like demons of the pit. ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... her breast. Then she said, "I think that is true. But if I am not afraid it is because I am—bad. It is because I am hardened. Oh, should not I fear Him who can send me away into—the lake that burns—into the pit—" And here she gave a great cry, but held the little Pilgrim all the while with her eyes, which seem to plead ...
— A Little Pilgrim • Mrs. Oliphant
... infernall pit, That more and more doth striue; Where only villany is wit, And Diuels only ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... them; [In Busching, Beitrage, i. 400, 401, account of their sacking of Nussler's pleasant home and estate, "Weissensee, near Berlin."] as who had not? Terror and murder, incendiary fire and other worse unnamable abominations of the Pit. One old Half-pay gentleman, whom I somewhat respect, desperately barricaded himself, amid his domestics and tenantries, Wife and Daughters assisting: "Human Russian Officers can enter here; Cossacks no, but shall kill us first. Not a Cossack till all of us ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... prince, "as a necessary scourge, which one can pit against the bad taste of second-rate authors. His satires, of too personal, a nature, and consequently iniquitous, do not please me. He knows it, and, despite himself, he will amend this. He is at work upon an 'Ars Poetica,' after the manner of Horace. The little ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... returned with the front part of his head cleanly shaved. I asked him what the people had thought of our appearance. He answered that they were greatly afraid lest we should fire upon them, and their hearts at first went pit-a-pat; but when they heard from him how well we treated him, and that we were no friends to the Rebels, they said 'Poussa' ('that's ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... della Signoria, on the spot where the 'David' of Michelangelo now stands, with the inscription, 'Exemplum salutis publicae cives posuere 1495. No example was more popular than that of the younger Brutus, who, in Dante, lies with Cassius and Judas Iscariot in the lowest pit of hell, because of his treason to the empire. Pietro Paolo Boscoli, whose plot against Giuliano, Giovanni, and Giulio Medici failed (1513), was an enthusiastic admirer of Brutus, and in order to follow his steps, only waited to ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... the New Order. "Give him room! Give him an opportunity! Give him a full stomach to pump blood to his muscles and life to his brain! Wait and see! If he fails then, let him drop to the bottom of the social pit without stop of poorhouse ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... was packed, both in the smart orchestra boxes and in the pit, as well as in the more plebeian balconies and galleries above. Gluck's ORPHEUS made a strong appeal to the more intellectual portions of the house, whilst the fashionable women, the gaily-dressed and brilliant throng, spoke to the eye of those ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... Society had not given me my rights. And woe unto the man on whom that idea, true or false, rises lurid, filling all his thoughts with stifling glare, as of the pit itself. Be it true, be it false, it is equally a woe to believe it; to have to live on a negation; to have to worship for our only idea, as hundreds of thousands of us have this day, the hatred, of the ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... surgeon was there; he had applied a succession of hot cloths to the pit of the stomach, and was trying. to get laudanum down the throat, but the ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... officers as could be spared, and who wished to go, started for the shore. Jack took Tom and Archie and Mr Mildmay, who undertook to narrate the events of the expedition in verse. The second lieutenant declared that he had no wish to toil up a steep mountain for the sake of seeing a huge pit full of fire and smoke, so that he willingly remained on board instead of the first lieutenant. Several others, however, had more curiosity. Adair took Desmond, and three or four of his ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... evening of his presentation day his Excellency the Fantaisian Ambassador and suite honoured the national theatre with their presence. Such a house was never known! The pit was miraculously over-flown before the doors were opened, although the proprietor did not permit a single private entrance. The enthusiasm was universal, and only twelve persons were killed. The Private Secretary told Popanilla, with ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... spoken like a soldier," swore Gildersleeve. "And the Bloody Fourteenth, too. It will march into the burning pit as far as any regiment; and the whole brigade, yes, sir! But a backslidden shepherd, my God! Have we come to that? I often say to myself, in the solemn hours of the night, as I remember my Sabbath-school days, 'Great Scott! have we come to that?' A reformed clergyman! ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... Thracian possessions, might live to do them still more mischief if he escaped, slew them all the same day, without giving them a trial or hearing the defence which they wished to offer, and cast their bodies into a pit; thinking themselves justified in using in retaliation the same mode of warfare which the Lacedaemonians had begun, when they slew and cast into pits all the Athenian and allied traders whom they caught on board ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... and retired to rest, though he felt no tendency to sleep. At some small hour of the darkness, owing, possibly, to some intervening door being left open, he heard the mouse-trap click. Another light sleeper must have heard it too, for almost immediately after the pit-pat of naked feet, accompanied by the brushing of drapery, was audible along the passage towards the kitchen. After her absence in that apartment long enough to reset the trap, he was startled by a scream from the same quarter. ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... uses its proboscis, that nose-like hand which Nature has given it in compensation for its very short neck, for the benefit of its master, accepting the presents which will be profitable to him. It always walks cautiously, remembering that fatal fall into the hunter's pit which was the beginning of its captivity. When requested to do so, it exhales its breath, which is said to be a remedy for ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... James Evans, among others. This group and their allies in the services could point to a political fact of life: to interfere with local segregation laws and customs, specifically to impose off-limits sanctions against southern businessmen, would pit the administration against powerful congressmen, calling (p. 533) down on it the wrath of the armed services and appropriation committees. To the charge that this threat of congressional retaliation was simply an excuse for inaction, the services could explain that unlike the ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... calm, the waves having quite ceased to break. Only a heavy swell lifted the ship up at intervals, letting her roll down again, and swaying gently to and fro with a gentle rocking motion which would have sent us all to sleep but for the hunger which now kept us awake with a nasty, gnawing pain at the pit ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... dragged to the top of the centre aisle. Standish swung into the Mendelssohn Wedding March, and through a haze of rose-leaf confetti and paper streamers, the two Devereuxs were forced down to the orchestra-pit. The house was on its feet to them, and Anna, half-laughing, half-crying with happiness, was sorting confetti out of her hair when Standish clambered up on the stage, and ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... debate rapidly, when the accident happened. One of the men, curiously examining Bassett's shot-gun, managed to cock and pull a trigger. The recoil of the butt into the pit of the man's stomach had not been the most sanguinary result, for the charge of shot, at a distance of a yard, had blown the head of one of the debaters ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... Wolsey, with all his astuteness, was digging his own pit. If he succeeded, he would fall to make way for the Boleyn faction. If he failed, he involved the Catholic cause in his downfall. The first step in the business was the demand for permission to marry ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... but the little hunchback stopped on the margin, and looked once more into the pit where the box was ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... victorious over those that are of irresistible prowess (DCCXC—DCCXCIX); He whose limbs are like gold; He that is incapable of being agitated (by wrath or aversion or other passion); He that is Master of all those who are masters of all speech; He that is the deepest lake; He that is the deepest pit; He that transcends the influence of Time; He in whom the primal elements are established (DCCC—DCCCVI); He that gladdens the earth; He that grants fruits which are as agreeable as the Kunda flowers (Jasmim pubescens, Linn); He that gave away ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... horror fell upon her at what she had done. She wore a tragic mask. "Erchie, the Lord peety you, dear, and peety me! I have buildit on this foundation" - laying her hand heavily on his shoulder - "and buildit hie, and pit my hairt in the buildin' of it. If the hale hypothec were to fa', I think, laddie, I would dee! Excuse a daft wife that loves ye, and that kenned your mither. And for His name's sake keep yersel' frae inordinate desires; haud your heart in baith your hands, carry it canny and laigh; dinna ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sprang on his horse, looked back once, waving his hand, and rode rapidly to General Lee. Later in the night, he received permission to hunt up the Invincibles, his heart full of fear that they had perished utterly in the gloomy pit called the Wilderness, lit now only ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of "An Evening's Love; or, The Mock Astrologer," borrowed from "Le Feint Astrologue" of the younger Corneille, Dryden, the adapter of the play, makes jesting defence of the system of adaptation. The critics are described as conferring together in the pit on the subject ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... honest in the sight of God;—nay, the very fountain-head of my wo is love and compassion! Yes, yes!—fix your glittering eyes on me; contemplate me in the abyss of poverty where I am fallen! From the bottom of that pit I lift my brow boldly toward you, and your silent glance does not force me to grovel in the earth with shame! Here, in the presence of your noble images, I am alone with my soul, with my conscience;—hero, no mortification can touch the being who, ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... marble balustrade and looked down into the huge pit with marble walls and sanded floor. All around it were cages in which were confined great beasts; and alcoves in which she and her guests, behind iron bars, would sit, when sated with love and feasting, to watch the animals fight ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... to be a great engagement ended in a mere skirmish. Neither Charles nor Bedford were eager to pit all on a stake, and both preferred to play a waiting game. Charles retired on Crecy, while Joan of Arc remained in the field. She had done all that courage and audacity could to induce the English to attack. She had ridden up to their palisades and struck ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... to his seat in the stalls of the Straw Exchange Theatre and turned to watch the stream of distinguished and distinguishable people who made their appearance as a matter of course at a First Night in the height of the Season. Pit and gallery were already packed with a throng, tense, expectant and alert, that waited for the rise of the curtain with the eager patience of a terrier watching a dilatory human prepare for outdoor exercises. Stalls and boxes filled slowly and hesitatingly with a crowd ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... an alluring pasture to the unwary. An experienced eye might have judged it too green—too alluring. Could a more perfect trap be devised by evil human ingenuity than this? Think for one instant of a bottomless pit of liquid soil, absorbing in its peculiar density. Think of all the horrors of a quicksand, which, embracing, sucks down into its cruel bosom the despairing victim of its insatiable greed. Think of a thin, solid ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... "one hautboy" to "one fiddle" in the description of the band. The subsequent explanation, how the poet had purposely intertwined the various handkerchiefs which rescued Pat Jennings's hat from the pit, lest the real owner should be detected, and the reason for it, is a not less exquisite piece of fooling:—"For, in the statistical view of life and manners which I occasionally present, my clerical ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... the Earl again, "man's best and God's best are often very different things. In the eyes of Monseigneur Saint Jacob, the best thing would have been to spare his son from being cast into the pit and sold to the Ishmaelites. But God's best was to sell the boy into slavery, and to send him into a dungeon, and then to lift him up to the steps of the king's throne. When then comes, Clarice, we shall be satisfied with what happened to ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... of more than questionable character, and of an appearance by no means inviting. From the main street he had entered, itself little better than an alley, a low-browed doorway led into a blind court, or yard, profoundly dark, unpaved, and reeking with stagnant odours. Into this ill-favoured pit, the locksmith's vagrant 'prentice groped his way; and stopping at a house from whose defaced and rotten front the rude effigy of a bottle swung to and fro like some gibbeted malefactor, struck thrice upon an iron grating with his foot. After listening ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... other measures. Their device was diabolical wisdom. Satan, having had more than three thousand years since he failed on Israel in Egypt, was now better up to his work. The king proposed to indulge the ministers. The royal indulgence was surely a product of the bottomless pit. The snare was laid six times and caught ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... 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, and ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... tones only a sort of dreary monotony. She shivered a little—how cold it seemed! She did not quite grasp his words—and yet she shrank from them. And then her very soul seemed to cry out against them, to pit itself against their meaning, as their meaning surged upon her. And unconsciously she drew herself up, and the whiteness of her face fled before a ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... city. Nor must we forget to add to these aggravations the ceaseless, triumphant crowing of the game-cocks, the noisiest and most boastful of birds, large numbers of which are kept by the citizens purely for gambling purposes in the cock-pit. Besides these "professional" birds, every nook and corner is filled with fowls kept for brooding purposes, each bird family with ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... and answers. All this, however, was little compared to the profit I derived from the theatre. My grandfather had given me a free ticket, which I used daily, in spite of my father's reluctance, by dint of my mother's support. There I sat in the pit, before a foreign stage, and watched the more narrowly the movement and the expression, both of gesture and speech; as I understood little or nothing of what was said, and therefore could only derive entertainment from the action and the tone of voice. I understood least of comedy; because ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... guns were discharged so rapidly that it seemed the earth itself was in a volcanic uproar. The iron storm passed through our ranks, mangling and tearing men to pieces. The very air seemed full of stifling smoke and fire which seemed the very pit of hell, peopled ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... Brougham's Lyceum, corner of Broome Street and Broadway, of Niblo's, and of Castle Garden. There were no afternoon performances in those days, except now and then when the Ravels were at Castle Garden; and the admission to pit and galleries was usually two shillings—otherwise, twenty-five cents. His first play, so far as he remembers, was "The Stranger," a play dismal enough to destroy any taste for the drama, one would suppose, in any juvenile mind. He never cared very much to see "The Stranger" again, but nothing ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton
... you struggling through that dreadful pit." She shuddered. "I could not see who you were, did not know whether friend or enemy—but oh, my heart almost died in pity for you, Walter," she breathed. "What ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... desired victim of clay or pitch, honey, fat, or other soft material,[359] and either by burning it inflict physical tortures upon the person represented, or by undertaking various symbolical acts with it, such as burying it among the dead, placing it in a coffin, casting it into a pit or into a fountain, hiding it in an inaccessible place, placing it in spots that had a peculiar significance, as the doorposts, the threshold, under the arch of gates, would prognosticate in this way a fate corresponding to one of these acts ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... assembly given on the spur of the moment in his honour, whereat Sam Winnington, standing with his hat under his arm, and leaning against the carved door, was an observant spectator. He was not sullen as when Will Locke and Dulcie tumbled headlong into the pit of matrimony! he was smiling and civil; but his lips were white and his eyes sunken, as if the energetic young painter did ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... persecution, raised by Maximinus, numberless christians were slain without trial, and buried indiscriminately in heaps, sometimes fifty or sixty being cast into a pit ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... is the answer, not of the sages, Not of the loves that are ready to part, Ready to find their oblivion sweet! Out in the night there's an army marching, Men that have toiled thro' the endless ages, Men of the pit and the desk and the mart, Men that remember, the ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes |
