"Pitch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... received, on authority not to be disputed, the following horrible account. A few years ago it was the head quarters of lawless and bloody men. They fabricated base coin, gambled, robbed, murdered. To such a pitch of wickedness had they arrived, and such a terror were they to the whole country, that a party of men from Memphis (a city on the eastern side of the Mississippi, 180 miles up) took the law into their own hands, armed themselves with deadly weapons, came down, scoured ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... they will seek something else which they may imagine will be those desired items of existence, and that is what it may be difficult to give them. In the mean time party spirit here has reached a tremendous pitch; old friendships are broken up and old intimacies cease; former cordial acquaintances refuse to meet each other, houses are divided, and the dearest relations disturbed, if not destroyed. Society ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... allusions, and blush all over the top of his head, and kick the desk, and throw ink-bottles at the presiding officer, they say that John Q. made them pay attention. Seward says, "with unwavering firmness, against a bitter and unscrupulous opposition, exasperated to the highest pitch by his pertinacity—amidst a perfect tempest of vituperation and abuse—he persevered in presenting his anti-slavery petitions, one by one, to the amount sometimes of 200 in one day." As one of his eminent ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... of passing a night in the back woods of Indiana was by no means agreeable, but I screwed my courage to the proper pitch, and set forth determined to see with my own eyes, and hear with my own ears, what a camp-meeting really was. I had heard it said that being at a camp-meeting was like standing at the gate of heaven, and seeing it opening before you; I had heard ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... generous restoratives, that it may be active and vigorous. And the imagination should be charmed with sweet music, and if all care and thoughts of business be drowned in a glass of rosy wine, so that their spirit may be raised to the highest pitch of ardour, it would be as well, for troubles, cares or sadness are enemies to the pleasures of Venus. And if the woman should conceive when sexual intercourse takes place at such times of disturbance, it would have a bad effect ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... eve of 1666. In a few days the first sun of the great year would rise upon the world. The Jews were winding up their affairs, Israel was strung to fever pitch. The course of the exchanges, advices, markets, all was ignored, and letters ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... rather than 'by, Him.' And the effect of that small change in the preposition is to bring out the thought that God is regarded as the foundation on which His beloved build their house of life, and dwell in security and calm. If we are sons through the Son, we shall build our houses or pitch our tents on that firm ground, and, being founded on the Rock of ages, they will not fall when all created foundations reel to the overthrow of whatever is built on them. It is not companionship only, blessed as that is, that is promised here. We have a larger ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... every prominent Ribierist of Sulaco. The improbability of such a thing threw a doubt upon the whole statement. Hirsch was either mad or playing a part—pretending fear and distraction on the spur of the moment to cover the truth. Sotillo's rapacity, excited to the highest pitch by the prospect of an immense booty, could believe in nothing adverse. This Jew might have been very much frightened by the accident, but he knew where the silver was concealed, and had invented this story, with his Jewish cunning, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... and, by an ingenious system of funnels arranged about its sixty-square-mile area, could at a moment's notice produce any variety of breeze he chanced to wish; and its submarine bottom was so designed that if a heavy sea were wanted to make the yacht pitch and toss, a simple mechanical device would cause it to hump itself into such corrugations, large or small, as were needed to ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... whatever facility in the expression of thoughts, will only enable us to do more justice to what is drawn from so deep a source of faith and intellect, and arrayed, oftentimes, in the fairest hues of nature. Yet it may not be well for a young mind to dwell too near one tuned to so high a pitch as this writer, lest, by trying to come into concord with him, the natural tones be overstrained, and the strings weakened by untimely pressure. Do not attempt, therefore, to read this book through, but keep it with you, and when the spirit is fresh and earnest turn to it. It is full ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... action was supported throughout the line. Was it possible for me to add anything to the well-earned renown of Lord Nelson, it would be by asserting that his exertions, great as they have heretofore been, never were carried to a higher pitch of zeal for his country's service. I have only to lament, that the sort of attack, confined within an intricate and narrow passage, excluded the ships particularly under my command from the opportunity of exhibiting their valour: but I can ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... body and the sex) with instruments like brushes or small twigs, with very fine points of bamboo. The body was pricked and marked with them until blood was drawn. Upon that a black powder or soot made from pitch, which never faded, was put on. The whole body was not tattooed at one time, but it was done gradually. In olden times no tattooing was begun until some brave deed had been performed; and after that, for each one of the parts of the body which was tattooed some new deed had to be performed. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... devices would be of use. I made them out in the distance, and thought that something else would be needed. Therefore I got that Eastern gong that I purchased as a curiosity at Genoa, and lighted a fire in the courtyard. As soon as they approached I threw pitch into the fire, making thereby a great column of smoke, and set Andrew to beat the gong furiously, telling him to shout and yell as he pleased. Then I went to an upper window to observe the effect. The crowd had halted some fifty yards away and stood open-mouthed gazing at the ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... says, "There is a tradition which I have met with in many places in Scotland, that it was Robert Bruce's march at the battle of Bannockburn. This thought, in my solitary wanderings, warmed me to a pitch of enthusiasm on the theme of liberty and independence, which I threw into a kind of Scottish ode, fitted to the air, that one might suppose to be the royal Scot's address to his heroic followers on that eventful morning." It was written ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... rises the top of the head is the part first seen; it then blows, and immediately afterwards dips head downwards, its back curving over, exposing successively the whole dorsal ridge with its fin. It seems thus to pitch heels over head, but does not show the tail fin. Besides this peculiar motion, it is distinguished from the Tucuxi by its habit of generally going in pairs. Both species are exceedingly numerous throughout the Amazons and ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... speak. "Dell met the herd on the Republican," said he with decision. "It's the Stoddard cattle from Ogalalla. The pitch of their dust ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... administer the Slave Act, it constantly becomes more revolting, particularly in its influence on the agents it enlists. Pitch cannot be touched without defilement, and all who lend themselves to this work seem at once and unconsciously to lose the better part of man. The spirit of the law passes into them, as the devils entered the swine. Upstart ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... spread a deerskin on the ice, rolled himself in his blanket, pillowed his head on the dog, who seemed to be perfectly satisfied with the arrangement, and went to sleep till—we cannot say morning, for pitch darkness still prevailed, but till that point of time when the ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... that has carried the world on beyond and replaced that phrase by the phrase, "The League of Nations," a phrase suggesting plainly the organization of a sufficient instrument by which war may be ended for ever. In 1913 talk of a World League of Nations would have seemed, to the extremest pitch, "Utopian." To-day the project has an air not only of being so practicable, but of being so urgent and necessary and so manifestly the sane thing before mankind that not to be busied upon it, not to be making it more widely known and better understood, ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... great unsheltered plain before us—the hail and sleet driven so fiercely before the hurricane, that a man was half-blinded if he turned his face towards it for a moment—the forked lightning shooting from pitch-dark clouds, leaping and running fearfully over the level ground, blackening, splitting, tearing from their places the stoutest rocks on the moor. Three masses of granite lay heaped together near ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... yet too limited to convince him that most enmities and antipathies, being theoretical rather than actual, are apt to become mitigated, or to disappear altogether on personal contact—that it is, in fact, exceedingly hard to keep hatred at concert-pitch, or to be consistently rude to a person face to face who has a pleasant manner and ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... out of the room with the words. The rest of the men in the smoking-room followed. Fisher remained to shut the window. He stood a couple of seconds before it, facing the hurricane. The night was like pitch. The angry roar of the sea half-a-mile away surged up on the tearing gale like the voice of a devouring monster. He turned away into the cosy room and ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... "jerk" the roses. Instead, he pointed one of those long arms toward the window. "Walk over there," he commanded, "and pitch 'em out!" His ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... into an open court upon bread and water, and as the usual room of detention of the establishment was too small for them all, for two nights they had had to sleep in a loft on thin straw mats. The young spirits were excited to the highest pitch, but each expressed his feelings in quite ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... youth, "there is on that palmetto bale a speck of pitch scarce larger than the pupil of my eye. Thou'lt need to strain thy sight to see it. Observe how my shaft will find it. Canst thou better such ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... marched the Third Indian to Pryor Creek[384] but had scarcely done so when orders came from Salomon, under cover of his usurped authority as commander of the Indian Expedition, for him to cross the Grand and advance northeastward to Horse Creek and vicinity, there to pitch his tents. The new camp was christened Camp Wattles. It extended from Horse to Wolf Creek and constituted a point from which the component parts of the ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... Rotherwood whom I ushered to the postern and dismissed with my own hands! And thou," he said to Wamba, "whose folly could over-reach the wisdom of idiots yet more gross than thyself. I will give thee holy orders, I will shave thy crown for thee! Here, let them tear the scalp from his head and pitch him headlong from the battlements. Thy trade is to ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... small packet, wrapped in new parchment, 'The day in which you form the fatal resolution of acquainting yourself with the contents of this packet,' said he, 'will be the last of your prosperity; but if you desire to carry your good fortune to the highest pitch, be careful upon every great festival, that is to say, Easter, Whit-Sunday, the Assumption, and Christmas, to plunge a pin in this talisman, so that the point shall pass directly thro' it; observe to do this, and you will live perfectly happy.' "The king ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... may be that it will dare even this. Some domestic dissension may come—(no nation is safe against it)—the passion of particular interest may cause some momentary discord. Russia will foster it, by its secret diplomacy, to which nothing is sacred on earth; and when irritation comes to the pitch, and the ties of affection become for a moment loose, then perhaps Russia may step in at a moment of interior weakness, from which not the greatest nations are exempt. Russia will begin by "divido," and will perhaps ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... an unaccountable pitch of spirits. Adventure had taken hold of him like liquor. He made a start for the door as if to carry out his expressed intention in all ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... Mr Burnett, sir. It won't be like swarming up her side in the dark, expecting a couple of dozen of them half-bred niggers to come at you with their long knives ready to pitch you overboard. Here: I am glad you talked. I was getting all in the downs like over that job, when it aren't half so 'ard as for a young gent like you to swarm up that anker, that very one yonder ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... at the extent of his knowledge of books. It was very great, but it was not incredible. If a man cannot touch pitch without being defiled, still less can he handle books without acquiring bibliographical information. I am not sure that the Bibliotaph ever heard of that professor of history who used to urge his ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... shameless and outrageous, treads justice and equality under foot, and in its natural tendency and practical effects is nothing else than a system of wrong-doing. What have they to do with the just and the equal who in their "respect of persons" proceed to such a pitch as to treat one brother as a thing because he is a servant, and place him, without the least regard to his welfare here, or his prospects hereafter, absolutely at the disposal of another brother, under the name of master, in the relation of owner to property? ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... and was probably much more abundant in England formerly than it is now, the tree has no genuine English name, and apparently never had. Pine comes directly and without change from the Latin, Pinus, as one of the chief products, pitch, comes directly from the Latin, pix. In the early vocabularies it is called "Pin-treow," and the cones are "Pin-nuttes." They were also called "Pine apples," and the tree was called the Pine-Apple ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... Peden went through the flower-decked parlour in which he had met Jess Kissock an hour before, he heard the clang of controversy, or perhaps it is more correct to say, he heard the voice of Meg Kissock raised to its extreme pitch of command. ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... Though both were keyed to the highest pitch of excitement they were as steady as eight-day clocks. O'Connor stretched his limbs, flexing them this way and that, so that he might have perfect control of them. He worked especially over the forearm and fingers of ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... darker and darker and blacker and blacker, while I struggled with those awkward sixth-century clothes. It got to be pitch dark, at last, and the multitude groaned with horror to feel the cold uncanny night breezes fan through the place and see the stars come out and twinkle in the sky. At last the eclipse was total, and I was very glad of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a time there lived an old man and his wife, and one day she said to him: "Make me a straw ox and smear him over with pitch." And he asked: "What for?" And she answered: "Do what I tell you! Never mind what it's for—that's my business!" So the old man made a straw ox and smeared him over with pitch. Then his wife got ready in the early morning and drove the ox to pasture. She sat down under a tree, and began ...
— More Russian Picture Tales • Valery Carrick
... refute One Attius in a certain suit. Since when, a cold cough and catarrh Against my battered frame made war; Until I came in thee to settle, And cured it with repose and nettle. So, now I'm well, I thank thee, farm! And that I got so little harm, From such great fault. I may be pardon'd If to this pitch my heart is harden'd: To pray, when Sextius reads again Things so abhorr'd of gods and men, That that my cough and cold catarrh Not mine but Sextius' health might mar— Who never sends me invitation But for such ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... however, a perfect cone, for the floor, being largely incandescently molten, was practically level except for a depression at the center, where the actual vortex lay. The walls of the pit were steeply, unstably irregular, varying in pitch and shape with the hardness and refractoriness of the strata composing them. Now a section would glare into an unbearably blinding white puffing away in sparkling vapor. Again, cooled by an inrushing blast of air, it would ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... to the highest bidder—in other words, they were slaves. Many men made large sums of money in this inhuman trade, trafficking in the lives of their fellow-countrymen. The thing at last reached such a pitch that practically no able-bodied man was safe from the danger of being kidnapped, sold to some dealer, and shipped off to slavery in the Plantations. That was the fate of many a young man who mysteriously disappeared from the ken of his friends in those seventeenth- ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... or books, or sweets, or music. She has more books than she wants, because she reviews'em for the paper, and I don't think she's musical. She doesn't look like the candy fiends, and I imagine she'd pitch a box of chocolates into the sad sea, or give it to Hepsey. There's nothing left but flowers—and ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... ark of gopher wood,'" quoted the stranger. "'Rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and thou shalt pitch it within and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... doubt, the cause of the disease in two cases, a setter and a pointer, while the other, in a hound, was the result of an acute attack of ophthalmia brought on by scalding with hot pitch thrown upon the animal. Some of this substance entered the eye, while a large portion adhered to the muzzle and lids. The eye, as well as the lids, became inflamed; the latter, being puffed up and ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... breathing went on too steadily and naturally to be other than that of a man in a sound sleep. She crept back to her room reassured, and stood in the window watching the moon set through the trees of the park. The sky was misty and starless, and after the moon went down the night was black as pitch. She knew the time had come, and stole along the passage, past her husband's door—where she stopped again to listen to his breathing—to the top of the stairs. There she paused a moment, and assured herself that no one was following her; ...
— Kerfol - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... of this diversion is fearful to a person of delicate nerves. The pitch of the descent is so sheer, the height so great, (apparently,) the motion of the sled so swift, and its course so easily changed,—even the lifting of a hand is sufficient,—that the novice is almost sure to make immediate shipwreck. The sleds are small and low, with smooth iron ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... She felt it across and up and down. There was no latch and she could find no keyhole. Again she pushed, this time with all her strength. Jerking suddenly, the door opened inwards, and Ellenor, leaning against it, fell forward over the high threshold into pitch darkness. She felt a blinding blow and a sickening pain, and ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin
... has put into this book his experience of twenty-two summers of actual camping with boys. The twenty-three chapters are filled with information such as this: where to go; what to take; how to layout a camp, pitch tent, build a camp fire; what to cook and how to cook it, how to get well if you eat too much of it; directions for long trips, short trips, any trip at all; something to do every hour of the day, from reveille ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... and seemed almost warm upon her face. A young moon fought gallantly, giving the massed clouds just enough light to sail by; but in the lane it was dark as pitch. This did not so much matter, as the rain had poured down it like a sluice, washing the flints clean. Ruby's lantern swung to and fro, casting a yellow glare on the tall hedges, drawing queer gleams from the holly-bushes, and flinging an ugly, ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... to lie flat on her back for a while. In that position she might begin to feel sleepy. It was not a pitch-black night, indeed the darkness seemed half luminous—the kind of light in which, after the eyes have grown accustomed to it, it is possible to make out the outlines of objects quite plainly. Rosemary knew she could not be mistaken when she saw a shadowy ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... "Do you throw that up to me—you of all men? Who, I ask you, was the cause of all the shame and misery and violence that I suffered there? Who was the one that made it necessary? Who was the one that brought me to such a pitch of desperation that I was ready to do any thing, however wild or frantic? Who? Why, you yourself—you, who come to me now, and with a solemn voice ask me to calm myself. Is it not possible for you to see what a horrible mockery all this must be to me? But I will do what you ask. I will be ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... and of one accord sprang up and made for the door. Sam involuntarily ran with the others, filled, like they were, with disappointment. It was now pitch dark under the trees, and straight from the fire as they were, they could not see ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... to the brotherhood of vagrancy that is part of every Eastern Bazaar calls the attention of no one, and being a newcomer, Coryndon contented himself with accepting a pitch in a district where alms were difficult to obtain and small in value, but his humility did not keep him there long, and he made a place for himself at the top of Paradise Street, in the shadow of an arched doorway, where a house with ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... pitch of accounting for all the mental and physical peculiarities of Madame de M. by the presence of this slight blemish, and despite myself this black tooth personified the Countess so well that even now, although it has ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... and I crouched nearer the fire; my head felt hot, and the rest of me chill: moreover, I was excited, almost to a pitch of foolishness, through my nerves and brain. This caused me to feel, not uncomfortable, but rather fearful (as I am still) of serious effects from the incidents of to-day and yesterday. She returned presently, bringing a smoking basin and a basket ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... "savage strangers" should step upon the "sacred land of gods." To them the admission of the foreigners signified nothing less than unprecedented disgrace and possibly more—a prey to the ambition and treachery of the "foreign devils." The conservative spirit of the people carried them to a pitch of excitement as high as the exactly opposite principle carried the French people during the revolution. The Emperor became doubly dear to them, because he was a sovereign de jure, and because he was opposed to ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... making his final dispositions when his malady increased to a violent pitch. "On the 5th of March, forty hours' public prayers were ordered in all the churches of Paris, which is not generally done except in the case of kings," says Madame de Motteville. The cardinal had sent for M. Jolt, parish-priest of St. Nicholas des Champs, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... world, we have much more need of a still wiser man to help us out of it. Such a one, and a friend to boot, a man ought to purchase at any cost for such an occasion. I am not yet arrived to that pitch of disdainful vigour that is fortified in itself, that nothing can assist or disturb; I am of a lower form; I endeavour to hide myself, and to escape from this passage, not by fear, but by art. I do not intend in this act ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... occasionally, the motion being so violent that he had to jam himself in his berth, to prevent himself from being thrown out. The blows with which the waves struck the ship were tremendous; and so deeply did she pitch that, more than once, he thought that she would never come up again; but go down, head foremost. Once he thought he heard a crash, and there were orders shouted, on the deck above him; but he resisted the desire to go up and see what it was, for he knew that he could ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... no one in it but just us two. But not in the tent. You take a pitch here, 'longside the tent. It's worth twice the money in the ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... that a peculiar obligation rests upon us to further in every way the welfare of these communities. The Philippines should be knit closer to us by tariff arrangements. It would, of course, be impossible suddenly to raise the people of the islands to the high pitch of industrial prosperity and of governmental efficiency to which they will in the end by degrees attain; and the caution and moderation shown in developing them have been among the main reasons why this development has hitherto gone on so smoothly. Scrupulous care has been ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... other falling in a grove, like Botal; and then try to check the bleeding by tying a pig's bladder over the face of the stump, like Hans de Gersdorf; or tying it up in the inside of a hen newly killed; or by plunging it at once into boiling pitch. ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... good so as any way. Now, the first thing you do after getting in, is to pull out that filling from the bolt sockets if you care to save yourselves, then pitch into the goods. Get the lightest and most valuable—silks, embroideries, rich laces, everything of that kind, but avoid the linens, cloths, and all that, as too heavy, and besides might be detected by the stamp. Lock and bolt the door after you when ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... it should pitch upon New Year's morning to say all sorts of pretty things. They do not carry an almanack in their ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... boomed about the cabin, singing queer old songs in a patois, rumbling to the faithful Golemar, washing the dishes while Houston wiped them, joking, talking of everything but the troubles of the day and the plans of the night. Outside the shadows grew heavier, finally to turn to pitch darkness. The bull bats began to circle about the cabin. Ba'tiste walked to ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... and Jemappes to a multitude who troubled themselves little about political forms, it engaged, on behalf of the elect of the bourgeoisie, that national feeling that had been exalted to so high a pitch by the victories of the Republic and the Empire, Lastly, it invoked the sovereignty of the people, the better to destroy it—an old ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... a couple of hours for luncheon; and with the going down of the sun they pitch their tent for the night. For this purpose an opening in the forest beside a spring of water, or the bank of a running stream is selected, where the horses, relieved of their saddles, may find pasture. At morning and noon a little flour of millet and honey suffices ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... with the greatest ease and facility. But after the imagination is arrived at this point of view, it finds its object to be surrounded with so many other relations, which challenge its regard, that it knows not which to prefer, and is at a loss what new object to pitch upon. The ties of interest and duty bind her to another family, and prevent that return of the fancy from her to myself, which is necessary to support the union. The thought has no longer the vibration, requisite to set it perfectly at ease, and indulge its inclination ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... "Chaise to Fredericksburg at six this morning. Pitch dark and no one stirring, and he as chipper, fresh, and pleased as a squirrel with a nut! Pshaw! a Creek pappoose could read his trail! He's from New England anyway. I want a Virginian ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... were real advantages, if she had not been too ambitious and too precipitate in seizing upon them. A republic has generally been considered the most primitive form of rule; it is, on the contrary, the very last pitch of refinement in government, and the cause of its failure up to the present has been, that no people have as yet been sufficiently enlightened to govern themselves. Republics, generally speaking, have at their commencement ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... had only lately made warm and close friends, I had a copy bound, without the final chapter, that the book might not, by its tragic close, depress one who had known so much sorrow. Sir Alfred Lyall thought—"the story reaches a higher pitch of vigor and dramatic presentation than is to be found even in your later books"; while Lord Halifax's letter—"how lovable they both are, each in his way, and how true to the ideal on both sides!"—and others, from Mr. Godkin, of the American Nation, from Frederic Harrison, Lord Goschen, ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Livingstone's ox set off at a furious gallop. Looking back, he saw one of his men flung up into the air by a toss from one of the beasts, who had carried him on his horns for twenty yards before giving the final pitch. The fellow came down flat on his face, but the skin was not pierced, and no bone was broken. His comrades gave him a brisk shampooing, and in a week he was as ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... shop for the second time, he found the tobacconist and his wife conversing in low tones together, in evident fear of being overheard. He came and stood before them, lowering his voice to the pitch ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... the other department. Some of these operations are done by hand, but it is very interesting to see self-working machines planing the sheets of metal to precisely the required thinness with mathematical exactness. A pointed tool is set to a certain pitch, and the plate of metal is made to revolve in such a way that one continuous curl shaving falls until the whole surface (back) has been planed perfectly true. The wood blocks are treated in the same way, after being sawn into the required ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... more terrible spectacle than a city taken by storm. All the pent-up passions of men are here let loose without restraint. Roused to a pitch of fury from long-continued resistance, and eager to take vengeance on the murderers of women and children, the men in their pitiless rage showed no mercy. The dark days of Badajoz and San Sebastian were ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... Serving with looks his sacred majesty; And having climb'd the steep-up heavenly hill, Resembling strong youth in his middle age, Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still, Attending on his golden pilgrimage; But when from highmost pitch, with weary car, Like feeble age, he reeleth from the day, The eyes, 'fore duteous, now converted are From his low tract, and look another way: So thou, thyself out-going in thy noon, Unlook'd on diest, unless ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... responded to this provoking language by unfriendly measures. They refused their subjects permission to go to Bern, and denied a safe-conduct to travelers who passed through their boundaries. The government of Luzern, excited to the highest pitch of hostility by the passionate Doctor Murner, did not prevent him from attacking Bern and her government in the most unmeasured style in various libelous writings, issued by a printing-house of his ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... as his ideals are vague and abstract, so too are the expressions of his Weltschmerz. It needs no concrete idea to arouse his enthusiasm to its highest pitch. Thus Hyperion exclaims: "Der Gott in uns, dem die Unendlichkeit zur Bahn sich oeffnet, soll stehen und harren, bis der Wurm ihm aus dem Wege geht? Nein! nein! man fraegt nicht, ob ihr wollt! ihr wollt ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... Hernandez, ungraciously enough. "Or perhaps the sun isn't shining above Madison Square," she added, sarcastically. A strange voice this, raucous in quality and abnormally low in pitch. ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... not wish to vote, who think it is not ladylike, or whatever the proper term may be. Well, sir, I have known many men who have habitually abstained from politics because they were so "ungentlemanly," and who thought that no man could touch pitch without defilement. Now what would the honorable gentlemen who know women who do not wish to vote, have thought of a proposition that I should not vote, because my neighbors did not wish to? There may have been slaves who preferred ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... while Chris was cooking supper, the boys prepared a number of torches from fat pitch pine and looked over ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... it, oh, so lovingly, and, with an apologetic glance at Mr. Watlin, he tuned the strings to a different pitch. Anita climbed to the back ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... pitch of the voice is its keynote, or governing note. It is that on which the voice usually dwells, and to which it most frequently returns when wearied. It is also the pitch used in conversation, and the one which a reader ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the worst of Neave's state was the fact of his not being a mere collector, even the collector raised to his highest pitch of efficiency. The whole thing was blent in him with poetry—his imagination had romanticized the acquisitive instinct, as the religious feeling of the Middle Ages turned passion into love. And yet his could never ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... to hand with the Texan Rangers; and they were roused to the highest pitch of enthusiasm when they found themselves again in front of a regular force of troopers, instead of Home Guards or guerillas. With their sabres in hand they rushed upon the foe with all the speed to which they could spur their horses. The men were fresh; for they had fought no ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... scarcely splinter proof, nor had we any means of making ourselves more secure. The enemy's heavy counter batteries swept and searched over the slope where the majority of our batteries were congregated, and never before or after were they seen to reach such a pitch of efficiency. ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... never look pale for the matter, Nell. I am not angry with you, you simple fool. But what would you have me think, when you are eternally looking back upon your dungeon yonder by the river, which smelt of pitch and old cheese worse than a Welshman does of onions, and all this when I am taking you down to a castle as fine as ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... morning he practices before night." "Heaven penetrates to the bottom of our hearts, like light into a dark chamber. We must conform ourselves to it, till we are like two instruments of music tamed to the same pitch. We must join ourselves with it, like two tablets which appear but one. We must receive its gifts the very moment its hand is open to bestow. Our irregular passions shut up the door of our souls ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... panic and, leaping up groped in the pitch-dark until my eager fingers closed on the haft of the sheath-knife under my pillow, and with this naked in my hand I crouched awaiting I knew not what; for all about me was direful sound, groans and cries with wailings long drawn ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... of the surrounding country. The jehad of which he had been the chief instigator had certainly attained unexampled dimensions, and although it was not in the nature of things that every Afghan who carried arms should be inspired with religious fanaticism to such a pitch as to be utterly reckless of his life, swarms of fierce ghazees made formidable the levies which Mahomed ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... and you are so, partly at least, because you are a highly trained person. It has taken many years to train you up to this pitch of efficiency. You can handle agreements, at a pinch you can draft a bill. You are a favorite and influential speaker. You are invaluable in a strike, and you have often prevented strikes. We all want you to go on doing all these things. Now, tell me, which ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... are few that some authority on etching or some great artist has not held up as an example of work that even the master himself never surpassed. But an artist cannot always keep himself at concert pitch and when Rembrandt etched the portrait of his friend "Abraham Francen" (No. 291) I feel that he struck an uncertain, almost false note, unworthy of himself. We might, perhaps, account for this by saying, that it was done in 1656, the year of his bankruptcy were it not that ...
— Rembrandt and His Etchings • Louis Arthur Holman
... wind, a shriek of terror from the awakening crew, and a whip-like sting of water in our faces. Some of the men ran to let go the haulyards and lower the sail, but the parrel jammed and the yard would not come down. I sprang to my feet and hung on to a rope. The sky aft was dark as pitch, but the moon still shone brightly ahead of us and lit up the blackness. Beneath its sheen a huge white-topped breaker, twenty feet high or more, was rushing on to us. It was on the break—the moon shone on its crest and tipped its foam with light. On it rushed beneath the inky ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... night he even caused a number of living men and women to be wrapped in cloths soaked in pitch, tied to the top of long poles, and then set on fire. This horrible deed was carried out in Nero's own beautiful gardens, which were thus all lighted up with the ...
— The Bible in its Making - The most Wonderful Book in the World • Mildred Duff
... do not know, or do not remember, that audibility is not secured by mere loudness and bigness of voice, nor again by raising the voice to a high pitch. "People tell you to speak up," said that excellent elocutionist, Mr Simeon; "but I say, speak down," down as regards the musical scale. Again, the larger the building the more accentuated must be the articulation, and the more limited the variation ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... conduct on Friday, when his three columns came into presence of the enemy. What every one would have expected of Fighting Joe was, that at this supreme moment his energy would have risen to its highest pitch. It was a slight task to hold the enemy for a few hours. Before ordering the columns back, Hooker should have gone in person to Sykes's front. Here he would have shortly ascertained that Jackson was moving around his right. What easier than to leave a strong enough force at the edge of the ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... chanted I, in that high brassy pitch of voice which Jem and I had adopted for this bravado period of our existence—"I think she's like our old white hen that turned up its eyes and died of ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... in winter they descend from the pastures, and pitch their tents round the villages of Tanurin and Akoura, which are situated in a valley, sheltered on every side by the perpendicular sides of the Upper Libanus. At Tanurin and Laklouk the winter corn was already above ground. ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... on his boat. Oats were worth their weight in greenbacks, but so was plug tobacco. He gave me half a sack for all the tobacco in my saddle-bags, and, filling my old campaign hat with the precious grain, I sat me down on a big log by the flowing Yellowstone and told poor old "Donnybrook" to pitch in. "Donnybrook" was a "spare horse" when we started on the campaign, and had been handed over to me after the fight on the War Bonnet, where Merritt turned their own tactics on the Cheyennes. He was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... sentences as to his manfully fighting against sin, the world, and the devil, and being a faithful soldier and servant unto his life's end. She duly went on with the Lord's Prayer, the children lisping it after her in a thin gnat-like wail, till, at the conclusion, raising their voices to clerk's pitch, they again piped ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... the mate said. "Some of the wood here is as hard as iron, and we might cut some pegs and fasten the planks into their place again. I don't suppose we shall be able to make them watertight, but we might caulk them up with pitch or gum from some of the trees. But that is not the first thing to think of; it is no use having a boat if we have not food or water to put into her. These biscuits would last us two or three days, and the water, ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... with the Cayuse, which appeared reluctant to face a treacherous ascent whose slope was somewhat steeper than the pitch of an average roof, but once more Alton conquered, and they dragged the beasts up, and then floundered on doggedly beside them, seeing nothing but a dim pine or two through the snow. Now and then there was a rattle ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... away from the fire, and Wildfire, free of the stifling smoke, began to break and lunge and pitch, plunging round Nagger in a circle, running blindly, but with unerring scent. Slone, by masterly horsemanship, easily avoided the rushes, and made a pivot of Nagger, round which the wild horse dashed in his frenzy. It seemed that he no longer tried to free himself. ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... presented its incalculable significance; nor do I know any of his followers who have made any approach to an adequate use of it in their advocacy of his views. In preparing the present chapter, therefore, I have been particularly careful not to pitch too high my own estimate of its evidential value. That is to say, I have considered, both in the domain of structures and of instincts, what instances admit of being possibly adduced per contra, or as standing outside the general law that adaptive structures and instincts are of primary use ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... invincible, because when successful they forgot not the maxims of wisdom and prudence; and indeed it would have been matter of astonishment did they act otherwise. That those persons to whom success was a new and uncommon thing proceeded to a pitch of madness in their ungoverned transports in consequence of their not being accustomed to it. That to the Roman people the joy arising from victory was a matter of common occurrence, and was now almost become old-fashioned. That they had extended their empire more by sparing the vanquished ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... same time, however, a very different action was proceeding at the northern end of the besiegers' intrenchments. Ali left his castle of the lake, preceded by twelve torch-bearers carrying braziers filled with lighted pitch-wood, and advanced towards the shore of Saint-Nicolas, expecting to unite with the Suliots. He stopped in the middle of the ruins to wait for sunrise, and while there heard that his troops had carried the battery of Ibrahim-Aga-Stamboul. Overjoyed, he ordered ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... would be easy. On we walked in silence, I carrying the gun, Tom with the hare over his shoulder, and Tommy at our heels. For upwards of an hour did we tread our way through the furze, but could find no road. Above us all was dark as pitch; the wind howled; our clothes were loaded with snow; and we began to feel ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... How they ever manage to keep on their feet I don't know, much less how they give directions. One man told me that he was once in such a sea that when he was pitched off his feet into one end of the bridge he hadn't time to recover himself before the same pitch came again and sent him down just as he was trying to get up! At any time the life at sea is hard, but doubly so in a storm like this! Hour after hour it goes on. I don't suppose anyone has slept through this, ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... pretty litter. I do not intend to let them send a single barrel of it beneath my hatches again, but the deck and the islands must take it all. Now I wish to relieve my passengers from the confinement this will occasion, and I have ordered the boatswain to pitch a tent for them on the largest of these here Tortugas; and what I want of you, is to muster food and water, and other women's knicknacks, and go ashore with them, and make them as comfortable ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... couple of men rushed along the road crying out for Stretcher Bearers, and he learnt from one of them that in the darkness and confusion of the retreat, British had been fighting with British. The pitch darkness shrouded every action with a ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... spite of their thickness, in crashing through them, killing many of the men beneath. The experiment was also tried of throwing balls of Greek fire down upon the wood; but as this was green and freshly felled it would not take fire, but the flames dropping through, with much boiling pitch and other materials, did grievously burn and scald the soldiers working below it. Upon both sides every device was tried. The crossbowmen among the mercenaries kept up a fire upon the walls to hinder the defenders from interfering with ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... impregnable henceforth, all readers can believe. Friedrich has been building various Fortresses in this interim, though we have taken no notice of them; building and repairing many things;—trimming up his Military quite to the old pitch, as the most particular thing of all. He has his new Silesian Fortress of Silberberg,—big Fortress, looking into certain dangerous Bohemian Doors (in Tobias Stusche's Country, if readers recollect an old adventure now mythical);—his new Silesian Silberberg, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... note: Pitch Lake, on Trinidad's southwestern coast, is the world's largest natural ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... in their outrages as well as in their pastimes, suddenly stooped, and taking the dreadful dagger out of the hands of the wounded man, continued the pursuit bounding after his foe with a spirit of vengeance and ferocity, now raised to the highest pitch. The stranger, seeing that M'Carthy was still in equal danger if not in still greater, for the now infuriated ruffian was gaining upon him, once more levelled his pistol—fired—and, as before, down came the intended assassin. He himself then sprang forward, as if in pursuit ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... that the sun rises about three-thirty A.M. during the end of December or first week in January out there, so it would have been fairly light before four A.M.; whereas when I woke out of my first sleep that night, it was pitch dark. ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... presented to him. A certain great person, who at that time was at the head of public affairs, had a neice, who for many private reasons, he found it necessary to dispose of in marriage: Natura was the man he happened to pitch upon, as one who seemed to him a very proper person, and accordingly made him the offer, accompanied with a promise of getting him into a great post, which he knew he had been for a long time, and was still, solliciting, though ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... strange, potential force of the man. Stepping softly, without the least sound, Dale entered this straggly bit of woods, which appeared to have narrow byways and nooks. Then presently he came to the top of a well-wooded slope, dark as pitch, apparently. But as Helen followed she perceived the trees, and they were thin dwarf spruce, partly dead. The slope was soft and springy, easy to step upon without noise. Dale went so cautiously ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... Leith; Aberdour, hard by the monastic islet of Inchcolm, hard by Donibristle where the "bonny face was spoiled": Burntisland, where, when Paul Jones was off the coast, the Reverend Mr. Shirra had a table carried between tide-marks, and publicly prayed against the rover at the pitch of his voice and his broad lowland dialect; Kinghorn, where Alexander "brak's neck-bane" and left Scotland to the English wars; Kirkcaldy, where the witches once prevailed extremely and sank tall ships and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sound sleeper. She woke in the pitch dark with the instant conviction that she had slept long past midnight, with a sudden qualm of apprehension, of ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White |
