"Staple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the state of New York by a narrow stream, spanned by a bridge, which it takes a foot passenger about three minutes to cross. The inhabitants are for the most part U.E. loyalists,[2] and differ little in habits or modes of thought and expression from their neighbours. Wheat is their staple product—the article which they exchange for foreign comforts and luxuries. Now it is the fact that a bushel of wheat, grown on the Canadian side of the line, has fetched this year in the market, on an average, from 9d. to 1s. less than the same quantity and quality of the ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... in nothing but shirt and breeches, were lolling, lying crouching on the deck forward, circled around Bulger. Seated on an upturned tub, he was busily engaged in baiting a hook. Tired of the "Irish horse" and salt pork that formed the staple of the sailors' food, he was taking advantage of the calm to fish for bonitos, a large fish over two feet long, the deadly enemy of the beautiful flying fish that every now and then fell panting upon ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... genuine Editions of the following biography, it has been repeatedly reprinted both in America and France; and portions of it, pirated in the shape of cheap pamphlets, have, for two or three years bypast, formed a staple article of commerce with the Peripatetic Bibliopoles in this country. Popularity to an author must be always gratifying; but it were well that it came ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... order, without distinction of any kind. And sires will not forgive sons, and sons will not forgive sires. And when the end approaches, wives will not wait upon and serve their husbands. And at such a time men will seek those countries where wheat and barley form the staple food. And, O monarch, both men and women will become perfectly free in their behaviour and will not tolerate one another's acts. And, O Yudhishthira, the whole world will be mlecchified. And men will cease to gratify the gods by offerings of Sraddhas. And no one will listen to the words ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... of stone steps fell down to the water from the lower terrace. Fastened to an iron staple sunk deep into the granite, was a little boat swinging by a cable. Caroline's heart gave a leap ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... pardon for having so long omitted to write. One thing or other has put me off. I have this day moved my things and you are now to direct to me at Staple Inn, London. I hope, my dear, you are well, and Kitty mends. I wish her success in her trade. I am going to publish a little story book [Rasselas], which I will send you when it is out. Write to me, my dearest girl, for I am always ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... more celebrated associates, Henry C. Frick and Charles M. Schwab, were younger men. Frick was cold and masterful, as hard, unyielding, and effective as the steel that formed the staple of his existence. Schwab was enthusiastic, warm-hearted, and happy-go-lucky; a man who ruled his employees and obtained his results by appealing to their sympathies. The men of the steel yards feared Frick as much as they loved "Charlie" Schwab. The earliest glimpses which we ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... a higher state of advancement, and thus their saleability ceases. Furs cease to be generally marketable in northern climes, when the fur-bearing animals are nearly killed off and the fur trade declines. When tobacco was the great staple of export from Virginia, everybody was willing to take it, and its market price was known by all. It served well then as the chief money, but, as it ceased to be the almost exclusive product of the province, it lost the knowableness and marketability it had before. In agricultural ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... was only a staple on the door of the shed, but Noaks said he'd fetch the padlock off his play-box, ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... concluded, and the party drew from the abode of the quiet dead, closing the old iron door, and shooting the lock loudly into the huge copper staple—an incongruous act of imprisonment towards those who had ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... the leaders of the Fronde, headed by De Retz, and bringing with them their pasquinades on Mazarin, which the easy Italian read and laughed at and pretended to heed not at all. Politics, however, was not the staple of the conversation at Scarron's. He was visited as a curiosity, as a clever buffoon, and those who came to see, remained to laugh. He kept them all alive by his coarse, easy, impudent wit; in which ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... known to be across the border—been brought for the night within the shelter of the fort. Already the ponderous wooden gate was swinging creakingly to on its ponderous wooden hinges; but just as its ponderous wooden bolt was sliding into the ponderous wooden staple, out from the neighboring forest ringing, with echo on echo, it came—the old familiar cry, the trumpet-call to battle abroad, the note of brotherly cheer at home: "I yi, you dogs!"—too jocund and triumphant for any one whose ears had caught the glad sound to doubt that glad tidings were coming. ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... over accounts, or making endless calculations based on cheaper freights for copra and on the possible maximum and minimum market prices for that staple of commerce. His days were spent out on the plantation. He undertook more clearing of bush; and clearing and planting went on, under his personal supervision, at a faster pace than ever before. He experimented with premiums for ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... it. It was a small building, like a Northern corn-barn, and seemed to have as prominent and as legitimate a place among the outbuildings of the establishment. In the middle of the door was a large staple with a rusty chain, like an ox-chain, for fastening a victim down. When the door had been opened after the death of the late proprietor, my informant said, a man was found padlocked in that chain. We found also three pairs of stocks of various construction, two of ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... began to strike more tillage and fertility. Maize, wheat, and rice were growing, but rather low and thin. The last is by no means the staple food of China, as is commonly supposed, except in the southern portion. In the northern, and especially the outlying, provinces it is considered more a luxury for the wealthy. Millet and coarse flour, from which the mien or dough-strings ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... original stone contained little lime, and the human race would become nearly helpless if there were no stores of supply in the form of limestone, chalk, marl, etc. The day would come when the surface soil could not produce our staple crops if its loss of lime continued, and a means of replenishing the stock were not at hand. The huge deposits of limestone that have not been disintegrated by processes of weathering are assurance that the soil's need can be met forever. The calcium and magnesium ...
— Right Use of Lime in Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... Paton, just opposite the ruined castle. Among other visitors to St. Andrews known to my father were Professors Tait and Crum Brown, who inveigled him into making trial of the "Royal and Ancient" game, which then, as now, was the staple resource of the famous little city. I have a vivid recollection of his being hopelessly bunkered three or four holes from home, and can testify that he bore the moral strain with more than usual calm as compared ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... be briefly told: Shorty's modest request of a glass of whiskey was granted him. Then, his hands still bound securely by Carson, he was put in the small grain-house, a windowless, ten-by-ten house of logs. An admirable jail this, with its heavy padlock snapped into a deeply embedded staple and the great hasp in place. The key safely in Judith's possession, Shorty was left to his own thoughts while Judith, and Hampton went to ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... opens up. The great arch of timber lands beginning on the west of Lake Manitoba, circles round to Edmonton and comes down along the mountains so as to include the whole of your Province. Poplar alone for many years must be the staple wood of the lands to the south of the Saskatchewan, and your great opportunity lies in this, that you can give the settlers of the whole of that region as much of the finest timber in the world as they can desire, while cordwood cargoes ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... thought verily I should presently die: but I turned myself about, and ranne as fast as ever I might to the stable from whence I came. Then the men of the towne called in their dogs, and took me and bound mee to the staple of a post, and scourged me with a great knotted whip till I was well nigh dead, and they would undoubtedly have slaine me, had it not come to passe, that what with the paine of their beating, and the greene hearbes that lay in my guts, I caught such ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... had been in Latin, which they must be put into in conclusion; but he did observe," &c. In fact, he restated his objections to making pitch, tar, hemp, flax, and sails, contraband, as they were the staple produce of Sweden. Lord Fiennes, in reply, premised: "that the Articles were brought in English for the saving of time, and they should be put in Latin when his Excellency should desire," and then discussed ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... had taken for firm ground was nothing but an iron staple projecting from the wall. Fandor seized it, stopped for a minute or two's breathing space, ascertained, by drawing it up, that of his cord there were only a few yards remaining; but he also perceived, and with what ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... stones, and more recently by cheap blades, which were of Indian manufacture. For such cultivation as they were capable of these people used primitive earth rakes, and they also possessed coarse mallets, sticks, and net bags in which they kept their stores. Their staple food in former days was river fish, flesh of wild animals, and roots of certain trees; but they now eat grain also, and, like all savages, they have a craving for liquor. The interior of Raot habitations was so primitive and lacking of furniture, that it hardly requires to be described, ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... beauty is best enjoyed when it is sought for with some trouble and difficulty, and partly because such beauty, and the romance which is attached to it, should not make up the staple of one's life. Romance, if it is to come at all, should always come by ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... recollected the uneven character of the wall, and hauling himself up a little, he was able to stretch out his feet sufficiently to reach it. He put out one hand in the same direction, and caught hold of an iron staple. He could now clutch the wall, and feeling his way, he descended about eight feet to the ground. It was fortunate that he had not jumped, for, instead of sand, there was a slab of hard rock on which he would have fallen. Scarcely had he time to ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... results for causes and to vent its resentment upon persons when misgovernment occurs. That disposition was bitterly intense at this period. "Turn the rascals out" was the ordinary campaign slogan of an opposition party, and calumny formed the staple of its argument. Of course no party could establish exclusive proprietorship to such tactics, and whichever party might be in power in a particular locality was cast for the villain's part in the political drama. But as changes of party control took place, experience taught ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... Minerva mediocre;" Carlyle is "Thomas Carlyle with his bilious howls and bankrupt draughts on hope." Hawthorne, he learns, though we cannot tell from whence, "thought it inexpressibly ridiculous that any one should notice man's miseries, these being his staple product," and was "swallowed up in the wretchedness of life;" also, "the Concord novelist was a handsome, bulky character, with a soft rolling gait; a wit said he seemed like a boned pirate." From these more or less contemptuous views of mankind at large Mr. Channing turns with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... my boy," said the Admiral, drawing near his son gradually, for his wrath (like good vegetables) was very short of staple; "and when I do so you may feel quite certain that there is sound reason at the bottom of it"—here he looked as if his depth was unfathomable. "It is not only that I am not myself, because of the many hours spent upon hard leather, and vile chalks of flint ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... a time there was made a wondrous garden. It was called the earth. The flowers, the trees, the plants which afterwards became through man's skill our staple products—all ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... once, but forced conversation did not flourish. Bourcelles was not fashionable; no one ever had appendicitis there. Yet ailments of a milder order were the staple, inexhaustible subjects at meals. Instead of the weather, mon estomac was the inexhaustible tale. The girl brought in the little Cantonal newspaper, and the widow read out selections in a high, shrill voice, regardless who listened. Misfortunes and accidents ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... assured me that they had raised tobacco off the same piece of land for thirty consecutive years. The inhabitants, who are generally English, are mostly engaged in this production. It is their chief staple, and the money with which they must purchase every thing they require, which is brought to them from other English possessions in Europe, Africa and America. There is, nevertheless, sometimes a great want of these necessaries, owing to the tobacco market being ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... time. The door of the shed was thrown violently open, and out plunged Jim, his hair on fire and his clothes singed and smoking. He brushed the sparks off himself as if they were flakes of snow. Quick as thought, he tore 'Liza's halter from its fastening, pulling out staple and all, threw his smoking coat over her eyes, and backed her out of the shed. He reached in, and, pulling the harness off the hook, threw it as far into the snow as he could, yelling "Fire!" at ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... "the great staple" of the Douglas campaign, was "the most arrant Quixotism that was ever enacted ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... Dredlinton, and your fellow directors, have inaugurated and are carrying on a business, or enterprise, whichever you choose to call it, founded upon an utterly immoral and brutal basis. Your operations in the course of a few months have raised to a ridiculous price the staple food of the poorer classes, at a time when distress and suffering are already amongst them. I have spent a considerable portion of my time since I arrived in England studying this matter, and this is the conclusion ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... be, occupied in the centre of this line a chair slightly more elevated than those of the three who sat on either hand. Seven staples had been driven into the interstices of the stones above the heads of the Court and from each staple hung a lighted lantern, which with those at the belts of the guard standing round, illuminated the dismal chamber fairly well. To the left of the Court was a block draped in black and beside it stood the ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... creeks and inlets and little bays, no two of them alike, yet all trackless abysses? We may almost fancy that Nature took pleasure in recording by ineffaceable hieroglyphics the symbol of Norwegian life, bestowing on these coasts the conformation of a fish's spine, fishery being the staple commerce of the country, and well-nigh the only means of living of the hardy men who cling like tufts of lichen to the arid cliffs. Here, through fourteen degrees of longitude, barely seven hundred thousand souls maintain existence. Thanks to perils devoid of ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... gentleman; and Captain Sumph, an ex-beau reader about town, and related in some indistinct manner to Literature and the Peerage. He was said to have written a book once, to have been a friend of Lord Byron, to be related to Lord Sumphington; in fact, anecdotes of Byron formed his staple, and he seldom spoke but with the name of that poet or some of his contemporaries in his mouth, as thus: "I remember poor Shelley, at school being sent up for good for a copy of verses, every line of ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... herself to drinking the defensive liquid which the grub distils at the end of its intestine. For her this liquid is doubtless a beverage of delicious flavour, with which she relieves from time to time her staple diet of the honey distilled by flowers, some highly spiced condiment, appetiser or aperient, or perhaps—who knows?—a substitute for honey. Although the qualities of the liquid escape me, I see at least that Odynerus cares nothing for the rest. Once the pouch is emptied the larva is abandoned as ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... have invested his limited mental endowments in trying to make the world believe him a genius, would have been only so like what many thousands are doing as to have absolved him from too harsh a judgment; but he traded in perilous stuff. Cheap prophecy was his staple. It was his wont to give out about once in five years, that the world would shortly come to an end, and, like Mr. Zadkiel, he found people who thought their inevitable disappointment a proof of his inspiration. Had you heard the honeyed words ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... riding and walking round the Newera Ellia plain, it appears a marvel how they can be housed in the few dwellings that exist. There is an endless supply of fine timber in the forests, and powerful sawmills are already erected; but the island is, like its soil, 'poor.' Its main staple, 'coffee,' does not pay sufficiently to enable the proprietors of estates to indulge in the luxury of a house at Newera Ellia. Like many watering-places in England, it is overcrowded at one season and deserted at another, the only permanent residents being comprised in the commandant, ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... nature which is yours as a reasonable being," or "to thwart your own moral development,"—and so on in a variety of phrases descriptive of the argument of the last section. Here it seems the chain is made fast to a staple in the wall. If a person goes on to ask, "Well, what if I do contradict my rational self?" we can only tell him that he is a fool for his question. The oughts, such as those wherewith our illustration commenced, Kant calls the hypothetical imperative, the form being, "You must, unless:" ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... From where we lay moored to the floe, the nearest island was about three leagues to the east, and the northern main from ten to twelve miles. For sounding we had a twenty-four-pound iron weight, with a staple leaded into it for the line. Dropping it out of the stern, we ran out a hundred and seventy-three fathoms before it slacked. The depth of the strait at that place was given at ten hundred and thirty-eight feet. I should add, that this was considerably ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... hands of two foreign groups—the Hansa, who had acquired privileges in England which they did not reciprocate, and the Venetians, who held their own without privileges by superior commercial acuteness—and of two English groups, the Merchants of the Staple, who controlled the wool markets, and the Merchant Adventurers, who were mainly interested in the manufactured goods. The King therefore followed a consistent policy of straining, in a restrictive sense, the interpretation of the concessions ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... but ate my dinner; casting an eye occasionally to the door, and conjecturing what were the probabilities, by a very sudden spring, of breaking the chain, for he had only put one up, or of drawing the staple by which it was held, and which, from the thickness of the wood-work, I knew could not be clenched. It was not possible, I believe, for mind to be actuated by stronger motives than mine was, in my wish to escape: the circumstance of the single chain might not ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... waist in full fig; and one of the men following his example, we were soon afloat. The ladies applauded, and the captain sat in his wet breeks for the rest of the voyage, in all the consciousness of being considered a hero. Ducks and onions are the grand staple of Bermuda, but there was a fearful dearth of both at the time I speak of—a knot of young West India merchants, who, with heavy purses and large credits on England, had at this time domiciled themselves in ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... previous messages to the injurious and vexatious restrictions suffered by our trade in the Spanish West Indies. Brazil, whose natural outlet for its great national staple, coffee, is in and through the United States, imposes a heavy export duty upon that product. Our petroleum exports are hampered in Turkey and in other Eastern ports by restrictions as to storage and by onerous ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Chester A. Arthur • Chester A. Arthur
... nothing since he dined with the shop-woman in Burlington, on the day before. Besides, bread was a staple article with him. He had made many a meal of plain bread in his brother's printing office in Boston. Although he knew well which side his bread was buttered, his appetite for unbuttered bread never failed him. Entering ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... fastening is quite evident," said he. "An iron bar passed right across at the top and bottom and was secured by a staple and padlock. You can see the mark the bar made in the recess when the shutters were folded. When these bars were fixed and padlocked and the bolts were shot, this room was as secure, for a prisoner unprovided with tools, as a ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... quantity of fine flax and hemp particularly attracted my attention. Both grow admirably in this country, and at no very distant period will form staple articles for home manufacture and ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... the social and political problems which were occupying the whole world increased every day, until public meetings and private intercourse, and the shallow platitudes which formed the staple eloquence of the orators of the day, proved to me the terrible shallowness of the ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... which of the two countries would be the greatest gainer? England without doubt. There would instantly arise in France an immense demand for the cottons, woollens, and iron of England; while wines, brandies, and silks, the staple articles of France, are less likely to come into general demand here, nor would the consumption of such productions, it is probable, be so rapidly increased by the fall of price. The fall would probably be very great before France could obtain a vent in England for so much of her exports as would ...
— Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... significant confession that there were but few Greek plays from which he might have copied so chaste a plot, in which "there is no wenching, no intriguing, no exposure of a child" to be found by a procuress and brought up as a hetaira—which are the staple features of these later ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... high, and was filled to overflowing with material soon to be worked up into shoes, pocketbooks, belting, gloves, baseball covers, and a thousand other articles for which this staple material of trade is needed. Several heavy trucks were loading and unloading at the doors, and the boy heard the workmen speak of a consignment to Buffalo, and another to Boston, and of a shipload that had just ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer
... endemic in these woods. But against that I will effectually guard, though the dogs should take a liking to his ugly visage, and let him pass. The youth returned to the door, while giving vent to this soliloquy, and completed the fastenings by placing a small chain through a staple, and securing it there by a padlock. He is a pettifogger, and surely must know that there is such a thing as feloniously ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... all cotton growers in that part of the Western Presidency, profited enormously by the high price of the staple during the American war. Silver was poured into the country (literally) in crores (millions sterling), and cultivators who previously had as much as they could do to live, suddenly found themselves possessed of sums their imagination had ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... of the Rhine where the vine is cultivated as the material of a great manufacture, and the staple of a foreign trade, fruit trees of other species are not admitted within the vineyard; but at Botzen in the Tyrol, where the habits of society are more simple and primitive, I have repeatedly seen fig-trees growing within ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... succeeded. His characters, taken en masse, and as a whole, are as well-known as any novelist's characters; cultivated men know all about them, as young ladies know all about Mr. Trollope's novels. But no other dramatist has succeeded in such an aim. No one else's characters are staple people in English literature, hereditary people whom every one knows all about in every generation. The contemporary dramatists, Beaumont and Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Marlowe, &c., had many merits, some of them were great men. But a critic must say of ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... (ammisk) furnish the staple fur of the country. Many surprising stories have been told of the sagacity with which this animal suits the form of its habitation, retreats, and dam, to local circumstances; and I compared the account of its manners given by Cuvier in his Regne Animal with the ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... curtains, and, being anxious to test the truth of my imaginings, rose and pulled aside one of these curtains only to see, just as I expected, the blank surface of a series of unslatted shutters, tightly fitting one to another with old-time exactitude. A flat hook and staple fastened them. Gently raising the window, and lifting one, I pulled the shutter open and looked out. The prospect was just what I had been led to expect from the location of the room—the long, ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... The cotton for which Whitney's machine accomplished so much, was the short staple, which is the principal product of the South. The Sea Island cotton could not be cleaned by it, on account of the length and delicacy of its fiber; and this species, for the want of some cheap and expeditious method ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... is in shallow cups, while that of the clover is in deep tubes. The bees are up and at it before sunrise, and it takes a brisk shower to drive them in. But the clover blooms later and blooms everywhere, and is the staple source of supply of the finest quality of honey. The red clover yields up its stores only to the longer proboscis of the bumblebee, else the bee pasturage of our agricultural districts would be unequaled. I do ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... reason, begun by Humanism, which is still in progress. Nevertheless, the strife of Protestantism and Catholicism was needed for preserving moral and religious elements which might have been too lightly dropped, and for working these into the staple of the modern consciousness. The process of the last three centuries, attended as it has been by serious drawbacks to the Spanish and Italian peoples, and by a lamentable waste of vigor to the Teutonic ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... they serve better for walls and partitions than do ordinary boards. Boxes, also, are made of them; indeed, it would be difficult to describe the numberless uses to which they are put. The trunk, however, is the more valuable part, as the pith of the interior is the staple food of large numbers of the inhabitants of these regions. I will not stop here to describe how the sago is made; but I will ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... attentively; then, drawing from his pocket one of those wonderful knives which are really miniature tool-chests, he raised from a grove the screw-driver which formed part of its equipment, and with neatness and dispatch unscrewed the staple to ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... wars, disease, and infanticide.[362] Like the Papuans generally, they live in settled villages and engage in fishing, agriculture, and commerce. The houses are solidly built of wood and are raised above the ground upon piles, which consist of a hard and durable timber, sometimes iron-wood.[363] The staple food of the people is sago, which they obtain from the sago-palm. These stately palms, with their fan-like foliage, are rare on the coral island of Tumleo, but grow abundantly in the swampy lowlands of the neighbouring mainland. Accordingly in the months of May and June, when the sea is calm, the ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... mainly the discovery of a cheap chemical solvent of the Flax fiber, whereby its coarseness and harshness are removed and the fineness and softness of Cotton induced in their stead. This he has accomplished. Some of his Flax-Cotton is scarcely distinguishable from the Sea Island staple, while to other samples he has given the character of Wool very nearly. I can imagine no reason why this Cotton should not be spun and woven as easily as any other. The staple may be rendered of any desired length, ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... South Carolina had the largest and most widely developed slave-trade of any of the continental colonies. This was owing to the character of her settlers, her nearness to the West Indian slave marts, and the early development of certain staple crops, such as rice, which were adapted to slave labor.[9] Moreover, this colony suffered much less interference from the home government than many other colonies; thus it is possible here to trace the ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... as the immediate surrounding country, is mainly dependent on Abyssinia for its supplies. Jowaree is the staple food; wheat is little used; rice is a favourite amongst the better classes. Goats and sheep are killed daily in the bazaar, cows on rare occasions; but the flesh of the camel is the most esteemed, though, on account of the expense, rarely indulged ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... entirely done by black boys, and of these the "Chinde" boys from the Portuguese settlements are much sought after, and cannot be excelled as cooks or servants, so thoroughly do the Portuguese understand the training of natives. The staple meat was buck of all kinds; sheep were wellnigh unknown, oxen were scarce and their meat tough; but no one need grumble at a diet of buck, wild-pig, koran,[51] guinea-fowl, and occasionally wild-duck. As regards other necessities of life, transport difficulties were enormous; every ounce of food ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... Caradocs, who had unfortunately neglected to be born in wedlock, by one of those humorous omissions to be found in the genealogies of most old families. Yes, it was there, almost cynically hung in a corner; for this incident, though no doubt a burning question in the fifteenth century, was now but staple for an ironical little tale, in view of the fact that descendants of John's 'own' brother Edmund were undoubtedly to be found among the cottagers of a parish ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... goes rustically forward. Bucks, and bears, and rattlesnakes, and former mining operations, are the staple of men's talk. Agriculture has only begun to mount above the valley. And though in a few years from now the whole district may be smiling with farms, passing trains shaking the mountain to the heart, many-windowed hotels ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Minstrel" and "Marmion," as well as of the ideal abbeys in the "Monastery" and "Antiquary," together with those of Caerlaverock and Lochleven Castles in "Guy Mannering" and "The Abbot," remain the staple possessions and text-books of all travelers, not so much for their beauty or accuracy, as for their exactly expressing that degree of feeling with which most men ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... Biddy's neck, and talk to her about George with sobs and silences interspersed; and many a piece of dry bread steeped in warm water, or golden carrot, or mess of stewed turnips and bran flavored the dry hay that was the staple of the cow's diet. The cat was old now, and objected to the baby so strenuously that Dely regarded her as partly insane from age; and though she was kind to her of course, and fed her faithfully, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... upon the root itself but its product. This is now changed, and, the beetroot being taxed, the grower strives after that kind producing the largest percentage of saccharine matter. Hardly less important is the residue. The pulp of the crushed beetroot in these regions forms the staple food of cows, pigs and sheep. Mixed with chopped straw, it is stored for winter use in mounds by small cultivators, in enormous cellars constructed on purpose by large owners. Horses refuse to eat this mixture, which has a peculiar odour, ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... extraordinary events transpiring in the Chinese Empire, whereby portions of its maritime provinces are passing under the control of various European powers; but the prospect that the vast commerce which the energy of our citizens and the necessity of our staple productions for Chinese uses has built up in those regions may not be prejudiced through any exclusive treatment by the new occupants has obviated the need of our country becoming an actor in the scene. Our position ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • William McKinley
... staple crops are very similar in their fertilizer requirements, and this simplifies fertilization. Setting aside the impression gained from the dissimilarity in the so-called corn, potato, wheat, and grass fertilizers on the market, the farmer ...
— Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... light she saw Black Donald, not only doubly ironed but confined by a chain and staple to the wall. He was very pale and haggard from ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... lover of honesty and of too good a nature himself to make his living as a pettifogger. (4) Crito would then take the opportunity of times of harvesting and put aside small presents for Achedemus of corn and oil, or wine, or wool, or any other of the farm produce forming the staple commodities of life, or he would invite him to a sacrificial feast, and otherwise pay him marked attention. Archedemus, feeling that he had in Crito's house a harbour of refuge, could not make too much of his patron, and ere long he had hunted up a long list of iniquities which ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... had a Christian Science cook, a real artist if given unlimited materials, and she didn't mind loneliness, as she said that God is everywhere; to which I heartily agreed. I know that He is on this hill-top. So far so good, but her idea of obeying Mr. Hoover's precepts was not to mention that any staple was out until the last moment. At about six o'clock she usually came pussy-footing to my door in the tennis shoes she always wore, to tell me that there wasn't a potato in the house, or any butter. Not so bad in Pasadena, ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... a wife, a good disposition will be found the most staple commodity. Most other virtues will flourish in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 20, No. 567, Saturday, September 22, 1832. • Various
... prosecuted with the slightest hope of a useful result if there had not existed a body of law, like that of the Romans, bearing in its earliest portions the traces of the most remote antiquity and supplying from its later rules the staple of the civil institutions by which modern society is even now controlled. The necessity of taking the Roman law as a typical system has compelled the author to draw from it what may appear a disproportionate ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... inoffensively, with sheep. The sheep is a beast with which we are all familiar, being much used in religious imagery; the common stock of painters; a staple article of diet; one of our main sources of clothing; and an everyday symbol ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... staple of conversation on deck and in the steerage among the crew; and some of the better boys heard certain indefinite remarks about "the first step" and "the second step," used by "our fellows;" but no real friend of law and order discovered anything which ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... well illustrated during the past forty years in the flourishing county of Glamorgan in Wales, as is shown by Dr. R.S. Stewart ("The Relationship of Wages, Lunacy, and Crime in South Wales," Journal of Mental Science, January, 1904). The staple industry here is coal, 17 per cent of the population being directly employed in coal-mining, and wages are determined by the sliding scale as it is called, according to which the selling price of coal regulates the wages. This leads to many ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... and flavoured with chilis, onions, and salt. Dried beef and venison are also used, and wild pig and chickens and ducks are plentiful; other articles of food being maize, sweet potatoes, and many kinds of fruit, such as cocoa-nuts, bananas, mangoes, mangusteens, and so on. In the Moluccos the staple crop is not rice, but sago, which is prepared from the sap of the sago-palm. To an inhabitant of Java or Sumatra the cocoa-nut tree is indispensable; when a child is born, a nut is planted, and later on, if the child asks how old he is, his mother shows him the young ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... of the court failed in the days of King Charles, though Jonson was not without royal favours; and the old poet returned to the stage, producing, between 1625 and 1633, "The Staple of News," "The New Inn," "The Magnetic Lady," and "The Tale of a Tub," the last doubtless revised from a much earlier comedy. None of these plays met with any marked success, although the scathing generalisation of Dryden ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... fishing, hunting, and forestry, is the leading sector of the economy. It contributes 40% to GDP, employs 80% of the labor force, and provides most of the exports. The country is not self-sufficient in food production; rice, the main staple, accounts for the bulk of imports. The government is struggling to upgrade education and technical training, to privatize commercial and industrial enterprises, to improve health services, to diversify exports, to promote tourism, and to reduce the high population growth rate. ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... similar beginnings. Since the year of our Lord 1623, four forts have been built there by order of the Lords Directors,(2) one on the south point of the Manhatans Island, where the East and North Rivers unite, called New Amsterdam, where the staple-right(3) of New Netherland was designed to be; another upon the same River, six-and-thirty Dutch miles [leagues] higher up, and three leagues below the great Kochoos(4) fall of the Mohawk River, on the west side of the river, in the colony of ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... up as hopeless. One day I chanced to observe a nail trodden into the mud floor at no great distance from me. I seized upon this new treasure, and found that I could unlock with it the padlock that fastened me to the staple in the floor. By this means I had the pitiful consolation of being able to range, without constraint, the miserable coop in which I was confined. It became my constant practice to liberate myself at night; but security breeds negligence. One morning I overslept myself, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... The great staple exported from Whitehaven was then, and still is, coal. The town is surrounded by mines; the town is built on mines; the ships moor over mines. The mines honeycomb the land in all directions, and extend in galleries of grottoes ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... a liquor of modern date, which has nearly superseded the use of brown stout, and very much encroached on the consumption of other malt liquors, till it has become the staple commodity of the English brewery, and of such consequence to the government, in point of revenue, that it may be fairly said to produce more than all the rest. Porter, when well brewed, and of a proper age, is considered a wholesome and pleasant liquor, ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... of making your moral staple consist of the negative virtues. It is good to abstain, and teach others to abstain, from all that is sinful or hurtful. But making a business of it leads to emaciation of character, unless one feeds largely also on the more nutritious diet ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... in open assertion, however, for that could be easily refuted, and fair fight was not at all in their line. But when false witness could be meanly conveyed by implication and innuendo, it formed the staple of their conversation. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... than I had believed, the staple of the lock clinging to the hard teak wood of which the chest was made. I must have been ten minutes at it, compelled to use a wooden bar as lever, before it yielded, groaning as it finally released its grip, like a soul in agony. I felt the girl clutch me in terror ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... to a pot, for less than twenty cents. This gave the three of us two meals with some left over for lunch, making the cost per man about three cents. And they made a hearty meal, too. That was a trick she had learned in the country where baked beans are a staple article of diet. I liked them cold for ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... average over a hundred daily, and everybody is getting accustomed to it. Gentlemen make themselves agreeable to ladies by reciting the number of deaths in this house or that. This together with talk of funerals, cholera medicines, cholera dietetics, and chloride of lime form the ordinary staple of conversation. Serious persons of course throw in moral reflections ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... have its general or two, its three or four colonels, half a dozen majors, and captains without end,—besides non-commissioned officers and privates, more than the recruiting-offices ever knew of,—all with their campaign-stories, which will become the staple of fireside-talk forevermore. Military merit, or rather, since that is not so readily estimated, military notoriety, will be the measure of all claims to civil distinction. One bullet-headed general will succeed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... bread. The freight of cotton has formerly been three pence sterling, from Charleston to Liverpool, in time of peace. It is now I know not what, or how many fractions of a penny; I think, however, it is stated at five eighths. The producers, then, of this great staple, are able, by means of this navigation, to send it, for a cent a pound, from their own doors to the best market ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... so infrequent, that one daily coach, which could not be kept going but through its connection with the Post-office, suffices for three-fourths of the year along the line of country as far as Keswick. The staple of the district is, in fact, its beauty and its character of seclusion and retirement; and to these topics and to others connected with them my remarks shall ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... learned from a tiny settlement of bush-dwellers not twenty miles from Bombay, close to that beautiful lake which has been transformed into a reservoir, where bows and arrows are still the only weapons and rats are a staple food. And in an hour's time, in a car, one could be telephoning one's friends or watching ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... it was voted unanimously that fish should form one of the staple dishes of their stay in camp ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... his assistants; but the privilege is merely nominal, in consequence of the extremely imperfect state of the catalogue; and in point of fact the multitudinous volumes on the shelves may be compared to a mine, unexplored and unexplorable; whence only a few particular objects, considered the staple curiosities of the region, and consequently continually had recourse to by the visitors, are extracted. The volumes in question consist principally of a splendidly-illuminated Bible of the sixth century; the most ancient version of the ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... genius for the sake of aggrandizing the one at the expense of the other are the staple of the meaner kinds of criticism. No lover of art will clash a Venetian goblet against a Roman amphora to see which is strongest; no lover of nature undervalues a violet because it is not a rose. But comparisons used in the way of description ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... great staple of diet in ancient, as it is in modern, times. The importance attaching to it is shown by the fact that the Sun goddess herself is represented as engaging in its cultivation and that injuring a rice-field was among the greatest offences. Barley, millet, wheat, and beans ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... passed over a rough tract of ground towards a rocky cliff that formed part of the Castle boundary. In this cliff was a deep cavern, on one side of which was a stout staple with a chain attached, only a portion of which was visible. Here their young host stopped and gave a low whistle. Instantly there was a rattle of the chain, and the next moment all but the Count and Ruby hastily retreated as a great ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... and amalgamated with the cooking and eating customs of the original or copper-colored inhabitants. The difference in environment and climate and conditions, together with the amplified wealth of native supplies, did the rest. In Merrie England, as all travelers know, there are but three staple vegetables—to wit, boiled potatoes, boiled turnips, and a second helping of the boiled potatoes. But here, spread before the gladdened vision of the newly arrived, and his to pick and choose from, was a boundless expanse of new ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... of the story has been so extremely concise, that it is more than usually necessary for us to lay some specimens of the work itself before our readers. Its grand staple, as we have already said, consists of a kind of mystical morality: and the chief characteristics of the style are, that it is prolix and very frequently unintelligible: and though we are very sensible that no great gratification is to be expected from the exhibition of those qualities, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... of the mountains—logs, planks, clapboards, and laths, for which we pay such sinful prices in England—all seeking the sea. There was housing, food, and fuel for millions, on wheels together, and never a grain yet shifted of the real staple which men for five hundred miles were threshing out in heaps as ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... which grief can invade us; but, you will say, by which joy also can flow in;—granted! But in human life is there not more grief than joy? What is it that renders the balance even? What makes the staple of our happiness,—endearing to us the life at which we should otherwise repine? It is the mere passive, yet stirring, consciousness of life itself!—of the sun and the air of the physical being; but this consciousness every emotion disturbs. Yet could you add to its tranquillity an excitement ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... who lives on his private means and takes to art because he is unfit for anything else. This sort of producer, whose existence tells us less about the state of art than about the state of society, who would be the worst navvy in his gang or the worst trooper in his squadron, and is the staple product of official art schools, is unheard of in primitive ages. In drawing inferences, therefore, we must not overlook the advantage enjoyed by barbarous periods in the fact that of those who come forward as artists the ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... there is more shadow than substance about them now. The real religion of the people centres round a dairy-ritual. From a practical and economic point of view, the work of the dairy consists in converting the milk of their buffaloes into the butter and buttermilk which constitute their staple diet. From a religious point of view, it consists in converting something they dare not eat into something ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... at Skalholt, about the middle of the eleventh century, under Isleif, first Bishop of Iceland; four other schools and several convents soon followed. Poetry and music seem to have formed a staple ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... food may be divided into two classes, one of which we will call the staple part of the meal and the other the concomitant. It must be remembered that for the Manbo, as well as for so many other peoples of the Philippine Islands, rice or camotes or some other bulky food is the essential part of the meal, ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... broken the iron fetter of unbelief in thus acknowledging the fulfilment of the angel's words, "his mouth was opened immediately, and his tongue loosed, and he spake, blessing God. And fear came on all that dwelt round about them." All these sayings quickly became the staple theme of conversation throughout all the hill-country of Judaea; and wherever they came, they excited the profoundest expectation. People laid them up in their hearts, saying, "What, ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... tinned fruits and vegetables, hung a motto which read "God Bless our Home. If you don't like it, get out!" On the reverse side of this somewhat suggestive placard was the pleasing gastronomic intelligence, "Chicken to-day," chicken forming the staple of diet at Bongao, as of course fresh meat is to be had ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... would not offend them, I slept outside—"couchant a la belle etoile" as Rousseau has it— and beautiful nights those were I spent in this manner. We had plenty of fruit—wild strawberries and raspberries—pork and beans and potatoes forming the staple articles of diet. There was no cow, no horse, no dog belonging to the house. Fish we could get ourselves in plenty, and eggs made their appearance in a farmer's wagon about twice a week. Etienne and I spent entire days out-of-doors, shooting, fishing, ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... excellent quality, and is extensively used in the composition of paint, as it preserves wood from the ravages of insects. Timber is not abundant, but the gamboge tree and the wood-oil tree are found of a good size. Tobacco, cotton, sugar-cane, hemp and indigo are grown, and the staple article is rice, which is of superior quality, and the chief article of export. The inhabitants of the island are mainly Maghs. Cheduba fell to the Burmese in the latter part of the 18th century. From them it was captured in 1824 by the British, whose possession ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... have been added after the Crimean War, as the drama was copied out in 1857; but the staple of it was known long before, though with variations, in different villages, and it always concludes with little Johnny Jack, the smallest of the troup, with a bundle of dolls on his back, going round with ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... of him, and of placing him in absurd and whimsical points of view. His very celebrity operated here to his disadvantage. It brought him into continual comparison with Johnson, who was the oracle of that circle and had given it a tone. Conversation was the great staple there, and of this Johnson was a master. He had been a reader and thinker from childhood; his melancholy temperament, which unfitted him for the pleasures of youth, had made him so. For many years past the vast variety of works he had been obliged ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... nautical. Rough blue jackets, with mother-of-pearl buttons, oil-skin hats, coarse checked shirts, and large canvas trousers that look as if they were made for a pair of bodies instead of a pair of legs, are the staple commodities. Then, there are large bunches of cotton pocket-handkerchiefs, in colour and pattern unlike any one ever saw before, with the exception of those on the backs of the three young ladies without bonnets who passed just now. The furniture is much the same as ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... like Laudon and the Gennevilliers, promise better results, are imperfectly developed. Such defects would be fatal in a novel of the ordinary kind. But this is not a novel of the ordinary kind. The real staple of the book consists not of the incidents and the characters, but of discussions and reflections which sparkle with wit, with shrewd observation, and with ingenious if not absolutely profound speculation. There are a hundred little essays in it, compact ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... out there in the sunlight. She hitched the mare's bridle over a staple and came lightly stepping through the shadow of the porchway. Her lover walked down the aisle to meet her. He, too, ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument. I abhor such fanatical phantasimes, such insociable and point-devise companions; such rackers of orthography, as to speak dout, fine, when he should say doubt; det when he should pronounce debt,—d, e, b, t, not ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... and died away of itself. For the rich had no advantage here over the poor, as their wealth and abundance had no road to come abroad by, but were shut up at home doing nothing. And in this way they became excellent artists in common, necessary things; bedsteads, chairs, and tables, and such like staple utensils in a family, were admirably well made there; their cup, particularly, was very much in fashion, and eagerly bought up by soldiers, as Critias reports; for its color was such as to prevent water, drunk upon necessity and disagreeable to look at, from being noticed; and the shape of ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... either the Admiralty Islands, New Ireland, or New Britain touch an eel as food. The Maories, however, as is well known, are inordinately fond of eels, which, with putrid shark, constitute one of their staple articles of diet. ...
— Amona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... only to disgrace it; and he felt called to pledge his sword, his life, his knightly honor to do battle against him. He had urged his uncle in Milan to make interest for the cause of Savonarola with the King of France; and his uncle, with that crafty diplomacy which in those days formed the staple of what was called statesmanship, had seemed to listen favorably to his views,—intending, however, no more by his apparent assent than to withdraw his nephew from the dangers in which he stood in Italy, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... of Lake Ontario, La Salle had been attacked by a violent fever, from which he was not yet recovered. He now told his two colleagues that he was in no condition to go forward, and should be forced to part with them. The staple of La Salle's character, as his life will attest, was an invincible determination of purpose, which set at naught all risks and all sufferings. He had cast himself with all his resources into this enterprise, and, while his faculties remained, he was ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... before England had taken them into her keeping, and who gives some extraordinary details of the extent to which cannibalism then prevailed among their inhabitants, pork and human flesh being their two staple articles of food, relates in his deeply interesting record of his voyage that natural pig they called 'short pig,' and man dressed and prepared for food, 'long pig.' There was doubtless an attempt here to carry off with a jest the ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... miles, covering nearly twenty degrees of latitude. The variations of climate were naturally great, and involved marked differentiations in the character and products of labour. The prosperity of the Southern colonies depended mainly upon two great staple industries. Raleigh, in the course of his voyages, had learned from the Indians the use of the tobacco plant and had introduced that admirable discovery into Europe. As Europe learned (in spite of the protests of James ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... If the single flap seems to give a lop-sided effect, place a fellow on the other side, and fit it with sunk bolts to shoot into the overhanging top and plinth. If you wish to avoid the expense and trouble of fitting a lock, substitute a padlock and a staple clinched through the front of a drawer and passing through a slot in the flap (Fig. ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... zareeba was opened and the friends or wives of the prisoners entered. At once that enclosure became a cage of wild beasts. The gaolers took their dole at the outset. Little more of the "aseeda"—that moist and pounded cake of dhurra which was the staple diet of the town—than was sufficient to support life was allowed to reach the prisoners, and even for that the strong fought with the weak, and the group of four did battle with the group of three. From every corner men gaunt and thin as skeletons ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... our first accident. A passenger was running through a gangway, between decks, one stormy night, when he caught his foot in the iron staple of a door that had been heedlessly left off a hatchway, and the bones of his leg broke at the ancle. It was our first serious misfortune. We had traveled much more than twenty thousand miles, by land and sea, in many trying climates, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a formal-looking, old-fashioned house, with piazzas to the two stories, each bordered with a good extent of unquestionably modern gutter. The staple growth of the place, in which the house was set, like the centre of an antique breastpin, seemed to lie in the shrub called box. This ornamental vegetable stretched down each side of the gravel walk, hedged in all sorts ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... bawl in there under lock and key. And you there, pile plenty of stones against the door, thrust the bolt home into the staple, and to keep this beam in its place roll that great mortar ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... would be, first to agree upon the general amity and commerce between the two nations, and afterwards, if Sweden held it fit, when they sent an ambassador to England, or otherwise, to propound anything concerning the fishing for herrings or the traffic in America, or touching a staple at Narva, Revel, or Gothenburg (which Eric likewise discoursed of at large), that the Protector would give a ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... little inclosures into which they were divided skirting the bottom of the hills, and sometimes carrying their lines of straggling hedgerows a little way up the ascent. Above these were green pastures, tenanted chiefly by herds of black cattle, then the staple commodity of the country, whose distant low gave no unpleasing animation to the landscape. The remoter hills were of a sterner character, and, at still greater distance, swelled into mountains of dark heath, bordering ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... had changed entirely. What was the reason? Had the "law of God" been altered? Had some new "revelation" been handed down? Nothing of the kind; it was merely that a Yankee by the name of Eli Whitney had perfected a machine to take the seeds out of short staple cotton. The cotton crop of the South increased from four thousand bales in 1791 to four hundred and fifty thousand in 1820 and five million, four hundred ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... corruptions of wretchedness and poverty in large towns, the neglect of literature and classical learning, and the grievances of scholarly refinement in a world in which Greek iambic and Latin hexameter count for nothing,—such form the staple of his theses and tirades! His approximation at times to the confines of French realistic art is of the most accidental or incidental kind. For Gissing is at heart, in his bones as the vulgar say, a thorough ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... how did I evade it in these letters of mine? For people begin with a graceful skittish levity, lest you should be struck all of a heap with what is to come, and that is sure to be the stuff and staple of the man, full of wisdom and sorrow,—and then again comes the fringe of reeds and pink little stones on the other side, that you may put foot on land, and draw breath, and think what a deep pond you have swum across. But ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... satisfied with our survey, we collected a quantity of dried hay, and made ourselves some comfortable seats, where we could, without being seen, command the large end doors: one of which was fastened inside with a hook and staple, while the other had only the usual ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... while regretting that he was not what she called "serious-minded enough" to get on in the world. Rapkin had wooed and married her when they were both in service, and he still took occasional jobs as an outdoor butler, though Horace suspected that his more staple form of industry was the consumption of gin-and-water and remarkably full-flavoured cigars ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... the raveners of the deep. For we can hardly doubt that these prickles are meant as weapons of defence, without which so savoury a morsel as the mollusc within (cooked and eaten largely on some parts of our south coast) would be a staple article of food for sea-beasts of prey. And it is noteworthy, first, that the defensive thorns which are permanent on the two thinner species, aculeatum and echinatum, disappear altogether on the thicker one, tuberculatum, ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... critics who had condemned Pope's work without the requisite knowledge of Greek. From the tenor of the rest of the essay it may, however, be concluded that the writer was taking leave of his enterprise; and, according to a note by Boswell, in his Life of Johnson, it seems that Mr. Reed of Staple Inn possessed documents which showed that Fielding at this juncture, probably in anticipation of more lucrative legal duties, surrendered the reins to Ralph. The Champion continued to exist for some time longer; indeed, it must ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... his former fear, Dick hurried across the cabin floor to the door of the inner apartment. Feeling around in the dark he found a hasp and staple and pulled out the plug which fastened the barrier. In another instant boy and girl plumped into each other's arms in the darkness. Even in that moment of peril Dick could not resist giving Nellie a little squeeze, which ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill |
