"Pit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their husbands generally jealous. They give presents to the fathers or relatives of the girls they have wedded. These are the ceremonies and forms observed in their marriages. In regard to their burials: When a man or a woman dies, they dig a pit, in which they put all their property, as kettles, furs, axes, bows, arrows, robes, and other things. Then they place the body in the pit and cover it with earth, putting, on top many large pieces of wood, and another piece upright, painted red on the upper part. They believe ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... of law. He was "immediately dismissed from his office," (1626,) and Sir Nicolas Hyde appointed in his place. By such means the courts were filled with tools of the King or his favorites, and the pit digged for the liberties of the People, into which at last there ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... this gashly pit? Yah! Why didn't the captain and 'venturers get it, then, when they dug it fifty year 'fore I ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... at last," and my heart went pit-a-pat as I pointed it out to Nimrod. He recognised it but remained far too calm for my fancy. I pointed into the bushes with signs of "Hurrah, it's Wahb." I received in reply a shake of the head and a pitying smile. How was I to know that the ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... replied with a significant smile. "That I have travelled so much, is probably due to my desire to escape from that place! But you at Toledo, at Fuentecarral,—that is the name of my castle,—a Parisian like you! It would be cruel. As well shut up a humming-bird in a bear-pit. No! thank God, I have other nooks in Spain that will shelter us, my dear sparrow of the boulevards! Under the Andalusian jasmines, beneath the oleanders of Cordova or Seville, under the fountains whose basins are decorated with azulejos, and in which sultanas bathe, my jasmins could never sufficiently ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... death scared Pinocchio at all, it was only for a very few moments. For, as night came on, a queer, empty feeling at the pit of his stomach reminded the Marionette that he ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... and of good deeds, a pure and stainless reputation that had extended beyond the gulf into distant countries, and the traditional admiration, rising almost to worship, of several generations; all these things only served to deepen the pit into which the fisherman had fallen, at one blow, from his kingly height. Good fame, that divine halo without which nothing here on earth is sacred, had disappeared. Men no longer dared to defend the poor wretch, they pitied ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and make him grin, for he believed that he was invincible in arms, and that no man could stand against him, in which belief he was somewhat excused by his long record of successes, and it seemed to him no more than a sorry joke that a lad and a scholar like Dante should really pit his pigmy self against Simone's giantship. It was no information of Maleotti's that told Simone the truth about the unknown poet. That, as you know, he found out for himself, and if he did but despise any skill that Dante might attain in arms, he had the clumsy man's horror of the thing ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... a boy, in going among the savages at this hour, and letting himself fall into their hands like a deer that tumbles into a pit," growled the old man, perceiving as usual the mote in his neighbor's eyes, while he overlooked the beam in his own; "if he is left to pay for his stupidity with his own flesh, he can blame no one ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... of love to notify it, he went to his fair One, owned his father had mollified, but hoped she would be so good as to excuse him. You cannot imagine what an entertaining fourth act of the opera we had the other night. Lord Vane, (304) in the middle of the pit, making love to my lady. The Duke of Newcastle (305) has lately given him three-score thousand pounds, to consent to cut off the entail of the Newcastle estate. The fool immediately wrote to his wife, to beg she would return to him from Lord Berkeley; that he had got so much money, and ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... Miss R——'s face was assuming a fine, corpse-like green tint, I began to have a hesitating and unhappy sensation in the pit of the stomach, a suggestion of doubt as to the wisdom of leaving the solid, reliable land, and trusting myself to the fickle and deceitful sea. In a few moments these disquieting hints had grown to a positive clamor, ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... a grand one. Belforest Park on the one side, the town almost as if in a pit below, with a bird's-eye prospect of the roofs, the gardens and the school-yard, the leaden-covered church, lying like a great grey beetle with outspread wings. Beyond were the ups- and-downs of a wooded, hilly country, with glimpses of blue river here and there, and village and town gleaming ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Louis placed themselves, though some considerable way from the burn which ran at the bottom of the defile, they were still in a very pit of darkness. The leaves were dense overhead, and only the white gates gleamed very faintly in the trough of gloom where ran ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... during the whole time she was showing us about. She showed us dark passages, a gloomy apartment in which Welsh kings and great people had been occasionally confined, that strange memorial of the good old times, a drowning pit, and a large prison room, in the middle of which stood a singular-looking column, scrawled with odd characters, which had of yore been used for a whipping-post, another memorial of the good old baronial times, so ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... doubt of the reality of this fearful apparition. The jaws and teeth that Harvey had spoken about were even worse than he had predicted. Slowly, slowly, those loathsome jaws parted. Beth looked down into that awful gulf, like a great dark pit, opening to receive her. There were the two rows of gleaming white teeth ready to devour girls who screamed. How she kept from screaming she never knew. Perhaps she was too much paralyzed with fear. However, she kept so still ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... all the mobocrats of the nineteenth century were in the middle of the sea, in a stone canoe, with an iron paddle; that a shark might swallow the canoe, and the shark be thrust into the nethermost pit of hell, the door locked, the key lost, and a blind man ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... In a pit about eight feet deep, twenty feet long, and ten feet wide, laid up on the sides with stones, a fire of hickory had been made, over which, after the wood had burned down to coals, a whole ox, divested of its hide ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... trail was crossed by two fresher ones; then we found some dry wallows and several very fresh tracks. We tied up the horses in an old funnel pit and set about an elaborate hunt. Jarvis minded the stock, I set out with Sousi, after he had tried the wind by tossing up some grass. But he stopped, drew a finger-nail sharply across my canvas coat, so that it gave a little shriek, and said "Va pa," which is ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... that ghastly figure moving hither? It becomes bigger, bigger, as it advances down the platform—more ghastly, more horrible, enormous! It is as tall as the whole stage. It seems to be advancing on the stalls and pit, and the whole house screams with terror, as the GHOST OF THE LATE HAMLET comes in, and begins to speak. Several people faint, and the light-fingered gentry pick pockets furiously in ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with a blaze of rose-pink rays never yet seen of man. They writhed like a brood of angry snakes, hissing and sulphur pale; Then swift they changed to a dragon vast, lashing a cloven tail. It seemed to us, as we gazed aloft with an everlasting stare, The sky was a pit of bale and dread, ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... melancholy of spirit which appertains to mortuary events. To him, indeed, the ride marked a burial, a burial of high hopes and ambition, and of his youth, with the partially excavated canal providing their pit and the concrete work ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... part brightened by the deliverance that had been provided. "And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall punish the host of the high ones that are on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth. And they shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in the prison, and after many days shall they be visited."[1347] To the same mighty prophet was shown the universality of the Savior's atoning victory, as comprizing the redemption ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... uncertain reputation? Have we not been accustomed to regard those times as hopelessly corrupt, impenetrably dark, universally superstitious? Ought we not to be mortified, rather than gratified, to learn that from the pit of so mouldy a past our book of prayer was digged? Would not a brand-new liturgy, modernized expressly to meet the needs of nineteenth century culture, with all the old English idioms displaced, every rough corner smoothed and every crooked ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... and hung up angrily. Then I went towards the elevators, walking in a sort of dream-like daze. There was a cold lump of something concrete hard beginning to form in the pit of my stomach. Wetness ran down my spine and a drop of sweat dropped from my armpit and hit my body a few inches above my belt like a pellet of icy hail. My face felt cold but when I wiped it with the palm of a ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... add no more now. My heart goes pit-a-pat. When you receive this I shall be packing for my journey. It will be splendid to see Susan in the moment of your triumph. Altogether, dear, I never felt more elated in my life. This great and unexpected excitement has perfectly restored my health. I say to myself—you know, ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... down the street to the brow of the hill, where they looked down upon Union Street, far below and almost under their feet. This they called the Pit, and it was well named. Themselves they called the Hill-dwellers, and a descent into the Pit by the Hill-dwellers was looked upon by them as a ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... river-driver. He made a business of picking up whatever floated down the stream, not excepting the dead bodies of men and horses, the former for their clothing and whatever their pockets contained, and the latter for the saddles and bridles on them. He buried the bodies of the men in a pit he had made for the purpose, drying and storing in his house portions ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... sweets, for we have dined well, and need a toothsome morsel. If you could see, mon vieux, and had set eyes on her, I should have my doubts of you also, for she is as the fairy light that draws the unwary into the Pit of Death. Can you guess? No! Then I will tell you. What think you of the Demoiselle de Paradis? Yes! Hiss, hiss! Sus, sus! On to ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... weak were made pawns and shuttlecocks for men—lawyers, who were playing upon their moods, their vanities, their desires, and their necessities. It was an unholy and unsatisfactory disrupting and delaying spectacle, a painful commentary on the frailties of life, and men, a trick, a snare, a pit and gin. In the hands of the strong, like himself when he was at his best, the law was a sword and a shield, a trap to place before the feet of the unwary; a pit to dig in the path of those who might pursue. It was anything you might choose to make of ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... got the forge set up. There was no fuel for it. A party of Marines had gone out to the woods to the east to cut wood; when they got back, they'd burn some charcoal in the pit that had been dug beside the camp. Until then, he and Sonny were drawing plans for a wooden wheel with a metal tire when Lillian came out of the headquarters hut with a clipboard under her arm. She motioned ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper
... the business of a Republican Senate to pull the donkey of the Democrats out of the pit; the dug the pit, and ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... in my stall at eve I sit (And these remarks would still apply, Perhaps with greater force, were I Accommodated in the Pit)— Worn with the long day's dusty strife, I ask a brief surcease of gloom; I want a mirror held to life, But not the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920 • Various
... on the part of the Maoris, had advanced; indeed, they were in no wise tardy to pit themselves against British troops. Their own success, or rather the want of success of the British, had brought about this state of feeling. Careful, direct study of the situation, upheld Sir George in the intuition that he must strike firmly at ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... ab'bey rec'ord pit'y col'ter ab'bot check'er dis'tant fo'cus atom ed'it din'gy glo'ry ash'es lev'el diz'zy lo'cust cap'tor meth'od fin'ish mo'ment car'rot splen'did gim'let po'tent cav'il ves'per spir'it co'gent ehap'ter west'ern tim'id do'tage chat'tel bed'lam ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... racial affairs James Evans, among others. This group and their allies in the services could point to a political fact of life: to interfere with local segregation laws and customs, specifically to impose off-limits sanctions against southern businessmen, would pit the administration against powerful congressmen, calling (p. 533) down on it the wrath of the armed services and appropriation committees. To the charge that this threat of congressional retaliation was simply an excuse for inaction, the ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... whilst hanging; he had an awful appearance, because his eyes were open and terror-stricken, his mouth was also open as though in the act of trying to catch his last breath. They quickly dug a pit near by and pushed therein the corpse of Zygfried with the handles of their pitchforks; they laid him with his face downward and covered it first with dust, then they gathered stones and placed them upon it, because it was an immemorial custom to cover ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... service in God's temples. In the hearts of such God's Spirit in moving could touch and quicken and flush with reviving life these old memories, and through them bring conviction of sin, and an intense desire to rise out of the horrible pit into which they had fallen and the clay wherein their feet were mired. Angels could come near to these by what of good and true was to be found half hidden, but not erased from their book of life, and so help in the work of their recovery ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... I fell into a pit of thought. I did not remark at first the change that was creeping over his face. He lay back on his pillow, made a faint zzzing sound that ceased, and presently and quite quietly he died—greatly comforted by my ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... to this process, or to the action of nature, or to the combined efforts of nature and his friends, that Bumpus owed his recovery, we cannot pretend to say; but certain it is, that, on Corrie's making a severer dab than usual into the pit of the seaman's stomach, he gave a gasp and a sneeze, the latter of which almost overturned Poopy, who chanced to be gazing wildly into his countenance at the moment. At the same time he involuntarily threw up his right arm, and fetched Corrie such a tremendous backhander on the chest that ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... convex, oblong, breadth about two thirds of the length, almost quadrilateral, with the upper portion produced into a flat projection; this projection is almost spear-shaped, being constricted a little on each side below the apex. There is a deep pit for the adductor muscle. The umbo is near the apex, the part above not being above one fifth of the whole length of the valve. As in S. vulgare, the growth is at first downwards, and subsequently a ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... evaporation on all sides as well as at the top. The result was that I had very bright and excellent hay at the bottom, top, and sides of that mow, but severals tons in the center were as completely charred as though burned in a coal pit. What prevented combustion has always been a mystery to me. Since that escape from a conflagration, I have not deemed it prudent to put clover in so green as to cause intense heating, or to fill a mow too rapidly. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... the devil ever sent to ruin men is after all but a lie that engulfs the liar. I know that man Jimgrim. She will dig a pit, but he will not fall into it. It may be that we shall all die together, ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... capitalists had guaranteed two millions sterling as compensation for such destruction of property as might be brought about by the discharge of the cannon, and, coupled with this guarantee, was a request that everyone living within five miles of what had been the Great Lever pit should leave, and this was authorised by a Royal Proclamation. There was no confusion, because, when faced with great issues, the Lancashire intellect does not become confused. It just gets down to business and does it. So it came about that the people of Bolton, ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... was seen to prevail about the precincts of tranter Dewy's house. The flagstone floor was swept of dust, and a sprinkling of the finest yellow sand from the innermost stratum of the adjoining sand-pit lightly scattered thereupon. Then were produced large knives and forks, which had been shrouded in darkness and grease since the last occasion of the kind, and bearing upon their sides, "Shear-steel, warranted," in such emphatic letters of assurance, ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... disgraced, insulted! Horrible man, Remembered be your laugh in lowest hell, Dragging you to the nether pit! Forgive me; You are my friend—take me from here—unbolt Those iron doors—I'll crawl upon my knees Unto my father—I have much to tell him. For but the freedom of one hour, sweet Prior, I'll brim the vessels of ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... to Labor" was printed, many persons expressed their regret that so little was said about sin and destitution in Boston itself; and many refused to believe that every pit-fall and snare open in the Old World gaped as widely here. "You have only the testimony of the girls themselves," they would reply, when I privately told them what I had not thought it wise to print. I have never ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... these flowers and plants and the brisk keen mountain air, blowing cold and fresh in spite of the hot sun, was remarkable. After admiring the beauty of the various specimens of flowers, and inspecting the works at the pit's mouth—where men were hard at work filling skips and emptying them into trucks waiting for their loads—some of the party got into the cage and descended 400 or 500 feet into the bowels of the earth. A few of the ladies declared they ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... moment the group of dark-cloaked figures outside crept off in single file like a slithering serpent, moving down the rock defile toward where in the cauldron pit the lights of the mine shone on its ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... B.C., and it was with terror found that the Gauls would twice take possession of the soil of Rome. On the advice of the priests, there was dug within the city, in the middle of the cattle-market, a huge pit, in which two Gauls, a man and a woman, were entombed alive; for thus they took possession of the soil of Rome, the oracle was fulfilled, and the mishap averted. Thirteen years afterwards, on occasion of the disaster at Cann, the same atrocity was again committed, at the same place and for the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... began Bazarov, 'reminds me of my childhood; it grows at the edge of the clay-pits where the bricks were dug, and in those days I believed firmly that that clay-pit and aspen-tree possessed a peculiar talismanic power; I never felt dull near them. I did not understand then that I was not dull, because I was a child. Well, now I'm grown up, ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... faith. The general character of a community formed of a rude people, emerging from fetish and demon worship, can be readily supposed. I suspect the converts made by the monk Augustine and his companions had not a little in their character and conduct to show the pit from which they had been taken; and yet that was the dawning of a day for the Anglian and Saxon race in our country for which we have abundant reason to be thankful. There is no doubt much imperfection in Kol and ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... continued three days, and from the large number of 'game uns' on both sides and in the adjacent country, will be prolonged no doubt a fourth. To prevent confusion and promote 'sport,' the Pit will be enclosed and furnished with seats; so that those having a curiosity to witness a species of diversion originating in a better day (for they had no rag money then,) can have ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... speed from those of the most powerful and elegantly designed computers. However, no machine or language exactly matching Turing's primitive set has ever been built (other than possibly as a classroom exercise), because it would be horribly slow and far too painful to use. A 'Turing tar-pit' is any computer language or other tool that shares this property. That is, it's theoretically universal — but in practice, the harder you struggle to get any real work done, the deeper its inadequacies suck you in. Compare {bondage-and-discipline ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... will be cow stables, then the back of the square will be the barn. The roofs are all connected up. Around the inside of the court yard next the buildings will run a brick sidewalk about six feet wide, and the square in the centre contains a brick walled pit into which the refuse of the stables and houses is thrown. One corner of this midden is bricked off to form a drainage pit. Of all ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... and cold by turns, he saw Rod Grant fling aside his brand-new crimson sweater and jog forth, smiling, to pit his skill and brains ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... to Long Lake was a winding one, up one hill and down another, and around a sharp turn where in years gone by there had been a sand pit. ...
— The Bobbsey Twins - Or, Merry Days Indoors and Out • Laura Lee Hope
... bring them down into the pit of destruction; bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... unsparing sword, and the penal fires of this resolute captain, had certainly accomplished the fate of the heretics; for angry lions, however numerous, would find their numerical force diminished by gibbets and pit-holes. We have lately been informed by a curious writer, that protestantism once existed in Spain, and was actually extirpated at the moment by the crushing arm of the Inquisition.[286] According to these catholic politicians, a great event in catholic history did not ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... "have n't you heard the news? The chief is coming this way soon, and is going to have all witches and the low animals like myself put to death. For this reason I am digging a pit to hide ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... outlines of the pit, they went to work with spade, shovel, and pick. The ground proved tolerably loose, and the pick was but little needed. The field-cornet himself handled one of the spades Hendrik the other, while Swartboy acted as shoveller, and filled ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... ship-money would become public property. He would be tried for his life. Themistocles would turn against him. The jury would hardly wait for the evidence. He would drink the poisonous hemlock and his corpse be picked by the crows in the Barathrum,—an open pit, sole burial ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... forward) The most practical and the surest way is a good butt with the horns in the pit of the stomach.... Shall I go ...
— The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Six Acts • Maurice Maeterlinck
... pole lies the large walled plain of Newton, whose interior is the deepest known depression on the moon. It is so deep that the sunshine never touches the larger part of the floor of the inner abyss, and a peak on its eastern wall rises 24,000 feet sheer above the tremendous pit. Other enormous walled plains are Longomontanus, Wilhelm I, Schiller, Bailly, and Schickard. The latter is one hundred and thirty-four miles long and bordered by a ring varying from 4,000 to 9,000 feet in height. Wargentin, the oval ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... breast—Dulness, debility, distress, and dismay, with a great sense of weariness—A wan complexion, a languid eye, a loathing stomach, and an uncertain appetite, which, if not immediately satisfied, is irremediably lost—Heartburning, bilious vomitings, belchings, pains in the pit of the stomach, and shortness of breath—Dizziness, inveterate pains in the temples and other parts of the head, a tingling noise in the ear, a throbbing of the brain, especially of the temporal arteries—Symptoms of asthma, tickling coughs, visible ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith
... making way to the coffee-room, though very slowly on account of the crowd; and just as they got near the lobby, Cecilia perceived Mr Belfield, who, immediately making himself known to her, was offering his service to hand her out of the pit, when Sir Robert Floyer, not seeing or not heeding him, pressed forward, and said, "Will you let me have the honour, Miss Beverley, of taking care ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... sinking at the pit of his stomach. To be plunged into an encounter with a gang of unknown ruffians on his first night offshore was more than he had bargained for. For a ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... his lordship, with the utmost gravity. "And if you choose to visit the bottomless pit, I won't go with you—we must part company, for I swear I'll not move another step towards it!—What's this?" he said, taking up his glass ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... return to Mike. By a happy thought, he had suddenly remembered that whilst working some days before in the hole, his pick had let in daylight on one side, and the desperate hope presented itself to his mind that he might make a passage into the next pit, which he knew led into others, and thus escape. His success was beyond his expectation; and he regained the open air at a sufficient distance from his late quarters to escape observation. Once able to reflect calmly upon the event of the morning, it required little discrimination ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... black-hearted villain, Slatter, ordered him down. He did not obey. The husband and wife, with tears streaming down their cheeks, besought him to let them converse for a moment. But no! a monster more hideous, hardened and savage, than the blackest spirit of the pit, knocked him down from the car, and ordered him away. The bystanders could hardly restrain themselves from laying violent hands upon the brutes. This is but a faint description of that scene, which took place within a few rods of the capitol, ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... our while to forget them also. We need not be burdened with them. So long as we have not repented of them, we may well be crushed under their load; but when we have cast them upon God, we are forever free. Let them go down into the pit of eternal oblivion. Let there be no phantom rising from the grave of buried sins to affright us. Looking to the Christ, their power is all gone. Oh, what a relief this is! See how men are driven by an accusing conscience—longing for deliverance from themselves, since in themselves ...
— Joy in Service; Forgetting, and Pressing Onward; Until the Day Dawn • George Tybout Purves
... a new species of thunder, which was approved of by the actors, and is the very sort that at present is used in the theatre. The tragedy however was coldly received, notwithstanding such assistance, and was acted but a short time. Some nights after, Mr. Dennis, being in the pit at the representation of "Macbeth," heard his own thunder made use of; upon which he rose in a violent passion, and exclaimed, with an oath, that it was his thunder. "See," said he, "how the rascals use me! They will not let my play run, and yet they steal my thunder!"—Biographia Britannica, ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... fine," she replied, smiling. "Margaret pit him doon for three dances, and sat in a corner with him through 'em a'. I wonder the incomparable one's lugs"—I knew what she meant because she pinched one—"arena burnt off his head. You should hae seen Maclachlan ranting and raving like an auld ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... stock and take care of the family for 18 months. Potatoes were raised in large quantities and after they were dug they were banked for the winter. By banked, it is meant, large holes were dug in the cellar of the house or under the house or inside of an outhouse; pine straw was put into this pit and the potatoes piled in; more straw was laid on and more potatoes piled in until all were in the pit. Dirt was shoveled over the lot and it was left until for using them. Northern people used and still use a large amount of white, or ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... since escaped. It is the ghost that rises from its tomb every night, to haunt its faithless lover, the world. It is a country of ancient silver-mines, unworked for centuries. You may see the gaping mouths of the dark old shafts through your telescopes. You may even see the rusting pit tackle, the ruinous engine-houses, and the idle pick and shovel. Or you may say that it is counterfeit silver, coined to take in the young fools who love to gaze upon it. It is, so to speak, a ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... now, calling to each other as the shells had given them a few minutes respite. He crept by them and came upon stones — the square stones of the walls of a house demolished and scattered. Only one house had been at that point, and, crawling carefully, he dropped into the pit of the cellar. There, in that cellar, Hal and he were to meet, if Hal ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes
... wind began to attack us. We had now been on the march for over twenty hours, only halting for our occasional meals. Wisps of cloud drove over the high peaks to the southward, warning us that wind and snow were likely to come. After 1 a.m. we cut a pit in the snow, piled up loose snow around it, and started the Primus again. The hot food gave us another renewal of energy. Worsley and Crean sang their old songs when the Primus was going merrily. Laughter was in our hearts, though not on our ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... hind flippers it digs a hole two or three feet deep, and deposits from eighty to one hundred and sixty eggs (Gibbon says from one hundred and fifty to two hundred). These are covered with sand, and the next comer makes another deposit on the top, and so on until the pit is full. Egg-laying comes earlier on the Amazon than on the Napo, taking place in August and September. The tracaja, a smaller species, lays in July and August; its eggs are smaller and oval, but richer than those of ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... cannon still defying, and her colors flaming, flying, In her pit her wounded helpless, on her deck her Admiral dead, Soared the Orient into darkness with her living and her dying: "Yet our lads made shift to rescue ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... wall from where we stand, and at its base, as we lean over the parapet, we see houses and alleys and just beneath us a school-yard of shouting, frolicking children. We brighten their play with a few friendly sous, as one enlivens the Bernese bear-pit with carrots. ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... if the story of the sub-prior was to be believed, Hereward and his housecarles had taken an ugly stride forward toward the pit. They had met him riding along, intent upon his psalter, in a lonely path of the Bruneswald,—"Whereon your son, most gracious lady, bade me stand, saying that his men were thirsty and he had no money to buy ale withal, ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... shaking the snow from his garments, he whistled loudly to Crusoe, and, on listening, heard him whining piteously. He hurried to the place whence the sound came, and found that the poor dog had fallen into a deep pit or crevice in the rocks, which had been concealed from view by a crust of snow, and he was now making frantic but ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... fell into one of the numerous crevasses. At the critical moment we were fortunately able to come to Bjaaland's aid; had we been a moment later the sled with its thirteen dogs would have disappeared in the seemingly bottomless pit. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... sobered (as well they might be) by the piteous tale of the Prioress concerning the little clergy-boy,—how, after the wicked Jews had cut his throat because he ever sang "O Alma Redemptoris," and had cast him into a pit, he was found there by his mother loudly giving forth the hymn in honour of the Blessed Virgin which he had loved so well. Master Harry Bailly was, as in duty bound, the first to interrupt by a string of jests the silence which ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... gaze to the livid sky whose far, clear stars were paled and shamed by the up-flung glare, like eyes of innocence peering down into a pit of hell. ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... should the divil be wanting of me?" cried Betty, tartly. "And isn't there divils enough in the corps already, without one's coming from the bottomless pit to frighten a ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... to whom they are addressed.' 'An antithesis renders a passage piquant'; but the dire results of a too-frequent indulgence in it are relentlessly set forth. Pages and pages are devoted to a minute survey of the pit-falls of punctuation. But when the young lady of that period had skirted all these, and had observed all the manifold rules of caligraphy that were here laid down for her, she was not, even then, out of the wood. Very special stress was laid on 'the use of the ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... of either the pit or the grotto kind, in which the dead were laid, together with various objects of use and luxury, without cremation, and in either coffins or loculi or simple ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... vnbroke are made to thee. Make me that nothing haue, with nothing grieu'd, And thou with all pleas'd, that hast all atchieu'd. Long may'st thou liue in Richards Seat to sit, And soone lye Richard in an Earthie Pit. God saue King Henry, vn-King'd Richard sayes, And send him many yeeres of Sunne-shine dayes. What more remaines? North. No more: but that you reade These Accusations, and these grieuous Crymes, Committed by your Person, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... he cried excitedly. "Thar sart'in is a cave in thar; but it is as dark as the bottomless pit. We must have lights before we can enter. Give me ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... a bottomless pit of intense light. The circular sheet of water reflected a luminous sky, and the shores enclosing it made an opaque ring of earth floating in an emptiness of transparent blue. The hills, purple and arid, stood out heavily on the sky: their summits seemed to fade into a coloured tremble ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... emotions, each according to his type and training. For to human eyes the Nevian is a fearful thing. Even to-day there are few Terrestrials—or Solarians for that matter—who can look at a Nevian, eye to eye, without feeling a creeping of the skin and experiencing a "gone" sensation in the pit of the stomach. The horny, wrinkled, drought-resisting Martian, whom we all know and rather like, is a hideous being indeed. The bat-eyed, colorless, hairless, practically skinless Venerian is worse. But they both are, after all, remote cousins ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... some unknown forces which I had only to understand to overcome; but there was an altogether new element in the sickening quality of the Morlocks—a something inhuman and malign. Instinctively I loathed them. Before, I had felt as a man might feel who had fallen into a pit: my concern was with the pit and how to get out of it. Now I felt like a beast in a trap, whose enemy ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... heard him say a fit of laughter drives away the devil, while the groans of flagellating saints seem as music to Beelzebub's ears. Thus, a wit-cracker is the demon's enemy, and the band of Pantagruel, an evangelical brotherhood, that with tankard and pot sends the arch-fiend back to the bottomless pit." ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... fragments that have to be blasted again in detail before a clearance is made, for the oxyhydrogen charge has such terrible force that it completely pulverizes the rock, scooping out, even in granite, a deep wide pit of parabolic section of which the spot where the charge was is the focus. The dust is blown out in a cloud high in ...
— The Dominion in 1983 • Ralph Centennius
... intolerable to husbands, live corpses with corruption distilling at each pore—and this filthy marriage law, which is the last relic of Christianity's worst barbarism, binds quick and wholesome flesh to stinking death, and bids them fester together in the legal pit. I set one honest man's curse upon that shameless and abominable creed, and I would not take my hand away from my seal though I went to the ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... with him, and when he brought it, told him to dig a hole in the ground, pointing to a spot at no great distance. While the slave was thus engaged, the dooty kept muttering the words—"Good-for-nothing! A real plague!" These expressions, coupled with the appearance of the pit the lad had dug, which looked much like a grave, made Park think it prudent to decamp. He had just mounted his horse, when the slave who had gone into the village returned, dragging the corpse of a boy by a leg and arm, which he threw into the pit ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... convulsive sigh. It was as though a deep pit had opened between herself and her companion. "That was Charles," she whispered, "poor Charles calling me. I ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... Among the rest, there was one Woman who made great Lamentation, and took off the condemn'd Person's Ear-rings. We supposed her to be his Mother. After he had taken his leave of her and some others, he was put into the Pit, and covered over with Earth He did not struggle, but yielded very quietly to his Punishment; and they cramm'd the Earth close upon him, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... virtue she is treated as a slave and outcast by the very man who brought her ruin upon her. Her self-respect is gone. Her life becomes valueless to her, and she is swept downward, ever downward, into the bottomless pit of prostitution, and becomes an outcast from ...
— From the Ball-Room to Hell • T. A. Faulkner
... yawning chasm or deep water. The leader of one party suddenly saw a very dark spot just before him; he jumped over, instead of stepping on it, and told the others to halt. Examination proved the dark patch to be a pit ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... saw an Angel come down from Heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... from a tray in a portholed pit consecrated to the use of a casual supercargo, rejoiced because he adored the sea, inland lubber that he had been born and where the tides of fate had stranded him. For, to a New Yorker, the sea seems far away—as far as it seems to the Parisian. And only when ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... always drawing nearer and nearer in a zigzag course, now easy and then difficult, to the green vale below. There were moments when Trixy was on her knees, moments when she was on her haunches, moments when she stood swaying above the pit, and moments when all traces of the trail had vanished. But somewhere ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... rain fell on us; cold, nor heat, nor hunger, nor thirst, nor fatigue affected us; neither our shoes nor our clothes wore out; but still we went on dancing. We trod the earth down to our knees, next to our middles, and at last were dancing in a pit. At the end of ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... spectator of the scene, unknown to all of them, who was aware of it. The cochero could not at first tell what were the things striking him in the pit of the stomach, as if he was being pelted with pebbles! But he could see they came from the hands of the hunchback, flung behind in his repeated contortions ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... and steeples, and breed only in such; yet in this village some pairs frequent the lowest and meanest cottages, and educate their young under those thatched roofs. We remember but one instance where they breed out of buildings, and that is in the sides of a deep chalk-pit near the town of Odiham, in this county, where we have seen many pairs entering the crevices, and skimming and ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... marched, counter-marched, fed, slept, and fought with his comrades; had dodged with them behind cover, loaded, fired, charged with them; had behaved outwardly like a decent soldier, but almost always with a sickening void in the pit of the stomach. Once or twice in particularly bad moments he had caught himself blubbering, and with a deadly shame. He had not an idea that at least a dozen of his comrades—among them Dave and Teddy—had seen it, and thought nothing of it; still less did he imagine that those had been his most ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... some pit, or lost himself among the dungeons," said my mother. "We will go and help you to ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... from the curse of evil and the eternal penalty of sin; but, believe me, your faith is vain if you do not stand for, and labour and fight to enforce, God's claims to proclaim Christ's redeeming grace, and to deliver men from going down to the pit. ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... they threw their victims, the living, dead and wounded, into the Trouillas Tower, some sixty feet, down into the pit. The men were thrown in first, and the women later. The assassins wanted time to violate the bodies of those who were young and pretty. At nine in the morning, after twelve hours of massacre, a voice was still heard crying from ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... its great apostle, Martin Luther. Luther was born in Eisleben in Germany in 1483 of a poor family whose ancestors had been peasants. Martin early showed himself bold, headstrong, willing to pit his own opinions against those of the world, but yet possessing ability, tact, and a love of sound knowledge. Educated at the university of Erfurt, where he became acquainted with the humanistic ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... the graves they proceeded to open the large pit, but the sight was too horrible, and they carried Imre away by force. He could not have looked on what was there and ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... The skeleton was covered and surrounded by a mass of limpet-shells. There were seven other skeletons buried in a line with these two, but without coffins, and they were not of the race of giants; and then, at a little distance, there was a great pit, filled with the bones of men, women, and children, as if a slaughtered multitude had been flung into a common grave. In this pit were found some beads, light blue in colour, some sherds of red glazed pottery, and a few fragments ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... to be put in the rivulet to soak, intending to try it after the European method of dressing flax. The sawpit being finished on the 18th, a small pine was cut down near it, which measured 115 feet in length, and two feet six inches diameter at the base: a twelve foot length was got on the pit, and the sawyers began sawing it into framings and scantlings for the store-house. By the 19th, the greatest part of the seeds we had procured at the Cape of Good Hope, and sown in the garden, were out of the ground, and seemed likely to do well; but scarcely any of the English seeds ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... he flung up his arms; the fumes from the cauldron entering in at his mind he said raging things that he had not known before and runes that were dreadful (the acolyte screamed); there he cursed London from fog to loam-pit, from zenith to the abyss, motor-bus, factory, shop, parliament, people. "Let them all perish," he said, "and London pass away, tram lines and bricks and pavement, the usurpers too long of the fields, let them all pass ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... vile job I fear and hate: Some sickening round of long endeavour, No light, no rest, no outlet ever: All at a pace that must not slack, Tho' heart would burst and sinews crack: Fog in one's eyes, the brain a-swim, A weight like lead in every limb, And a raw pit that hurts like hell Where once the light breath rose and fell: Do you but keep me, hope or none, Cheery and staunch till all is done, And, at the last gasp, quick to lend One effort more ...
— Thoughts on religion at the front • Neville Stuart Talbot
... peach tree made? First, the blossom appears. Then pollination and fertilization occur. The fruit ripens. The pit, or seed, is saved. In the spring of the next year the seed is planted. The young tree, known as the stock, comes up quickly. In August of that year a bud of the variety which is wanted is inserted in the little stock, near the ground. One year later, in the spring, ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... each other names, and breaking the furniture, and innocent little children fleeing to the neighbors for protection. Strikes are simply horrid. Can't you stop it? Labor and capital are like bears in a pit with sharpened teeth tearing each other's flesh. Of what use is our so-called civilization if it permits such brutal scenes? George, the lion in father is again aroused. There is no telling what ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... nor cattle for their stall, And frost no more is whitening all the lea. Now Cytherea leads the dance, the bright moon overhead; The Graces and the Nymphs, together knit, With rhythmic feet the meadow beat, while Vulcan, fiery red, Heats the Cyclopian forge in Aetna's pit. 'Tis now the time to wreathe the brow with branch of myrtle green, Or flowers, just opening to the vernal breeze; Now Faunus claims his sacrifice among the shady treen, Lambkin or kidling, which ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... Yrsi's prettiness, now to Stini's thrift. Their jealousy finally becomes so furious that Uli begins to cool off, which only makes them the more eager. Yrsi plans a master-stroke: she uncovers the liquid manure-pit, and Stini tumbles into it. When she is finally hauled out, not without difficulty and amid the gibes of the other servants, she falls like a tigress upon her rival, and the two roll in the dirt and become such a reeking ball of filth that no one ventures to touch them to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... and ravaged the crops. The king sent the cat to attack him. "Alas! I can only do what I am able," again pleaded the cat, but there was no moving the king. While the cat was coming, the elephant fell into a pit and was killed. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... Belvedere at Macugnaga, or the Tacul point upon the Mer de Glace, in some nightmare, and finding to one's horror that the radiant snows and river-breeding ice-fields have been turned by a malignant deity to sullen, stationary cinders. It is a most hideous place, like a pit in Dante's Hell, disused for some unexplained reason, and left untenanted by fiends. The scenery of the moon, without atmosphere and without life, must be of this sort; and such, rolling round in space, may be some planet that has survived ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... shareholders, and the shares were at more than cent per cent, when one bright morning Giles Compass, Esq., unexpectedly removed himself to that wider field for genius like his, the United States; and it was discovered that the mine had for more than a year run itself into a great pit of water, and that Mr. Compass had been paying the shareholders out of their own capital. My uncle had the satisfaction this time of being ruined in very good company; three doctors of divinity, two county members, a Scotch ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... looked back upon it all—knowing then the depth of the pit into which he had fallen, knowing the full power of the forces that were ranged against him—and he marvelled that he had ever had the courage to hold out. But in truth the idea of surrender did not occur to ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... complete description of the earth. They considered the earth as a parallelogram, flat, and surrounded by four seas, as a kind of house, with heaven as its upper story and the earth as its ground floor. To the north of the earth was a great mountain; at night the sun was pushed into a pit and pulled out again in the morning, with heaven as a loft and hell as a cellar. In the Atlantic Ocean, at some unknown distance from Europe, was one of the openings into hell, into which a ship sailing to this point, ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... maz'd,—my Husband's dead, My chile, (hush! hush! Lord love er face!) Tha pit-hawl had at Milemas, when ThAc put me in ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... thousands of public speeches I have made since that time. I have never again gone so far as to faint in the presence of an audience; but I have invariably walked out on the platform feeling the sinking sensation at the pit of the stomach, the weakness of the knees, that I felt in the hour of my debut. Now, however, the nervousness passes ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... into a great dark pit, acres in extent, its sides riddled with holes, the amputated ends of water and sewage lines and power cables dangling. Far below light glistened from the surface of a black pool. A few feet away the waitress stood unmoving in the dark on a narrow ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... Matsukura. To this last is to be credited the terrible device of throwing converts into the solfataras at Unzen, and under him, also, the punishment of the "fosse" was resorted to. It consisted in suspension by the feet, head downwards in a pit until death ensued. By many this latter torture was heroically endured to the end, but in the case of a few ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... exactly opposite the gate were open. Inside the shed forty or fifty men, who wore white robes and peculiar caps and who were engaged in chanting a dreadful, melancholy song, were gathered on three sides of a huge fire that burned in a pit in the ground. On the fourth side, that facing the gate, a man stood alone with his arms outstretched ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... that his own son had fallen into this pit was terrible to him. But he was compelled to look and listen. All the young men were smoking, and beer and wine, which stood on a buffet at one side of the room, ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... darkness was so intense, that the hapless wanderer cou'd only grope his way along, slowly and painfully.—Upon one corner of the street the foundation for a house had recently been dug, forming a deep and dangerous pit, lying directly in Sinclair's path: no friendly lantern warned him of the peril—no enclosure was there to protect him from falling. Unconscious of the danger, he slowly approached the brink of the pit; now he stood upon the extreme edge, and the next instant he fell! There ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... which any poet ever writ but he could produce it much better done in Shakespeare.' {328} Leonard Digges (in the 1640 edition of the 'Poems') asserted that every revival of Shakespeare's plays drew crowds to pit, boxes, and galleries alike. At a little later date, Shakespeare's plays were the 'closet companions' of Charles I's ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... of the truth of this statement, Schliemann, while clearing the Lion Gate, and investigating the already rifted tomb known as the Treasury of Atreus, caused a great pit, 113 feet square, to be dug within the walls at a distance of about 40 feet from the Lion Gate. With the most extraordinary good fortune he had hit upon the exact spot which he sought, and had even almost exactly proportioned his pit to the area within which ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... commands—were there any to wait for—the men, ducking low, dashed past him toward the pit, leaped down into it gouging their bayonets right and left. With the sentry's rifle still in his hands he tried to follow; but at the brink, being confronted by sounds of steel upon steel, oaths, grunts, yells of victory and of pain, his legs refused to ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... betrayed! How terrible had been her happiness on the edge of the pit! The days in Greece—Robin—Dion's return from the war! And she had wished to live rightly; she had loved the noble things; she had had ideals and she had tried to follow them. Purity ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... really thought, that such a phrase as the "Queen's wrongs" would be supposed to contain an allusion to the trial of Queen Caroline (August-November, 1820), and to the exclusion of her name from the State prayers, etc. Unquestionably if the play had been put on the stage at this time, the pit and gallery would have applauded the sentiment to the echo. There was, too, but one "pavilion" in 1821, and that was not on the banks of the Euphrates, but at Brighton. Qui s'excuse s'accuse. Byron was not above "paltering" with his readers "in ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... him. Nor can he help but weep and sigh at this. But his own self, he's not forgotten him, He owns his faults, and God's forgiveness bids: "Very Father, in Whom no falsehood is, Saint Lazaron from death Thou didst remit, And Daniel save from the lions' pit; My soul in me preserve from all perils And from the sins I did in life commit!" His right-hand glove, to God he offers it Saint Gabriel from's hand hath taken it. Over his arm his head bows down and slips, He joins his ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... the answer, not of the sages, Not of the loves that are ready to part, Ready to find their oblivion sweet! Out in the night there's an army marching, Men that have toiled thro' the endless ages, Men of the pit and the desk and the mart, Men that remember, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... and went by a narrow path through a few fields and meadows, by a sand-pit, to the Rauchfuss farm, and found its young mistress sitting in the garden under the lime-tree, eating her supper. On the white-covered table was a bowl of sour milk from which she ladled some out every little while, and a loaf of fresh bread, and a plate ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... land our hearts we give Till the sure magic strike, And Memory, Use, and Love make live Us and our fields alike— That deeper than our speech and thought, Beyond our reason's sway, Clay of the pit whence we were wrought ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... to lay down the candlestick! She persisted, however, in her determination, succeeded, was applauded, and Sheridan begged her pardon. She described well the awe she felt, and the power of the excitement given to her by the sight of Burke, Fox, Sheridan, and Sir Joshua Reynolds in the pit. She invited us to a private reading-party at her own house: present only her daughter, a very pretty young lady, a Mrs. Wilkinson, Mr. Burney, Dr. Holland, Lydia White, Mr. Harness and ourselves. She read one of her finest parts, and that best suited to a private room—Queen Katherine. She was ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... the death penalty is imposed (and the matter often lies in the discretion of the dicasts), the criminal, if of servile or Barbarian blood, may be put to death in some hideous manner and his corpse tossed into the Barathron, a vile pit on the northwest side of Athens, there to be dishonored by the kites and crows. The execution of Athenian citizens, however, is extremely humane. The condemned is given a cup of poisonous hemlock juice and allowed to drink it while sitting comfortably among his friends ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... came on in fury, his rags fluttering like ten scarecrows, and he waving his arms in the air, with wild gestures and grimaces and cries and curses. He was more terrible than the bull, and Turkey was behind him. I was just, like a negro, preparing to run my head into the pit of his stomach, and so upset him if I could, when I saw Turkey running towards us at full speed, blowing into the bagpipes as he ran. How he found breath for both I cannot understand. At length, he put the bag under his arm, and forth issued such a combination of screeching and grunting ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... the career of ambition. They had long run side by side. At length Fox had taken the lead, and Pitt had fallen behind. Then had come a sudden turn of fortune, like that in Virgil's foot-race. Fox had stumbled in the mire, and had not only been defeated, but befouled. Pit had reached the goal, and received the prize. The emoluments of the Pay Office might induce the defeated statesman to submit in silence to the ascendency of his competitor, but could not satisfy a mind conscious of great powers, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... fire, and he could not conceal it. Domini, he described to me minutely the effect of jealousy in a human heart. I had never imagined what it was, and, when he described it, I felt as if I looked down into a bottomless pit lined with the flames of hell. By the depth of that pit I measured the depth of his passion for this woman, and I gained an idea of what human love—not the best sort of human love, but still genuine, intense ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... was packed, pit to gods. Larry and his friend with considerable difficulty made their way to the front row of those standing, where they found a group of University men, who gave them enthusiastic welcome to a place in their company. The Chairman had made his opening remarks, ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... shouldn't be sorry to have one like him. There was a very different pair, when I was in the Marquis de Courtivois's service. He was one who made it a point never to be in good humor. His eldest son, who is a friend of the viscount's, and who comes here occasionally, is a pit without a bottom, as far as money is concerned. He will fritter away a thousand-franc note quicker than Joseph ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... me when he was teaching me my parts; for you know I commenced acting at a very early age. I was only three when I made my first appearance—and I ruined the play. It was at the Marylebone Theatre in the 'Three Poor Travellers,' and I was a blind child. My nurse was in the front row of the pit—that is, in the very first row, for there were no stalls. All I thought about was my new shoes—a very pretty, dainty little pair, and as soon as I stepped on the stage, I opened my eyes, caught sight of the delighted face of my ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... first time in his life he felt humble. He perceived how misguided he had been ever to suppose that he could pit his pigmy wits against ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... on the stage. A stage meal is popular, because it proves to the audience that the actors, even when called GEORGE ALEXANDER or ARTHUR BOURCHIER, are real people just like you and me. "Look at Sir HERBERT eating," we say excitedly to each other in the pit, having had a vague idea up till then that an actor lived like a god on praise and grease-paint and his photograph in the papers. "Another cup, won't you?" says Miss GLADYS COOPER; "No, thank you," ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... his forbearance, recoiled, and stepped into the roadway in order to pass him. Indignant at this attempt to ignore him, he again placed himself in her path, and was repeating his question with increased sternness, when a jerk in the pit of his stomach caused him a severe internal qualm, besides disturbing his equilibrium so rudely that he narrowly escaped a fall against the curb-stone. When he recovered himself he saw before him a showily dressed young man, ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... of submission. Such terror had the Persians inspired by their recent conquest of Ionia, that a large number of the Grecian cities at once complied with the demand; but the Athenians cast the herald into a deep pit, and the Spartans threw him into a well bidding him take ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... street, fell, probably on me. I was rendered insensible, and when I regained consciousness I found myself in a hotel near by with several doctors attending me. My leg was swollen from the knee to the thigh, and the swelling, almost to the point of bursting, extended along the body up to the arm-pit. The pain was almost beyond endurance. I lay at the hotel something over a week without being able to turn myself in bed. I had a steamer stop at the nearest point possible, and was carried to it on a litter. I was then taken to Vicksburg, where I remained unable to ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... minister from Walsall, who came before the public in connection with the proceedings at [82] Birmingham of Mr. Murphy, already mentioned. Speaking in the midst of an irritated population of Catholics, the Rev. W. Cattle exclaimed:—"I say, then, away with the mass! It is from the bottomless pit; and in the bottomless pit shall all liars have their part, in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone." And again: "When all the praties were black in Ireland, why didn't the priests say the ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... shadows came. The shadows lengthened. They lapped the floor, devoured the silver, turned the rug into a pit, the room into darkness. Apart from shadows, no one came, no one rang. But, though Lennox was unaware of it, two people did come, and of the two one would have rung, had not ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus |
