"Staple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hand touched the window-ledge. He felt along the sash and shoved upward. To his surprise, the window lifted easily. But the hand he shoved without met, as he expected it would, a heavy wooden shutter; and his investigating fingers disclosed, moreover, a padlock, that, by means of a staple sunk in the sill, locked the shutter fast. No hope of getting away through ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... including the Keeler family, were not accustomed to speak of bread as a compact and staple article of food, but rather as one of the hard means of sustaining existence represented by the term "hunks." At the table, it was not "will you pass me the bread?" but—and I shall never forget the sweet tunefulness ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... 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 a laske that I all besprinkled ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... walkers and saunderers, and some noted climbers; but as a staple recreation, as a daily practice, the mass of the people dislike and despise walking. Thoreau said he was a good horse, but a poor roadster. I chant the virtues of the roadster as well. I sing of the sweetness of gravel, good sharp quartz-grit. It is the proper ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... was unrelieved. After Bob and Jack Pollock had driven the last staple in the last strand of barbed wire, they turned their horses into the new pasture. The animals, overjoyed to get free of the picket ropes that had heretofore confined them, took long, satisfying rolls in the sandy corner, and then went eagerly to cropping ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... the Romans first attacked the island it was believed at Rome that slaves were the only booty which Britain could afford; and slaves, no doubt, must have been the staple commodity for which its ports were visited. Different tribes had at different times established themselves here by conquest, and wherever settlements are thus made slavery is the natural consequence. It was a part of the Roman economy; and ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... the 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, ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... to speak on the subject, and when we bear in mind that the excess charge of 40s. to 45s. per case does not benefit the State, but serves to enrich individuals for the most part resident in Europe, the injustice of such a tax on the staple industry becomes more apparent and ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... beans, cheese, tea, sugar, milk, and the profits on other articles are regulated by the Ministry. When Lord Devonport was Food Controller we had courses at lunch and dinner limited—a policy most people felt to be stupid as it meant a run on staple foods—and it was abandoned by Lord Rhondda. We had meatless days, which also have been stopped. We found it difficult to do, and impossible to regulate. We had many potatoless days last spring—by regulation in the restaurants—perforce by most of us in towns where they were almost impossible ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser
... industry, or whatever staple production, shall become, in the possible changes of the future, the leading interests of the country, thereby creating unforeseen complications or new conflicts of opinion and interest, the Constitution of the ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... mortal enemy: he therefore ordered all the inhabitants of Calais to evacuate the town, and he peopled it anew with English; a policy which probably preserved so long to his successors the dominion of that important fortress. He made it the staple of wool, leather, tin, and lead; the four chief, if not the sole commodities of the kingdom, for which there was any considerable demand in foreign markets. All the English were obliged to bring thither these goods: foreign ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... cuttlefish in a single night. Boats have been burst asunder by the weight of a few hauls, and caution has to be observed in loading. Besides the sepia, however, this coast swarms with another variety of cuttlefish which also furnishes a food-staple—the formidable tako, or true octopus. Tako weighing fifteen kwan each, or nearly one hundred and twenty-five pounds, are sometimes caught near the fishing settlement of Nakamura. I was surprised to learn that there was no record of any person having been ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... grace of the maple, The strength that is born of the wheat, The pride of a stock that is staple, The bronze of a midsummer heat; A blending of wisdom and daring, The best of a new land, and that's The regiment gallantly bearing The neat ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
... recommends them boiled or roasted and eaten with butter and sugar.[243] Eden notes its increasing popularity during the eighteenth century, and by his time (the end of that century) in many parts it was the staple article of food for the poor; in Somerset the children mainly subsisted on it, and in Devon it was made into bread. Its cultivation on a large scale in the field did not, however, spread all over England till the Napoleonic ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... technical assistance. Agriculture, including fishing, hunting, and forestry, 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 - which is hampered by internal political disputes - is struggling to upgrade education and technical training, privatize commercial and industrial enterprises, improve health services, ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... against such hosts as these? An evil day was coming on the Southern politicians, and it behooved them to be prepared. As a separate nation—a nation trusting to cotton, having in their hands, as they imagined, a monopoly of the staple of English manufacture, with a tariff of their own, and those rabid curses on the source of all their wealth no longer ringing in their ears, what might they not do as a separate nation? But as a part of the Union, they were ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... beans, using half a pound of pork 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 ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... latter passes twice over the seat on the clip, the first turn holding the clip to the stave, while the second turn is held by the lugs which are hammered down over it. The end of the band is then turned back over the clip and held down by a staple. ...
— The Water Supply of the El Paso and Southwestern Railway from Carrizozo to Santa Rosa, N. Mex. • J. L. Campbell
... and Minnesota, and throughout the Rocky Mountains and the timbered ranges of the Pacific coast. In the East it has always ranked second only to the deer among the beasts of chase. The bear and the buck were the staple objects of pursuit of all the old hunters. They were more plentiful than the bison and elk even in the long vanished days when these two great monarchs of the forest still ranged eastward to Virginia and Pennsylvania. The wolf and the cougar were ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... land did not exist. The town lands were divided out annually among the members of the community, as their wants required, the consumption of each adult being calculated at twenty loads (of a man) of maize each year, this being the staple food.[27-1] ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various
... the ancient graves, having been buried with the ashes of the dead, as an indispensable article for their outfit for another world. When Florida and Louisiana were first discovered, the native Indian tribes all cultivated maize as their staple food; and throughout Yucatan, Mexico, and all the western side of Central America, and through Peru to Chili, it was, and still is, the main sustenance of the Indians. The people that cultivated it were all more or less advanced in civilisation; they were ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... his consumption by Mrs. Waring. In this regard, also, the utmost parsimony was evinced, and the daily fare consisted of the commonest articles of diet that he was able to purchase. Salt meats and fish, brown bread and cheese, seemed to be the staple articles of food. At the expiration of every week, accompanied by William, he would journey to South Norwalk, to purchase the necessary stores for the following seven days, and he soon became well-known ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... Charlotte. The lingering signs of the old family mansion are still visible; and the plow, in this centennial year, runs smoothly over its site, presenting a more vigorous growth of the great Southern staple, cotton, than the adjoining lands. The plantation was a part of the valuable lands owned by Ezekiel Polk in the "Providence" settlement, and near the present flourishing village of "Pineville." The family mansion, around ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... by Major Carter, on the bank of the lake, between Meadow and Spring streets, and this was speedily followed by another, built by Elias and Harvey Murray, which became the centre of business and gossip for the village and the country round about. Of course a full supply of the great staple—whisky—was kept. ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... the fracture means new business for the district—even this majestic thought had probably never occurred to either of the girls. The fact is, that while in the Five Towns they were also in the Square, Bursley and the Square ignored the staple manufacture as perfectly as the district ignored the county. Bursley has the honours of antiquity in the Five Towns. No industrial development can ever rob it of its superiority in age, which makes it absolutely sure in its conceit. And the time will never come when the other towns—let ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... fortunate enough to obtain one—and then went forward to the forecastle to hunt for a lantern of some sort. I found the fore-scuttle not only closed, but also secured by a stout iron bar, the slotted end of which was passed over a staple and secured by a padlock. Fortunately, however, the individual who had last visited the little vessel had been too careless or too lazy to remove the key from the lock, therefore all I had to do was ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... value. You can help along a little by wearing high-heeled shoes. So you can do something to encourage yourself in serenity of aspect and demeanor, keeping your infirmities and troubles in the background instead of making them the staple of your conversation. This piece of advice, if followed, may be worth from three to five years of the fourscore which you hope ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... will soon have means of conjecturing, that Myrtle had seen him but once in the week following his return, and that in the presence of her dragons. She had various excuses when he called,—headaches, perhaps, among the rest, as these are staple articles on such occasions. But Master Gridley knew his man too well to think that slight obstacles would prevent his going forward to ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... English wool, vexed in a Belgian loom, And into cloth of spongy softness made, Did into France or colder Denmark doom, To ruin with worse ware our staple trade." ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... diversion, let me say here that, while slicing off the victim's ear is a staple situation among novelists who write of bandits, in all my experience with bandits—and I have known a thousand, most of 'em in Wall Street—I have never known it done, and I challenge those who write of South European highway-robbers to produce any evidence to prove that the ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... synthetic drugs as to form one subject of discussion. Quite early in the war dye-stuffs ran short, and there was no means of replenishing the stock in Britain, nor even in America, these products having formed the staple of a colossal manufacture, with an enormous ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... to be ground by pounding, or in primitive hand-mills. Potatoes were about the only vegetable raised in large quantities, and pioneer families often made the whole meal of roasted potatoes. Once when his father had "asked the blessing" over an ashy heap of this staple, Abe remarked that they were "mighty ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... 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
... he said, had reached even his ears, not at all favourable to that gentleman's character, and he expressed himself strongly of opinion that any such appointment was quite out of the question. At this stage of the proceedings, the master's right-hand man, Tom Staple, was called in to assist at the conference. Tom Staple was the Tutor of Lazarus and, moreover, a great man at Oxford. Though universally known by a species of nomenclature so very undignified, Tom Staple was one who ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... entirely unblessed with a sense of humor. I can even now recall with a sinking of the heart the manner in which, if I abjured my food, he would grasp me firmly by the back of the neck and force my nose toward the plate of Indian mush—which was the family staple at supper—with the command, "Eat, boy!" Sometimes he was kind to a degree which, by a yawning of the imagination, might be regarded as affectionate, but this was only from a sense of religious duty. At such times I was prone to distrust ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... 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 to consult in preparing his Dictionary ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... the credit of humanity, that these facts are not generally known, for man has ills enough without incurring the risks of such a diet. If pork must form a staple, let the genealogical tree of his pigship be carefully sought after, and let the would-be consumer ask the question considered so important in a certain river- bounded city of Pennsylvania, "Who ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... the thirteenth century, and used for making paper; and in the sixteenth, the plant was grown in the south of Europe. From Italy it was carried into the Low Countries, and only reached England in the seventeenth century,[183] so lately has the great staple of our manufactures first belonged ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... coquetted with this older woman who loved her, and whom she loved, with that charming coquettishness sometimes seen in a daughter towards her mother. She presumed upon this affection which she felt to be so staple. She affronted Sylvia with a delicious sense of her own power over her and an underlying affection, which had in it the protective instinct of youth which dovetailed with the protective instinct ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... by Samuel at Ramah to David's exorcism of the evil spirit, (xvi. 23,) and contains five acts. The second part opens with David as a guest in the palace at Gibeah. The defeat of the Philistines at Elah, Saul's jealousy of David, and the latter's marriage with Michal form the staple of the four acts of this part. The third part consists of six acts of unusual length, (some of them have thirteen scenes,) and is devoted to the pursuits and escapes of David, the Witch of Endor, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... 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
... the working classes, a larger and more accessible coast, and nearly eight times the length of navigable rivers, greater hydraulic power, vast superiority in mines of coal and iron, a far more salubrious climate, cotton, the great staple of modern industry, much nearer to Maryland, her location far more central for trade with the whole Union, and Baltimore, her chief city, nearer than Boston to the great West, viz,: to the Ohio at Pittsburg and Cincinnati, the Mississippi ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the lady selected for the honor of opening the festivities was subsequently toasted as the reigning divinity of fashion for the hour. The "minuet de la cour" and stately "quadrille," varied by the "basket dance," and, on exceptional occasions, the exhilarating "cheat," formed the staple for saltatorial performance, until the hour of eleven brought the concluding country dance, when a final squad of roysterers bobbed "up the middle and down again" to the airs of "Sir Roger de Coverly" or ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... farmhouse at the time and place to which my story belongs. But for twenty miles inland there was no forgetting the sea, nor the sea-trade; refuse shell-fish, seaweed, the offal of the melting-houses, were the staple manure of the district; great ghastly whale-jaws, bleached bare and white, were the arches over the gate-posts to many a field or moorland stretch. Out of every family of several sons, however agricultural their position might be, one had ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... suddenly take such a decided view of Casson's character as he appeared to have done. They went to the stable and examined it very carefully. They found the door unfastened; but on further consideration, discovered that the staple, which was rusty, had been broken off, so that, though the key had been turned, it could be opened as easily as if it had had no lock. They went up through the trap-door, but found nothing to assist them, till, just as they were descending, Hamilton picked up part of a Greek exercise. It was ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... part of the saloon was a good sized Yankee stove, black with dirt, and rust, the accumulation of many days' cooking, during which fried pork was the staple article; and it was evident that the presiding genius of the cuisine department had been regardless of how much fat was spilled, and how ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... abounds; and wheat, dhal (Cajanus) and gram (Cicer arietinum), Carthamus, vetches, and rice are the staple products of the country. Bushes are few, except the universally prevalent Adhatoda and Calotropis. Trees, also, are rare, and of stunted growth; Figs, the Artocarpus and some Leguminosa prevail most. I saw but two kinds of palm, the fan-palm, and Phoenix: the ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... particularly esteemed. Indeed, so extensively was the hunting of deer practised that bows and arrows were often called kago-yumi and kago-ya (kago signifies "deer"). Fish, however, constituted a much more important staple of diet than flesh, and fishing in the abundantly stocked seas that surround the Japanese islands was largely engaged in. Horses and cattle were not killed for food. It is recorded in the Kogo-shui that the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... was trembling in the ghost's hand. In fact, so convulsive was his grasp that it shook the hook from the staple, and the shutter slowly opened as he ...
— His Unquiet Ghost - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... reading. Poor, indeed, in all manner of resources, must be the child who cannot now buy, beg, or borrow a fair supply of reading of some kind; so that exclusion from the library is likely to be a shutting up of the boy or girl to dime novels and story papers as the staple of reading. Complaints are often made that public libraries foster a taste for light reading, especially among the young. Those who make this complaint too often fail to perceive that the tastes indulged by those who are admitted to the use of the public library ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... and Calenzana. They contain noble specimens of pines, oaks, beech, chestnut, walnut and olive trees. The cork oak forms woods, chiefly in the south of the island. The chestnut trees are as large and fruitful as the best on the Apennines, and the nuts form the staple article of food for man and beast during the winter months. Indeed, these glorious chestnut and beech forests, when in full foliage, are the grand features of Corsican scenery, which therefore cannot be seen to advantage till ...
— Itinerary through Corsica - by its Rail, Carriage & Forest Roads • Charles Bertram Black
... plant. This has been cultivated and used as food in tropical countries from very remote times, and furnishes enormous quantities of nutritious food, and serves as a staple support to a large number of the human race. The expressed juice is in some countries made into a fermented liquor and the young shoots ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... to that total our returns showed that we were rapidly approaching. The most careful calculations warned us that by next shearing we should hardly know what to do with our sheep. It is always better to be under than overstocked, for the merino gets out of condition immediately, and even the staple of the wool deteriorates if its wearer be at all crowded ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... extent for the last six or eight months, and from the observations I have made on it during that time, I have no hesitation in saying that it possesses many excellences: it is long enough (almost too long), very sound in staple, and where well managed of a very good colour. Its defects are coarseness and harshness of staple, and if these could be removed I don't see what is to prevent its rivalling the Egyptian and Sea Islands cotton, any ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... body of the case was secure, Duncan made a door from the lid and fastened it with hinges. He drove a staple, screwed on a latch, and gave Freckles a small padlock—so that he might fasten in his treasures safely. He made a shelf at the top for his books, and last of all covered the case ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... entirely of carbon and water, drains hardly any mineral constituents from the soil. But if that jungle be once cleared off, the slow and careful work of ages has been undone in a moment. The burning sun bakers up everything; and the soil, having no mineral staple wherewith to support a fresh crop if planted, is reduced to aridity and sterility for years to come. Timber, therefore, I believe, and timber only, is the proper crop for these poor soils, unless medicinal or otherwise useful trees should be discovered hereafter worth the planting. ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... unsmirched during three generations, and was prouder of it than of any other of its possessions. It was so proud of it, and so anxious to insure its perpetuation, that it began to teach the principles of honest dealing to its babies in the cradle, and made the like teachings the staple of their culture thenceforward through all the years devoted to their education. Also, throughout the formative years temptations were kept out of the way of the young people, so that their honesty could have every chance to harden and solidify, and become a part of their very bone. The neighbouring ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... little enclosures into which they were divided skirting the bottom of the hills, and sometimes carrying their lines of straggling hedge-rows 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 the horizon with a screen which gave a defined and limited boundary to ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... Carolina.[8] 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 untrammeled development of slave-trade ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... authority on the history of the East Indian Islands, wrote of the Dutch in Borneo of the early times — "Their sole object, according to the commercial principles of the time, was to obtain, through arrangements with the native prince, the staple products of the country at prices below their natural cost, and to sell them above it... . The result of these (arrangements) was the decline of the trade of Banjermasin; its staple product, pepper, which had at one time been considerable, having become nearly extinct" (DICTIONARY OF ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... not "come between" them. She had arrived in New York in midseason, and the dread of seeing familiar faces kept her shut up in her room at the Malibran, reading novels and brooding over possibilities of escape. She tried to avoid the daily papers, but they formed the staple diet of her parents, and now and then she could not help taking one up and turning to the "Society Column." Its perusal produced the impression that the season must be the gayest New York had ever known. The Harmon ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... to the door, and made a violent muscular effort. He had been an athlete in his time, and the sap was yet in him. The door creaked, little by little it began to give, the woodwork enclosing the bolt of the lock splintered, the panels bent inwards, the large upper bolt tore off its iron staple; the door flew back with a crash. Grodman ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... the staple of Republican exhortations was the Southern question and the need of a "strong man." Even Conkling in his one speech made no reference to State politics or State affairs. When Cornell's election, midway in the canvass, seemed assured, Curtis argued that his success would defeat the party ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... lie. It sounds well. There are some genuine bankrupt sales, of course; there are a few bona fide smoke, fire and water mark-downs undoubtedly, but there are more advertised in a week than there are failures and fires in a year. Good, staple merchandise will usually bring its value, and he who advertises an unheard of bargain has generally set a trap for the unwary. One class of goods in the window marked a certain price, an inferior class on the bargain counter at the same figure. You bargain for a piece of furniture at ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... of profitable commercial fruit-growing in this State, and this pamphlet is intended in part to be an answer to such inquiries; but, at the same time, it is hoped that it will have a wider scope, and give a general idea of one of our staple industries to many who are now on the look-out for a country in which to settle and an occupation to take ...
— Fruits of Queensland • Albert Benson
... antient stone building bounding the west side of the church yard is an hospital founded about the year 1516, by W. Wigston, Merchant of the staple at Calais, and mayor of Leicester, for 12 men and 12 women, their pay about 3s. weekly. It has a master and confrater. The Chapel has a large gothic window ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts
... selfish are they, that I have heard more than one lady declare that she didn't care if it was unjust, she should like to have slaves, rather than be plagued with servants who had so much liberty. All the novels, poetry, and light literature of the world, which form the general staple of female reading, are based upon aristocratic institutions, and impregnated with aristocratic ideas; and women among us are constantly aspiring to foreign and aristocratic modes of life rather than to those of native republican simplicity. How many women are ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... curiosity, which is an 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 breaking into ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... as like him as pea to pea. He has a tolerable share of his good qualities; and as for his prejudices—oh, they are his meat and drink, and the very clothes he wears. He is made up of prejudices—he is covered all over with them. They are the staple of his dreams; they garnish his dishes, they spice his cup, they enter into his very prayers, and they make his will altogether. His oaks and elms in his park, and in his woods—they are sturdy timbers, in troth, and gnarled and knotted to some purpose, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... its near destruction by war and political upheaval. The food situation remains precarious; during the 1980s famine was averted only through international relief. In 1986 the production level of rice, the staple food crop, was able to meet only 80% of domestic needs. The biggest success of the nation's recovery program has been in new rubber plantings and in fishing. Industry, other than rice processing, is almost nonexistent. Foreign trade has been primarily with the former USSR and Vietnam, ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... 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 ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... hoe the drilled-in wheat. The rice, the staple of the country, is so cared for and tended that it sells for much more than other rice. Imported rice is the ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... of brown bread and three quarters of a pint of gruel, or "skilly." The latter was frequently so fluid that spooning was unnecessary. The dinners, served punctually at twelve o'clock, were more varied. Brown bread and browner potatoes were the staple of each mid-day meal. The bread was always excellent. The potatoes were abominable. I have said that they were browner than the bread, and I may add that the color was not caused by cooking, but purely original. As the old potatoes were ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... of November were now upon us, which might account to some extent for the sleepy appearance of the old town of Coventry; but it appeared that underlying all this was a feeling of great depression caused by the declining state of its two staple industries—watches and silk. The manufacture of watches had been established here for many years, for as early as 1727 the archives recorded that a watch-maker had been appointed Mayor of Coventry, and for anything we knew ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... necessity of removing him! At last, nobody could understand either how such a man could ever have been chosen, or how he could have remained so long in his place! All his faults and all his ridicules formed the staple of Court conversation. If anybody referred to the great things he had done, to the rapid gathering of armies after our disasters, people turned on their heels and walked away. Such were the presages of the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... known, as it is not always possible to resort to irrigation. The quantity of labor required for previous tillage, cultivation, and harvesting of different crops, and the available supply, are primary essentials to be considered before entering upon the culture of any staple product, however remunerative it may appear in prospective. Facility and cost of transport to the nearest market or shipping port are the next desiderata to be ascertained, as well as a careful estimate of the cost of ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... the floor lay Nayland Smith, partially stripped, his arms thrown back over his head and his wrists chained to a stout iron staple attached to the wall; he was fully conscious and staring intently at the Chinese doctor. His bare ankles also were manacled, and fixed to a second chain, which quivered tautly across the green carpet and passed out through ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... (Ja'nn) Ravine," flowing from a haunted hill of red stone, near which no Arab dares to sleep. From that point the travellers struck nine miles and a half to south-east of Ghubbat Suwayhil: this roadstead, used only by native craft, lies eastward of the long point forming the Arabian staple of the Gulf el-Akabah's gate, where the coast-line of Midian bends at a right angle towards the rising sun. Adjoining it to the east, and separated by a long thin spit, is the Ghubbat el-Wagab (Wajb), the mouth ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... out how it is by this marvellous process of reproduction, not only that the world is made green and beautiful, but all animal life is fed. Corn and rice, which are only fertilized seeds, form the staple food of a large proportion of mankind; while even the animal in order to live has first to be nourished on corn or grass before it ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... comparatively modern iron veranda, with steps leading down to the terrace. In front of the building, between the elm avenue and the flower-bordered terrace, stood a row of very old poplar trees, tall as their forefathers in Lombardy, and to an iron staple driven into one of these, a handsome black horse ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... a staple of wealth to the people of Scandinavia. They are diminutive in size, dun-colored, docile in habits, and excellent milk producers. It is said when they are well-fed they average from six to nine hundred gallons of milk a year. The ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... that the production of wool could not keep step with it, and the price of the raw material rose greatly out of proportion to the price of the manufactured goods. Accordingly, we have here in the raw material of three staple articles a threefold material for a commercial crisis. Apart from these special circumstances, the seeming crisis of the year 1851 was, after all, nothing but the halt that overproduction and overspeculation make regularly in the course of the industrial cycle, before pulling all their forces ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... directed against the mercantile interest, and excited much general discontent. The Netherlands wished the staple of the English cloth manufacture to be removed from Emden—the petty, sovereign of which place was the humble servant of Spain—to Amsterdam or Delft. The desire was certainly, natural, and the Dutch merchants sent a committee to confer with Leicester. He was much ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... her laced-silk sleeves to make a pie. The Captain brought out a silver pie-dish of immense capacity, and the Captain brought out flour and butter and eggs and all things needful, except the inside of the pie. Of materials for the staple of the pie itself the Captain brought out none. Then said the lovely bride: 'Dear Captain Murderer, what pie is this to be?' He replied: 'A meat pie.' Then said the lovely bride: 'Dear Captain Murderer, I see no meat.' The ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... I quickly discovered that they might also aptly be termed limpet-pickers, for they seemed to take these shell fish as their staple food. The modus operandi of feeding is to pounce down upon a rock which the receding tide has left bare, and with a single sharp blow with its beak, detach a limpet, and turning it mouth upward, pick out the fish at its leisure. ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... objects manufactured from it constitute the principal article of export; in fact the only source of wealth of the Yucatecans. As the filament is now much in demand for the fabrication of cordage in the United States and Europe, many of the landowners have ceased to plant maize, although the staple article of food in all classes, to convert their land into hennequen fields. The plant thrives well on stony soil, requires no water and but little care. The natural consequence of planting the whole country with hennequen has ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... books on botany describing them could grow by mere chemical forces." No theory of an "eternal series" can account for this created universe. No matter how long a chain you may have, you must have a staple somewhere from which it depends. An endless perpendicular chain is an impossibility. "Every house is builded by some man," says the Bible; so this world in which we live was built by a designing mind ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... perils; in him courage was not a sentiment; but a thing simply useful to him, and always at hand upon all mortally practical occasions. Besides, he thought, perhaps, that in this business of whaling, courage was one of the great staple outfits of the ship, like her beef and her bread, and not to be foolishly wasted. Wherefore he had no fancy for lowering for whales after sun-down; nor for persisting in fighting a fish that too much persisted in ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... whale hunter. Starbuck was no crusader after perils; in him courage was not a sentiment; but a thing simply useful to him, and always at hand upon all mortally practical occasions. Besides, he thought, perhaps, that in this business of whaling, courage was one of the great staple outfits of the ship, like her beef and her bread, and not to be foolishly wasted. Wherefore he had no fancy for lowering for whales after sun-down; nor for persisting in fighting a fish that ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... the painted past Beneath the mist of war; One could not think life had been cast In sweet lines before. There was no list in that red mist For love or wholesome breath, But making rage our staple grist We ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett
... 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 vast majority have some real gift. I would hazard a guess that ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... common-lawyer, that he understood the theory of colors, that he was an accurate botanist, a master of the science of medicine, especially in its relation to mental disease, a profound metaphysician, and of great experience and insight in politics,—all these, while they may very well form the staple of separate treatises, and prove, that, whatever the extent of his learning, the range and accuracy of his knowledge were beyond precedent or later parallel, are really outside the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... back from the Commission's workers there that food in this shape was very difficult to handle in any systematic way. It was quickly evident that what was really needed was large consignments in bulk of a few kinds of staple and concentrated foods, which could be shipped in large lots to the various principal distribution centers in Belgium and thence shipped in smaller lots to the secondary or local centers, and there handed out on a ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... however they might commence, after the opening or introduction hearers were certain to find the preacher falling gradually into the old channel. The fall of man in Adam, his restoration in Christ, justification by faith, and the terms of the new covenant, formed the staple of each sermon, and without which it was not in fact reckoned complete as an orthodox exposition of Christian doctrine. Without omitting the essentials of Christian instruction, preachers now take a wider view of illustrating and explaining the gospel scheme of salvation and regeneration, without ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... and does the things I have been teaching he is like one who builds on a rock." One thing marks the rock founded life, the doing of Christly deeds. The course of conduct, the kind of character He has just outlined in the sermon on the mount gives the established staple character. ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... a chromatic radiance of gold, and violet, and pale metallic green, all blending and harmonizing like the mother-o'-pearl lustre in some rare sea-shell. The true value of this fish is not of a commercial kind, for he cannot be deemed particularly exquisite in a gastronomic sense; neither is he staple as a provision of food. His virtue lies in the inducement offered to him by the citizen of moderate means, who, for a trifling outlay, can secure for himself and family the invigorating influence of the salt sea-breezes, by having a run down outside ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... 'I have been bred and reared all my life by this grandfather of whom I have just spoken. Now, he has a great many good points—there is no doubt about that; I'll not disguise the fact from you—but he has two very great faults, which are the staple of his bad side. In the first place, he has the most confirmed obstinacy of character you ever met with in any human creature. In the second, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... the Apostle called "cunningly devised fables"? It seemed to him that the old story had become so well worn that, for the sake of a little novelty, which might, perhaps, attract the people who stayed away, he might turn into some subject less hackneyed than the staple stock of pulpit addresses. The reason was a very plausible one, and the preacher altogether sincere. The people did come to hear him, too, as they had not come concerning the other matters he had been used to expound. ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... tufted with orchids, tree ferns, ferns depending with air roots from the steep banks, great arums - I had not skill enough to say if any of them were the edible kind, one of our staples here! - hundreds of bananas - another staple - and alas! I had skill enough to know all of these for the bad kind that bears no fruit. My Henry moralised over this the other day; how hard it was that the bad banana flourished wild, and the good must be weeded ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... became a low plain, level and monotonous, and given over to sugar-cane. Near d'Abadie, this crop gave place to cocoa, the staple of the center of the island, and this extended through Arima to Sangre Grande, the terminus of the railroad. During the trip Stuart's host had enlightened him by an exact and painstaking description of the growing of these various crops and ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... state, like all other Melanesian and Polynesian peoples, were entirely ignorant of the cereals; and in the opinion of a competent observer the consequent defect in their diet has contributed to the serious defects in their national character. The cereals, he tells us, are the staple food of all races that have left their mark in history; and on the other hand "the apathy and indolence of the Fijians arise from their climate, their diet and their communal institutions. The climate is too kind to stimulate them to exertion, their food imparts no staying ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... arguments, but objected to his "personalities." Now, the reader must have observed that of all people practical jokers are those who can least tolerate a practical joke played at their own expense, and that those whose staple of conversation is banter or "chaff" become irascible the moment they are flicked with their own whip. For years Wagner had been the victim of unprovoked personal attacks in the Jew-controlled press, and ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... or in four generations?—I have many questions to put, but ten Delphic voyages can be made in a shorter time than it will take to satisfy my scruples.—Do you grow your own hemp?—What is your staple trade, exclusive of the national profession, I mean? Your lock-smiths, I take it, are some ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... the nation's economy with one another. And in what concerns the various economic stages, paper money is far removed from all medieval times; and for the same reasons that make external commerce here preponderant and condense all commerce into caravans, staple-towns, fairs, and recommend the collection of treasure etc.(950) Later, on the other hand, we find two stages especially adapted to paper money. We have first, as yet undeveloped but intellectually active (and therefore desirous of progress) colonial countries, possessed in abundance of natural ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... stooped down and examined the fleeces for themselves, pulling out tufts and ringlets, spinning them between their fingers, and measuring the length of the staple, each in turn paying tribute to wildness. It WAS finer, and no mistake; finer than Spanish Merino. Wild wool IS ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... times when Indians were 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 ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... Mozambique, where, as Gama learnt through his Arab interpreters, there were several merchants of Mahometan extraction, who carried on trade with India. Gold and silver, cloth and spices, pearls and rubies, formed the staple of their commerce. Gama at the same time was assured that in pursuing the line of the coast, he would find numerous cities; "Whereat we were so joyful," says Velho in his naive and valuable narrative, "that we wept for pleasure, praying God to grant us health ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... Nash, a facetious writer of considerable reputation in the latter part of the sixteenth century. The most witty of his productions is a satirical pamphlet in praise of red herrings, intended as a joke upon the great staple of Yarmouth, and the pretensions of that place to superiority over Lowestoft. It must be confessed that Nash is chiefly famous as a caustic pamphleteer and an unscrupulous satirist. For illustration we may point to his battle with Gabriel Harvey, ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... our country, and now constitutes one of the States of our Confederacy, "upon an equal footing with the original States." The salubrity of climate, the fertility of soil, peculiarly adapted to the production of some of our most valuable staple commodities, and her commercial advantages must soon make her one of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Polk • James Polk
... The veins of commerce in every part will be replenished, and will acquire additional motion and vigor from a free circulation of the commodities of every part. Commercial enterprise will have much greater scope, from the diversity in the productions of different States. When the staple of one fails from a bad harvest or unproductive crop, it can call to its aid the staple of another. The variety, not less than the value, of products for exportation contributes to the activity of foreign commerce. It can be ...
— The Federalist Papers
... the staple of the afternoon's enjoyment, intermingled with quiet chat consisting generally of reminiscences of bygone Christmases. Here and there a couple get together who are "townies," i.e. natives of the same district; and there ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... preachments to Eastern despots (who utterly ignore them) are a staple produce of Oriental tale-literature and form the chiaro-oscuro, as it were, of a picture whose lights are brilliant touches of profanity and indelicate humour. It certainly has the charm of contrast. Much of the above is taken from the Sikandar-nameh ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... hard because he mostly produces early season fruits, the high prices of which have to pay for fabulous rents, and that this system of culture entails more work than is necessary for growing the ordinary staple-food vegetables and fruit. Besides, the market-gardeners of Paris, not having the means to make a great outlay on their gardens, and being obliged to pay heavily for glass, wood, iron, and coal, obtain their artificial heat out of manure, while it can be had at much less ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... Justinian; on the Arabs; on the Crusades, have a rounded completeness, coupled with such artistic subordination to the main action, that they read more like cantos of a great prose poem than the ordinary staple of historical composition. It may well be questioned whether there is another instance of such high literary form and finish, coupled with such vast erudition. And two considerations have to be borne in mind, which heighten Gibbon's ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... about 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 ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... accentuated. Thus, in the Mississippi Territory the planters, in the closing years of the century, began to turn their attention to cotton instead of devoting themselves to the crops of their brethren farther north; and cotton soon became their staple product. But as yet the typical settler everywhere was the man of the axe and rifle, the small pioneer farmer who lived by himself, with his wife and his swarming children, on a big tract of wooded land, perhaps three or four hundred acres in extent. Of this three or four hundred acres he rarely ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... not be worth selling to the Jews. Individuality is an accompaniment, an accessory, a red line on the map, a fence about the field, a copyright on the book. It is like the particular flavors of fruits,—of no account but in relation to their saccharine, acid, and other staple elements. It must therefore keep its place, or become an impertinence. If it grow forward, officious, and begin to push in between the pure nature and its divine ends, at once it is a meddling Peter, for whom there is no due greeting but "Get thee behind ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... rocky road, a sudden exclamation like the whirr of a covey of partridges, an oath like the downfall of a truck-load of bricks. I arrived in time for the great pig fair, and Tuam was very busy. It is a poor town, of which the staple trade is religion. The country around is green and beautiful, with brilliant patches of gorse in full bloom, every bush a solid mass of brightest yellow, dazzling you in the sunshine. Many of the streets are wretchedly built, and the Galway Road shows how easily the Catholic poor are satisfied. ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... all other Shemitic races, a worship of one God as Supreme, though the Arabian Allah, like the Baal of Canaan and Phoenicia, was supposed to be attended by numerous inferior deities. Though Islam undoubtedly borrowed the staple of its truths from the Old Testament, yet there was a short confession strikingly resembling the modern creed of to-day, which had been upon the lips of many generations of Arabians before Mohammed's time. Thus it ran: "I dedicate myself to thy service, O Allah. Thou hast no companion ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... capable of rough slashes of sarcasm when he opens his old beard for speech): these, and the like of these, intimate confidants of the King, men who could speak a little, or who could be socially silent otherwise,—seem to have been the staple of the Institution. Strangers of mark, who happened to be passing, were occasional guests; Ginckel the Dutch Ambassador, though foreign like Seckendorf, was well seen there; garrulous Pollnitz, who ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle |
