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Staple   Listen
verb
staple  v. t.  (past & past part. stapled; pres. part. stapling)  
1.
To sort according to its staple; as, to staple cotton.
2.
To fasten together with a staple (9) or staples; as, to staple a check to a letter.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Staple" Quotes from Famous Books



... places—she was in the front yard that day you came over with Richard. She was there because the front yard has the one decent piece of fencing left on the farm. She would give more milk if we could let her go free in the pasture—but Kenneth has to stake her with a staple and rope because the fences are so poor—where there are any—that the only way to keep her home is ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence

... originally was covered with forests, and that it has been cleared by fire. It is said, that by digging in the barest spots, lumps of the kind of resin which flows from the kauri pine are frequently found. The natives had an evident motive in clearing the country; for the fern, formerly a staple article of food, flourishes only in the open cleared tracks. The almost entire absence of associated grasses, which forms so remarkable a feature in the vegetation of this island, may perhaps be accounted for by the land having ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... away on the shelves. By this economy of space, and with the possible addition of a temporary counter, you have gained room enough to admit of the introduction of a "5c, 10c or 25c counter." The next thing to do is to send to some reliable jobber for a bill of staple household sellers, with which you can mix hundreds of articles from your own stock; then send out a little circular ("dodger") to the over-anxious inhabitants, telling them of a few of the articles to be found on your "Cheap Counter," and they will respond as readily as ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher

... Halstead swung the hatchway door shut, forced the stout hasp over the staple and fastened ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock

... the thred of his verbositie, finer then the staple of his argument. I abhor such phanaticall phantasims, such insociable and poynt deuise companions, such rackers of ortagriphie, as to speake dout fine, when he should say doubt; det, when he shold pronounce debt; debt, not det: he clepeth a Calf, Caufe: halfe, haufe: ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... for slaves in Guiana, which they settled in 1616. Sugar cane became the staple crop, but the Negroes early began to revolt and the Dutch brought in East Indian coolies. The slaves were badly treated and the runaways joined the revolted Bush Negroes in the interior. From 1715 to 1775 there was continuous fighting with the ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois

... 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 ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser

... liberty of conscience, and at present the reigning religion is that of the English church. The climate is very sultry in summer, and not very salubrious. The soil is fruitful, and produces a great quantity of tobacca, which the people cultivate as their staple commodity. The seat of government is established at Annapolis, a small town beautifully situated on the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... may be made to slide occasionally to the right or left. To these blocks are attached the bows, the position of which are adjusted by gauge screws; and by the sliding of the blocks, the distance of the oxen from each other may be regulated. The middle of the yoke is furnished with a draught staple or eye-bolt which is moveable and regulated by a hand screw at the top, whereby the pitch of the draught it regulated. Invented by David Chappel, and entered at the Patent Office, ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various

... of yellow mustard were shooting up into the air. The door looked as stout as the opening to a bank vault, though this comparison did not occur to the children, and was secure with staple and padlock and three huge hinges. Evidently, no mischievous feet had cantered over the ridge of ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... black boys, and of these the "Chinde" boys from the Portuguese settlements are much sought after, and cannot be excelled as cooks or servants, so thoroughly do the Portuguese understand the training of natives. The staple meat was buck of all kinds; sheep were wellnigh unknown, oxen were scarce and their meat tough; but no one need grumble at a diet of buck, wild-pig, koran,[51] guinea-fowl, and occasionally wild-duck. As regards other necessities of life, transport ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson

... know, but they are not important things to tell. We conceive, in short, that Nature, by rendering these and similar truths unreservedly patent to the whole human race, has affixed to them her own contraband,—interdicting their communication; and that Dr Reid, in making them the staple of his publications, was fighting against an eternal law. He undertook to teach the world certain truths connected with perception, which by his own admission the world already knew just as well as he did—and which required no labour for their production. This way of going to work with any problem, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... disgrace it; and he felt called to pledge his sword, his life, his knightly honor to do battle against him. He had urged his uncle in Milan to make interest for the cause of Savonarola with the King of France; and his uncle, with that crafty diplomacy which in those days formed the staple of what was called statesmanship, had seemed to listen favorably to his views,—intending, however, no more by his apparent assent than to withdraw his nephew from the dangers in which he stood in Italy, and bring ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... used in a higher state of advancement, and thus their saleability ceases. Furs cease to be generally marketable in northern climes, when the fur-bearing animals are nearly killed off and the fur trade declines. When tobacco was the great staple of export from Virginia, everybody was willing to take it, and its market price was known by all. It served well then as the chief money, but, as it ceased to be the almost exclusive product of the province, it lost the knowableness ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... form a staple ground for fiction, with a very substantial under-strata of facts, even in the nineteenth century; and the annals of pre-Christian Erinn are by no means deficient in the same fertile source of human interest. The History of the Exile is still preserved in the Leabhar ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... fury she turned again to the fence. A superhuman effort brought away a staple. One wire was down and an instant later two more. Standing with one foot upon the wires to keep them from tangling about her horse's legs, she pulled her mount across into the wood. The foremost horseman was close upon her as she finally succeeded ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... women took hold and, though the bread is not yet very good, it serves and will as long as flour holds out. No one complains, though we already lack many things. No merchandise can come out yet on the railroads, all the automobiles and most of the horses are gone, and shops are shy of staple things. ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich

... head of Lake Ontario, La Salle had been attacked by a violent fever, from which he was not yet recovered. He now told his two colleagues that he was in no condition to go forward, and should be forced to part with them. The staple of La Salle's character, as his life will attest, was an invincible determination of purpose, which set at naught all risks and all sufferings. He had cast himself with all his resources into this enterprise, and, while his faculties remained, he was ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman

... out, sir, to look after him," said Harry, "and the fellow does not seem to have liked his night's lodgings. He broke jail, and was off before any of the men were up this morning; they found the door open, and the staple off—he must have kicked his way out; which could easily he done, as the ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... and his subordinates; that if those in authority were allowed to accomplish their purposes, the people would be deprived of their liberties and a monarchy established. Such and like expressions, varied by "trampling under his feet" Order No. 38, etc., made the staple ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... "war bread," the staple food of the population, which was made soon after the commencement of the war, was composed partially of rye and potato flour. It was not at all unpalatable, especially when toasted; and when it was seen ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard

... which countries alone it is extensively cultivated for use. The tea-plant was at one time introduced into South Carolina, where its culture appears to have been attended with but little success. It may yet become a staple production of some portions of the ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers

... the court failed in the days of King Charles, though Jonson was not without royal favours; and the old poet returned to the stage, producing, between 1625 and 1633, "The Staple of News," "The New Inn," "The Magnetic Lady," and "The Tale of a Tub," the last doubtless revised from a much earlier comedy. None of these plays met with any marked success, although the scathing ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson

... had left the Hall on no other account, as they declared, but sheer fright at the awful visits of the vampyre, spread the news far and wide, so that in the adjoining villages and market-towns the vampyre of Bannerworth Hall became quite a staple ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... Staple Square, and over the long bridge. Only too well did he know the terrible bulk of the "Ark"—and there was no other exit than the tunnel! And the timber-work, which provided the sole access to the upper stories! ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... Colorado Springs and Pike's Peak. Our party left Denver for home. On the long stretch via Kansas City, St. Louis and Indianapolis we saw nothing new, as we were traveling over familiar ground. It was early in September, when corn, the great western staple, was approaching maturity, and the earth was giving forth its increase. We were crossing the largest and perhaps most fertile valley of the world. All of it had been redeemed from nature and the Indians, within one hundred years. During our trip we had passed through great cities, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... will be the granary and magazine of the Confederacy in ten years. My own State, Mississippi, is rich in land, but the climate is hard for the stranger. It enervates the European at first. But we are an agricultural people, or rather we give our energies to our staple, cotton; that is to be the ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... was walking down with me from Staple Inn to Clifford's Inn, about 10 o'clock, and we saw the Great Bear standing upright on the tip of his tail which was coming out of a chimney pot. Jones said it wanted attending to. ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... had no great liking for that vulgar edible which bore his name, and which used to form the staple of so many good, old-fashioned suppers. To cheese, in the abstract, he could certainly have borne no forcible objection, since he was wont to steal into the larder, between breakfast and dinner, and help himself—as Martha ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... who possessed most of the landed property in the Weald, insomuch that almost all the ancient families of these parts, now of large estates and genteel rank in life, and some of them ennobled by titles, are sprung from ancestors who have used this great staple manufacture, now almost unknown here.' In his list of these families Hasted places the Austens, and he adds that these clothiers 'were usually called the Gray Coats of Kent; and were a body so numerous and united that at county elections whoever had their vote ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh

... never troubled with the complaints that follow drinking unboiled water. It is well to make liberal use of the curries and rice which are excellent everywhere. These, with fish, eggs and fruit, formed the staple of my diet. Never eat melons nor salads made of green vegetables; the native methods of fertilizing the soil are fatal to the wholesomeness ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch

... directors of a cotton mill, in a Massachusetts village, decided, in the middle '70's, to move their cotton factory from New England to Alabama, they had two objects in view—cheaper labor and cheaper staple. ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... mocking assumption of an heroic attitude recurs with sufficient frequency to stamp it as a staple of comic effect. Many passages would become tiresome and meaningless instead of amusing unless so interpreted. The soliloquy of Mnesilochus in Bac. 500 ff. could be made interesting only by turgid ranting. Similarly in Bac. ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke

... Oh! I forgot, Sir Harry Erskine is dismissed from the army, and if you will suffer so low a pun, as upon his face, is a rubric martyr for his country: bad as it Is, this is the best bon-mot I have to send you: Ireland, which one did not suspect, is become the staple of wit, and, I find, coins bons-mots for our greatest men. I might not send you Mr. Fox's repartee, for I never heard it, nor has any body here: as you have, pray send it me. Charles Townshend t'other night hearing somebody say, that my Lady Falmouth, who had a great many diamonds ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... abounding mercies and interpositions he suffered from temptations to distrust and disobedience, and sometimes had to mourn their power over him, as when once he found himself inwardly complaining of the cold leg of mutton which formed the staple of his Sunday dinner! We discover as we read that we are communing with a man who was not only of like passions with ourselves, but who felt himself rather more than most others subject to the sway of evil, and needing therefore a special keeping power. ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson

... utmost readiness in using them, I fear, would not have saved us. It appears, therefore, a providential circumstance, that it happened at this place, and was in our power to remedy the defect; for by great good luck we found a large staple in the boat that ...
— A Narrative Of The Mutiny, On Board His Majesty's Ship Bounty; And The Subsequent Voyage Of Part Of The Crew, In The Ship's Boat • William Bligh

... who number merely tens of thousands, not only the well-to-do, who number merely hundreds of thousands, but likewise the poor and the half-poor, who number millions and tens of millions. Hence, in the merchandise by the sale of which it is to profit, it takes care to include staple articles which everybody needs, for example, salt, sugar, tobacco and beverages in universal and popular use. This accomplished, let us follow out the consequences, and look in at the shops over the whole surface of the territory, in the towns or in the villages, where these articles are ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... the light twice before he could believe his eyes. There was no sign of Struve except the handcuffs depending from an iron chain connected by a heavy staple with the granite wall. Apparently he had somehow managed to slip from the gyves by working ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine

... their government pay, they celebrated with a buying spree. They were lavish buyers as long as they had a cent, and they bought the goods that had the most alluring picture on can or box. Ida Mary would hold up something of staple quality, but they would shake their heads and turn to ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl

... of preaching known or discoverable. So it is with that infirmity of speech—that flux, that determination of words to the mouth, or to the pen—which, though it be familiar to you in parliamentary debates, in newspapers, and as the staple language of Blue Books, Committees, Official Reports, I take leave to introduce to you as prose which is not prose and under its real ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... along, making hard work of it in his chaps, boots, and spurs, stopping now and then to drive a staple or brace a post. The country was growing wilder and more broken, with cedar timber on the ridges and here and there a pine. Occasionally he could catch a glimpse of the black, forbidding walls of Tailholt Mountain. But Patches did not know that ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright

... the full bottles, replacing them by empty ones, while other hands convey them to the corkers, whose guillotine machines are incessantly in motion; next the agrafeurs secure the corks by means of an iron staple, termed an agrafe; and then the bottles are conveyed either to a capacious apartment aboveground, known as a cellier, or to a cool cellar, according to the number of atmospheres the wine may indicate. It should ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly

... but forced conversation did not flourish. Bourcelles was not fashionable; no one ever had appendicitis there. Yet ailments of a milder order were the staple, inexhaustible subjects at meals. Instead of the weather, mon estomac was the inexhaustible tale. The girl brought in the little Cantonal newspaper, and the widow read out selections in a high, shrill voice, regardless who listened. Misfortunes and accidents ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... foreign grants and 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, ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... at first, and kept rich year by year, by the washings from the hills above; and this is the reason why land left dry by rivers and by the sea is generally so rich. Then what becomes of the soil? It begins a new life. The roots of the plants take it up; the salts which they find in it—the staple, as we call them—go to make leaves and seed; the very sand has its use, it feeds the stalks of corn and grass, and makes them stiff. The corn-stalks would never stand upright if they could not get sand from the soil. So what a thousand ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... plate is broken 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 ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... of the story has been so extremely concise, that it is more than usually necessary for us to lay some specimens of the work itself before our readers. Its grand staple, as we have already said, consists of a kind of mystical morality: and the chief characteristics of the style are, that it is prolix and very frequently unintelligible: and though we are very sensible that no ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... loose or send them to the nearest workhouse. But there is nothing new in private enterprise throwing its human refuse on the cheap labor market and the workhouse; and the refuse of the new industry would presumably be better bred than the staple product of ordinary poverty. In our present happy-go-lucky industrial disorder, all the human products, successful or not, would have to be thrown on the labor market; but the unsuccessful ones would not entitle the company to a bounty ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw

... Urumtsi we began to strike more tillage and fertility. Maize, wheat, and rice were growing, but rather low and thin. The last is by no means the staple food of China, as is commonly supposed, except in the southern portion. In the northern, and especially the outlying, provinces it is considered more a luxury for the wealthy. Millet and coarse flour, from which the mien or dough-strings are made, is the foundation, at least, ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

... enough what Latisan wanted at that moment, but he had not the courage to voice his wishes in regard to her; he had not enough self-possession left to state his actual desires as to food, even. There was one staple dish of the drive; he was heartily sick of that food, but he could not think ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day

... as ample employment to all engaged in the staple manufactures of the town is concerned, trade still continues favourable for the workman, but the manufacturers generally complain that, for the season, sales are late of commencing, and many of them are already rather slackening their operations to keep their ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various

... the barrel of an arruginated male key in the hole of an unstable female lock, obtaining a purchase on the bow of the key and turning its wards from right to left, withdrawing a bolt from its staple, pulling inward spasmodically an obsolescent unhinged door and revealing an aperture for free ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... necklace around his neck, with blazing eyes and ugly gleaming teeth, crouched some unrecognisable creature, human yet inhuman, a monkey and yet a man. There were a couple of monkeys swinging by their tails from a bar, and a leopard chained to a staple in the ground, walking round and round in the far corner, snapping and snarling every time he glanced towards the new-comers. The creature in front of him stretched out a hairy hand towards a club, and gripped it. Quest drew a long breath. His eyes ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... aware, No curtain falls but on a plighted pair. Thus with the Trilogy's First Part we've reckoned; But now the poet's labour-throes begin; The Comedy of Troth-plight, Part the Second, Thro' five insipid Acts he has to spin, And of that staple, finally, compose Part ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen

... Birkbeck Hill. Vol. i. p. 169. n. 2: "Ralph ... as appears from the minutes of the partners of the Champion in the possession of Mr Reed of Staple Inn, succeeded Fielding in his share of the paper before the date of ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden

... it was a small door. Feeling cautiously about, he found it to be secured by a hook. When he sought to raise the catch, however, it resisted. Evidently it had not been lifted for many years, and had rusted to the staple. Carefully Alex threw his weight upward against it. It still refused to move. He pushed harder, and suddenly it gave ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs

... John Fry was referring to the custom among the farmers of not killing their sheep until the teeth begin to go. Their coats are exceedingly thick, and their wool a very valuable asset to the whole county; it was more particularly so in the Middle Ages, when cloth-making was the staple industry of England. There is a woolpack in the coat-of-arms of Minehead, and the most striking feature of the little mediaeval town of Dunster is the yarn-market in the ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland

... weakness. He studies him—he knows his favorite phrases and gestures by heart, and has used them until there is not a Riggan collier who does not recognize them when they are presented to him, and applaud them as an audience might applaud the staple jokes of a ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... really valuable foodstuffs nuts are the least used and the least appreciated. In fact, nuts can hardly be said to constitute a part of the national bill of fare for the reason that when eaten at all they are taken as luxuries or deserts and not as staple foods. But the nut possesses special properties which entitle it to first consideration as a foodstuff, and the writer has no doubt that some time in the future nuts will become a leading constituent of the national bill of fare, and ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting • Various

... slaves who had escaped north, or, it might be, of free negroes in their place; the advertisements for such runaways, which Dickens collected, and which described each by his scars or mutilations; the systematic slave breeding, for the supply of the cotton States, which had become a staple industry of the once glorious Virginia; the demand arising for the restoration of the African slave trade—all these were realities. The Southern people, in the phrase of President Wilson, "knew that their lives were honourable, ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... area of high average fertility, the greatest food-producing tract on the continent. Third, I place the Southern section, where the governing factors in rural economy are the climate, the numerical strength of the colored population, the two staple industrial crops—cotton and tobacco—the comparatively recent abolition of slavery, and the long-drawn-out effects of the Civil War. My fourth division, the Far Western section, includes the ranching lands of the arid belt with their irrigation oases, and the fruit-growing and farming lands ...
— The Rural Life Problem of the United States - Notes of an Irish Observer • Horace Curzon Plunkett

... Icon. Parkinson, Bib. Banks, No. 89.—Native name, MADAWICK, "Skip-jack" of the settlers. "Rays, D. 8-28; A. 2-23; P. 15." Very common in shallow sandy bays, and forming the staple food of the natives, who assemble in fine calm days, and drive shoals of this fish into weirs that they have constructed of shrubs and branches of trees. Specimen caught by hook on ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... hail Mrs. Wood's appearance and success at the opera as an auspicium melioris aevi, as the dawn of a coming day, when the staple commodity of our Italian opera shall be furnished by our own island, instead of being imported from a country which, I boldly assert, does not produce either superior voices, or better educated musicians than our own—nay, so well educated. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various

... high, and was filled to overflowing with material soon to be worked up into shoes, pocketbooks, belting, gloves, baseball covers, and a thousand other articles for which this staple material of trade is needed. Several heavy trucks were loading and unloading at the doors, and the boy heard the workmen speak of a consignment to Buffalo, and another to Boston, and of a shipload that had just arrived ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer

... are staple, commonplace, or familiar in the semiconductor industry, or variations of such designs, combined in a way that, considered as a whole, ...
— Copyright Law of the United States of America and Related Laws Contained in Title 17 of the United States Code, Circular 92 • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.

... poverty in large towns, the neglect of literature and classical learning, and the grievances of scholarly refinement in a world in which Greek iambic and Latin hexameter count for nothing,—such form the staple of his theses and tirades! His approximation at times to the confines of French realistic art is of the most accidental or incidental kind. For Gissing is at heart, in his bones as the vulgar say, a thorough moralist and sentimentalist, an honest, true-born, downright ineradicable Englishman. ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... varied supplies of vegetables were evidence of Archie's industry, in spite of his rheumatism. It was by the produce of this garden that the old man obtained in return the oatmeal and milk which formed his staple food; for he could no ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett

... would be, first to agree upon the general amity and commerce between the two nations, and afterwards, if Sweden held it fit, when they sent an ambassador to England, or otherwise, to propound anything concerning the fishing for herrings or the traffic in America, or touching a staple at Narva, Revel, or Gothenburg (which Eric likewise discoursed of at large), that the Protector would give a ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke

... 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 and tended; and I had not the heart to tell him how fortunate ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... multitude of creeks and inlets and little bays, no two of them alike, yet all trackless abysses? We may almost fancy that Nature took pleasure in recording by ineffaceable hieroglyphics the symbol of Norwegian life, bestowing on these coasts the conformation of a fish's spine, fishery being the staple commerce of the country, and well-nigh the only means of living of the hardy men who cling like tufts of lichen to the arid cliffs. Here, through fourteen degrees of longitude, barely seven hundred thousand souls maintain existence. ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac

... to another sphere." He had himself no inconsiderable enjoyment also of Mr. F.'s aunt; and in the old rascal of a patriarch, the smooth-surfaced Casby, and other surroundings of poor Flora, there was fun enough to float an argosy of second-rates, assuming such to have formed the staple of the tale. It would be far from fair to say they did. The defect in the book was less the absence of excellent character or keen observation, than the want of ease and coherence among the figures ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... medieval estate; Marco Polo, Venetian trade with the East; Madame Eglentyne, monastic life; the Menagier's wife, domestic life in a middle-class home, and medieval ideas about women; Thomas Betson, the wool trade, and the activities of the great English trading company of Merchants of the Staple; and Thomas Paycocke, the cloth industry in East Anglia. They are all quite ordinary people and unknown to fame, with the exception of Marco Polo. The types of historical evidence illustrated are ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power

... reasons for and against the solitary system of confinement are well given in a communication sent to M. de Beranger after a visit to Paris, during which the subject of prison-management had formed a staple theme of discussion in the salons of that city. With much practical insight and clearness of reasoning, Mrs. Fry marshalled all the stock arguments, adding thereto such as ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman

... make it a success; And marks of female tastefulness, And traces of a lady's care, Were noticeable everywhere. The port was old, the champagne dry, And every kind of luxury Which Melbourne could supply was there. They had the staple Christmas fare, Roast beef and turkey (this was wild), Mince-pies, plum-pudding, rich and mild, One for the ladies, one designed For Mr. Forte's severer mind, Were on the board, yet in a way It did not seem like Christmas day With no ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... a lower economic type of existence. The French colonists who came to Lower Canada in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries found themselves located in a region of intense cold, where arable soil was inferior in quality and limited in amount, producing no staple like the tobacco of Virginia or the wheat of Maryland or the cotton of South Carolina or the sugar of the West Indies, by which a young colony might secure a place in European trade. But the snow-wrapped forests of Canada yielded ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... (iii.) two windows in three tiers, the belfry and two stages below (St Mary's, Taunton); (iv.) two in two tiers, the belfry and one stage below (Chewton Mendip, St John's, Glastonbury); (v.) two in one tier (belfry) only (St James', Taunton, Bishop's Lydeard, N. Petherton, Staple Fitzpaine, Huish Episcopi, Kingsbury Episcopi, Ile Abbots, etc.). A few towers have only one window in the belfry stage, but two in the stage below (Hemington, Buckland Denham). Among the towers with a single window in the belfry should also be ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade

... seminaries of Gray's Inn, in Dugdale's time, were Staple Inn and Barnard's Inn. Originally the Exchange of the London woolen merchants, Staple Inn was a law-school as early as Henry V.'s time. It is probable that Bernard's Inn became an academy for law-students in ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... at Queens' College (B). The photograph shews that in fixing the height of the desk above the ground the convenience of readers has been carefully considered. The iron bar that carries the chains is locked into the ornamental upright, passes through a staple in the middle of the desk, and into the upright at the opposite end, which is left plain. This bar is half an inch in diameter, and one inch above the level of the top of the desk. It is prevented from bending by passing through a staple fixed in the centre of the desk. ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark

... locked—a door with a clumsy old-fashioned latch, securely fastened by a staple and padlock. Ellen tried it ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon

... life afterward in Virginia very favorable to literary growth. The planters lived isolated on great estates which had water-fronts on the rivers that flow into the Chesapeake. There the tobacco, the chief staple of the country, was loaded directly upon the trading vessels that tied up to the long, narrow wharves of the plantations. Surrounded by his slaves, and visited occasionally by a distant neighbor, the Virginia country gentleman lived a free and careless life. He was fond of fox-hunting, horse-racing, ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... Mrs. Ewing did like dogs. They seemed more pleased than he had ever seen them, and the dog responded readily to their advances. He was a splendid specimen of his breed, very large, without a spot on his white coat, and with beautiful eyes. Doctor Gordon had a staple fixed in the vestibule, and the dog was leashed to it at night. "I can't have my patients driven away," he said with ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman

... particularly the mountainous ranges, are peculiarly adapted for the grazing of sheep, and we are destined not only to supply the world with cotton, but may hope ere long to add to our national wealth the other equally valuable staple commodity, ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... upon the atmosphere by means of the creeks which permeate the land in all directions. The seed of this cotton, planted on the upland, will produce in a few years the cotton of coarser texture; and the seed of the latter, planted on the islands, will in a like period produce the finer staple. The Treasury Department secured eleven hundred thousand pounds from the islands occupied by our forces, including Edisto, being the crop, mostly unginned, and gathered in storehouses, when our military ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... a poverty striken land inhabited by a turbulent and ignorant race whom she has with unrewarded solicitude sought to civilise, uplift and educate has been a staple of England's diplomatic trade since modern diplomacy began. To compel the trade of Ireland to be with herself alone; to cut off all direct communication between Europe and this second of European islands until no channel remained save through ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement

... the colonists was mainly spent in farming, there was a steady growth in industrial and commercial pursuits. Most of the staple industries of to-day, not omitting iron and textiles, have their beginnings in colonial times. Manufacturing and trade soon gave rise to towns which enjoyed an importance all out of proportion to their numbers. The great centers ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... basis. No doubt before the outbreak of the revolution there was a decided feeling against England on account of the restrictions on the sale of tobacco; and the quarrel, which I have just referred to, with respect to the stipends of the clergy, which were to be paid in this staple commodity according to its market value at the time of payment, had spread discontent among a large body of the people. But above all such causes of dissatisfaction was the growing belief that the political ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot

... no use, and you can't get anybody. Borrow old Susan from The Savins. She isn't good for much but staple commodities, roast beef and things; but I'll help her out. I know something about cooking, not much, but better than nothing; ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray

... me, when we would dine together in one of Soho's many dingy, garlic-scented restaurants, and afterwards, over our bottle of cheap Beaune, discuss the coming of our lives; and when he entered Guy's I left John Street, and took chambers close to his in Staple Inn. Those were pleasant days. Childhood is an over-rated period, fuller of sorrow than of joy. I would not take my childhood back, were it a gift, but I would give the rest of my life to live the twenties ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome

... not liberally supplemented from artificial sources, brings the sportsman in conflict with the farmer, and a demagogue whose zeal occasionally outruns his discretion has even endeavoured to cite the mangold as its staple food. This, however, is political, and not natural history. Although, however, like all grain-eating birds, the pheasant is no doubt capable of inflicting appreciable damage on cultivated land, it seems to be established beyond all question that it also feeds greedily on the ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo

... things, or who is always able to say great things. He is a man who on a few occasions has said great things; who on the coming of a sufficient occasion may possibly say great things again; but the staple of his talk is commonplace enough. Here is a point of difference from machinery, with all machinery's apparent caprice. You could not say, as you pointed to a steam-engine, "The usual power of that engine is two hundred horses; but once or twice it has surprised us all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... or soiling food. For animals producing milk and for young animals, the pasture is particularly excellent. It is also the standard pasture for swine where it can be grown, and where alfalfa is not a staple crop. When the hay is well cured, it makes a ration in even balance for cattle and sheep, and for horses it is equally good. The prejudice which exists in some quarters against feeding it to horses has arisen, in part, at least, from feeding it when improperly harvested, when over-ripe, ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw

... five hundred miles long, and three hundred wide; and there were others just as large. No wonder men quickly broke down and had soon to retire from such work. The prisoners in the jails and penitentiaries of the land live on much better fare than did these heroic men and their families. The great staple of the North was fish. Fish twenty-one times a week for six months, and not much else with it. True, it was sometimes varied by a pot of boiled muskrat or a roasted leg ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young

... Tanno, when Muso paused, "is rated the most wonderful place on earth. Rome is my home. Rome rates Sabinum low, except for olives, wines, oaks, sheep and mules. Wonders are not named among the staple products of Sabinum. Yet I come to Sabinum for the first time and hear wonders such as I never dreamed of ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... she was putting a few stitches every now and then. She chose to imagine herself hard at work; but it would have fatigued nobody to count the number of rows which she had accomplished since she came upon the terrace. The work which Blanche was really attending to was the staple occupation of her life,—building castles in the air. At various times she had played all manner of parts, from a captive queen, a persecuted princess, or a duchess in disguise, down to a fisherman's daughter saving ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt

... hard physical toil 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

... an overgrown Form, too large for any one man to attend to properly, consequently the elysium of the young scamps who formed the staple of it. Tom had come up from the Third with a good character, but he rapidly fell away, and became as unmanageable as the rest. By the time the second monthly examination came round, his character for steadiness was gone, and for years after, he went up the school without it, and regarded ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... left his hole and went across to the tub where Pan was sleeping, curled up comfortably within. The end of Pan's chain, where it was fastened to the staple outside the tub, was not of iron, but tar-cord. The last link had been broken, and it was therefore tied in this manner. The rat easily gnawed through the tar-cord, and then slipped back to his hole to await events. About the middle of the night, when the weasel had rested ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies

... slab of some kind of coarse, dark-coloured, ill-flavoured bread, and a bowl of maize-meal porridge such as has constituted the staple food of the natives of that part of the world ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... to get out of the buggy, Samuel looked at his companion dumbly; a sort of paralysis seemed to hold him in his seat. When he did move, Dr. Lavendar heard him gasp for breath, and in the darkness, as he hitched the sorrel to a staple in one of the big locusts, his face went white. The large manner which had dominated Old Chester for so many years was shrinking and shrivelling; the whole ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland

... there was no answer, the machinist took hold of the lock. To his own surprise and that of Tom, one of the staples pulled out and the door swung open. The place had evidently been forced before, and the lock had not been opened by a key. The staple had been pulled out and replaced ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton

... yield less and less as more and more of them are used in a given area; and therefore both of these agents need to extend themselves widely over the land in order to use it economically. In the production of staple crops which can be freely carried across sea and continent, the natural tendency is to scatter a rural population with some approach to evenness over all the land available for such crops. Market gardening requires less land per man and the areas devoted to it are much more densely ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark

... friends of his, some "gilded youths" like himself, together with some trade-union officials of a long experience, had done wonders. They had been planning out the industrial reorganisation of a whole district, through its two staple trades, with the enthusiastic co-operation of the workpeople themselves; and the result so far struck the imagination. Everywhere the old workshops were to be bought up, improved, or closed; everywhere factories ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... parallel to the shore at a height of over 1,000 feet. The dense forests which originally covered the island have been cut down, and the soil, which is of unusual fertility, is under thorough cultivation, yielding heavy crops of corn and manioc, which latter forms the staple food of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various

... the band, which plays there twice a day. It contains a large assembly-room, where the company dance at times, a restaurant, a theatre, and other apartments. There are also rooms for gambling, which is the staple amusement, not only for the blacklegs and swindlers, who resort to the establishment, but for the nobility and gentry. The Conversationshaus is rented by the government to a company, who pay fifty-five thousand dollars a year for ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic

... was peculiar to animals, and that carbon was an element peculiar to plants, we now know that both elements are found in animals, just as both occur in plants. The chemistry of living things, moreover, when it did grow to become a staple part of science, revealed other and greater anomalies than these. It showed that certain substances which were supposed to be peculiar to plants, and to be made and manufactured by them alone, were also found in animals. Chlorophyl is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various

... work is based on a fallacy, and that all its arguments, therefore, are unsound. The fallacy of the book, it is explained, consists in making cotton and slavery indivisible, and teaching that cotton can not be cultivated except by slave labor; whereas, in the opinion of the objector, that staple can be grown by free labor. Here, again, the author is misunderstood. He only teaches what is true beyond all question: not that free labor is incapable of producing cotton, but that it does not produce it so as to affect the interests of slave labor; and that the American ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... diversity of interests, liable to be exaggerated through sinister designs; they differed in size, in population, in wealth, and in actual and prospective resources and power; they varied in the character of their industry and staple productions, and [in some] existed domestic institutions which, unwisely disturbed, might endanger the harmony of the whole. Most carefully were all these circumstances weighed, and the foundations of the ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... men seemed actuated by a desire to "pay off" in the "enemy's country" all scores that the Federal army had chalked up in the South. The great cause for apprehension, which our situation might have inspired, seemed only to make them reckless. Calico was the staple article of appropriation—each man (who could get one) tied a bolt of it to his saddle, only to throw it away and get a fresh one at the first opportunity. They did not pillage with any sort of method or reason—it seemed to ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke

... Museum—fibres, commercial specimens of rattan, india-rubber, and gutta-percha, barks for tanning purposes, Peruvian barks, vegetable oils, indigo samples, various kinds of meal, resins and damars. There is also a section devoted to forest and staple produce. ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid

... creed of the dynasty, capital should own labor, and the labor thus owned can alone successfully produce cotton, he who has must be continually increasing his store, while he who has not can neither raise the one staple recognized by the Cotton dynasty, nor turn his labor, his only property, to other branches of industry; for such have, in the universal abandonment of the community to cotton, been allowed to languish and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various

... coming of that winter were the strangest ever witnessed in a farming community. Never had any man known fuel to be so scarce. Cornstalks, which were usually staple articles for fuel in that country, had been eaten almost to the very ground, but the stubs were gathered, the dirt shaken from them, and they were then carted to the house. Rosin weeds were collected and piled in heaps. The dried dung ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... statute of king Charles II[e], which prescribes a thing seemingly as indifferent; viz. a dress for the dead, who are all ordered to be buried in woollen; is a law consistent with public liberty, for it encourages the staple trade, on which in great measure depends the universal good of the nation. So that laws, when prudently framed, are by no means subversive but rather introductive of liberty; for (as Mr Locke has well observed[f]) where there is no law, there ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... that, even if Chamillart were their brother, they would sorrowfully admit the 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

... 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. ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... three 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 of your ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... pasted along the middle, with the inscription upon it. The wire c c and a similar one at the top of the plate, were passed through a perforation in the pasteboard, and then passed into the board. Instead of a pulley, the cord, which was a piece of twine, was passed through a little staple made of wire and driven into the board. The whole was made in one or two recesses in school, with such tools and materials as I could then command. The bell was a common table bell, with a wire passing through the handle. The whole was attached to such a ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... feudal agricultural country, on the other hand, Russia would be a great market for German manufactured goods, and, at the same time, a most convenient supply-depot for raw materials and granary upon which Germany could rely for raw materials, wheat, rye, and other staple grains—a supply-depot and granary, moreover, accessible by overland transportation not ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo

... made of the right stuff for a sailor," was Smellie's encouraging remark. "Then we'll do it," he continued. "The first thing is to close and fasten the fore-scuttle, which, I have already ascertained, is secured with a hasp and staple. A belaying-pin will secure it effectually; so that is ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... I rode some miles into the country, and visited a farm. Found the inmates (two brothers) at dinner. Cold boiled mutton and bread, and cold tea without milk, poured straight from a huge kettle in which it is made every morning, seem the staple commodities. No potatoes—nothing hot. They had no servant, and no cow. The bread, which was very white, was made by the younger. They showed me, with some little pleasure, some of the improvements they were making, and told me what they ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler

... obtain 35 lbs. of clean cotton from 140 lbs. of seed-cotton in the same space of time. Previous to being spun, the cotton is prepared pretty much in the same way as in Japan or China, the cotton being tossed into the air with a view to separating the staple; but the spinning-wheel commonly used in Corea only makes one thread at ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor

... the meal. In determining the cost, use the data from the previous lesson for the staple materials. The cost of fresh foods such as oranges or apples may be secured from the one who did the marketing or ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer

... such a rich and fertile soil, as persons living there assured me that they had raised tobacco off the same piece of land for thirty consecutive years. The inhabitants, who are generally English, are mostly engaged in this production. It is their chief staple, and the money with which they must purchase every thing they require, which is brought to them from other English possessions in Europe, Africa and America. There is, nevertheless, sometimes a ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts

... breath, the lad seized the handle, and with a quick flirt drew the door toward him. The strong iron hook was slipped into the staple, and he had done all he could. Yielding then to the panic which had been struggling so long within him, he bounded upon the front porch, shot through the door, and closed and fastened it in a twinkling. ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis

... his couch himself the prince address'd, The duteous dame received the purple vest; The purple vest with decent care disposed, The silver ring she pull'd, the door reclosed, The bolt, obedient to the silken cord, To the strong staple's inmost depth restored, Secured the valves. There, wrapped in silent shade, Pensive, the rules the goddess gave he weigh'd; Stretch'd on the downy fleece, no rest he knows, And in his raptured ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... other five godly ministers was banished for the same cause, viz. John Forbes, who went to Middleburgh, to the English staple there, Robert Dury, who went to Holland, and was minister to the Scots congregation in Lyden, John Sharp, who became minister and professor of divinity at Die in the Delphinate, where he wrote Carlus Theologeous, &c. and Andrew Duncan ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... of letters, all are insensibly guided—moulded—formed—by the judgment of the tribe they belong to, and the circle in which they move. Still more is it the case with the idlers of the great world, amongst whom the only main staple of ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... his head to signify that the present did not form a staple article of food, and then the urchin slipped off the pile of furs and stood upon his sturdy legs. Looking gratefully up at the paleface he lifted the string over his head and handed the beads back to Victor. The latter took them from his hand ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... cotton gin worked another revolution in commerce, and rice proved to be an unfailing staple. Armies of negroes tilled the soil, and were happy in their circumscribed sphere, humanely cared for by ...
— Historic Papers on the Causes of the Civil War • Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... out door occupations, and live a great portion of their time in the open air. The clothing of all classes is scanty. The use of woolen fabrics for underwear has not yet been introduced, and coarse cotton domestic is the universal shirting, and cotton jeans, or cotton and wool mixed, constitute the staple for outer wearing apparel. The men wear shoes throughout the year much more commonly than boots. They never wear gloves, mittens, scarfs, or overcoats, and they scorn umbrellas. Probably this whole 4,000 people do not possess two dozen umbrellas or twice as many overcoats. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various

... aught of this threatening danger? Outwardly all now was peaceful. Each waking-time the fishers put forth in their long boats of metal strips covered with fish-skins. Every sleeping-time they returned laden with the fish that formed the principal staple of the community. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... offering food and water, an easy grade and a direct course reaching out into the West, even to the edge of the lands of Spain; and here stood wheeled vehicles able to traverse it and to carry drygoods and hardware, and especially domestic cotton fabrics, which formed the great staple of a "Santa Fe assortment." The people of the Middle West were now, in short, able to feed and clothe themselves and to offer a little of their surplus merchandise to some one else in sale. They had begun ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough

... inhabitants there; who, growing in time more wise, and learning to work their own materials, and to build and employ their own ships in trade, and the city of Hamburg growing up and increasing in trade, and particularly by the staple for English cloth being there settled, and those of Luebeck not admitting strangers among them, their town began to decay, and to lessen in their trade and wealth, and is not now so considerable as in former times, yet still they drive a good trade into the Baltic Sea and other ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke

... work was concluded, and the party drew from the abode of the quiet dead, closing the old iron door, and shooting the lock loudly into the huge copper staple—an incongruous act of imprisonment towards those who had ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... the shoulder and pushed him out of the entry. Then he closed and fastened the outer door. This was a matter of main strength, for the gale was fighting mad. When the latch clicked and the hook dropped into the staple he, too, entered the kitchen. Kent had obeyed orders to the extent of going over to the stove, but he had not removed his hat or coat and seemed to be quite oblivious of them or the fire or anything except the words he ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... being discovered, that, if any one spoke to me, I adopted every Americanism which I could think of in reply. The country within fifty miles of Detroit is a pretty alternation of prairie, wood, corn- fields, peach and apple orchards. The maize is the staple of the country; you see it in the fields; you have corn-cobs for breakfast; corncobs, mush, and hominy for dinner; johnny-cake for tea; and the very bread contains a third part ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... one vibration. The world has drunk deep of wonderful literature, and all that I can do is make a small brew with a little flavour of my own; but it still could get on very well indeed with the old staple and matured vintages were I never ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... 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 has wandered ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... kitchen, slowly, with the squalid feeling that comes of sleeping in one's day clothes, and there she found the fire low and his cup and plate on the bare table. She could see him through the window. There was the horse, hitched to the staple in the corner of the barn, there was the basket of eggs on the ground waiting for its ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... firms or corporations, who own copies or abstracts of the public records, laboriously prepared, which give them special facilities for doing the work rapidly and well. So collecting uncontested debts was formerly the staple of many a lawyer's practice. The general abolition of imprisonment for debt about the middle of the nineteenth century rendered the process much more difficult and the fees less, and of late years great collection agencies, generally corporations, have sprung up, with an extensive system of ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD

... Everyone knows the staple ways of preparing oysters, and every chef looks upon the oyster as the source of new flavors in many dishes, but to our mind the best way we have found in San Francisco was at a little restaurant down in Washington street ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords

... overcame him at last. Indeed some of them thought he yielded to their violence long before they had the mastery of him; and this very submission terrified the more tender-hearted amongst them. However, they bound him; carried him down many stairs, and, having remembered an iron staple in the wall of a certain vault, with a thick rusty chain attached to it, they bore him thither, and made the chain fast around him. There they left him, shutting the great gnarring brazen door of the vault, as they departed for the upper regions of ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald

... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various



Words linked to "Staple" :   natural fiber, feedstock, fasten, nail, fix, paper fastener, plural, stapler, essential, natural fibre, long-staple cotton, material, raw material, staple gun, good, commodity, short-staple cotton, plural form, long-staple, trade good



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