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The pits   Listen
noun
the pits, pits  n.  The worst possible situation, person, or thing; something extremely bad, boring, or depressing; always used with the; as, cleaning the house is the pits. (Slang)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"The pits" Quotes from Famous Books



... of trust, if such were found defective. It appears therefore that the free miners valued their rights, and not only took thought for the morrow, but provided for it. They added a proviso that the servants of the Deputy Constable should have the benefit of always being supplied first at the pits, showing that they knew something also of public diplomacy. This "Order" has the names of forty-eight miners attached, all severally sealed, ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls

... approached the first waterhole, the wachtmeister pointed significantly to a saddled horse cropping quietly near by, whilst as they got nearer the pits, five or six big vultures flapped lazily away. "I knew I hit him," ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell

... should be eaten one by one, and the pits allowed to fall noiselessly into the half-closed hand and then ...
— The Book of Good Manners • W. C. Green

... household articles. They have perhaps begun to abandon the old custom of burning the dead, since the hunting has fallen off so that the supply of blubber for burning has diminished. I have before described the pits filled with burned bones which Dr. Stuxberg found on the 9th September, 1878, by the bank of a dried-up rivulet. We took them for graves, but not having seen any more at our winter station, we began to entertain doubts as to the correctness of our observation[280]. It ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... bird, by any means, that has a habit of spitting out hard stuff that is swallowed with the food. A crow tucks away many a discarded cud of that sort; and even the thrush, half an hour or so after a dainty fare of wild cherries, taken whole, drops from his bill to the ground the pits that have been squeezed out of the fruit by the digestive ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch

... The 'Henry' was wrecked; but the whales were plentiful, and yielded more oil than the casks would hold, so the men dug clay pits on shore, and poured the oil into them. The oil from forty-five whales was put into the pits, but the clay absorbed every spoonful of it, and nothing but bones was gained from so much slaughter. Before the 'Elizabeth' left Portland Bay, the Hentys, the first permanent settlers in Victoria, arrived in the schooner 'Thistle', on ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale

... without exception, in the vicinity of a drinking place, and the natives exhibit a great amount of cunning in felling trees across the usual run of the elephants, and sometimes cutting an open pit across the path, so as to direct the elephant by such obstacles into the path of snares. The pits are usually about twelve feet long, and three feet broad, by nine deep; these are artfully made, decreasing towards the bottom to the breadth of a foot. The general elephant route to the drinking place being blocked up, the animals are diverted by a treacherous path towards ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... distorted the eyes, and in other ways disfigured 'the human form divine,' in order to make fantastic playthings for the amusement of the noble-born. But history does not state that these deformities were inherited; certainly no race of monsters has resulted. The pits from small-pox are not inherited, though many successive generations must have been thus pitted by that disease before the beneficent discovery of the immortal Jenner. Children born with scars left by pustules have had ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... from its property of allowing the passage of hot rays down to the surface of the earth, and resisting their return: it may equally be so described on other grounds, inasmuch as the cold and heavy atmosphere will sink in the winter into the pits which lead to glacieres, and will refuse to be altogether displaced in summer by ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... where the hills drew down close to the wide, sluggish river, and where our women gathered berries and roots, and there were herds of deer, of wild horses, of antelope, and of elk, that we men slew with arrows or trapped in the pits or hill-pockets. From the river we caught fish in nets twisted by the women of the bark of ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... hymns murmured by separate persons on the way to the cemetery, was heard now in that, but with far more distinctness and power; and at last it became as penetrating and immense as if together with the people, the whole cemetery, the hills, the pits, and the region about, had begun to yearn. It might seem, also, that there was in it a certain calling in the night, a certain humble prayer for rescue ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... See "Report of British Association" for 1859. ) On my way through Rouen, I stated my convictions on this subject to M. George Pouchet, who immediately betook himself to St. Acheul, commissioned by the municipality of Rouen, and did not quit the pits till he had seen one of the hatchets extracted from gravel in its natural position.* (* "Actes du Musee d'Histoire Naturelle de Rouen" ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell

... them, Caer Penselcoit, was reported in Somersetshire. Habitations sunk deep in the rock, with only a roof above ground. But the spade has cracked these archaeological theories like filberts, and has proved that the pits in the wolds were sunk after iron ore, or those in Somerset were burrowings for the extraction of chert. [Footnote: Atkinson, "Forty Years in a Moorland Parish." Lond. 1891, p. 161, et seq. Some pits are, however, not so dubious. At Hurstbourne, in Hants, ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... of Vicksburg—the Southern Gibraltar, Where the hands of our foemen built tyranny's altar, Where their hosts are walled in by a cordon of braves, And the pits they have dug for defense are their graves, Where the red bombs are bursting and hissing the shot, Where the nine thunders death and the charge follows hot? Lo—torn by the shot and begrimed by the powder, The Old Flag is ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... insubordinate as ever, seeming to think opposition to Lord St. Erme an assertion of their rights as free-born Englishmen; and at last, finding it impossible to do anything with them as long as they did not depend immediately upon himself, he took the pits into his own hands when Mr. Shoreham went away, a fortnight ago. It seems that Mr. Shoreham, knowing that he was going, had let everything fall into a most neglected state, and the overlookers brought reports to Albert that there were hardly any safety-lamps ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... compliance, and went out; but hardly had they gone before their teacher heard the cry, "Hannah is in the well!" She ran there, but all was right. Then they led her to an opening just before the back door, saying, "The earth opened and swallowed her up." The covering of one of the pits had given way, and she had fallen perhaps twenty feet below the surface. Fortunately, as in the case of Joseph, there was no water in the pit, and in a few days she was able to resume her place in school, but much more gentle and subdued than ever ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary

... up on the embankment and from its height looked down upon the earth. A hundred yards away where the pits, holes, and mounds melted into the darkness of the night, a dim light was twinkling. Beyond it gleamed another light, beyond that a third, then a hundred paces away two red eyes glowed side by side— probably the windows of some hut—and a long series of such ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... Gorman mounted the platform, the narrow strip of platform left for him in front of the pits occupied by Tim's apparatus. The clatter of general conversation ceased, and the Cabinet Ministers, sitting in the front row with Ascher, clapped their hands. The rest of the audience, realising that applause was desirable, also clapped their hands. ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham

... the East were full of gold mines, but the men who went into the pits to get gold did not live long, because of the foul air. The gold sand was given to women to wash the gold ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley

... running close, to the boat. At 3.30 the temperature had dropped to eighty-five degrees. At 3.45 found a little sign of carbonic acid gas, very slight, however, as a candle would burn fairly bright in the pits. Thought we could detect a smell of gasoline by comparing the fresh air which came down the pipe (when hand blower was turned). Storage lamps were burning during the five hours of submergence, while ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... summer, the pits are slack. Often, on bright sunny mornings, the men are seen trooping home again at ten, eleven, or twelve o'clock. No empty trucks stand at the pit-mouth. The women on the hillside look across as they shake the hearthrug ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence

... till it deepened into a thinly wooded coomb, through which ran the streamlet coming from the wheat-fields under the road. As the coomb opened, the squire went along a hedge near but not quite to the top. Years ago the coomb had been quarried for chalk, and the pits were only partly concealed by the bushes: the yellow spikes of wild mignonette flourished on the very hedge, and even half way down the precipices. From the ledge above, the eye could see into these and into the recesses between the brushwood. ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... passage. Colonel Coleman, who was at home on furlough, gave it as his opinion that these precautions must be supplemented and supported by rifle-pits on the north side, or no successful defence could be made. The pits were hastily dug, but, when volunteers were called for, the extreme danger prevented a hearty response. None appeared except a few old soldiers and six or seven school-boys, whose ages ranged from fourteen to sixteen. The Yankees advanced in line, in an open plain, about two ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers

... such. But he waited in vain for his triumph, nor dare I in my heavy months expect bright days. The book was heartily grateful, and square to the author's imperial scale. You have lighted the glooms, and engineered away the pits, whereof you poetically pleased yourself with complaining, in your sometime letter to me, clean out of it, according to the high Italian rule, and have let sunshine and pure air enfold the scene. First, I read it honestly through ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... think we had better take our shovels and dig the pits for the water, and then we shall know by to-morrow morning whether the water ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat

... or with what success, was as yet unknown. Reports soon came in. The enemy had first driven in the pickets in front of Fort Sanders, and had then attacked our line which was also obliged to fall back. The Rebels in our front, however, did not advance beyond the pits which our men had just vacated, and a new line was at once established by Captain Buffum, our brigade officer of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various

... central openings elongate, run into each other, and form waving furrows all over the surface, instead of the small round pits so characteristic of the Astraeans. The Porites resemble the Astraeans, but the pits are smaller, with fewer partitions and fewer tentacles, and their whole substance ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... labour. Also he took endless pains to acquaint himself at first hand with the facts. 'In factories,' he said afterwards, 'I examined the mills, the machinery, the homes, and saw the workers and their work in all its details. In collieries I went down into the pits. In London I went into lodging-houses and thieves' haunts, and every filthy place. It gave me a power I could not otherwise have had.' And this was years before 'slumming' became fashionable and figured in the pages of Punch; it was no distraction caught up for a week or a month, but a labour of ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... be discouraged, who may upon some accident, be desirous, or forc'd to transplant trees, where the partial, or unequal ground does not afford sufficient room, or soil to make the pits equally capacious, (and so apt to nourish and entertain the roots, as where are no impediments), the worthy Mr. Brotherton (whom we shall have occasion to mention more than once in this treatise) speaking ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... faced the situation with judgment and courage. He acted as doctor, nurse, and hunter, and daily brought in meat for the hungry and furs to cover the dying. Five pits sheltered the castaways. When examined in 1885 the walls of the pits were still intact—three feet of solid peat. Clothing of sea-otter skins of priceless value, which afterwards proved a fortune to those who survived, and food of the flesh of the great sea-cow, saved a remnant of the wretched crew. During most of the month of November the St ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut

... evidence. On every front the men rise and lie down with death, but on no other front had I found them living so close to the graves of their former comrades. Where a man had fallen, there had he been buried, and on every hand you saw between the chalk huts, at the mouths of the pits or raised high in a niche, a pile of stones, a cross, and a soldier's cap. Where one officer had fallen his men had built to his memory a mausoleum. It is also a shelter into which, when the shells come, they dive for safety. So that even in death ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis

... the pits and beckoned with waving gauzy garments, and tried to hold fast with moist arms. There was a snatching, a catching, a reaching, a tearing asunder of mists and a treacherous rolling together again, a chaos of whirling, twirling, brewing grey ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig

... civilized, people,—mere white folks. Our festival has come and gone, with perfect success, and our good General has been altogether satisfied. Last night the great fires were kept smouldering in the pits, and the beeves were cooked more or less, chiefly more,—during which time they had to be carefully watched, and the great spits turned by main force. Happy were the merry fellows who were permitted to sit up all night, and watch the glimmering flames that threw a thousand fantastic shadows ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... not the going, nor the going made that more slow; but, talking, we went on apace even as a ship urged by good wind. And the shades, that seemed things doubly dead, through the pits of their eyes drew in wonder at me, perceiving that ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri

... people or no. There was a great deal of chaffering going on; a little courting, and some cheating. Meynell recognized some of his parishioners, spoke to a farmer or two, exchanged greeting with a sub-agent of the miners' union, and gave some advice to a lad of his choir who had turned against the pits and come ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... the pits in South Wales a system of fine sprays of water is in use, by which the water is ejected from pin-holes pricked in a series of pipes which are carried through the workings. A fine mist is thus caused where necessary, ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin

... collects the vapours from the retorts, is nearly a yard in diameter. One and a quarter million cubic feet of gas are manufactured at the works every day. Upwards of 1000 hands are employed. In the shale-pits adjoining, four hundred miners are regularly at work. The pits are conveniently near to the Addiewell Works, none of them being more than two miles off. A network of railway lines communicate with the various shale-pits, and five locomotives are regularly employed in the transit of minerals. A school, under Government ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans

... important change came over the even course of his young life. His parents sent him to work in a coal-pit; people in these days will scarcely credit such a thing, but it is nevertheless true; nor was this an extraordinary case, for children of poor parents were commonly sent to work in the pits at that early age, when Abe was a child. The work which they did was not difficult; perhaps it might be the opening or shutting of a door in one of the drifts; but whatever it was our hearts revolt at the idea of sending a child of such tender years into a coal mine, and thanks to the ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell

... naught. Many times has my rage almost betrayed my secret; which none knew but my dear child Azalia. Her I could not long deceive. Let the guards drag from our sight these wretches whose fat carcasses are to make a banquet for the royal beasts in the pits beneath ...
— Bright-Wits, Prince of Mogadore • Burren Laughlin and L. L. Flood

... The pits stretched out in either direction—bitten into the ground by the most miserable men the light of day uncovered—bitten through the snow and then through a thick floor of frost as hard as cement. I heard their voices—men ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... kings of the five towns had concentrated their troops in the vale of Siddim, and were there resolutely awaiting Kudur-lagamar. They were, however, completely routed, some of the fugitives being swallowed up in the pits of bitumen with which the soil abounded, while others with difficulty reached the mountains. Kudur-lagamar sacked Sodom and Gomorrah, re-established his dominion on all sides, and returned laden with booty, Hebrew tradition adding that he was overtaken near the sources of the Jordan ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... under each other till the top of the hill is split apart. No man can now tell which of all these mines were sunk by our men. The quarry runs irregularly in heaps and hollows of chalk and red earth mingled like flesh and blood. On our side of the pits the marks of our occupation are plain. There in several places, as at La Boisselle and on the Beaucourt spur, our men have built up the parapet of our old front line by thousands of sandbags till it is a hill-top or cairn from which they could see beyond. The sandbags have rotted and the chalk ...
— The Old Front Line • John Masefield

... court below was bright with moonlight, and standing just on the edge of the shadow thrown by one of the cherry trees was McTeague. A bunch of half-ripe cherries was in his hand. He was eating them and throwing the pits at the window. As he caught sight of her, he made an eager sign for her to raise the sash. Reluctant and wondering, Trina obeyed, and the dentist came quickly forward. He was wearing a pair of blue overalls; a navy-blue flannel shirt without a cravat; an old coat, ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... something violent, Ardelia. I am going to jerk the stems off of berries, chop the pits out of ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke

... leaf-carpeted bamboo-glade appeared, yet a select little company found life worth living there. The dry sand beneath the house was covered with the pits of ant-lions, and as we watched them month after month, they seemed to have more in common with the grains of quartz which composed their cosmos than with the organic world. By day or night no ant or other edible thing seemed ever to approach or ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... eyed 'scapes the pits * Wherein the lynx eyed fall: A word the wise man slays * And saves the natural: The Moslem fails of food * The Kafir feasts in hall: What art or act is man's? * God's ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... the wood into a field covered with underbrush, and lie there in the dark for hours, waiting for a shot. Then our men took to the rifle-pits,—pits ten or twelve feet long by four or five feet deep, with the loose earth banked up a few inches high on the exposed sides. All the pits bore names, more or less felicitous, by which they were known to their transient tenants. One was called "The Pepper-Box," another "Uncle Sam's Well," another "The Reb-Trap," and another, I am constrained to say, was named after a not to be mentioned tropical ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... for fuel than wood in this district, and consequently more commonly used in cooking; but that they gathered cow-dung for fuel only during four months in the year, November, December, January, and February; all that fell during the other eight months was religiously left, or stored for manure. In the pits in which they stored it, they often threw some of the inferior green crops of autumn, such as kodo and kotkee; but the manure most esteemed among them was pigs' dung—this, he said, was commonly stored and ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... A-Kor, indeed!" and the man sneered. "The will of A-Kor is without power in The Towers of Jetan, or elsewhere, for A-Kor lies now in the pits of O-Tar, and E-Med is dwar of ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... grain in covered pits, the supply obtained as forage for the horses largely exceeded expectations, for the peasants regarded the British as deliverers from their oppressors, and upon being assured by the sheik that they paid well for everything that they required, the pits that had escaped the French searchers were thrown open at once. General Hutchinson, on his return to carry out the siege of Alexandria to a conclusion, reported to Admiral Keith his very warm appreciation of the services that Lieutenant Blagrove had rendered him. Long before ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty

... after the sash are stripped, the old beds may be used for the growing of various delicate crops, as melons or half-hardy flowers. In this position, the plants can be protected in the fall. As already suggested, the pits should be cleaned out in the fall and filled with litter to facilitate the work of making the new bed in the winter ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey

... a gentleman farmer had the notion he knew better than others, and tried it on year after year till he made a laughing-stock of himself. Anyhow, that's the tale. Mr. Bates has shown me the basis of the pits—built over now by the buildings you were looking at. Ah, ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell

... expectation of reinforcements, and surrounded by a multitude which increased in size by the moment, for the officer in charge of the detachment sent to the church tower told me that the roads leading to the town were full of miners from the pits of Jemmapes, heading for the town of Mons. My little troupe and I were at risk of being wiped out if I had not taken decisive action. My address had produced a marked effect among the rich noblemen, the promoters of this ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... grew, the pits increased in size. At first they were about as large as a threepenny-piece, but ended by measuring more than ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen

... stair That to heaven from the vaults doth leap; We will measure its height By the strokes of our flight, Its span by the tempest's sweep. What matter the hail or the clashing winds! We know by the tempest we do not lie Dead in the pits of eternity. Brothers, let us be strong in our minds, Lest the storm should beat us back, Or the treacherous calm sink from beneath our wings, And lower us gently from our track To the depths of forgotten things. Up, brothers, up! 'tis the storm or we! 'Tis ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald

... they have been trying to keep us apart," she continued, "for whenever you have been off duty one of the older women of Tars Tarkas' retinue has always arranged to trump up some excuse to get Sola and me out of sight. They have had me down in the pits below the buildings helping them mix their awful radium powder, and make their terrible projectiles. You know that these have to be manufactured by artificial light, as exposure to sunlight always results in an explosion. You have noticed ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... mankind hate, With thee and thine." She answered: "God forbid! For, sir, though men be evil, yet the deep They dread, and at the last will surely turn To Him, and He long-suffering will forgive. And chide the waters back to their abyss, To cover the pits where doleful creatures feed. Sir, I am much afraid: I would not hear Of riding on the waters: look you, sir, Better it were to die with you by hand Of them that hate us, than to live, ah me! Rolling among the furrows of the ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow

... with a laugh; "you don't call this deep? Why, it's nothing to some of the pits out Saint Just way—is ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn

... nothing, absolutely nothing—just that seemingly endless stretch of sand, circled by the blazing sky, the wind sweeping its surface soundless, and hot, as though from the pits of hell; no stir, no motion, no movement of anything animate or inanimate to break the awful monotony. Death! it was death everywhere! his aching eyes rested on nothing but what was typical of death. Even the heat waves seemed fantastic, grotesque, assuming ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish

... where they dwelt in the pits; in earth and in stocks they hid them like badgers, in wood and in wilderness, in heath and in fen, so that well nigh no man might find any Briton, except they were in castle, or in burgh inclosed fast. When they heard of ...
— Brut • Layamon

... known was fading voyage by voyage. Only rarely was there time to go from the Tyne or the Wear or the Clyde to my home in London. Coal is shipped and ore discharged in the North. But even the North meant little to me beyond the staiths where the coal came down from the pits, and the dirty, rain-swept back streets where the shipping-offices were. Once or twice I tried to get quit of the ship and went inland by rail. I saw cathedrals and castles and temperance hotels. A bleak and unfriendly land! Somehow I could not find ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... scattered along the river's bars, waist high in the pits. Here and there a tent showed white, but a blanket under a tree, a pile of pans by a blackened heap of fire marked most of the camps. Some of the gold-hunters had not waited to undo their packs which lay as they had been dropped, and the owners, squatting by the stream's ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... has attached to it a flexible wire which can be connected to the shoe-hanger of the truck or to the end plug of the car, so that the cars can be moved around in the shops by means of their own motors. In the north bay, where the pits are very shallow, the conductor is carried overhead and consists of an 8-pound T-rail ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous

... that if the ballot were placed in the hands of woman the old American eagle that stands with one foot upon the Alleghanies and the other upon the Rockies, whetting his beak upon the ice-capped mountains of Alaska, and covering half the Southern gulf with his tail, will cease to scream and sink into the pits of blackness of darkness amidst the shrieks of lost spirits that will forever echo and reecho ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... survived to carry the tidings to their Lord. When the people of Hormos heard of this they went forth to bury the bodies lest they should breed a pestilence. But when they laid hold of them by the arms to drag them to the pits, the bodies proved to be so baked, as it were, by that tremendous heat, that the arms parted from the trunks, and in the end the people had to dig graves hard by each where it lay, and ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... square, and flat-roofed, standing unenclosed along a dismal high-road, and with that congenitally shabby look, in spite of their newness, which seems to belong by nature to all southern buildings. Some stagnant pools alone remained to attest the presence after rain of a roaring brook, the pits in whose dried-up channel they now occupied; over their tops hung the faded foliage of a few dust-laden trees, struggling hard for life with the energy of despair against depressing circumstances. It was a picture that gave Guy a sudden attack of pessimism; if THIS was ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen

... the Welsh collieries it is becoming the habit to go down the pits in rough home-spun, and reserving the top hat, morning coat and check trousers for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various

... of the cave we found to be 112 ft. 7 in., and its breadth 94 ft., the general shape of the field of ice, which filled it to its utmost edges, being elliptical. The surface was unpleasantly wet, chiefly in the line of the currents, which were now seen to pass backwards and forwards between the pits A and C. In the neighbourhood of the pit B the water stood in a very thin sheet on the ice, which there was level, and rendered the style of locomotion necessitated by the near approach of the roof extremely disagreeable, as I was obliged to lie on my face, and push myself along the wet and slippery ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... formerly been much used, was evident from the piles of shells, and the pits in which, as I was informed, sweet potatoes used to be kept as a reserve. As there was no water on these hills, the defenders could never have anticipated a long siege, but only a hurried attack for plunder, against which the successive terraces would have afforded good protection. The general ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... wonder, always, everywhere— Not that vast mutability which is event, The pits and pinnacles of change, But man's desire and valiance that range All circumstance, and come to ...
— Abraham Lincoln • John Drinkwater

... the half days journey from their salt heaps, some of the emperors people made certain pits by the water side, and near the place where the salt was left, and when the negroes came to deposit their gold on the salt, those who were concealed in the pits attacked them suddenly and took four of them prisoners, all the rest making their escape. Three of those who were thus taken were immediately set free by the captors, who judged that one would be quite sufficient ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr

... was hailed by a lime-burner from the pits over by Hankey and asked if he was looking ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells

... an attentive lens between the two humps at the lower end, we very often see, encrusted in the earthy mass, the remains of the shell of the egg. This is the potter's mark. The arrangement of the spiral ridges, the number and the shape of the pits enable us almost to read the name of the maker, Clythra ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... one, came. The sanguine, enterprising, kindly Roebuck was in financial straits. His pits had been much troubled by water, which no existing machinery could pump out. He had hoped that the new engine would prove successful and sufficiently powerful in time to avert the drowning of the pits, but this hope had failed. His embarrassments were so pressing that he was unable to pay the cost of the engine patent, according to agreement, and Watt had to borrow the money for this from that never-failing friend, Professor Black. Long may his memory be gratefully remembered. Watt had the ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie

... frantic. Women stretched themselves on the corpses, mouth to mouth and brow to brow; it was necessary to beat them in order to make them withdraw when the earth was being thrown in. They blackened their cheeks; they cut off their hair; they drew their own blood and poured it into the pits; they gashed themselves in imitation of the wounds that disfigured the dead. Roarings burst forth through the crashings of the cymbals. Some snatched off their amulets and spat upon them. The dying rolled ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert

... of the 96, as far as we at present know. Turning, however, to that part of the coal-field regarded as precarious, and consisting of first, second, and third-rate household coal, we have for future use 300 square miles. London was formerly supplied from the pits east of Tyne Bridge, where is the famous Wallsend Colliery, which gave the name to the best coal. That mine is now drowned out, and, like the great Roman Wall, at the termination of which it was sunk, and from which it derived its name, is now an antiquity. There is now no Wallsend coal, ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness

... the men in view desisted, quite as though he had sounded the dinner horn. Heads of others emerged from the pits. Within a minute there was a small crowd gathered, of burly fellows diffusing the fragrance of pine sawdust, all stamped in their degrees with the M'Lauchlin family likeness, and all eager to know the ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... and so far as a surveyor's level can be relied on, the same may be said of the Cavern Pit and some others." The rivers of the Cave were unknown at the time of Mr. Lee's visit in 1835, but they are unquestionably lower than the bottom of the pits, and receive the water which flows from them. According to the statement of Lee, the bed of these rivers is lower than the bed of Green River at its junction with the Ohio, taking for granted that the report of the ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt

... came. Nothing could stop it. Down went man and horse, line upon line of them swept to death by the pitiless English arrows, but still more rushed on. They fell in the pits that had been dug; they died beneath the shafts and the hoofs of those that followed, but still they struggled on, shouting: "Philip and St. Denis!" and waving their golden banner, the Oriflamme ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard

... low ridge, a mile or so west of the town, Longstreet had been posted and he had dug trenches and gunpits. The crest of this ridge, called Marye's Hill, was bare, and here, in addition to the pits and trenches, Longstreet threw up breastworks. Down the slopes were ravines and much timber, making the whole position one of great strength. Harry gazed at it as he carried one of his messages from general to general, and he was enough of a soldier ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler

... closer, and Baggs saw that he was old and incredibly worn; his skin clung in dry yellow patches to his skull, the temples were bony caverns, and the pits of his eyes blank shadows. He felt forward with a siccated hand, on which veins were twisted like blue worsted over fleshless tendons, gripped Harry Baggs' shoulder, and lowered himself ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer

... sense of taste is something of a chemical nature. The tasteable substances must be in solution in order to penetrate the pits and get to the sensitive tips of the taste cells. If the upper surface of the tongue is first dried, a dry lump of sugar or salt laid on it gives no sensation of taste until a little saliva has accumulated and dissolved some of ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... of preventing a duel between him and a mad young Frenchman, who wanted to fight Mr. Higginbotham with pistols, because that gentleman resented the idea of being taken for an Egyptian, through wearing a fez cap. I had a talk with Capt. Warren at Jerusalem, and descended one of the pits with a sergeant of engineers to see the marks of the Tyrian workmen on the foundation-stones of the Temple of Solomon. I visited the mosques of Stamboul with the Minister Resident of the United States, and the American Consul-General. I travelled over ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... holes have been pecked in the rock as an aid in the more difficult places, and similar aids were often employed to afford access to storage and burial cists. Plate LVI shows a site in the lower part of the canyon where such means have been employed. The pits in the rock are so much worn by atmospheric erosion that the ascent now is very dangerous. The cove or ledge to which they lead is about halfway up the cliff, and on it are a number of cists, one of them still intact, with a doorway. The masonry consists of large ...
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff

... surface, almost like stands. They are sometimes connected in such a way that the parallel flanges appear like the letter 'h' with the two down-strokes much prolonged. In the morning the chalky rubble brought from the pits upon the Downs and used for mending gateways leading into the fields glistens brightly. Upon the surface of each piece of rubble there adheres a thin coating of ice: if this be lightly struck it falls off, and with it a flake of the chalk. As it melts, too, the chalk splits and crumbles; and ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies

... love lofty marks. Learn, as I have done, to look down with scorn from the summit of indifference upon the feeble darts aimed from the pits beneath you. My child, don't suffer the senseless gossip of the shallow crowd ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... table with both hands in his excitement—"God, if that's so, what a chance there's in Barbie! It has been a dead town for twenty year, and twenty to the end o't. A verra little would buy the hauf o't. But property 'ull rise in value like a puddock stool at dark, serr, if the pits come round it! It will that. If I was only sure o' your suspeecion, Weelyum, I'd invest every bawbee I have in't. You're going home the night, are ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... she was doing when his back was turned to her, just as if he had been sitting squarely in front of her. Some laughed at this foolish notion; but others, who knew more of the nebulous sciences, told her it was like's not jes' so. Folks had read letters laid ag'in' the pits o' their stomachs, 'n' why should n't they see out o' the backs o' ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... contains about 1500 souls. They are comparatively a fine race of people, and suffer from little but fever and an occasional ophthalmia. Their greatest hardship is the want of the pure element: the Hissi or well, is about four miles distant from the town, and all the pits within the walls supply brackish or bitter water, fit only for external use. This is probably the reason why vegetables are unknown, and why a horse, a mule, or even a dog, is not to be found ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... English songs, and the Scotch songs she poured forth without stint, for she sang more for them than for her baby. No wonder they adored her. She was so bright, so gay, she brought light with her when she went into the camp, into the pits—for she went down to see the men work—or into a sick miner's shack; and many a man, lonely and sick for home or wife, or baby or mother, found in that back room cheer and comfort and courage, and to many ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor

... Korwa, Majhi, Kol, Kawar and others, the Dhanuhars themselves being the progeny of Karankot and Maswasi. The bones of the animals killed by Karankot were thrown into ditches dug round the village and form the pits of chhui mithi or white clay ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... choice but to obey. When she returned to the pits the stones had been removed and John Frying Pan, with a pair of Sleepy Cat ice tongs, was lifting out the first big chunks of roasted meat. The crowd, being called, ran for the creek whooping and yelling, and while Kate watched John and his helpers dish up the meat, the guests—nearly ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman

... will soon return from his journey. It will never do for him to find us idle, and the fires cold. Some one must go to-day to the forest-pits, and bring home a fresh supply of charcoal. How would you like the errand? It is but a pleasant day's journey to the pits; and a ride into the greenwood this fine summer day would certainly be more agreeable than ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin

... on a big bed with nothing on but a flimsy chemise. Frau Hadebusch, pimp always, had rented the bed from a second-hand dealer; it covered a half of the room. Before Dorothea was a plate of cherries; she had been amusing herself by shooting the pits at her lover. He likewise was lacking nearly all the garments ordinarily worn by men when in the presence of women. He was sitting astride on a ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... these tubes are joined by their sides to each other. In Fistulina the tubes are free from each other though standing closely side by side. In Merulius distinct tubes are not present, but the surface is more or less irregularly pitted, the pits being separated from each other by folds which anastomose, forming a network. These pits ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson

... cloak with his teeth, as did Julius Caesar; then with the help of one hand he entered forcibly into a boat, from whence he cast himself again headlong into the water, sounded the depths, hollowed the rocks, and plunged into the pits and gulfs. Then turned he the boat about, governed it, led it swiftly or slowly with the stream and against the stream, stopt it in its course, guided it with one hand, and with the other laid hard about ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various

... to which they were attached, cases occasionally occurred in which miners were actually transferred by sale from one part of the country to another. During the early part of the XIXth century, the son of an extensive coal-proprietor was examining with a friend the pits of another proprietor, and finding a collier whose speech resembled that of the colliers of his own district, he inquired where he came from. 'Oh!' exclaimed the man with surprise, 'd'ye no' ken me? Do ye no' ken that your faither sell't me for ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... same time cutting transverse trenches on the western and southern points of the oval, along the line of which the men posted themselves. Inside the oval eight more wagons were drawn up for the purpose of corralling the animals, and there was also a pit provided for sheltering the wounded. Behind the pits ran a path to the nearest bend of Milk River, which was used for obtaining water. The command held its position until 8:30 o'clock that night, when the ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... XXVI). Under each corner of the main wall was one of the little pits filled with sand, which have now become so familiar, and at a metre's distance along the side wall was another and larger deposit. The pits were about .60 m. in diameter; in two, there was at the bottom a recess, filled with the small cups of brown clay. The objects are all closely similar to those found in the other deposits of this reign at Koptos and Nubt. One shape of pot, however (XXI, 14), has not ...
— El Kab • J.E. Quibell

... led them past the slave pens at the lower end of Via Sacra, and shortly after they found themselves traveling a roadway on the Campagna. Here they often found it necessary to step aside to make passageway for carts loaded with Pozzolana sand. It was toward the pits from which this sand came the two were making their way and it was not until they had turned into deserted pitroad that they entered into ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock

... given over to a squad of soldiers and each placed in a pine box without uncovering the faces. The boxes were forthwith placed in the pits prepared for them, and directly all but the memory of their offense passed ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend

... said, that opening the pock and taking out the matter has not abated the secondary fever; but as I had conceived, that the pits, or marks left after the small-pox, were owing to the acrimony of the matter beneath the hard scabs, which not being able to exhale eroded the skin, and produced ulcers, I directed the faces of two patients ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... services had hardly been resumed when there was another attack; but this time the pits near the old blockhouse got the range of the malignant marksmen and shattered them with a few shots. The Texas and Panther shelled the brush to the eastward, but the chaplain kept right on with the service, ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis

... gravel from the pits in Henley street to mend the causeway at the bridge, which had been badly washed by the late spring floods, and the fine sand dribbled from the cart-tail like ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett

... quiet. That they are exceedingly sensitive to warmth, however, may be proven by the fact that when a warm rain comes some night in February or March, thawing out the crust of the earth, the next morning reveals in our dooryards the mouths of hundreds of the pits or burrows of these primitive tillers of the soil, each surrounded by a little pile of pellets, the castings of the active artisans of the pits during ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various

... in Genoa. When I visited it, at noonday, I saw a solitary coffin of plain deal: uncovered by any shroud or pall, and so slightly made, that the hoof of any wandering mule would have crushed it in: carelessly tumbled down, all on one side, on the door of one of the pits—and there left, by itself, in the wind and sunshine. 'How does it come to be left here?' I asked the man who showed me the place. 'It was brought here half an hour ago, Signore,' he said. I remembered to have met the procession, on its return: straggling away at a good round pace. ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... this manner you raise a large and high pyramid of the wood, and when it is finished, you set fire to it at the top. As the wood burns, the fire melts the resin in the pine, and this liquid tar distills into the square hole, and from thence runs into the pits made to ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz

... up in the air and a white magnesium cluster descended slowly, lighting up all the trenches in a sudden blaze which made the pioneers look like ghosts peering over the black brink of the pits. Then the light went out, and the eyes trying in vain to pierce the darkness saw nothing but glittering fiery red circles. The Japanese batteries on the other side opened fire. The air-ship had entirely disappeared, and ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff

... one position to another. Besides the advantage this would give us in the way of moving about, according as we wished to fire, it also meant that we should probably be able to mislead the enemy as to our numbers—which, by such shifting tactics might, for a time at least, be much exaggerated. The pits for fire to the north and south were nearly all so placed as to allow the occupants to fire at ground-level over the veldt. They were placed well among the bushes, only just sufficient scrub being cut away to allow a man to see all round, without exposing the position ...
— The Defence of Duffer's Drift • Ernest Dunlop Swinton

... ever saw. Part of this, when dressed, is exported to other countries; and part is manufactured into cordage. However profitable it may be to the grower, it is certainly a great nuisance in the summer. When taken out of the pits, where it has been put to rot, the stench it raises is quite insupportable; and must undoubtedly ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... battle was over, and since the vessels that would have thrown themselves away were saved by your orders, which I heard. Thanks to you, we are not even crippled, though our capital is destroyed and the lives of some unfortunates, who could not reach the pits in time, have ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby

... close quarters, but even its possession made the guerrillas stronger than the people of the country and undoubtedly had much to do with securing their cooeperation, not only as bolomen but also in the digging of the pits which were placed in the trails and also set about the towns. These were required to be constructed by the local authorities. In the bottom was set a sharp spike of bamboo, sometimes poisoned; and the pit was covered with leaves and soil upon a fragile framework; so that if a man stood upon it ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... for these discoveries: the other affords a description of a Vale in the Moon, compared with that of Hevelius and Ricciolo; where the Reader will find several curious and pleasant Annotations, about the Pits of the Moon, and the Hills and Coverings of the same; as also about the variations in the Moon, and its gravitating principle, together with the use, that may be made of this Instance of ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various

... this is probably due to the fact that a large quantity of earth, mostly, of course, from the upper part of the deposits, has been taken away for fertilizer. Neither in the bank of the little channel nor about the pits left by this digging is any refuse to be seen, and there is none about the entrance. So, in spite of its suitability for residential purposes and its favorable situation, it does not seem ever ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke

... reach our destination? However, all remained quiet throughout our progress, and at last we arrived at the entrance to the gun position, which was to be our home for the next fortnight. The guns were speedily unlimbered and man-handled into the pits awaiting their reception, the ammunition was unloaded from the vehicles, and the teams were returned ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose

... performing in the other parts of the castle. Ten of the pits had been cleared of their burden to appease the first cravings of the appetite of the hunters. The fires had been replenished, the gridirons again covered, and such a supply kept up as should not only satisfy the chieftains, but content their followers. Tancred ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... man, and over a wide district with David as a center, discredits the statements of De Zeltner in respect to the form illustrated in Fig. 4, and states that generally the graves do not differ greatly in shape and finish from the ordinary graves of to-day. He describes the pits as being oval and quadrangular and as having a depth ranging from a few feet to 18 feet. The paving or pack consists of earth and water worn stones, the latter pitched in without order and forming but a small percentage of the filling. He has never seen such stones used in facing the walls ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes

... give out in Glendale yit, since we took the cover offen the pits for Old Hickory in my granddad's time," he answered, with a trace of offense in his voice, as he stood over a half tub of butter mixing in his yarbs with mutterings that sounded like incantations. I drew Jane away for I felt ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess

... too, fallen, Iberia? Do we see The robber and the murderer weak as we? Thou that hast wasted earth, and dared despise Alike the wrath and mercy of the skies, Thy pomp is in the grave, thy glory laid Low in the pits thine avarice has made. We come with joy from our eternal rest, To see the oppressor in his turn oppressed. Art thou the god, the thunder of whose hand Rolled over all our desolated land, Shook principalities and kingdoms down, And made the mountains ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... sweetened and mixed like ordinary doughnut dough, rolled it like a thick pie crust and then enclosed the "filling," consisting of mince-meat, or stewed apple, or gooseberry, or plum, or blackberry; or perhaps peach, raspberry, or preserved cherries. Only such fruits must be cooked and the pits or stones of plums or peaches carefully removed. The edges of the dough were wet and dexterously crimped together, so that the pie would ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens

... stealthily, the two, as they drew apart into a shadowed place, where, nevertheless, the light from the bonfire could reach and bring their faces into relief. He watched the girl unfasten her mask and throw it on the grass. He drew a deep breath. Her face was pitifully ugly. It was covered with the pits and dents and scars that small-pox had left. The skin was coarse and rough and of a yellowish white. Her eyes were dim and red and bleared. Her eyebrows and lashes were gone. Her expression was like that of a furtive, crouching ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin

... comrades with a spirit of revolt. His influence grew, and he became the acknowledged leader of the strike which followed. The result was disastrous. After weeks of misery from cold and hunger the infuriated workmen attempted to destroy one of the pits, and were fired upon by soldiers sent to guard it. Many were killed, and the survivors, with their spirits crushed, returned to work. But worse was yet to come. Souvarine, an Anarchist, disgusted with the ineffectual struggle, brought about an inundation of the pit, whereby many ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson

... found in strata of different thickness, at the depth of about sixty feet below the surface of the ground. If worked much lower, it ceases to be good. It is brought up in square blocks, about nine feet wide, and two feet thick, by means of vertical wheels, placed at the mouths of the pits. When first dug from the quarry, its color is a pure and glossy white, and its texture very soft; but as it hardens it takes a browner hue, ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner

... called "Kasendi", for cementing our friendship. It is accomplished thus: The hands of the parties are joined (in this case Pitsane and Sambanza were the parties engaged); small incisions are made on the clasped hands, on the pits of the stomach of each, and on the right cheeks and foreheads. A small quantity of blood is taken off from these points in both parties by means of a stalk of grass. The blood from one person is put into a pot of beer, and that of the second into another; each then drinks the other's blood, and ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... overwhelmed unawares by the slip of the subsiding earth. Then he feigned a panic, and proceeded to forsake the camp for a short while. The townsmen fell upon it, missed their footing everywhere, rolled forward into the pits, and were massacred by him ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... damsel is like any oriental pearl, and looked at on the right side seems a very flower of the field; but on the left not quite so fair, for on that side she wants an eye, which she lost by the small-pox; and though the pits in her face are many and deep, her admirers say they are not pits but graves wherein the hearts of her lovers are buried. So clean and delicate, too, is she, that to prevent defiling her face, she carries her nose so hooked up that it seems to fly from her mouth; yet for all that ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... and the fickle goddess will perhaps remain faithful to him longer than to many others, for he is busy from early till late, and is his father's right-hand. At least he won't fall into one of the pits Fate digs for mortals." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... valley is the western outlet of the Black-down range, with the Beacon hill upon the north, and Hackpen long ridge to the south; and beyond that again the Whetstone hill, upon whose western end dark port-holes scarped with white grit mark the pits. But flint is the staple of the broad Culm Valley, under good, well-pastured loam; and here ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore

... least he could be revenged, and in his wrath it seemed to him that he was equal to the task of wiping out the entire population of that terrible city. It was nearly noon when he reached the great bowlder at the top of which terminated the secret passage to the pits beneath the city. Like a cat he scaled the precipitous sides of the frowning granite KOPJE. A moment later he was running through the darkness of the long, straight tunnel that led to the treasure vault. Through this he passed, then on and on until at last he came to the well-like shaft ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Makalaka strangers at the kraal as the Zulus. As a matter of fact, after the alarm was given late in the afternoon, as many of the Makalakas as could be communicated with had assembled here. Scouts had reported in the evening that the strangers were looting the corn from the pits, and only a couple of hours before Kondwana called a halt in the darkness, the fires that the Zulus had lighted were still to be seen burning brightly. Moreover, Kondwana had been very careful in preventing the huts being burnt, lest the Makalakas should infer that his force ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully

... Remove the pits from a large cup of stewed prunes and chop fine. Add the whites of three eggs and a half cup of sugar beaten to a stiff froth. Mix well, turn into a buttered dish and bake thirty minutes in a moderate oven. Serve with whipped cream. If it is desired to cook this in individual cups, butter the ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum

... and ask me what about it, and haven't the sense to alter it? Couldn't you set up a proper Government to-morrow, if you liked? Couldn't you contrive that the pits belonged to you, instead of you belonging to the pits, like so many old pit-ponies that stop down till they are blind, and take to eating coal-slack for meadow-grass, not knowing the difference? If only you'd learn to think, I'd respect ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence

... cinders, bones, and ordure, indescribable; and, variously kneaded into, sticking to, or fluttering foully here and there over all these,—remnants broadcast, of every manner of newspaper, advertisement or big-lettered bill, festering and flaunting out their last publicity in the pits of stinking dust ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... transferring the ingots, after allowing for this loss, there remains a surplus, which goes into the brickwork of the soaking pits, so that this surplus of heat from successive ingots tends continually to keep the pits at the intense heat of the ingot itself. Thus, occasionally it happens that inadvertently an ingot is delayed so long on its way to the pit as to arrive there somewhat short of heat, its temperature will be raised by ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various

... pickets commenced very early, and quite heavy, at 5.40 A.M. Terrific cannonading to the seaward was heard between 9 and 10 A.M. As there was some talk of the enemy making a sortie, all eyes were open. Dirt began falling in the pits from the jar, bells could be heard tolling in the city, and steam whistles in the harbor. There was much speculation as to what was in progress. I'll say that there were many glad hearts when the news reached us that Sampson's fleet was King of the ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward

... what it is that penetrates the soul. His images of horror in the infernal regions were all founded on those familiar to every one in the upper world; it was from the caldron of boiling pitch in the arsenal of Venice that he took his idea of one of the pits of Malebolge. But what a picture does he there exhibit! The writhing sinner plunged headlong into the boiling waves, rising to the surface, and a hundred demons, mocking his sufferings, and with outstretched hooks tearing his flesh ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... be spared. But Stephen was right; nothing could keep her from the pronouncement of the words that would free him and bind herself in intolerable ill. Her uprightness was terrible. It would take her fearful but determined into the pits of any hell. His hands slowly clenched, his muscles tightened, in a spasm of anguish. God, why hadn't he recognized the desperation in Essie's quivering face! It would have been already too late, he added in thought; it ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... along the ridge of the canal between. The berries on the hedges were crimson and bright red, above the leaves. The glow of evening and the wheeling of the solitary pee-wit and the faint cry of the birds came to meet the shuffling noise of the pits, the dark, fuming stress of the town opposite, and they two walked the blue strip of water-way, the ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... left, twin streams of lead, the number of rounds governed only by the carrying power of the Mayther. Prester Kleig knew them all: the guns in the wings, the guns which fired through the three propellers, and the guns set two and two in the fuselage, to right and left of the pits, which could be fixed either up or down—all by the mere pressing of buttons. It was marvelous, miraculous, yet even as Kleig told himself that this was so, he felt, deep in the heart of him, that Moyen knew all about ships like these, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various

... visits from Bechuanas of strange tribes causes the Bakalahari to choose their residences far from water; and they not unfrequently hide their supplies by filling the pits with sand and making a fire over the spot. When they wish to draw water for use, the women come with twenty or thirty of their water-vessels in a bag or net on their backs. These water-vessels consist of ostrich egg-shells, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... log house was in the midst of the clearing. It had, properly speaking, only one room, but there was a shed-room attached, for the purpose of storage, and also a large open shed at one side. The rail fence inclosed the space of an acre, perhaps, which was covered with spent bark. Across the pits planks were laid, with heavy stones upon them to hold them in place. A rude roof sheltered the bark-mill from the weather, and there was the patient mule, with Birt and a whip to make sure that he did ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)

... fuel in some districts which were fortunate enough to possess large beds, and in the capital, which could easily be supplied by water carriage. It seems reasonable to believe that at least one half of the quantity then extracted from the pits was consumed in London. The consumption of London seemed to the writers of that age enormous, and was often mentioned by them as a proof of the greatness of the imperial city. They scarcely hoped to be believed when they affirmed that two hundred ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... excursion, and order a number of pits to be dug on the road sufficiently large to hold Rustem and his horse, and in each several swords must be placed with their points and edges upwards. The mouths of the pits must then be slightly covered over, but so carefully that there may be no appearance of the earth underneath having been removed. Everything being thus ready, Rustem, on the pretence of going to the sporting ground, must be conducted by that road, ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... nears the Araxes, we shall depart with our wives and children and seek another home, for we have no fixed dwellings like yours, but are accustomed to rove at will on our swift horses, and to rest in tents. Our gold we shall take with us, and shall fill up, destroy, and conceal the pits in which you could find new treasures. We know every spot where gold is to be found, and can give it in abundance, if you grant us peace and leave us our liberty; but, if you venture to invade our territory, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... desultory fire. There were very few casualties on either side. Some of the Christian native infantry soldiers suffered from the bamboo spikes (Spanish, puas) set in the ground around the stockades, but the enemy had not had time to cover with brushwood the pits dug for the attacking party to fall into. In about two months the operations ended by the submission of some chiefs of minor importance and influence; and after spending so much powder and shot and Christian ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... when approaching a river, to march in advance of a party without first sending forward a few natives to examine the route in front. The pits are usually about 12 or 14 feet in depth. These are covered over with light wood, and crossed with slight branches or reeds, upon which is laid some long dry grass; this is covered lightly with soil, upon which some elephant's ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... long lines of men on small horses and ponies are seen issuing from their camps in all directions, who return before night loaded with fodder for the cattle, with firewood torn down from houses, and grain dug up from the pits where it had been concealed by the villagers; while other detachments go to a distance for some days and collect proportionately larger supplies of the same kind." [223] They could thus dispense with a commissariat, and being ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... its quite shabby and belittered and ramshackle recall of the old Roman "art-life" of one's early dreams. Everything was somehow in the picture, the rickety sheds, the loose paraphernalia, the sunny, grassy yard where a goat was browsing; then the queer interior gloom of the pits, frilled with little overlooking scaffoldings and bridges, for the sinking fireward of the image that was to take on hardness; and all the pleasantness and quickness, the beguiling refinement, of the three or four light fine "hands" of whom the staff consisted and into whose type ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... back, over the ground towards the fort. Fresh hordes were seen coming on, probably those who had before retreated. Again the trumpet sounded the recall. The commandant now summoned every available man in the fort; some to garrison the pits, others to advance to the support ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston

... process of indigo dyeing. The dyers bore circular pits of about fifteen or twenty feet deep, and three feet in diameter, in which they throw the things to be dyed, and leave them there. The pits are full of the dye, produced by the leaves and the seed of the plant called nila, sodden in water. They dye tobes and raw cotton, and cotton twist; the work is carried on in the open air. About ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson

... resolves (about mending my conduct). I pray you to protect me like sages that do not accept gifts protecting the poor. Sinful wights abstaining from sacrifices never attain to heaven.[439] Leaving (this world), they have to pass their time in the pits of hell like Pullindas and Khasas.[440] Ignorant that I am, give me wisdom like a learned preceptor to his pupil or like a sire to his son. Be ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... a violent poison, is sometimes taken by children in eating the pits of stone fruits or bitter almonds which contain it. The antidote is to empty the stomach by an emetic, and give water of ammonia or chloric water. Affusions of cold water all over the body, followed by warm hand friction, ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... Meanwhile the goddess fetched me up four seal skins from the bottom of the sea, all of them just skinned, for she meant playing a trick upon her father. Then she dug four pits for us to lie in, and sat down to wait till we should come up. When we were close to her, she made us lie down in the pits one after the other, and threw a seal skin over each of us. Our ambuscade would have been intolerable, for the stench of the fishy seals was most distressing {45}—who would go to bed with a sea monster if he could help it?—but here, too, the goddess helped us, and thought of something ...
— The Odyssey • Homer

... way he had of showing his "quareness" was that he did not even eat like other people. On this particular day the Watson children had for dinner, among other plainer things, a piece of wild cranberry pie, with the pits left in, for each child. Patsy's piece had gone at the first recess; Danny's did not get past the fireguard around the school; Tammy's disappeared before he had gone a hundred yards from the house (Tommy was carrying ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung

... went down into that deep place, and dug many pits in it, and in one of the pits he lay hidden with his sword drawn. There he waited, and presently the earth began to shake with the weight of the Dragon as he crawled to the water. And a cloud of venom flew before him as he snorted and roared, so that it would have been death ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various

... considerably lighter than stone and cast iron. He felt a great respect for such persons of rank as professed to be supporters of the drama, trusting that they would keep the ceilings of the theatres from tumbling into the pits. He spent great part of his time in the Thames Tunnel, and if he ever felt a doubt respecting the ultimate success of that undertaking, he did justice to the enterprise and skill of its projector, that illustrious mole, and sincerely wished that zeal and talent ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various

... upon the two. Chet saw Anita for one instant as he felt himself lifted in air. About him was a pandemonium of flailing wings; ahead and below was the red of hidden fires. They were being lifted out and over the pits. ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin

... on the night of the third day of the ice bearing, he drew the curtain and looked out of window. The moon was nearly full, there was not a breath of wind stirring to shake the hoar-frost off the trees; all was hard, and bright, and clear. How splendid the pits would be now! How glorious to have the whole sheet of ice to one's self! why, with such a chance of solitary practice he might well expect to cut an eight, for he could already complete entire circles on each foot. If it were ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough

... not the slightest attempt had been made to call his bluff. It had been, in fact, a painful walk-over. The seven labourers seemed to expect a death-blow. When it fell, they met it with the apathy of despair. Every felt as though he were sentencing a bunch of forest ponies to the pits, and the dumb hopelessness of their demeanour ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... cell walls, since, as already mentioned, except for the open vessels in the hardwoods, free resin ducts in the softwoods, and possibly the intercellular spaces, the cells of green wood are enclosed by membranes and the water must pass through the walls or the membranes of the pits. Heat appears to increase this transfusion, but experimental data ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner



Words linked to "The pits" :   hell, snake pit, part



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