"Pitch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is certainly most harmonious when wound up to the highest pitch; but at that very time, is in greatest danger of breaking: and upon the whole, the strongest friendships may be compared to the strongest towns, which are too well fortified to be taken by open attacks; but are always liable to be undermined by ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various
... of the ragdealer's hovel were formed of stakes paid with pitch, and the wall opposite to that built of the bathing-houses was constructed of thick, irregular rocks and curved outward with a swelling like that of a church presbytery. Within, this curve corresponded to a hollow in the manner of a wide vaulted ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... it won't seem genuine,' said the sneering voice of fat Lavaux, grinning close at his ear. He turned round angrily; but here the young officer gave at stentorian pitch the command 'Carry—arms!' and the bayonets rattled on the muskets while the muffled tones of the organ rolled out the 'Dead March.' The procession began to form for leaving the church, headed as before by Gazan, ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... last statement Peter's voice sank a little in pitch, so that they hardly heard it. But the last statement mattered to no ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... of allegiance, born so suddenly and strangely in the Irish breast, cherished so ardently and at the price of so many sacrifices, finally raising the nation to the highest pitch of heroism, is worth studying ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... again, his young mistress led him back to the piano. Several teachers experimented with him. They found he had absolute pitch, and a remarkable memory. As a very young child he could repeat, after a fashion, any composition that was played for him. No matter how many wrong notes he struck, he never lost the intention of a ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... rose to a fiercer pitch of intensity the next day. The Mexicans seemed to have an unlimited supply of ammunition, and they rained balls and shells on the Alamo. Many of the shells did not burst, and the damage done was small. The Texans did not reply from the shelter of their ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... thought Jack; but the next moment she began to sink toward the horizontal, hung for a second or two level, and then glided down after a tremendous pitch, rose again, and then began to race along on the top of a huge billow which foamed and raved hungrily ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... Maurice had made. Bertha looked like a culprit awaiting sentence, rather than a person who came to dictate, when she entered Madame de Gramont's apartment. The countess had been highly incensed by her conversation with Maurice, and was wrought up to such a pitch that she seemed to have gained sudden strength, and almost to be restored to health. Bertha stole to her side, but the young girl's good intentions were oozing away every moment. The probability is that that she would not have had the courage to introduce ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... her as ever a sick man did from a third-day ague; and had she dropped into the grave by any fair way, as I may call it, I mean, had she died by any ordinary distemper, I should have shed but very few tears for her. But I was not arrived to such a pitch of obstinate wickedness as to commit murder, especially such as to murder my own child, or so much as to harbour a thought so barbarous in my mind. But, as I said, Amy effected all afterwards without my knowledge, for which I gave her my hearty curse, ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... by wine, their orgies began to have the appearance of those of demons, roaring, howling, singing, and laughing until the walls of the church echoed with their yells. This was often carried on until they worked themselves up to a pitch of madness, and then they began boxing each other until the floor of the church would be smeared with blood; upon which most severe expiations were exacted from them; as, however, much has been shed in the cause of the church, it was not to be permitted that the holy sanctuary should ever be stained ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... has two variations differing from each other only in pitch; the oblique tone has three variations, known as "Rising, Sinking, and Entering." In a seven-syllable verse the odd syllables can have any tone; as regards the even syllables, when the second syllable is even, then the fourth is oblique, and the ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... the highest pitch, Columbus again repaired to Court; but so fully occupied was he with the grandeur of his enterprise, that he stipulated that he should be invested with the title and privilege of admiral, and viceroy over the countries he should discover, with one-tenth of ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... to use the Telephone, and in the course of an Hour he had organized a Pirate Crew that would go as far as you like at any Game from Pitch-and-Toss to Manslaughter. ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... at its highest pitch, a fierce cry rang from the end of the room. The game ceased suddenly, and the children turned to see what had happened. There was that odd little new-comer, Kate Daniels, standing with hands clenched and dark eyes flashing, in front of ...
— Daybreak - A Story for Girls • Florence A. Sitwell
... chasms; and Warburton, who had reasons best known to himself for cultivating Pope's favor, besides considerable practice during his youth in a special pleader's office, took the desperate case in hand. He caulked the chasms with philosophic oakum, he 'payed' them with dialectic pitch, he sheathed them with copper and brass by means of audacious dogmatism and insolent quibbles, until the enemy seemed to have been silenced, and the vessel righted so far as to float. The result, however, as a permanent result, was this—that the demurs which had once been raised (however ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... Theft and pickeries.] 6 Sixtlie, that if anie man were taken with theft or pickerie, and thereof conuicted, he should haue his head polled, and hot pitch powred vpon his pate, and vpon that, the feathers of some pillow or cushion shaken aloft, that he might thereby be knowne for a theefe, and at the next arriuall of the ships to any land, be put foorth of the companie to seeke his ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (6 of 12) - Richard the First • Raphael Holinshed
... this with the desire they expressed that Alice might enjoy the same opportunities as Robina of giving her acquirements a final polish, up to diploma pitch. A correspondence commenced, resulting in Miss Knevett being engaged as teacher, being remunerated by lessons in languages and accomplishments. The arrangement gave universal satisfaction; Cherry could not detect any regret on the ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the sour asperity which they entertain towards each other, and which, notwithstanding the efforts of the ladies to keep peace between them, by christening one their "beau medecin," and the other their "bon medecin," has arrived at such a pitch that they refuse to speak French, or ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... saw the free hand steal out behind him and pitch away a crumpled fragment of paper. One of the policemen saw it too, followed it with his eyes, and saw ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... half-way up the calf of my leg in mud at every step, while these light, naked fellows tripped like snipe over the sodden ground. Vainly I called upon them to go easily; their moment of excitement was at its full pitch, and they were soon out of sight among the trees and underwood, taking all the spare guns, except the four-ounce rifle, which, weighing twenty-one pounds, effectually prevented the bearer from leaving ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... letters too; the reiterated promise of gold, and the marvellous anecdotes which these credulous settlers readily believed from the natives, such as that there was a rock close by out of which gold would burst if you struck it with a club, raised greed and expectation in Spain to a fever pitch, and ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... no end to these curious volumes. I will, however, only add that there were upwards of 150 articles of Old Plays, mostly in quarto. See page 73. Of Antiquities, Chronicles, and Topography, it would be difficult to pitch upon the rarest volumes. The collection, including very few MSS., contained probably about 7000 volumes. The catalogue, in a ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... signal of the Gwalior, Captain Southcombe, marching slowly with his long limp burdens, found ready on the sand the little barrel, about as big as a kilderkin, of true and unsullied Stockholm pitch, which he had taken, as his brother took Madeira, for ripeness and for betterance, by right of change of climate. With a little of this given choicely and carefully at the back of every sick man's tongue, and a little more spread across the hollow of his stomach, he found them so enabled ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... known to be one of the boldest, and, at the same time, one of the most utterly reckless, men in St. Just, was appealed to in the emergency, and, as we have seen, offered to attack the enemy single-handed, on condition that the miners should give him a "pitch" of the good lode they had found—that is, give him the right to work out a certain number of fathoms ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... to its highest pitch by the sight of a portrait of a beloved son, who had died in England during his absence. It arrived in the close of those sad days. He recognised it with a burst of tenderness and delight which at once lifted his mind above the suffering of his mortal illness. Again and again ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... lifting the "matter" from the stick and transferring it to a "galley," a feat which the experienced "Magog" accomplished very deftly, and greatly to the amazement of his companion. Just as it was over, and Reginald was laughingly hoping he would not soon be expected to arrive at such a pitch of dexterity, Mr Durfy ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... boats which are found in India and on this sea are not made in the same manner as are other ships. For neither are they smeared with pitch, nor with any other substance, nor indeed are the planks fastened together by iron nails going through and through, but they are bound together with a kind of cording. The reason is not as most persons suppose, ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... associating with his performance the melancholy grandeur of their geniuses; you are to imagine that you hear his slow, solemn, well-accented enunciation, and his voice of affecting trembling melody; you are to remember the pitch of passion and enthusiasm to which the congregation were raised; and then the few moments of portentous, deathlike silence which reigned throughout the house; the preacher removing his white handkerchief from his aged face, (even yet wet from the recent torrent of his tears), and slowly stretching ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... The struggle under the Maccabees was a noble one; but it attained not the grandeur of that of the Vaudois. It was short in comparison; nor do its single exploits, brave as they were, rise to the same surpassing pitch of heroism. When read after the story of the Vaudois, the annals of Greece and Rome even, fruitful though they be in deeds of heroism, appear cold and tame. In short, we know of no other instance in the world in which a great and sacred ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... chap showing the white feather, too. All the new fellows are cowards it seems this time," said Jones. "This'll never do. Pitch ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... I staked higher and higher, and still won. The excitement in the room rose to fever pitch. The silence was interrupted by a deep-muttered chorus of oaths and exclamations in different languages, every time the gold was shovelled across to my side of the table—even the imperturbable croupier dashed his rake on the floor in a (French) fury of astonishment at my success. But one man ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... perpetual tendency to political and ecclesiastical "leap-frog." In one sense, life is a great "game of ball." We all choose sides and gather into denominational and political parties. We take our places on the ball ground. Some are to pitch; they are the radicals. Some are to catch; they are the conservatives. Some are to strike; they are those fond of polemics and battle. Some are to run; they are the candidates. There are four hunks—youth, manhood, ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... intervals we pass a n'zala, a square empty space surrounded by a zariba of thorn and prickly pear. The village, a few wattled huts with conical roofs, stands by its side. Every n'zala is a Government shelter for travellers; you may pitch your tent within the four walls, and even if you remain outside and hire guards the owners of the huts are responsible for your safety, with their worldly goods, perhaps with their lives. I have tried the interior of the Moorish n'zalas, where all too frequently you must lie on unimagined filth, ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... middle of the altar, plac'd a turf-table, which she heapt with burning coals, and her old crack cup (for sacrifice) repair'd with temper'd pitch; when she had fixt it to the smoaking-wall from which she took it; putting on her habit, she plac'd a kettle by the fire, and took down a bag that hung near her, in which, a bean was kept for that use, and a very aged piece of a hog's forehead, ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... sailed amongst many unknown desolate islands, and the weather was wretchedly bad. We met with no natives. The coast was almost everywhere so steep, that we had several times to pull many miles before we could find space enough to pitch our two tents: one night we slept on large round boulders, with putrefying sea-weed between them; and when the tide rose, we had to get up and move our blanket-bags. The farthest point westward which ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... out of function, by the obstruction of a main bronchus, or if inflammatory sequelae are extensive. 7. The asthmatoid wheeze is usually present in tracheal foreign bodies, and is often louder and of lower pitch than the asthmatoid wheeze of bronchial foreign bodies. It is heard at the open mouth, not at the chest wall; and prolonged expiration as though to rid the lungs of all residual air, may be necessary to elicit it. 8. ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... or resin ointment, is composed of bees wax, olive oil, resin, Burgundy pitch, and turpentine. This is said to be identical with the famous "Holloway's Ointment," and is highly useful when the stimulation of indolent ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... get forward!" he said, "you have nothing to do here. If you want to say a Pater noster, or an Ave Maria, there is plenty of room at home, and it is quite as good to say it there as in this monastery, which is now as dark as pitch." ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... flight she was delivered of a male-child. After some time. the chiefs of the Chola kingdom, proceeding to elect a king, determined, by the advice of the saint to crown whomsoever the late monarch's elephant should pitch upon. Being turned loose for this purpose, the elephant discovered and brought to Trisira-mali the child of his former master, who accordingly became the Chola king." (Wilson's Desc. Catal. of Mackenzie MSS., i. 17.) In a Manipuri story of two brothers, Turi and Basanta—"Indian Antiquary," vol. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... shall we take this wonder, Lay this prodigy of evil, That destruction may o'ertake him, Where the boy will sink and perish?" Then his messengers he ordered To collect dried poles of brushwood, Birch-trees with their hundred branches, Pine-trees full of pitch and resin, Ordered that a pyre be builded, That the boy might be cremated, That Kullervo thus might perish. High they piled the and branches, Dried limbs from the sacred birch-tree, Branches from a hundred fir-trees, Knots and branches full of resign; Filled with bark a thousand sledges, Seasoned ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... letter from him with a shudder. Yes, wouldn't it be great! If scrimmage was hard, what would a real game be with rivalry at high pitch and each team contesting for every inch of ground? Judd wondered how other people could feel the way they did about things. Just now it seemed to him that the opportunity to play in the big game would be about the worst calamity that could befall him. The way to live up to the contract ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman
... drenched in a moment, and running with floods as if she had been under water. For a few moments H. and I both enjoyed the motion. We stood amidships, she in her shawl, I in a great tarpauling which I had borrowed of Jack, and every pitch sent the spray over us. We exulted that we were not going to be sick. Suddenly, however, so suddenly that it was quite mysterious, conscience smote me. A profound, a deep-seated remorse developed itself just exactly in the deepest centre of the ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... shouldn't hesitate to recommend a coat of tar-and-feathers and a ride upon a fence-rail for him. And if I should ever detect Tom, or any of my boys, even sympathizing in any attempt to dissolve the Union, I would warm the pitch for them myself, as sure as there is ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... train-sickness rushed over her; she could have crumpled to her knees, had even a sense of wanting to faint, but instead she opened her lips again, her eyes fixed on the unseen last two tows of the unseen top gallery, and by miracle finding a pitch that left ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... amid a good deal of blushing and hesitation, were hoisted on board in a chair. Tea was served on deck; and after half an hour's laughing and chatting, during which time our violin-player was endeavouring to coax his first string to the proper pitch without breaking, the ball opened with a Scotch reel. Every one knows what Scotch reels are, but every one does not know how the belles of the ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... flame burnt thereon. Mr Palmer almost worshipped Mr Maurice, and his admiration was not blind, for Maurice connected the Bible with what was rational in his friend. 'What! still believable: no need then to pitch it overboard: here after all is the Eternal Word!' It can be imagined how those who dared not close their eyes to the light, and yet clung to that book which had been so much to their forefathers and themselves, rejoiced when they were able to declare that it belonged to them more than to ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... an idea. I think he must be some camera-man who's seen me when they've been shooting the pitch—" she made the correction almost in time—"who's seen me when they've been shooting the pick-tures. I can't ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... so hungry to hang other fellers. I hadn't ever met up with such aristocratic stock as I did then but I tchuned right up to 'em and I've mighty nigh held their pitch ever sence. Fo'most of all was this Hugh Courteney. Fo'most because, he being a man, I wa'n't afraid of him. But a close second was yo' daughter; second because, she being a woman, I was afraid of her. Why, even Phyllis, that's ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... the glass was bedewed, and Graham saw only hazy suggestions of the forms below, but near the pitch of the transparent roof the glass was clear, and he found himself looking sheerly down upon it all. For awhile, in spite of the urgency of his guide, he gave way to vertigo and lay spread-eagled on the glass, sick and paralysed. Far below, mere ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... made Orthodoxy a study. And by an attentive examination of 'The Presbyterian,' 'The Observer,' 'The Puritan Recorder,' and such like unblemished confessors, we have perceived that no man is truly sound who does not pitch into somebody that is not sound; and that a real modern orthodox man, like a nervous watch dog, must sit on the door-stone of his system, and bark incessantly at everything that comes in sight along the highway. And when there is nothing to bark at, either he must growl and gnaw ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... little saint?" cried John, angrily, grabbing his brother's arm. "Now just promise to do as we say, or we'll pitch you into that ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... wrap closer about her as she stepped into the carriage which was waiting. The drive homeward was silent. The two women sat together, each feeling in that fervent handclasp the emotions which filled the heart of the other. Mrs. Dallas had been roused by something to an unusual pitch of excited feeling, and her little friend, by the intuition of sympathy, defined it. The way was long and Mr. Dallas, making himself as comfortable as possible on the seat opposite, took off his hat, leaned his head back and in a few moments was ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... many moments it is an avoidance in fact. But we have seen in the case of the birds that the avoidance is, at the pairing season, only a part of the process of working up the organism to the nervous pitch necessary for pairing. ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... reach the pueblo that night, however. Only a mile from it I plunged out of the moonlight into the pitch darkness of a hollow lane cutting through Don Jaime's hacienda. Banana palms were growing thick to right and left; the way was narrow and deep—it was a fine place for cutthroats, but that avocation had lost much of its romantic charm from the fact that, not three weeks before, ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... places for certain crimes. I was willing enough to go thither, as well to secure my ship in a good harbour, where I might careen her (there being dammer also, which I could not get here, to make use of instead of pitch, which I now wanted) and where I might still be refreshing my men and supporting them in order to my further discoveries; as also to inform myself more particularly concerning these places as yet so little known to us. Accordingly I accepted the offer of a pilot and two ...
— A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... or a private view, or a first-night at which she was to be present, she would expostulate that he wished to advertise their relations in public, that he was treating her like a woman off the streets. Things came to such a pitch that, in an effort to save himself from being altogether forbidden to meet her anywhere, Swann, remembering that she knew and was deeply attached to my great-uncle Adolphe, whose friend he himself also had been, went one day to see him in his little flat in the Rue de Bellechasse, to ask ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... their bodies Burnt in a coal-pit with the ventage stopp'd, That their curs'd smoke might not ascend to heaven; Or dip the sheets they lie in in pitch or sulphur, Wrap them in 't, and then light them like a match; Or else to-boil their bastard to a cullis, And give 't his lecherous father to renew ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... removed my shoes, took my knife, and having opened the panel, slipped silently through. It was not more than thirty feet that I had to go, but I went inch by inch, for the old rotten boards snapped like breaking twigs if a sudden weight was placed upon them. It was, of course, pitch dark, and very, very slowly I felt my way along. At last I saw a yellow seam of light glimmering in front of me, and I knew that it came from the other panel. I was too soon, then, since he had not extinguished ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... no answer, nor did a soul show himself. The curiosity of the castaways was aroused to the highest pitch, and as vigorously as they could they paddled to the side of the steam yacht. The craft was not a large one, but seemed to be of good build and in first-class trim. The wheel was lashed fast, causing her to ride fairly well in the faint breeze. Not ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield
... and pitch-fork, goat and prong, Mounted on these we whirl along; Who vainly strives to climb tonight, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Della Causa, and Dell' Infinito Universo, yet the irresistible tendency to dramatic satire emerges even there in the description of England and in the characters of the indispensable pedant buffoon. His dialogue on the Eroici Furori is sustained at a high pitch of aspiring fervor. Mystical in its attempt to adumbrate the soul's thirst for truth and beauty, it adopts the method of a running commentary upon poems, in the manner of a discursive and fantastic Vita Nuova. In his Italian style, Bruno owed much to the fashion set by Aretino. The study of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... know—more is the pity it could not save you from this—for it passes all bounds that you should meditate such an unnatural act, upon my soul, in the most natural manner in the world. One must be an Adrian Landale, and live on a tower for the best part of one's life, to reach such a pitch ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... figure of a European, presumably made by a native. "It is inconceivable," he concludes, "that an introduced art could have developed at so rapid a rate that in seventy years, probably less, for this art would hardly have been introduced the first day, such a high pitch of excellence could have been ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... respect cannot fail, I think, to be remarked by the reader,—there being, with an evident increase of intellectual vigour, a tone of violence and bravado breaking out in them continually, which marks the high pitch of re-action to which he had now wound up ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... permanence to a given state of affairs. The fact that Ethel was the wife of another man seemed to me so fixed and unalterable that I allowed my imagination to play with the picture of what might happen if that unalterable fact were altered. Secure in this fallacy, I worked myself up to the pitch of believing that I was actually and passionately in love with a woman whose inaccessibility was, after all, her most winning attraction. Moreover, by writing down, in this journal, the events and words of the hours we spent together, ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... monitress, "you are already learning to laugh at principles which have been dear to you since you left your mother's breast. Alas, how true it is, 'You cannot touch pitch and ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... wood painted twice with the solution; afterwards the wood is submitted to the action of hydrochloric acid, and finally washed with ammonia. It is then dried in a dark place, oiled and polished. This is said to give remarkably good results on beech, pitch pine and poplar. Black—7 ozs. logwood are boiled with three pints of water, filtered, and the filtrate mixed with a solution containing 1 oz. of sulphate of copper (blue copperas). The mixture is left to clear, and ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... of logs, with an inner skin of rough match-boarding, daubed with pitch. It measured seventeen feet by fourteen; but opposite the door four bunks—two above and two below—took a yard off the length, and this made the interior exactly square. Each of these bunks had ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... will bid them pitch thy tent on this same place, that I may smell the wild thyme again, as I did that ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... the whole weight of the battle was brought into the centre, where King James and the Earl of Surrey commanded in person. The determined valour of James, imprudent as it was, had the effect of rousing to a pitch of desperation the courage of the meanest soldiers; and the ground becoming soft and slippery from blood, they pulled off their boots and shoes, and secured a firmer footing by ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... the dance, the white satin of her raiment flashing perpetual interchange of lustrous and obscure, the warm air playing in the lace that fell like the spray of the fountain round her golden hair and over her pearly shoulder; grace swept in all her motions, beauty crowned her, she seemed the perfect, pitch of womanhood. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... was but one-third of his age, and saw better at night. On the other hand he was less easily seen, but the midnight there was so still and deserted, that that was of small consequence. In a few minutes they were out together in a lane as dark as pitch, compelled now to keep to the roads, for there was not light enough to see the pocket-compass by which the surgeon ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... gazing on Raffles all this time in mute and rapt amazement. But I had long been past that pitch. If he had told me now that he had broken into the Bank of England, or the Tower, I should not have disbelieved him for a moment. I was prepared to go home with him to the Albany and find the regalia under his bed. And I took down my overcoat as he put ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... cover flew off, and he arose from his constrained and painful position with feelings of the most intense satisfaction. All was pitch dark, and he began groping around for some door or window which would afford him egress from the place. His hand soon came in contact with a window; he raised the sash, and unfastened the shutters, threw them open, when instantly a flood of moonlight streamed into the store, enabling ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... And the woman conceived, and bare a son: and when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months. And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river's brink. And his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be ...
— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous
... hound had a keener scent, no eagle a sharper eye. How indefatigable he was! Distance, rivers, mountains, pickets, patrols, roll-calls,—nothing could stop or hinder him. He never bragged about his exploits; simply brought in the spoils, laid them down, and said, "Pitch in." Not a word of the weary miles he had traveled, how he begged or how much ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... exterior that always engages their hearts; and I would never advise you to give yourself much trouble about their understanding. Princes in general (I mean those 'Porphyrogenets' who are born and bred in purple) are about the pitch of women; bred up like them, and are to be addressed and gained in the same manner. They always see, they seldom weigh. Your lustre, not your solidity, must take them; your inside will afterward support and secure what your outside has acquired. ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... round in circles, hide under the willows, and attempt to creep into the rat-holes in the banks, a stupidity so crass that it merits instant death, which it somehow always escapes. Then they come out in couples and waddle under the wrong fence into the lower meadow, fly madly under the tool-house, pitch blindly in with the sitting hens, and out again in short order, all the time quacking and squawking, honking and hissing like a bewildered orchestra. By dint of splashing the water with poles, throwing pebbles, beating the shrubs at the pond's edges, "shooing" frantically with our skirts, ...
— The Diary of a Goose Girl • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... faiths, and worships besides being "in the darkness of apostasy."[145:1] But after the abatement of that wonderful first fervor which within a lifetime carried "its line into all the earth, and its words to the ends of the world," it was impossible to hold it to this pitch. Claiming no divine right to all men's allegiance, it felt no duty of opening the door to all men's access. It was free to exclude from the meeting on arbitrary and even on frivolous grounds. As zeal decayed, the energies of the Society ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... nutrit servum suum, postea sentiet eum contumacem. Here is signified, that if a man begin too high a pitch in his favours, it doth commonly end ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... that Thangbrand was out early and made them pitch a tent on land, and sang mass in it, and took much pains with it, for it was a ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... cottages was all Langholm's. The whole thing, levelled, would not have made a single lawn-tennis court, nor yet a practice pitch of proper length. Yet this little garden contained almost everything that a garden need have. There were tall pines among the timber to one side, and through these set the sun, so that on the hottest days the garden was in sufficient shadow by the time the ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... muskmelon in hand, and advancing toward me, shouts, "H-o-i" loud enough to wake the seven sleepers. Shouting "H-o-i!!" at a person close enough to hear a whisper, as loud as though he were a good mile away, is a peculiarity of the Persians that has often irritated travellers to the pitch of wishing they had a hot potato and the dexterity to throw it down their throats; and in my present unenviable condition, and its accompanying unenviable frame of mind, I don't mind admitting that I mentally relegated this vociferous melon-vender to ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... a looking creature!' exclaimed Geoff, as he stooped over the recovered treasure. 'See, Bell, his curls are glistening with pitch, his dress is torn into ribbons, and ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... by man's hand, than the abode of thousands, and the central mart of Western Abyssinia. For a few days we resided in the town, where several of the best houses had been put at our disposal; but the countless host of unmentionable insects fairly drove us away. We obtained permission to pitch our tents on the sea beach, on a pleasant spot only a few hundred yards from the town, where we enjoyed the double luxury of fresh air and abundance ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... will be especially interesting with reference to families. The voices of animals have a family character not to be mistaken. All the Canidae bark and howl!—the fox, the wolf, the dog, have the same kind of utterance, though on a somewhat different pitch. All the bears growl, from the white bear of the Arctic snows to the small black bear of the Andes. All the cats meow, from our quiet fireside companion to the lions and tigers and panthers of the forests and jungle. This last may seem a strange assertion; but to any one who has listened critically ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... he resumed his general lectures on physics. From these, however, he was speedily driven, or one might say shelled out, by a concerted assault of my sister Mary's. He had been in the habit of lowering the pitch of his lectures with ostentatious condescension to the presumed level of our poor understandings. This superciliousness annoyed my sister; and accordingly, with the help of two young female visitors, and my next younger brother,—in subsequent times ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... Burgundy Pitch 1 ounce Beeswax 1 ounce Mutton Tallow 1 ounce Oil of Hemlock 2 drams Balsam Fir 2 drams Oil Origanum 2 drams Oil of Red Cedar 2 drams Venice Turpentine, 2 drams Oil Wormwood 1/2 dram Copper ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... this to what a pitch of lawlessness and disorder the land came under the reign of Duke Johann. For, methinks, these robbers would never have dared to make such a mock of the authorities, only that my Lord Duke had shut up all the courts ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... hollow echo; I knew—I knew that I was losing my consciousness—that I was about to faint! Words cannot describe my humiliation at this discovery. I set my lips hard and straightened my limbs; raised my voice to a shrill, defiant pitch, and struggled in the dimming horror to select my adversary in the monkey-jacket and overwhelm him with bitter apostrophes. In vain! The novelty, the excitement, the enervation of that long, consuming fever, mastered my overtaxed physique. I knew that, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... starving; and it may be, for this is one of the occasional and unavoidable results of England's endeavoring to become the workshop of the world. By over-manufacturing, she has brought it to such a pitch that one fourth of her population live on imported food—such as do not starve outright—for be it remembered that in Great Britain one person in eight is buried at the public expense, while one in every ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... halted, and Leonard and Otter walked to and fro searching for a suitable place to make the camp and pitch their solitary tent. Presently Otter shouted aloud. Leonard ran towards him, and found him staring into the mist at something that loomed largely about a hundred ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... impossible task of lifting them out of the earth in which they were embedded; to swing fallen trees away from a path by means of rope attached to one end rather than to attempt to remove them single-handed; to pitch hay rather than to lift it; to clear a field with a rake rather than with the hands; to carry heavy loads in wheelbarrows (Fig. 92) rather than on the shoulders; to roll barrels up a plank (Fig. 93) and to raise ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... an Arab scholar named Ibn-Sadif. He was as thin as an arrow, pliant as a bow, as dark as pitch, with the eyes and nose of an eagle under his white turban. He was a wanderer over the earth, for, learned in all else, he still sought knowledge of men and of countries. He had gone up by the Volga to the Kama and to the Bulgarians. Now he was wending his ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... it out of the waste basket, into which he had unwittingly dropped it. Taking it with many apologies, he bowed himself confusedly and ungracefully out, and went away, wondering if he would ever be able to get himself up to such a pitch again, and resolving, if it proved possible, that it should not occur next time where there was one of ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... revolver, cocked, upon the top of the wooden case behind which I crouched. Holmes shot the slide across the front of his lantern and left us in pitch darkness—such an absolute darkness as I have never before experienced. The smell of hot metal remained to assure us that the light was still there, ready to flash out at a moment's notice. To me, with ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... passion, are only the concomitants of those voluntary movements which the structure renders necessary." Mr. Spencer has also published[10] a valuable essay on the physiology of Laughter, in which he insists on "the general law that feeling passing a certain pitch, habitually vents itself in bodily action," and that "an overflow of nerve-force undirected by any motive, will manifestly take first the most habitual routes; and if these do not suffice, will next overflow into the less habitual ones." This law I believe to be of the highest ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... disposition of man to humanity, and the warmth of his temper, may raise his character to this fortunate pitch. His elevation, in a great measure, depends on the form of his society; but he can, without incurring the charge of corruption, accommodate himself to great variations in the constitutions of government. The ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... broke in cursing the doctor, in a feeble voice, but heartily. "Doctors is all swabs," he said; "and that doctor there, why, what do he know about seafaring men? I been in places hot as pitch, and mates dropping round with Yellow Jack, and the blessed land a-heaving like the sea with earthquakes—what do the doctor know of lands like that?—and I lived on rum, I tell you. It's been meat and drink, and man and wife, to me; and if I'm not to have my ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... be criticised as a play, not merely as a poem. The whole structure of a piece depends on the fact that it is to be acted; its striking moments must be great dramatic, not merely beautiful poetic, moments. They must have the intensity of pitch by which the effect of action exceeds the effect of narrative. This intensity is made almost infinitely variable with the variations in the actor's mastery of ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... also a considerable trade to Norway and to the Baltic, from whence they bring back deals and fir timber, oaken plank, balks, spars, oars, pitch, tar, hemp, flax, spruce canvas, and sail-cloth, with all manner of naval stores, which they generally have a consumption for in their own port, where they build a very great number of ships every year, besides refitting and ...
— Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722 • Daniel Defoe
... century later, the whole coast of Sardinia appears in the undisputed possession of the Carthaginian community. Corsica on the other hand, with the towns of Alalia and Nicaea, fell to the Etruscans, and the natives paid to these tribute of the products of their poor island, pitch, wax, and honey. In the Adriatic sea, moreover, the allied Etruscans and Carthaginians ruled, as in the waters to the west of Sicily and Sardinia. The Greeks, indeed, did not give up the struggle. Those Rhodians and Cnidians, who had been driven out of Lilybaeum, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Billy's, the smile in them quickened in sparkling radiance. She was the very spirit of the dance; she was Youth and Joy incarnate. And the heart behind the white shirt bosom near which her fairy hair was floating began to pitch and toss like a laboring ship in the very devil ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... soulless trade. They will not weave a yard of silk unless they have the order and are sure of payment. If orders fall off; the workmen may starve; they can scarcely earn a living, convicts are better off. After the Revolution of July, the distress reached such a pitch that the Lyons weavers—the canuts, as they call them—hoisted the flag, 'Bread or Death!' a proclamation of a kind which compels the attention of a government. It was really brought about by the cost ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... knight, for I met him of late in the forest." So Sir Percivale promised gladly to serve her when she should need him. Then the lady asked him how long he had fasted. "For three days," answered Sir Percivale. Immediately she gave orders to her attendants forthwith to pitch a tent and set out a table with all manner of delicacies, and of these she invited Sir Percivale to partake. "I pray you, fair lady," said Sir Percivale, "who are ye that show me such kindness?" "Truly," said the lady, "I am but a hapless damsel, driven forth from my inheritance ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay
... bellowed orders, a great scuffling and pounding of feet upon the dirt floor of the hut, the rickety, bark-covered walls bulged and creaked. Over all sounded the shrieks of the negress battling in the pitch- black interior like an animal in its lair. Then some one set fire to the thatch; the flames licked up the dead palm-leaves to the ridge-pole, and the ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... a sympathy with sounds; And as the mind is pitch'd, the ear is pleased With melting airs, or martial, brisk or grave, Some chord in unison with what we hear Is touched within us, and the heart replies. How soft the music of those village bells, Falling at intervals upon ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... and we forgot about the transparency, which remained in undisputed possession of a pitch to which it was certainly entitled. We sat and smoked, and looked out at the mountains of Skye and the wonderful panorama of sea and loch, with an occasional glance at the gurgling waterfall at our feet, and presently I picked up ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... old garrotting days," he said. "Waverley and I were coming down the Tottenham Court Road a bit after midnight—just off Seven Dials. There were half-a-dozen men hanging about a corner, and one of them tiptoed after us with a pitch plaster—you'll remember they used to do the stuff up in sacking and pull it over your mouth from behind. I never noticed anything, but Waverley did. The man was just about to throw the thing over me when Waverley wheeled round and ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... underwood below. They followed each other through a narrow path, until they came to a cleared place in the middle of the plantation, in which there stood a low cottage, surrounded with covert on every side, with the exception of some thirty yards of land around it. All was still, and as dark as pitch; Edward remained behind the trees, and when the two men again stopped, he was not six feet from them. They consulted in a low tone but the wind was so high that he could not distinguish what they said. At last they advanced to the cottage, and Edward, still ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... struggled to his feet, hoping that the gods would be kind to him, and that he could get away before his presence there was discovered. He was still dazed and confused; his head ached painfully, and he groped in the pitch darkness without any prospect of escape. He could nowhere find an avenue. So far as he could judge, he was absolutely caught like ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... between bramble and cedar. There are few natural scenes whose harmonies are not conceivably improvable either by banishment of some discordant point, or by addition of some sympathetic one; it constantly happens that there is a profuseness too great to be comprehended, or an inequality in the pitch, meaning, and intensity of different parts. The imagination will banish all that is extraneous, it will seize out of the many threads of different feeling which nature has suffered to become entangled, one only, and where that seems thin and likely to break, it will spin it stouter, and ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... pitch camp at the rock. The horses are dead tired and this wind is making them nervous. There's a storm due as soon as it lays a bit, and we would be sort of protected here. A tornado's a giant out in this country, ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... fishery. They undertook to knit nets with the rinds of certain trees called macoa, whereof they make also ropes and cables; so that no vessel can be in need of such things, if they can but find the said trees. There are also many places where they find pitch in so great abundance, that running down the sea-coasts, being melted by the sun, it congeals in the water in great heaps, like small islands. This pitch is not like that of Europe, but resembles, both in colour and shape, that froth of the sea called bitumen; but, in my judgment, this matter ...
— The Pirates of Panama • A. O. (Alexandre Olivier) Exquemelin
... pitch to which he had them wound up would be utterly impossible. He sat in the cook's arm-chair, leaning a little back, his feet placed upon the fender, and his eyes, as before, immovably, painfully, and abstractedly fixed upon the embers. He was now the centre of a circle, for they were all crowded ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... always the danger of spoiling the shape of the slowly forming boat. Both ends must be sharpened, but one more than the other to form the prow or forward going end. After he had shaped his boat, he began hollowing it out. This he did also by burning for the most part. He used the branches of pitch bearing trees for this purpose. But it was so slow. He worked at his boat all the time he could spare from his regular duties in attending to his goats, his garden and his cave. He was always making his cave ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison
... it is. 'Tis like a mother's curse Upon my soul—the mark is set upon me. The exiles you speak of went forth by nations; Their hands upheld each other by the way; Their tents were pitch'd together—I'm alone— Ah, you never yet Were far away from Venice—never saw Her beautiful towers in the receding distance, While every furrow of the vessel's track Seem'd ploughing deep into your heart; you never Saw day go down upon your native spires So calmly with its gold and crimson ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... of heavy foliage. Later, in the great spilling of all the riches of sunset, Malata stood out green and rosy before turning into a violet shadow in the autumnal light of the expiring day. Then came the night. In the faint airs the schooner crept on past a sturdy squat headland, and it was pitch dark when her headsails ran down, she turned short on her heel, and her anchor bit into the sandy bottom on the edge of the outer reef; for it was too dangerous then to attempt entering the little bay ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... enormity of his guilt. Dante draws an awful picture of him as alone even in hell, shunned by all other sinners, as Turkish prisoners will shun Christians, though sharing the same cell. But let us remember that he did not come to such a pitch of evil at a single bound. There was a time, no doubt, when, amid the cornfields, vineyards, and pastoral villages of his native Kerioth, he was regarded as a promising youth, quick at figures, the comfort of his parents, the pride of his instructors, ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... down to the carving on the stone sarcophagi. In addition, there are to be rooms and chambers in the lower story for the reception of her treasures. Beneath them she has had corridors made for the pitch and straw which, if the worst should come, are to be lighted. She will then give to the flames the gold and silver, gems and jewels, ebony and ivory, the costly spices—in short, all her valuables. The pearls alone are worth many kingdoms. Who can blame her if she prefers to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers |
