"Staple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... commercial relationship between the United States and Europe has changed very greatly. For centuries we were a debtor community, buying largely from Europe, possessed only of crude staple products for export, and scarcely able by a series of expedients and exchanges to pay for what we bought. Tobacco for many decades, then cotton, were the only commodities of which much was exported direct to Europe. Then came, during the European famines of 1846, 1861, ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... commission. The following day the mayor informed the council that he had arrested the bodies and goods of certain merchant strangers in the city.(1569) Throughout the greater part of the month frequent letters passed between the city, the merchant adventurers, the merchants of the staple and the lords of the council concerning Alva's proceedings and measures to be taken by way of reprisal. The citizens showed themselves very anxious to devise measures of retaliation and to avail themselves to the utmost of the opportunity afforded them of avenging themselves of their foreign rivals, ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... harder than I had believed, the staple of the lock clinging to the hard teak wood of which the chest was made. I must have been ten minutes at it, compelled to use a wooden bar as lever, before it yielded, groaning as it finally released its grip, like a soul in agony. I felt the girl clutch me in terror at the sound, her frightened ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... premises to give a constant supply. It is a mistake to suppose, as many persons do, that meat diet provokes eczema and other skin troubles; the contrary is the case. The dog is by nature a carnivorous animal, and wholesome flesh, either cooked or raw, should be his staple food. Horseflesh, which is frequently used in large establishments, is not so fully to be relied upon as ordinary butcher meat. There is no serious objection to bullocks' heads, sheeps' heads, bullocks' tripes and paunches and a little liver given occasionally is an aperient food ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... allow more foreign investment. Agriculture and manufacturing continue to play a lesser role in the economy, constrained by the limited availability of cultivable land and the shortage of domestic labor. Most staple foods must be imported. Industry, which consists mainly of garment production, boat building, and handicrafts, accounts for about 18% of GDP. Maldivian authorities worry about the impact of erosion and possible global warming on their low-lying country; 80% of the area is one meter ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... as indeed she had always suspected him of bullying his wife. Naturally she fell to comparing her own fortunes with the fortunes of her friend, for Willoughby's wife had been perhaps the one woman Helen called friend, and this comparison often made the staple of their talk. Ridley was a scholar, and Willoughby was a man of business. Ridley was bringing out the third volume of Pindar when Willoughby was launching his first ship. They built a new factory the very year the commentary on Aristotle—was it?—appeared at the University Press. "And Rachel," ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... Hatton Hall was over, it formed the staple of conversation in the neighborhood. Everyone wondered who would be there and who would be left out. About the dinner itself there was no doubt, for there is little variety in such entertainments. The meat and the drink offerings ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... of eulogium, which contrasts ludicrously enough with the well-toned sobriety of what we may term its staple style, is made to surround, like the halo in old paintings, some of the men who were happy enough to be distinguished assertors of the Romish Church. We would instance, as a specimen, the biographical sketches of Bossuet and the ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... commercial city in Switzerland, having distanced both Basel and Geneva in this direction. The manufacturing of silk, woolen, and linen fabrics has flourished here since the end of the thirteenth century. In modern times, however, cotton and machinery have been added as staple articles of manufacture. Much of the actual weaving is still done in outlying parts of the Canton, in the very cottages of the peasants, so that the click of the loom is heard from open windows in every village ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... Halse exclaimed. "Oh, he can lead him all right. All he has to do is to untie the calf's rope from the staple in the barn post. He will come ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... cotton to some extent for the last six or eight months, and from the observations I have made on it during that time, I have no hesitation in saying that it possesses many excellences: it is long enough (almost too long), very sound in staple, and where well managed of a very good colour. Its defects are coarseness and harshness of staple, and if these could be removed I don't see what is to prevent its rivalling the Egyptian and Sea Islands cotton, any considerable approximation to which ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... of antient stone building bounding the west side of the church yard is an hospital founded about the year 1516, by W. Wigston, Merchant of the staple at Calais, and mayor of Leicester, for 12 men and 12 women, their pay about 3s. weekly. It has a master and confrater. The Chapel has a large gothic window ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts
... abysses? We may almost fancy that Nature took pleasure in recording by ineffaceable hieroglyphics the symbol of Norwegian life, bestowing on these coasts the conformation of a fish's spine, fishery being the staple commerce of the country, and well-nigh the only means of living of the hardy men who cling like tufts of lichen to the arid cliffs. Here, through fourteen degrees of longitude, barely seven hundred thousand souls maintain ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... little porch such as that just removed at Ellerburne, or a big window with decayed wooden mullions cut in a wall, regardless of symmetry, one may be quite safe in attributing it to the early years of the nineteenth century. One of the staple industries of Pickering and the adjoining villages at this time was weaving, and a great number of the cottages had the room on the opposite side of the passage to the parlour ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... through the thick and thin of this world our path lies. Our strength, our worth, our happiness, our glory, are to be attained through the occupations and advantages of this world. Yet through discipline, and not happiness, is the main staple here, it is not the only product. Six days we must labor and do all work, but the seventh is a holiday. Then we may drop the absorbing now, and revel in anticipated joys,—lift ourselves above the dusty duties, the common pleasures that weary and ensoil, even while they ennoble ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... Indeed some of them thought he yielded to their violence long before they had the mastery of him; and this very submission terrified the more tender-hearted amongst them. However, they bound him; carried him down many stairs, and, having remembered an iron staple in the wall of a certain vault, with a thick rusty chain attached to it, they bore him thither, and made the chain fast around him. There they left him, shutting the great gnarring brazen door of the vault, as they departed for the upper regions of ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... "Garden of the Gods," Colorado Springs and Pike's Peak. Our party left Denver for home. On the long stretch via Kansas City, St. Louis and Indianapolis we saw nothing new, as we were traveling over familiar ground. It was early in September, when corn, the great western staple, was approaching maturity, and the earth was giving forth its increase. We were crossing the largest and perhaps most fertile valley of the world. All of it had been redeemed from nature and the Indians, within one hundred years. During our trip we had passed ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... was, was evidently familiar with the workings of the mine, for, going round into Stony Gulch, he had forced the door at the exit of the old tunnel, cutting out the staple with auger and saw, and then, clambering through the disused, waste-encumbered drifts, he had carried out the little sacks one by one and made ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... women have another source of power; their position has an industrial as well as a kinship basis. In this island the people subsist mainly on the produce of their taro fields, and the cultivation of this, their staple food, is carried out by the women alone. And this identification of women with the industrial process has without doubt contributed materially to the predominance of female influence on the social life of the people. Wherever the control ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... the catch, a. Finally, the spring is freed from the hook, f. When it is desired to bind the pages of a pamphlet, the latter is placed open on the support, g, which, as will be noticed, is angular above, so that the staple may enter exactly on the line of the fold. Then the handle, h, is shoved down so as to act on the arm, c, and cause the descent of the extremity, d, as well as the vertical piece, b, with which it engages. This latter, in its downward travel, takes up ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... to see the man and he had told me that he would buy goods from me if I would make the price right. So I lit in to cut. I sold him the twelve dollar suit for ten dollars. He took a dozen of them. It was a staple. I didn't know anything about what the goods were worth, but he had made his bluff good. I sold him the bill right through at cut prices on everything. The house actually lost money on the bill. I have long since learned that the only way to meet a bluffer is with ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... see also the first formal beginning of the dramatic monologue, which, hinted at in Pauline, disguised in Paracelsus, and developed, still disguised, in Sordello, became, from the period of the Dramatic Lyrics onward, the staple form and special instrument of the poet, an instrument finely touched, at times, by other performers, but of which he is the only Liszt. The literal beginning of the monologue must be found in two lyrical poems, here included, Johannes Agricola and ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... the court failed in the days of King Charles, though Jonson was not without royal favours; and the old poet returned to the stage, producing, between 1625 and 1633, "The Staple of News," "The New Inn," "The Magnetic Lady," and "The Tale of a Tub," the last doubtless revised from a much earlier comedy. None of these plays met with any marked success, although the scathing generalisation of Dryden that designated them ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... is often the case in this bushy and unenclosed country, the cows are milked by them and do not go dry. They give very little milk, probably due to the entire want of care in breeding them. It is at once made into cheese, which forms a staple article of food amongst ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... deep basement, in a large, dusky room that we shared with three other families, each family occupying one of the corners and as much space as it was able to wrest. Violent quarrels were a commonplace occurrence, and the question of floor space a staple bone of contention. The huge brick oven in which the four housewives cooked dinner was another prolific source of strife. Fights over pots were as frequent and as truculent as ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... up to the waist in full fig; and one of the men following his example, we were soon afloat. The ladies applauded, and the Captain sat in his wet breaks for the rest of the voyage, in all the consciousness of being considered a hero. Ducks and onions are the grand staple of Bermuda, but there was a fearful dearth of both at the time I speak of; a knot of young West India merchants, who, with heavy purses and large credits on England, had at this time domiciled themselves in St George's, to batten ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... with hunched-up shoulders, a necklace around his neck, with blazing eyes and ugly gleaming teeth, crouched some unrecognisable creature, human yet inhuman, a monkey and yet a man. There were a couple of monkeys swinging by their tails from a bar, and a leopard chained to a staple in the ground, walking round and round in the far corner, snapping and snarling every time he glanced towards the new-comers. The creature in front of him stretched out a hairy hand towards a club, and gripped it. Quest drew a long breath. ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... unemployment, and a heavy dependence on foreign grants and technical assistance. Agriculture, including fishing, hunting, and forestry, contributes 40% to GDP, employs 80% of the labor force, and provides most of the exports. The country is not self-sufficient in food production; rice, the main staple, accounts for the bulk of imports. The government - which is hampered by internal political disputes - is struggling to upgrade education and technical training, privatize commercial and industrial enterprises, improve health services, diversify exports, promote tourism, and reduce the high population ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... themselves against this act of scanty justice assert that they are only contending for an equality. What equality? Do they forget that the whole woollen manufacture of Ireland, the most extensive and profitable of any, and the natural staple of that kingdom, has been in a manner so destroyed by restrictive laws of ours, and (at our persuasion, and on our promises) by restrictive laws of their own, that in a few years, it is probable, they will not be able to wear a coat of their ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... between the crags and precipices to the very summits. The rock, chiefly old red sandstone, is purple. The heather, of which there are enormous masses, is in many places waist deep." Yachting and fishing, fishing and yachting, were the staple amusements at Derreen. Nothing was more characteristic of Froude than his love of the sea and the open air. Sport, in the proper sense of the term, he also loved. "I always consider," he said, "that the proudest moment of my life was, when sliding down a shale heap, I got a right and left at woodcocks." ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... Everyone knows the staple ways of preparing oysters, and every chef looks upon the oyster as the source of new flavors in many dishes, but to our mind the best way we have found in San Francisco was at a little restaurant down in Washington street before the fire. It was the Buon Gusto. where they served fish and oysters ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... of the Ojibways. Schoolcraft's volume, absurdly entitled "The Hiawatha Legends," has not in it a single fact or fiction relating either to Hiawatha himself or to the Iroquois deity Aronhiawagon. Wild Ojibway stories concerning Manabozho and his comrades form the staple of its contents. But it is to this collection that we owe the charming poem of Longfellow; and thus, by an extraordinary fortune, a grave Iroquois lawgiver of the fifteenth century has become, in modern literature, ...
— Hiawatha and the Iroquois Confederation • Horatio Hale
... caused Peredur to sit beside the nobleman during the repast. And when they had eaten and drank as much as they desired, the nobleman asked Peredur, whether he could fight with a sword? "Were I to receive instruction," said Peredur, "I think I could." Now, there was on the floor of the hall a huge staple, as large as a warrior could grasp. "Take yonder sword," said the man to Peredur, "and strike the iron staple." So Peredur arose, and struck the staple, so that he cut it in two; and the sword broke into two parts also. "Place the two parts together, and reunite them," and Peredur placed ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... means and takes to art because he is unfit for anything else. This sort of producer, whose existence tells us less about the state of art than about the state of society, who would be the worst navvy in his gang or the worst trooper in his squadron, and is the staple product of official art schools, is unheard of in primitive ages. In drawing inferences, therefore, we must not overlook the advantage enjoyed by barbarous periods in the fact that of those who come forward as artists the vast majority have some real gift. I would hazard ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... of industry your Commissioners propose (not, of course, as a unique industry but as a staple) the packing of sardines. A sound system of fair trade based upon a tariff scientifically adjusted to the conditions of the Island should develop the industry rapidly. Everything lends itself to this: the skilled labour could be imparted ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... the "Staple of News," act iii. scene 2, Jonson talks of the miracles done by the Jesuits in Japan and China, as ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... 12-stamp quartz mill with engine and boiler, and all the equipments understood to be necessary for extracting gold from the rock, including mining tools, powder, quicksilver, copper plate and chemicals; also a supply of provisions for a year. The staple articles of the latter were flour, beans, salt pork, coffee and sugar. Then we had rice, cornmeal, dried fruit, tea, bacon and a barrel of syrup; besides a good supply of hardtack, crackers and cheese for use while crossing the plains, when a fire for cooking might not be found practicable. ...
— A Gold Hunter's Experience • Chalkley J. Hambleton
... Ireland, however in former Times miserably restrained and limited, hath in this happy Reign received considerable Enlargements; such as, the opening several Wooll-Ports; the Bounty on Irish Linens, now our staple Commodity, imported into Great-Britain; and the Immunity lately granted of importing thither Beef, Butter, Tallow, Candles, Pork, Hides, live Cattle, &c. a Privilege that, in its Consequences, must prove of signal Advantage to ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... to say it was invigorating and welcome that cold day, but Higbald finished the bowl then and there, and then staggering down, drew the outer bolt in such a way that it missed the staple, which fact he ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... like to that fine old expression "commencing author." And that reminds me: the most fascinating lodgings to hunt, perhaps, anywhere, are called "chambers." These which I mean are in the old Inns of Court in London. And the most charming of these remaining is Staple Inn, off Holborn. I used frequently to hunt chambers in "the fayrest Inne of Chancerie." There are no "modern conveniences" there. You draw your own water at a pump in the venerable quadrangle, and you "find" your own light. But ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... cupboard in two sections, having glass doors in the upper part to show the class china and glass, should be placed where it will be most convenient and add to the attractiveness of the room. This cupboard will hold the dinner set and extra dishes and utensils, as well as the linen and some staple food supplies. A refrigerator is desirable for such foods as butter, ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Management • Ministry of Education
... limited in the extreme. Indian corn, panela, and coffee, with an occasional addition of platanos or rice, and now and then bits of bagre, the coarse fish yielded by the adjacent lake, constituted the staple diet of the average citizen of this decayed hamlet. A few might purchase a bit of lard at rare intervals; and this they hoarded like precious jewels. Some occasionally had wheat flour; but the long, difficult transportation, and its rapid deterioration in that hot, moist climate, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... but shirt and breeches, were lolling, lying crouching on the deck forward, circled around Bulger. Seated on an upturned tub, he was busily engaged in baiting a hook. Tired of the "Irish horse" and salt pork that formed the staple of the sailors' food, he was taking advantage of the calm to fish for bonitos, a large fish over two feet long, the deadly enemy of the beautiful flying fish that every now and then fell panting upon the deck in their mad flight from marine foes. The bait was made to ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... himself repeatedly drawn out of his hutch by this, the sagacious little fellow, whenever he retreated within his castle, took the chain in his mouth, and drew it so completely in after him, that no one, who valued his fingers, would endeavor to take hold of the end attached to the staple. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... considerable number, were brought to the shambles. The butchers were now ordered to sell this new kind of meat, and a maximum price was fixed. For a fortnight the supply of cats held out, after which rats and mice became the chief staple of food. Dog-flesh was next reluctantly tasted, and found, as our conscientious chronicler observes, to be somewhat sweet and insipid.[1300] And so the spring of 1573 passed away, and summer came; but no succor arrived for the beleaguered ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... is the rarest thing to meet a man who, when a subject is started, is willing or able to follow it out into its ramifications, to play with it, to embroider it with pathos or with wit, to penetrate to its roots, to trace its connexions and affinities. Question and answer, anecdote and jest are the staple of American conversation; and, above all, information. They have a hunger for positive facts. And you may hear them hour after hour rehearsing to one another their travels, their business transactions, their experiences ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... the year 1690, and is at the rate of five shillings the English acre, which is equivalent to eight shillings and eightpence Irish, and that to be paid before the farmer removed it from the field. Flax is a manufacture of little consequence in England, but is the staple in Ireland, and if it increases (as it probably will) must in many places jostle out corn, because it ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... moment came to get out of the buggy, Samuel looked at his companion dumbly; a sort of paralysis seemed to hold him in his seat. When he did move, Dr. Lavendar heard him gasp for breath, and in the darkness, as he hitched the sorrel to a staple in one of the big locusts, his face went white. The large manner which had dominated Old Chester for so many years was shrinking and shrivelling; the whole man ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... feet. The dense forests which originally covered the island have been cut down, and the soil, which is of unusual fertility, is under thorough cultivation, yielding heavy crops of corn and manioc, which latter forms the staple food of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... buffet. This, said Chevenix, was his ordinary breakfast. When Sanchia objected that he might have stepped out in the afternoon, he replied that it also formed his usual tea, and, so far as he knew, was the staple of all his meals. "And cigarettes," he added. "But he would have had those with him. I bet you what you like he ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... of modern date, which has nearly superseded the use of brown stout, and very much encroached on the consumption of other malt liquors, till it has become the staple commodity of the English brewery, and of such consequence to the government, in point of revenue, that it may be fairly said to produce more than all the rest. Porter, when well brewed, and of a proper ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... this padlock attentively; then, drawing from his pocket one of those wonderful knives which are really miniature tool-chests, he raised from a grove the screw-driver which formed part of its equipment, and with neatness and dispatch unscrewed the staple to which the padlock ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... preserves wood from the ravages of insects. Timber is not abundant, but the gamboge tree and the wood-oil tree are found of a good size. Tobacco, cotton, sugar-cane, hemp and indigo are grown, and the staple article is rice, which is of superior quality, and the chief article of export. The inhabitants of the island are mainly Maghs. Cheduba fell to the Burmese in the latter part of the 18th century. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... everybody is getting accustomed to it. Gentlemen make themselves agreeable to ladies by reciting the number of deaths in this house or that. This together with talk of funerals, cholera medicines, cholera dietetics, and chloride of lime form the ordinary staple of conversation. Serious persons of course throw in moral ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... out of the City we have the remarkably picturesque half-timbered buildings of Staple Inn; and in the Strand, near the entrance to the Temple, there was once a group of wooden houses, one of which, popularly called Cardinal Wolsey's Palace, has been rescued from destruction, thanks to the action of the London ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... several stories high, and was filled to overflowing with material soon to be worked up into shoes, pocketbooks, belting, gloves, baseball covers, and a thousand other articles for which this staple material of trade is needed. Several heavy trucks were loading and unloading at the doors, and the boy heard the workmen speak of a consignment to Buffalo, and another to Boston, and of a shipload that had ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer
... of six ounces of brown bread and three quarters of a pint of gruel, or "skilly." The latter was frequently so fluid that spooning was unnecessary. The dinners, served punctually at twelve o'clock, were more varied. Brown bread and browner potatoes were the staple of each mid-day meal. The bread was always excellent. The potatoes were abominable. I have said that they were browner than the bread, and I may add that the color was not caused by cooking, but purely ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... opposite the ruined castle. Among other visitors to St. Andrews known to my father were Professors Tait and Crum Brown, who inveigled him into making trial of the "Royal and Ancient" game, which then, as now, was the staple resource of the famous little city. I have a vivid recollection of his being hopelessly bunkered three or four holes from home, and can testify that he bore the moral strain with more than usual calm as compared with the generality of golfers. Indeed, despite his naturally ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... nor Virginia nor any of the Border States had then joined the rebel Confederacy. Most of these States were opposed to the reopening of the African slave trade from principle and sentiment. The material interests of Virginia were strongly opposed to it. The staple product of Virginia was slaves. She lived only by breeding negroes for the market of the slave-consuming States of the Lower South. To reopen the African slave trade would destroy the profits of her great staple. The price of negroes would go down from one thousand dollars ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... necessity of removing him! At last, nobody could understand either how such a man could ever have been chosen, or how he could have remained so long in his place! All his faults and all his ridicules formed the staple of Court conversation. If anybody referred to the great things he had done, to the rapid gathering of armies after our disasters, people turned on their heels and walked away. Such were the presages of the fall ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... play for a moment beneath the rough door; and they were hardly in their places when there was the sound of descending steps on the ladder, the shape of the door marked out plainly by the light all round. Then came the rattling of a key in the padlock, which was drawn out of the staple, the door was flung open, and the hutch of a place was filled with the dull, soft light of a lanthorn, ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... very recent days a spell of drinking—simple drinking—was the staple amusement of many an otherwise respectable farmer. Not many years since it was not unusual for some well-to-do farmer of the old school to ride off on his nag, and not be heard of for a week, till he was discovered ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... a subject for these columns. It is quite clear, however, that education is partial, and in some sort a monopoly; its valuable branches being altogether out of the reach of more than half the population, and the staple industry of the people not sufficiently represented,—as, for instance, the steam-engine. In them there is not sufficient concentration, if I may use the term, of instruction; and the requirements of many arts and trades insufficiently carried ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... nights in his dew-drenched boat at the garden's foot, or lying wakeful and rising and falling with the tide under her window, and my mother forever hearing the boat-chains clank and stir. She's had the staple wrenched out of the wall now,—'t was just below the big bower-window, you remember. And when Mary utterly refused Seavern, Seavern swore he'd wheel his ship round and raze the house to its foundations: he was—drunk—you see. And Mary laughed in his face. And ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... labor of the colonists was mainly spent in farming, there was a steady growth in industrial and commercial pursuits. Most of the staple industries of to-day, not omitting iron and textiles, have their beginnings in colonial times. Manufacturing and trade soon gave rise to towns which enjoyed an importance all out of proportion to their numbers. The great ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... the interior, and the dangers of the ocean, large portions of it could never profitably reach the foreign market. But let us quit this field of theory, clear as it is, and look at the practical operation of the system of protection, beginning with the most valuable staple of ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... months without bread. They were not without a substitute, however, as various roots and nuts supplied them with a change of food. Of the latter, they had the ground or pig-nut, which grows in all parts of Southern Africa, and which forms a staple food of the native inhabitants. For vegetables they had the bulbs of many species of Ixias and Mesembryanthemums, among others the "Hottentot fig." They had the "Caffir bread"—the inside pith of the stems of a species of Zamia; and the "Caffir ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... "Nothing was ever taken for granted between him and his sons. A succession of arguments on great topics and small topics alike—arguments conducted with perfect good humor, but also with the most implicable logic—formed the staple of the family conversation. The children and their parents argued upon everything. They would debate as to whether a window should be opened, and whether it was likely to be fair or wet the next day. It was all perfectly good-humored, but curious to a stranger, because of the evident care ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... entwine itself around and feed upon his body; then he sent forth cries of agony painful to the ear, begging some one to blow his brains out; at the same time surging with almost superhuman strength, until the staple with which the chain was fastened to the tree (not being well secured) drew out, and he leaped from the burning pile. At that moment the sharp ringing of several rifles was heard: the body of the Negro fell a corpse on the ground. He ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... on a brisk trade with Europe, the West Indies and the United States, in lumber of different descriptions, fish, gypsum, grindstones, &c.; but the staple article is squared timber, one hundred and fourteen thousand one hundred and sixteen tons of which were shipped from this port in 1824. Ship-building has also been lately revived here and prosecuted to a considerable ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... horses, cattle, sheep, dogs, had followed the Ichthyosaurus into extinction. But the fruits were very delightful; one, in particular, that seemed to be in season all the time I was there—a floury thing in a three-sided husk—was especially good, and I made it my staple. At first I was puzzled by all these strange fruits, and by the strange flowers I saw, but later I ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... or arising out of the general treaty, there would probably be a periodical congress of delegates of the parliaments of the States belonging to the league, as a development out of the existing Interparliamentary Union. A regular staple of discussion for this body would be afforded by the reports of the interstate conference and of the different international bodies. The congress would thus cover the ground that is at present occupied by the periodical Hague Conference and also the ground ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... population was inconsiderable, and shipbuilding was almost an unknown industry. Strong on land, she was powerless at sea, and yet it was on the sea that her prosperity depended. Cotton, the principal staple of her wealth, demanded free access to the European markets. But without a navy, and without the means of constructing one, or of manning the vessels that she might easily have purchased, she was unable to keep open ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... the suggestion of any spiritual interpretation of the Arthur legends, and even to the existence of elementary morality among the Arthurian knights and ladies. There seems to be a notion that "bold bawdry and open manslaughter," as Roger Ascham said, are the staple of Tennyson's sources, whether in the mediaeval French, the Welsh, or in Malory's compilation, chiefly from French sources. Tennyson is accused of "Bowdlerising" these, and of introducing gentleness, courtesy, and conscience ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... letter, whether meant for z, s, or c I am not sure. The Zuche are the common gourds, divided into two protuberances, one larger than the other, like a bottle compresed near the neck; and the Moloni are the long water-melons, which, roasted, form a staple food of the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... Bible was read in Hebrew. Such of his pupils as desired it were initiated in French; and besides an extensive course of Jewish Antiquities and Church History, they were carried through a history of philosophy on the basis of Buddaeus. To all of which must be added the main staple of the curriculum, a series of two hundred and fifty theological lectures, arranged, like Stapfer's, on the demonstrative principle, and each proposition following its predecessor with a sort of mathematical precision. Enormous as was the labor of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... test the truth of my imaginings, rose and pulled aside one of these curtains only to see, just as I expected, the blank surface of a series of unslatted shutters, tightly fitting one to another with old-time exactitude. A flat hook and staple fastened them. Gently raising the window, and lifting one, I pulled the shutter open and looked out. The prospect was just what I had been led to expect from the location of the room—the long, bare wall of the neighboring house. I was curious about that ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... slaves, but Missy Grace was mean to us. She whip us a heap of times when we ain't done nothing bad to be whip for. When she go to whip me, she tie my wrists together wid a rope and put that rope thru a big staple in de ceiling and draw me up off de floor and give me a hundred lashes. I think 'bout my old mammy heap of times now and how I's seen her whipped, wid de blood dripping ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... stood there with him, listening to his graphic descriptions of the wool-rooms at the top of the great Yorkshire mills. "I'd like well to take you through one, squire. Fleeces? You would be wonder-struck. There are long staple and short staple; silky wool and woolly wool; black fleeces from the Punjaub, and curly white ones from Bombay; long warps from Russia, short ones from Buenos Ayres; little Spanish fleeces, and our own Westmoreland ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... it reasonable to ascribe some share in the restoration of good to Klopstock, both because his own writings exhibit nothing of this most abject euphuism, (a euphuism expressing itself not in fantastic refinements on the staple of the language, but altogether in rejecting it for foreign words and idioms,) and because he wrote expressly on the ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... of this threatening danger? Outwardly all now was peaceful. Each waking-time the fishers put forth in their long boats of metal strips covered with fish-skins. Every sleeping-time they returned laden with the fish that formed the principal staple of ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... corresponding monotony of a town life. For this reason, and for many others, it is certain—and perhaps (unless we get to fighting with steam-men) it will continue to be certain through centuries—that, for the main staple of her armies and her navies, England must depend upon the quality of her bold peasantry and noble yeomanry; for we must remember that, of those huge-limbed men who are found in the six northern counties of England and in the Scottish Lowlands, of those elegantly-formed ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... nor rhetorical buffoonery for the purpose of provoking a laugh; the vein of his humor runs too rich and deep to make surface gliding necessary. But there are few who can resist the quaint similes, keen satire, and hard, good sense which form the staple of his ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... its coarseness and harshness are removed and the fineness and softness of Cotton induced in their stead. This he has accomplished. Some of his Flax-Cotton is scarcely distinguishable from the Sea Island staple, while to other samples he has given the character of Wool very nearly. I can imagine no reason why this Cotton should not be spun and woven as easily as any other. The staple may be rendered of any desired length, though the usual average is about two inches. It is as white as any ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... questionable shadows; and those that, like Laudon and the Gennevilliers, promise better results, are imperfectly developed. Such defects would be fatal in a novel of the ordinary kind. But this is not a novel of the ordinary kind. The real staple of the book consists not of the incidents and the characters, but of discussions and reflections which sparkle with wit, with shrewd observation, and with ingenious if not absolutely profound speculation. There are a hundred ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... Wine is a great staple of the country. Yet they don't export much after all. In fact the foreign commerce is comparatively trifling. Chestnuts and olives are raised in immense quantities. The chestnut is as essential to the Italian as the potato is to the Irishman. A failure ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... pound of pork to a pot, for less than twenty cents. This gave the three of us two meals with some left over for lunch, making the cost per man about three cents. And they made a hearty meal, too. That was a trick she had learned in the country where baked beans are a staple article of diet. I liked them cold ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... swine which are reared in the vast forests of the interior, at no expense to the inhabitants, are the great staple of Servian product and export. In districts where acorns abound, they fatten to an inconceivable size. They are first pushed swimming across the Save, as a substitute for quarantine, and then driven to Pesth and Vienna by easy stages; latterly ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... the world has found multitudinous satirists, and furnished the staple of a whole school of writers. We touch our hats in token of respect to men whom in our hearts we despise. We inquire tenderly for the health of persons for whom we do not care a straw. We who cannot afford it wear expensive clothing, ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... our Union was formed, lost their value? Has patriotism ceased to be a virtue, and is narrow sectionalism no longer to be counted a crime? Shall the North not rejoice that the progress of agriculture in the South has given to her great staple the controlling influence of the commerce of the world, and put manufacturing nations under bond to keep the peace with the United States? Shall the South not exult in the fact, that the industry and persevering intelligence of the ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... your moral staple consist of the negative virtues. It is good to abstain, and teach others to abstain, from all that is sinful or hurtful. But making a business of it leads to emaciation of character, unless one feeds largely also on the more nutritious diet ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... [Greek: anax] of publishers, the Anak of stationers, has a design upon you in the paper line. He wants you to become the staple and stipendiary editor of a periodical work. What say you? Will you be bound, like "Kit Smart, to write for ninety-nine years in ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... through. When thoroughly satisfied with our survey, we collected a quantity of dried hay, and made ourselves some comfortable seats, where we could, without being seen, command the large end doors: one of which was fastened inside with a hook and staple, while the other had only the ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... on Man is not Pope's best work. It is a theory which Bolingbroke is supposed to have given him, and which he expanded into verse. But "he spins the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument." All that he says, "the very words, and to the self-same tune," would prove just as well that whatever is, is wrong, as that whatever is, is right. The Dunciad has splendid passages, but in general it is dull, heavy, and mechanical. The sarcasm already quoted on Settle, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... story has been so extremely concise, that it is more than usually necessary for us to lay some specimens of the work itself before our readers. Its grand staple, as we have already said, consists of a kind of mystical morality: and the chief characteristics of the style are, that it is prolix and very frequently unintelligible: and though we are very sensible that no great gratification is to ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Indian Turnip, Bread-root or Pomme-blanche of the Prairie. This is found on all the prairies of the Missouri region. Its root was and is a staple article of food with the Indians. The roots are one to three inches thick and four to ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... Black Donald, not only doubly ironed but confined by a chain and staple to the wall. He was very pale and haggard from long imprisonment ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... once regarded as the staple nourishment of the tender passion, and in my younger days the haunting strains of "The Blue Danube" assisted many a budding love-affair to blossom. But these non-stop stridencies of the modern ballroom, even if ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... continent it would be calamitous beyond description." It would "destroy in a great measure the cultivation and production of the great tropical staples, amounting annually in value to nearly $300,000,000." It is a suggestive commentary on Mr. Calhoun's evil foreboding, that the great tropical staple of the South has steadily increased in growth under free labor, and that the development of Texas never fairly began until slavery ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... past in a dark ravine below. Pasture being the principal crop cultivated, the mountain sides have no terraces. Four great fairs are held annually here. The winter is long and severe, but from June to October the weather is pleasant. The staple occupation of the females is lace-making on a pillow with bobbins. The design is on paper fixed to a short cylinder, and is further indicated by pins with coloured glass heads. The linen thread is given them by the merchants, ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... John repented of his behaviour. All day long he wandered about the garden of the vicarage, excusing himself from joining the daily skating which formed the staple of amusement during the Christmas week, by saying that he had an idea for a copy of verses and must needs work it out. But he inwardly hoped that Mrs. Goddard would come to the vicarage late in the afternoon, without the inevitable ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... and I was never troubled with the complaints that follow drinking unboiled water. It is well to make liberal use of the curries and rice which are excellent everywhere. These, with fish, eggs and fruit, formed the staple of my diet. Never eat melons nor salads made of green vegetables; the native methods of fertilizing the soil are fatal to the wholesomeness ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... in 1412 to 10,000 in 1470, and in 1486 one-third of its inhabitants were reduced to begging. Bruges succeeded in maintaining herself for a time through her banking establishments, while Ghent benefited from the staple of grain, Brussels from the presence of the dukes, Malines from its parliament, Louvain from its newly created university and Antwerp from its ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... if the long winter, spent chiefly indoors, with, maybe, a little trading with the Indians, meagre sport, and scant sun, savages and half-breeds the only companions, and out of all touch with the outside world, letters coming but once a year; with frozen fish and meat, always the same, as the staple items in a primitive fare; with danger from starvation and marauding tribes; with endless monotony, in which men sometimes go mad— he had to ask himself if these were to be cheerfully endured because, in the short ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... plant were grown in the South. Two kinds of the black-seed or long-staple variety thrived in the sea-islands and along the coast from Delaware to Georgia, but only the hardier and more prolific green-seed or short-staple cotton could be raised inland. The labor of cultivating and harvesting cotton of any kind was very great. The fiber, growing in bolls ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... effect should be lost. When we abandoned this camp the next day, the miserable wretches remained in it and collected the offal about the cooks' fires to feast still more, piecing out the meal, no doubt, with their staple article of food—grasshoppers. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... favorite phrases and gestures by heart, and has used them until there is not a Riggan collier who does not recognize them when they are presented to him, and applaud them as an audience might applaud the staple jokes of ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett |
