"Pith" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an interest in my new acquaintance. He was communicative, shrewd, and peculiar; and though apt to express himself quaintly, it was always with the pith of one who had seen a great deal of at least one portion of his fellow-creatures. The conversation, under such circumstances, did not flag; on the contrary, it soon grew more interesting by the stranger's beginning to touch on his private interests. He told me that he was ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... biography of Douglass extracts are given from letters of distinguished contemporaries who knew the orator. Colonel T.W. Higginson writes thus: "I have hardly heard his equal, in grasp upon an audience, in dramatic presentation, in striking at the pith of an ethical question, and in single [signal] illustrations and examples." Another writes, in reference to the impromptu speech delivered at the meeting at Rochester on the death of Lincoln: "I have heard Webster and Clay in their best moments, Channing ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... Roulette table—a goodly crop of florins, with here and there a speck of gold shining amongst the silver harvest, is being sown over the field of the cloth of green, soon to be reaped by the croupier's sickle, and the pith ball is being dropped into the revolving basin that is partitioned off into so many tiny black and red niches. For the next twelve hours the processes in question are carried on swiftly and steadily, without variation or loss of time; relays of croupiers are laid on, who unobtrusively slip ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... and injustice on their parts, and of justifiably indignant feeling on the part of the Americans. By many of the writers on America, the little discrepancies, the mere trifles of custom have been dwelt upon, with a sarcastic, ill-natured severity to give their works that semblance of pith, in which, in reality, they were miserably deficient; and they violated the rights of hospitality that they might ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... twig lengthwise, it will be seen that its *pith* is divided into little chambers as shown in Fig. 71. The bud is dark gray and satiny. The bark is dark brown and deeply ridged and the fruit ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... large part of the globe, being the candle rush of Europe and the common plant of wet ground in the United States. In Japan it is made into beautiful mattings, the handsomest and most costly produced. The pith is also employed for lamp wicks, and probably the "timsim" imported from China and used in oil lamps in the Philippines is obtained from this plant. Juncus effusus has no native name in the Philippines. It is found throughout the Mountain Province ...
— Philippine Mats - Philippine Craftsman Reprint Series No. 1 • Hugo H. Miller
... to the top of the tree until he takes me—alive, I mean—he'll die a sub-inspector. But we'd better sleep on it. This is an enterprise of great pith and moment, and requires no end of thought. We must get your sister to come over. That will ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... years to exterminate the coconut throughout the West Indies; belonging, we are told, to the Elaters—fire-fly, or skipjack beetles. His grub, like that of his cousin, our English wire-worm, and his nearer cousin, the great wire-worm of the sugar-cane, eats into the pith and marrow of growing shoots; and as the palm, being an endogen, increases from within by one bud, and therefore by one shoot only, when that is eaten out nothing remains for the tree but to die. And so it happens that almost every coconut grove which ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... his stories. Wherever those boys are now—scattered far and wide—they recall no scenes or events of their springtime without a remembrance of Dr. Evans and his tales, none of which were wanting in pith or amusement.] ...
— A Sketch of the History of Oneonta • Dudley M. Campbell
... part of Hamlet, which, in these days, the very mention of his name suggests. Little remains to be said of that undying play, whose pith and meaning escaped the sturdy English critics, until Coleridge discovered it by looking into his own soul, and those all-searching Germans pierced to the centre of a disposition quite in keeping with their national character. A score of lights have since ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... and stones!' I says. 'You come inside,' I says, 'and I'll punch your blooming head.' There was a kind of silence and more jabbering, and in he came, Bible in hand, after the manner of them—a little sandy chap in specks and a pith helmet. I flatter myself that me sitting there in the shadows, with my copper head and my big goggles, struck him a bit of a heap at first. 'Well,' I says, 'how's the trade in calico?' for I don't ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... entrusted a copy of the original to his friend, Antonio de Dominis, Archbishop of Spalato, and he, having taken refuge in England, had it translated there, the authorship being ascribed on the title-page to "Pietro Soave Polano." This English translation was, in vigor and pith, worthy of the original. In it can be discerned, as clearly as in the original, that atmosphere of intrigue and brutal assertion of power by which the Roman Curia, after packing the Council with petty Italian bishops, bade defiance to the Catholic world. This translation, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... saved against his will. Here am I, full of expedients and resources for his good; there is he, throwing cold water on everything, and making difficulties as if he loved them. It's his abominable pride, that's the pith of the matter. He could not have behaved worse though I had played the bully with him, and had reproached him with his Christianity. But I have studiously avoided every subject which could put his back up. He's a very Typhon or Enceladus for pride. ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... vainglorious), where do things read so well as in notes? but we will put the question in another form:—Where do you so well test an author's learning and knowledge of his subject?—where do you find the pith of his most elaborate researches?—where do his most original suggestions escape?—where do you meet with the details that fix your attention at the time and cling to your memory for ever?—where do both writer and reader luxuriate so much at their ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various
... forward in front of the artist and jotting down his neat symbols in the space reserved for significant form. The landscapes and boats and street-scenes of Marquet, with their joyously emphatic statement, their lively contrasts, and their power of giving you the pith of the matter in a few strokes, are about as valuable as the best things of Forain. They are statements of fact, not expressions of emotion. Marquet, the inimitable captor of life as it hurries by, is not much better than ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... these two magic words, All Right! was what the waiter most desired. "All right! Yes! All Right!" This is the pith, the marrow, the sum and essence of the English language to a southerner. Of course it is not all right. It is Or-rye—and one word at that. The blow that would be given to most foreign waiters, if they were forced to realize that the famous orye ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... nothing but papyrus-pith, and lotus-bread, and now he brings me the cake which grandmother gave ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... actually white—for Morrison refused to accept the racial whiteness of the Portuguese officials. He let himself go for the mere relief of violent speech, his elbows planted on the table, his eyes blood-shot, his voice nearly gone, the brim of his round pith hat shading an unshaven, livid face. His white clothes, which he had not taken off for three days, were dingy. He had already gone to the bad, past redemption. The sight was shocking to Heyst; but he let nothing of it appear in his hearing, concealing his impression under that consummate ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... having flattened it with his hand, glance over it till he came to a certain spot. The pale-faced clerk, accustomed to such documents, glanced over the ambages, the "whereases," the "aforesaids," the rich exuberance of "admors.," "exors.," and "assigns," till he deftly came to the pith of the matter, and then he began to make extracts, a date here and a date there. John Ball watched him all the time, till the door was opened, and old Mr Slow himself ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... that ship, had long ceased to occupy a thought in the public mind. Throughout the whole of that eventful period, the attention of all Europe had been absorbed in the contemplation of 'enterprises of great pith and moment,'—of the revolutions of empires—the bustle and business of warlike preparations—the movements of hostile armies—battles by sea and land, and of all 'the pomp and circumstance of glorious war.' If ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... the pith and point of my contention! I mentioned the two moments at which I hold that a man's soul may be caught apart, may be cut off from his body by no other medium than a good sound lens in a light-tight camera. You cannot have forgotten them if ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... society; that Rossetti, who was made to bear the brunt of attack, was a man who never by direct avowal, or yet by inference, displayed the faintest conceivable sympathy with the French excesses in question, and who never wrote a line inspired by unwholesome passion. As the pith of Mr. Buchanan's accusation of 1871 lay here, and as Mr. Buchanan has, since then, very manfully withdrawn it, {*} we need hardly go further; but, as more recent articles in prominent places, The Edinburgh Review, The British Quarterly Review, and again The Contemporary Review, ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... Noiselessly Iskender surmounted the low wall and parted with his hands their feathery boughs till he could see the disputants. The uncle's face was richly bronzed, in striking contrast with his light blue eyes and heavy white moustache. Clad in a white suit, with a white pith helmet on his head, he appeared to Iskender like a portrait just begun, of which only the hands and the flesh of the face had yet been coloured by the artist. Of figure he was broad and upright, without a symptom of decrepitude unless it might be the stout cane he used ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... whose burn No incremate returns—weakens the will, And makes us rather bear the graves we have Than fly to ovens that we know not of? This, Thompson, does make cowards of us all. And thus the wisdom of incineration Is thick-laid o'er with the pale ghost of nought, And incremators of great pith and courage With this regard their faces turn awry, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... as he was walking among some reeds he broke off one, and seeing that its hollow stalk was filled with a dry, soft pith, exclaimed: ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... anchors flexed as lissome withe; With boles like mighty monolith; These arms of brawn, outstretched in power To brave the storms that would test their pith! ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... because they ingender a-dust cholor, or melancholly humours, by reason that they bee burned and dry. And therefore great estates the which be [orig. the] chollerick of nature, cause the crustes aboue and beneath to be chipped away; wherfore the pith or crumme should be chosen, the which is of a greater nourishment then the crust." Regimen Sanitatis Salerni, ed. 1634, p. 71. Fr. chapplis, bread-chippings. Cotgrave. ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... One that has catch'd a cold, sir, and can scarce be heard six inches off; as if he spoke out of a bulrush that were not pick'd, or his throat were full of pith: a fine quick fellow, and an excellent barber of prayers. I came to tell you, sir, that you might omnem movere lapidem, as they say, be ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... explain the construction of the fountain. A healthy poplar, seven or eight years old, is taken from its native soil, and a cold iron borer is run up the heart of the trunk from the roots, for six feet or more, by which means the pith is removed, and the trunk is made to assume the character of a pipe. A hole is then bored through from the outside of the trunk, to communicate with the highest point reached by the former operation, and in this second hole a spout is fixed. The same is done at a very short distance above ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... as I see it, is the whole pith, mystery, outer form, common acceptation, purpose, usage usual, meaning and inner meaning, beauty intrinsic and extrinsic, and right character of Christmas Feast. Habent urbs atque orbis ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... smiling, peaceful spot of great tropical beauty; it is one of the fairest places in the West Indies. At every hour of the year the harbor of Port of Spain holds open its arms to vessels of every draught. A governor in a pith helmet, a cricket club, a bishop in gaiters, and a botanical garden go to make it a prosperous and contented colony. But the little derelict Trinidad, in latitude 20 degrees 30 minutes south, and longitude 29 degrees 22 minutes west, seven hundred miles ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... in our textile manufactures. The linen fiber consists of the bast cells of certain species of flax grown in Europe, Africa, and the United States. All bast fibers are obtained near the outer surface of the plant stems. The pith and woody tissues are of no value. The flax plant is an annual and to obtain the best fibers it must be gathered before it is fully ripe. To obtain seed from which the best quality of linseed oil can be made it is usually necessary to sacrifice ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... in the prime of life, and interrupted in some literary undertakings and projects of great pith and moment. He had written a portion of a treatise on the "Evidences of Christianity," and was meditating some works, such as a "Metrical Version of the Psalms" and a tragedy on the history of Socrates, still more suitable to his cast ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... passages abounding in vivacity, in the color and play of lif.... The pith of the book lies in its singularly fresh and vivid pictures of the humors of the gold-fields; tragic humors enough they ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... can mak a belted knight, A marquis, duke, and a' that; But an honest man's aboon his might— Guid faith, he maunna fa' that! For a' that, and a' that, Their dignities and a' that; The pith o' sense and pride o' worth Are higher ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... polemical spirit, of asking you quite frankly what good you think can be done by resolutions of this character? I am not now referring to the resolution against myself. That is a matter of very minor importance. The pith of the whole business is in resolution number one, a resolution evidently framed with great care by the clever men who are engineering the present agitation in the Colony. Now, that resolution asks for ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... a pathetic photograph of his car hit by a shell outside Messines. I have spoken of the simplicity and directness of Mr. COLEMAN'S style; he himself describes his book as a plain tale. It has, indeed, that kind of plainness which in dealing with enterprises of great pith and moment has a peculiar brilliancy of its own. The account, for instance, of the Cambrai—Le Cateau battle, with all its vicissitudes, is extraordinarily graphic and interesting, and the story of the charge of some fifty men of the 9th Lancers against more than twice ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various
... simply lukkunu, men, and only their neighbors apply to them the contemptuous name aruac (corrupted by Europeans into Aroaquis, Arawaaks, Aroacos, Arawacks, etc.), meal-eaters, from their peaceful habit of gaining an important article of diet from the amylaceous pith of the Mauritia flexuosa palm, and the edible root ...
— The Arawack Language of Guiana in its Linguistic and Ethnological Relations • Daniel G. Brinton
... of England to permit the Genovese Columbus to discover America!" That task was clearly England's! "And now there being nothing great left to be done," the sole work Frobisher finds worth attempting is the discovery of the northwest passage to Cathay. Upon this he spends the pith of his manhood year by year, and the result of all the labours of this sea-Hercules, well! it is perhaps to be sought in those dim beings, "half-man, half-fish," whom he brings back from some voyage, those forlorn Esquimaux who, seen ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... ground the waster weel!—haud him down—ye haena the pith o' a cat"—were the cries of advice, encouragement, and expostulation, from those who were on the bank, to the sportsman engaged with the salmon, who stood up to his middle in water, jingling among broken ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... detained from sailing until our pith helmets arrived on the 26th, when, at 10 o'clock on a clear moonlight night, we steamed away escorted by two T.B.Ds. The Bay was crossed in calm weather. Gibraltar passed on the 30th and Malta reached on the 2nd June. ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... building may be expressive and thereby have interest, without rising into beauty; but it can never be, architecturally speaking, beautiful unless it has expression. And what do we mean by expression in a building? That brings us to the very pith of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... procuring fire is this. They take a reed and shave one side of the surface flat. In this they make a small incision to reach the pith, and introducing a stick, purposely blunted at the end, into it, turn it round between the hands (as chocolate is milled) as swiftly as possible, until flame be produced. As this operation is not only laborious, but the effect tedious, they frequently relieve each ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... Greg's temperament, moreover, was too sanguine in practical affairs, as Cobden's was; and we might almost gather from his writings that he had not that faculty of sustained attention to details which is the pith and marrow of success in such a business as his. At last the crash came in 1850. Three years before this the health of his brother Samuel had broken down, and William Greg added the management of his affairs ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 7: A Sketch • John Morley
... oranges of all rind and pith, slice them into a dish, season with a little cayenne pepper, add the rind of one minced, the juice of one lemon and a tablespoonful of oil if desired; ...
— The Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical Every-Day Cookery • Juliet Corson
... betel, the sago, and the gno or gomati, are the four favorite palms of the Dyaks. In their simple mode of life, these four trees supply them many necessaries and luxuries. The sago furnishes food; and after the pith has been extracted, the outer part forms a rough covering for the rougher floor, on which the farmer sleeps. The leaf of the sago is preferable for the roofing of houses to the nibong. The gomati, or gno, gives the black fibre which enables the owner to manufacture ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... The pith of the matter was that the Sieur Brian Philip Francis de la Montaigne proclaimed before all men the greater chivalry and skill at arms of the knights of France and of Dauphiny, and likewise the ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... Werper spent in overhauling his Belgian uniform, removing from it every vestige of evidence that might indicate its military purposes. From a heterogeneous collection of loot, Achmet Zek procured a pith helmet and a European saddle, and from his black slaves and followers a party of porters, askaris and tent boys to make up a modest safari for a big game hunter. At the head of this party ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... prime, and who could captivate young and old, man, woman, and child, when he chose to try. As yet, his habits of life and mind had not told upon his manners, conversation, and countenance as they did afterwards. The beauty of his face, the reserved and hesitating grace of his manner, and the pith and strength of such conversation as he was tempted into might well win the heart of a girl who was certainly far more fond of poetry than of mathematics. Yet she refused him. Perhaps she did not know him enough. Perhaps she did not ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... culture skims over that like a bird, never touching it with the tip of a wing. What she brings home is the freshness and brightness of life. She touches everything so daintily, she hits off a character in a sentence, she gives the pith of a dialogue without tediousness, she mimics without vulgarity; her narration sparkles, but it does n't sting. The picture of her day is full of vivacity, and it gives new value and freshness to common things. If we could only have ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... keen instinct for reality, and perhaps he found little in books that satisfied him. For poetry and philosophy he had small aptitude, and in science he had no training. What books he read he seemed to digest and get the pith of. Once, made suddenly conscious by defeat of his lack of book-culture, he took up Euclid's geometry, and resolutely studied and re-studied it. Doubtless that helped him in the close logic which often characterized his speeches. ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... large, hold them in the hot grease till a part melts off. Let them remain one night to cool; then cut off the bottoms, and keep them in a dry, cool place. Cheap lights are made, by dipping rushes in tallow; the rushes being first stripped of nearly the whole of the hard outer covering and the pith alone being retained with just enough of the tough bark to ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... steeple-crowned, now presenting every diversity of slouch. Next, are hats of the same original shape, made of coarse plaited straw or reeds, now very much broken and bent. Finally, there are the remains of one or two pith helmets and solar topees. ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... plenipotentiary of Spain, By spies informed, had swiftly warned his king, Who sent out mandates through his huge empire From Gaudalchiber to the golden West For the instant sinking of all English ships And the instant execution of their crews Who durst appear in the Caribbean sea. Moreover, in the pith of their emprise A peril lurked—Burleigh's emissaries, The smooth-tongued Thomas Doughty, who had brought His brother—unacquitted of that charge Of poisoning, raised against him by the friends Of Essex, but in luckless time released Lately for lack of proof, on no ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... brawn of a roasted capon, the brawn of two partridges, two rails, two quails, and twelve sparrows all roasted; take the brawns from the bones, and beat them in a stone mortar with two ounces, of the pith of roast veal, a quarter of a pound of pistaches, half a dram of ambergriece, a grain of musk, and a pound of white sugar-candy beaten fine; beat all these in a mortar to a perfect paste, now and then putting ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... visions? Did not Doctor Lardner prove to demonstration that railway carriages could never go more than twenty miles an hour, owing to the laws of resistance, friction, &c., and did not Brunel take the breath out of him, and the pith out of his arguments, by carrying the learned demonstrator with him on a locomotive, and whisking him ten miles out of London in as many minutes? When I see that among so intelligent and practical a people ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... proud father had heard of his son's gallantry, and the captain's words had been repeated to him. It would have been difficult to find a finer specimen of the superior class of British seaman, the pith and sinew of the navy, than the boatswain of the "Marlborough" presented, as, still in the prime of manhood, he stood, hat in hand, before his captain. By his manner and appearance he looked indeed well fitted ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... of sap in the shortest time from the body of a tree, bore it quite through the pith, and the very inner rind on the other side, leaving only the bark unpierced on the north-east side. This hole to be made sloping upwards with a large auger, and that under a large arm near the ground. This way the tree will in a short time afford ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... discreet, decorous, old dotard-of-state; senile prudence; fatuous soullessness! The ribanded old dog is paralytic all down one side, and that the side of nobleness. His soul is gone out. Only nature's automatonism keeps him on his legs. As with some old trees, the bark survives the pith, and will still stand stiffly up, though but to rim round punk, so the body of old Polonius has ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... advocate of equity, of love, and of humility; that he may have disregarded the subtleties of the bigots for legal observance, and appealed rather to those noble conceptions of religion which constituted the pith and kernel of the teaching of the great prophets of his nation seven hundred years earlier; and that, in the last scenes of his career, he may have embodied the ideal sufferer of Isaiah, may be, as I think it is, extremely probable. But all this involves not a step beyond the borders of orthodox ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... a tree, of which the chapter of contents is the seed; the divisions called Pauloma and Astika are the root; the part called Sambhava is the trunk; the books called Sabha and Aranya are the roosting perches; the books called Arani is the knitting knots; the books called Virata and Udyoga the pith; the book named Bhishma, the main branch; the book called Drona, the leaves; the book called Karna, the fair flowers; the book named Salya, their sweet smell; the books entitled Stri and Aishika, the refreshing shade; the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... eldritch sing-song, turned with a skip, and was gone. I stood where she left me, with my hair on end. In those days folk still believed in witches and trembled at a curse; and this one, falling so pat, like a wayside omen, to arrest me ere I carried out my purpose, took the pith ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "I've known a derelict up-end and sift her engines out of herself and flicker round the Lower Lanes for three weeks on her forward tanks only. We'll run no risks. Pith her, George, and ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... but my woman's wit will be brought to play to keep him quiet; Trevalyon will necessarily have a surer footing at Haughton than he, as in this case I shall see; in an underhand way the Colonel has his wish, and the pith of all my musings is that if George will not aid me in reviving the Fanny Clarmont, hidden wife scandal, I shall do it without him. One thing in my favour is, that as he swears against matrimony, people will say the secret reason ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... to look for a little clay in a corner of the garden. Raphael stood spellbound, like a child to whom his nurse is telling some wonderful story. Planchette put the clay down upon the slab, drew a pruning-knife from his pocket, cut two branches from an elder tree, and began to clean them of pith by blowing through them, as if Raphael had not ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... soggy pastures produces edible, nut-flavored tubers, called by the Indians taboose. The common reed of the ultramontane marshes (here Phragmites vulgaris), a very stately, whispering reed, light and strong for shafts or arrows, affords sweet sap and pith which ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... substance of the acts, and can merit grace and justification by works which reason performs by itself, without the Holy Ghost? How many absurdities follow from these Pelagian opinions, which are taught with great authority in the schools! These Augustine, following Paul, refutes pith great emphasis, whose judgment we have recounted above in the article Of Justification. (See p. 119 and 153.) Nor, indeed, do we deny liberty to the human will. The human will has liberty in the choice of works and things which reason comprehends by ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... the two horsemen jogged into view, ambling over the sand-hills whose red-hot edge met a shimmering sky some little distance beyond the station pines. Both wore pith helmets and fluttering buff dust-coats, but both had hot black legs, the pair in gaiters being remarkable for their length. The homestead trio, their red necks chafed by the unaccustomed collar, gathered grimly at the open end of the veranda, where they exchanged impressions while the religious ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... our friend said, but the above was the pith of his discourse. I believe that neither my young messmate nor I ever forgot what he said. By following his advice, we have found a comfort, a joy, a strength, which we should never otherwise have known. Our kind friend's forebodings were speedily fulfilled; ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... whose heart in such an hour 295 Beats no march of conscious power, Sweeps no tumult of elation! 'Tis no Man we celebrate, By his country's victories great, A hero half, and half the whim of Fate, 300 But the pith and marrow of a Nation Drawing force from all her men, Highest, humblest, weakest, all,— Pulsing it again through them, Till the basest can no longer cower, 305 Feeling his soul spring up divinely ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... dozen lemons, chip off the yellow rinds, taking care that none of the white underlying pith is taken, as that would make the punch bitter, whereas the yellow portion of the rinds is that in which the flavor resides and in which the cells are placed containing the essential oil. Put this yellow rind into a punch bowl, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various
... the men who was supporting my adversary, a big, sun-burned man, in a pith helmet, ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... nearer to her, confiding: "I know a spell my master mountebank taught me. A Greek fellow made it, a Roman rogue stole it, an Italian rascal gave a new twist to it; here is the pith of it. Oh, it sounds simple enough, but it will win a matron from her allegiance, a nun from her orisons, a maid from her modesty. See, now, how she will trip to my whistle. Mistress Modesty, Mistress Modesty, follow me home, follow ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... did the great god Pan, (How tall it stood in the river!) 20 Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man, Steadily from the outside ring, And notched the poor, dry, empty thing In holes, as he sat by ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... old methods of the explorer are still the best. Simply equipped with an elephant-rifle and a pith helmet, let him plunge into the bush and be lost to sight for a few years. Whereas the Missing Link may be relied on to remain resolutely beneath his rock at the sight of a sort of a Lord Mayor's Show wandering among the vegetation, the spectacle of a simple-looking traveller in the midst of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... X. 1. Seeds suspended in their pods. Stars discovered by Mr. Herschel. Destruction and resuscitation of all things. 351. 2. Seeds within seeds, and bulbs within bulbs. Picture on the retina of the eye. Concentric strata of the earth. The great seed. 381. 3. The root, pith, lobes, plume, calyx, coral, sap, blood, leaves respire and absorb light. The crocodile in its egg. 409. XI. Opening of the flower. The petals, style, anthers, prolific dust. Transmutation of the silkworm. 441. XII. ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... universal uproar of Machineries, Eldorados, "Unexampled Prosperities," which make a great noise for themselves in the days now come,' with much more to the same effect (xx. xiii.) Allowance made for the dialect, we do not see how the pith and root of the matter, the connection between the transactions of the eighteenth century and the industrial and colonial expansion that followed them, could be more firmly ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 9: The Expansion of England • John Morley
... rings from the pith out to about number forty-five. The tree was healthy up to that time. Then it met with an injury of some kind, as is indicated by this black scar. After that the rings grew narrower. The tree ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... save a soul from death. The representation in the parable, however, is true to nature and fact: it would be a mistake to attribute to a miser a high appreciation of the dignity of man. Covetousness, in its more advanced stages, eats the pith out of the understanding, and leaves its ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... friends. He tried also to encourage civilised warfare among earthworms, by supplying them with small pieces of pipe, with which they might fight if so disposed. His notions of charity at this early age were somewhat rudimentary; he used to peel rushes with the idea that the pith would afterwards "be given to the poor," though what possible use they could put it to he never attempted to explain. Indeed he seems at this time to have actually lived in that charming "Wonderland" which he afterwards described so vividly; but for all that he was a thorough boy, ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... should 'consider what chance there is of making terms,' and since then he had been repeatedly pressing on the Envoy the 'hopelessness of further resistance.' Macnaghten, vacillating as he was, yet had more pith in his nature than was left in the debilitated old general. He wrote to Elphinstone on the 18th recommending, not very strenuously, the policy of holding out where they were as long as possible, and indeed throughout the winter, if subsistence could be obtained. He pointed out that in the cantonments, ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... employed not in producing anything new, but in summarizing, epitomizing, and, as far as possible, suppressing, what their predecessors produced. Criticisms are offered to us as substitutes for the works criticised; volumes are tapped that their sap and pith may be extracted; the analyst takes our labor upon himself and generously presents us with the fruits. Up to a certain point the process is unobjectionable, and we have reason to be grateful to those who are skilful in it. It used, however, to be thought that there ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... made a statement in regard to colonial government. His lordship denounced the imprudence of the Colonial Reform Association, which, by its correspondence with disaffected persons, kept alive discontent wherever it existed, and indirectly promoted it everywhere else. The pith of the noble lord's statement was, that the colonies were a source of strength in peace and war, contrary to the doctrine propounded by Messrs. Cobden and Bright: that it was the duty of England to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... produces something peculiar to it. The food often grows in one country, and the sauce in another. The fruits of Portugal are corrected by the products of Barbadoes, and the infusion of a China plant is sweetened with the pith of an Indian cane. The Philippic islands give a flavour to our European bowls. The single dress of a woman of quality is often the product of an hundred climates. The muff and the fan come together from the different ends of the earth. The scarf is sent ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... 462 and 463 represent leaves of Annularia and Sphenophyllum, common in the coal, and believed by Mr. Carruthers to be leaves of Calamites. Dr. Williamson, who has carefully studied the Calamites, thinks that they had a fistular pith, exogenous woody stem, and thick smooth bark, which last having always disappeared, leaves a fluted stem, as ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... that Lesage devised (Fig. 1) was composed of 24 wires insulated from one another by a non conducting material. Each of these wires corresponded to a small pith ball suspended by a thread. On putting an electric machine in communication with such or such a one of these wires, the ball of the corresponding electrometer was repelled, and the motion signaled the letter ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... he saw the General seated at a table covered with writing materials, finishing a despatch for which an orderly was waiting. He was dressed in a sort of loose tunic, with pantaloons and riding-boots, and the sword which trailed by the side of his chair was straight. A pith helmet stood on the table before him, and altogether he looked like an Englishman, and not at all like a Pasha, as from the name Harry ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... seemed to be to teach Barnwell the language, and then to confide to him not only the story of his eventful life, but the pith of it, ...
— The Boy Nihilist - or, Young America in Russia • Allan Arnold
... travellers, mounted on wiry yet strong looking steeds, were wending their way through a forest in Australia. They were both young and dressed much alike in broad-brimmed pith hats, loose red shirts, corduroy trousers and ...
— Adventures in Australia • W.H.G. Kingston
... business did not prevent. Mr. Davis' manner was unvarying in its quiet and courtesy, drawing out all that one had to tell, and indicating by brief answer, or criticism, that he had extracted the pith from it. At that moment he was the very idol of the people; the grand embodiment to them of their grand cause; and they gave him their hands unquestioning, to applaud any move soever he might make. And equally unthinking as this popular manifestation of early ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... is the light by which we are enabled to discover the limits of his personality. Every man brings into the world with him a certain amount of pith and force, and to that pith or force his amount of accomplishment is exactly proportioned. It is in this way that every spoken word, every action of a man, becomes biographical. Everything a man says or does is in consistency ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... know, if Parson Oliver had not dropped in. We made quite a pleasant evening of it, and the old folks discussed the reminiscence in all its bearings. I like to hear old people talk. They come straight to the pith of a subject, especially if it is love and matrimony. And the more I hear them, the better I can realize the truth of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... bonds," she continued, not exactly remarking the pith of his last observation; "from bonds quasi- terrestrial and quasi-celestial. The full-formed limbs of the present age, running with quick streams of generous blood, will no longer bear the ligatures which past times have woven for the decrepit. Look down upon that multitude, Mackinnon; they ...
— Mrs. General Talboys • Anthony Trollope
... counterpoise to the vacillation of the other. It was not a sun and a planet, the one wheeling about the other, nor yet were they double stars, revolving about a centre common to both; their movements were like nothing so much as the freaks of a couple of pith-balls electrically excited, at one time drawn furiously together, and then capriciously repelling each other. Their loves, caresses, spats, quarrels, poutings, and reconciliations were as uncertain ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... Sincere are coming. On the base-angles, Maxen and Dohna, Finck expects Daun and the Reich. From Trohnitz to Maxen is near two miles; from Maxen to Dohna above four. At Dohna stands Wunsch against the Reich; Finck himself at Maxen, expecting Daun, as the pith of the whole affair. In this triangular way stands Finck at the topmost heights of the country,—"Maxen highest, but Hausdorf only a little lower,"—and has not thought of disputing the climb upwards. Too literal an eye to his orders: alas, he was not himself king, but ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the now well-kept lawns and flower-beds and entered a long avenue of fig-trees. The purple fruit hung abundantly among the large green leaves. Miss Williams opened one of the figs and showed Strowbridge the red luscious pith. ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... mankind that the writer of the hoax, with an apology (Heaven save the mark!) spared us Herschel's notes of "the Moon's tropical, sidereal, and synodic revolutions," and the "phenomena of the syzygies," and proceeded at once to the pith of the subject. Here came in his grand stroke, informing the world of complete success in obtaining a distinct view of objects in the moon "fully equal to that which the unaided eye commands of terrestrial objects at the distance of a hundred yards, affirmatively ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... giving form to angelic beings, by interpreting Mariolatry in all its charm and pathos, and by rousing deep sympathy with our Lord in His Passion, painting lent efficient aid to piety. Yet painting had to omit the very pith and kernel of Christianity as conceived by devout, uncompromising purists. Nor did it do what the Church would have desired. Instead of riveting the fetters of ecclesiastical authority, instead of enforcing mysticism and asceticism, it really restored to ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... that they grew to a far greater height than any similar plant now living, sometimes being as much as eight feet high. In the nature of their stems, too, they exhibited a more highly organised arrangement than their living representatives, having, according to Dr Williamson, a "fistular pith, an exogenous woody stem, and a thick smooth bark." The bark having almost al ways disappeared has left the fluted stem known to us as the calamite. The foliage consisted of whorls of long narrow leaves, which differed only from the fern asterophyllites in the fact that they were single-nerved. ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... to the whole social calendar. For months, addresses of congratulation kept coming in from all the societies and public bodies in the kingdom, and at every philanthropic function in which any member of royalty took part during the next twelve-month it gave pith to all the speeches and focussed the applause. Its influences extended to every department of public life; it affected politics, trade, public holiday, art, science; it invaded literature, increased the circulation of the newspapers, and ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... old saying "Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are" is as full of the "pith o' sense" to-day as in ye days of long ago, for food either makes us physically fit and fully efficient, or miserable failures with physical complications that keep us constantly ...
— Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book - Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions • Mary A. Wilson
... cotton fabrics, spirits, straw hats and tea are produced in the district of Ponta Delgada; linen and woollen goods, cheese, butter, soap, bricks and tiles, in that of Angra; baskets, mats, and various ornamental articles made from straw, osier, and the pith of dried fig-wood, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... conversant with the tactics of the Jupiter to know that the pith of the article would lie in the last paragraph. The place of honour was given to him, and it was indeed as honourable as even he could have wished. He was very grateful to his friend Mr Towers, and with full heart looked forward to the day when he ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... dears, that is the pith of the thing," Harry said. "The first thing for you to do is to send round notes to the mothers of these children saying that from unforeseen circumstances you have retired from the profession, and that the school has ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... for original and constructive statesmanship. By virtue of his leadership of the Senate, he was in effect the leader of Congress. He had the power of initiative. He was at the age when men are ripest for enterprises of pith and moment. Unhesitatingly, he advanced to the front and centre of the stage. When the session ended, his name was forever associated with a law that upset precedents and traditions, divided old parties and summoned up ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... long ago of which it was the professed object to give to the modern generation of lazy readers the pith of Boswell's immortal biography. I shall, for sufficient reasons, refrain from discussing the merits of the performance. One remark, indeed, may be made in passing. The circle of readers to whom such a book is welcome must, of necessity, be limited. ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... appearance is not unlike the cocoa-nut palm. Our conductor called the sago tree sibla, but the Malays give it the name of rumbiga. They say that each tree, if kept properly pruned down, will produce at least five hundred pounds of pith per annum; but it soon degenerates if suffered to grow to any considerable height. The pith is soaked in large troughs of running water until it dissolves and afterward settles, the sand and heavy dirt sinking beneath it, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; And enterprises of great pith and moment, With this regard their currents torn awry, And lose the name of action. 386 SHAKS.: ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... notoriety at the hanging of Ruth Blay. The circumstances are set forth by the late Albert Laighton in a spirited ballad, which is too long to quote in full. The following stanzas, however, give the pith of the story— ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... slices of toast, drinks two cups of coffee, and swallows two eggs boiled for two and a half minutes by an infallible chronometer. After breakfast he reads the newspaper, but lays it down in the very heart and pith of a clever article on his own side of the question, the moment his time is up. He has even been known to leave the theatre at the very moment of the denouement of a deeply-interesting play rather than exceed his limited hour by five minutes. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... eggs singly on the outside of the plant upon which the young are to feed. As soon as the eggs hatch, which is in about a month, the young larvae, or caterpillars, gnaw their way from the outside into the pith. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... bring out the very pith of his story in so abrupt a manner. He wished to have the work over, to feel, that as regarded Herbert it was done,—but his heart failed him when he ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... space, sought to prove him a liar by his defence of the Jay treaty in the Camillus papers, and made him insult Washington in language so un-Hamiltonian that to-day it excites pity for the desperation of the Virginians. When it finally arrived at the pith and marrow of the assault, however, it was with quite an innocent air. This was a carefully concocted version of the Reynolds affair. Callender had obtained possession of the papers which Monroe, Muhlenberg, and Venable had prepared to ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... Stevenson in the Pall Mall Magazine, has a remark which I confess astonished me—a remark I could never forget as coming from him. He said that he "had lived a very full and varied life, and had no interest in remarks about morals." "Remarks about morals" are, nevertheless, in essence, the pith of all the books to which he referred, as those to which he turned in preference to the Edinburgh Edition of R. L. Stevenson's works. The moral element is implicit in the drama, and it is implicit there because ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... rush-lights are gone by, but rush-baskets for flowers and helmets are made by the children, and the white pith, when pressed, is made up into devices. (F. effusus) (F. glaucus) All in Itchen ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... I have watched the strongest go—men Of pith and might and muscle—at your heels, Down the plantain-bordered highway, (Heaven send it ne'er be my way!) In a lacquered box and jetty ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... our later literary women prefer the epigrammatic form in sentences, crisp and laconic; short sayings full of pith, of which ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... to the line. We now got our bait ready. On this occasion it was a live tame duck. Passing the bend of the hook round its neck, and the shank under its right wing, we tied the hook in this position with thread. We then made a small raft of the soft pith of the plantain-tree, tied the duck to the raft and committed it to the stream. Holding the rope as clear of the water as we could, the poor quacking duck floated slowly down the muddy current, making an occasional vain effort to get free. We ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... He says further: "If a steel mill were to start in a Mississippi swamp paying wages of $2 a day, the news would hum through foreign lands in a month, and that swamp would become a beehive of humanity and industry in an incredibly short space of time." Dr. A. F. Schauffler says, with equal pith, that "the great cause of immigration is, after all, that the immigrants propose to better themselves in this country. They come here not because they love us, or because we love them. They come here because they can do themselves good, not because they ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... a swift analysis, which drives directly to the heart of the man, instantly detects the impostor behind the braggart, and curtly declares him to lack "the true grit." The word is so close to the thing it names, has so much pith and point, is so tart on the tongue, and so stings the ear with its meaning, that foreigners ignorant of the language might at once feel its significance by its griding utterance as it is shot impatiently ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... small pith ball is suspended from a non-conducting support, it forms a simple and ready means of testing the electricity in a stone. According to whether the ball is repelled or attracted, so is the electricity ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin |
