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Pile   Listen
noun
Pile  n.  The head of an arrow or spear. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pile" Quotes from Famous Books



... She incloses the living man within the confines of the grave; she subjects to sudden death those who were destined to a protracted age; and she brings back to life the corses of the dead. She snatches the smoaking cinders, and the bones whitened with flame, from the midst of the pile, and wrests the torch from the hand of the mourning parent. She seizes the fragments of the burning shroud, and the embers yet moistened with blood. But, where the sad remains are already hearsed in marble, it is there that she most delights to exercise her sacrilegious power. She tears the ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... and Richard sat turning over a pile of papers which related to the purchase of the Daily Tory; they had been left by Mr. Gwynn. These he compared with a letter or two that ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... delegate at the Ministry of War, after the pretended flight of Rossel, and in a sitting of the 20th of April, in which the project of burning Paris was discussed, Delescluze ended his speech with the words—"If we must die, we will give to Liberty a pile worthy of her."] ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton

... on the same scale, must number nearly 400. Moreover, ninety-six heliogravure enlargements from the Paris Chart-plates, distributed in the same year, supplied a basis for the calculation that the entire Atlas of the sky, composed of similar sheets, will form a pile thirty feet high and two tons in weight![1576] It will, however, possess an incalculable scientific value. For millions of stars can be determined by its means, from their imprinted images, with an accuracy comparable to that ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... design obliging me, and the direct road in part concurring, I came back through the west part of the county of Essex, and at Saffron Walden I saw the ruins of the once largest and most magnificent pile in all this part of England—viz., Audley End—built by, and decaying with, the noble ...
— Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722 • Daniel Defoe

... alarms of icy death, why do you dread Styx? why the shades, why empty names, the stock subjects of the poets, and the atonements of an imaginary world? Whether the funeral pile consumes your bodies with flames, or old age with gradual dissolution, believe that they cannot suffer any injury. Souls are not subject to death; and having left their former abode, they ever inhabit new dwellings, and, {there} ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... words. This use cannot be learned from a dictionary, where words are studied individually, but only by studying them in combination with other words where the influence of one word upon another may be noted. There is little difference in the size of a pile of stones, whether we say a great pile of stones or a large pile of stones; but a great man is of much more consequence than a large man. A dictionary could hardly have told a foreigner this. A man may pursue or chase a robber, as the author wishes; but he may not chase ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... the shanty. In one corner of the room a dilapidated stove was glowing; in another corner there was a bed, made of rough boards, with a pile of dirty bedding on the straw. A table and one chair completed the furniture. Near the door some farm implements were stacked. A rusty, battered pan on the floor caught the water that dripped in through a leak in ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop

... up and down the platform, passing his pile of luggage, solitary and eloquent on the barrow. Never in his life having been made to look a fool, he felt the red heat of the thing, as a man who has not blessedly become acquainted with the swish in boyhood finds his untempered blood turn to poison at a blow; he cannot healthily ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... a very common condition in cold, wet weather when hogs are allowed to sleep in manure heaps, straw stacks, or pile up together, when they become overheated and later chill. Nasal Catarrh may also be due to inhaling dust ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek

... known, and some that were never heard of. At first view it looks like a small palace set on the top of a large one. It is certainly very original and very elaborate. Going to the citadel, they entered by a highly ornamental gateway, which opened to the visitors the view of the vast pile of buildings, in the middle of which is the Imambara. The vastness of the pile presented before them was bewildering, though they had seen so many immense structures that mere size did not now overwhelm them. The Great ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic

... stone-lime should be done in a large pile, and the distribution may be made with lime-spreaders. When the application is fairly heavy, a manure-spreader does satisfactory work. A good lime-spreader is to be desired, but care must be used to remove any stones or similar impurities in the slaked ...
— Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement • Alva Agee

... means; but there is a large class of vindictive Southerners who will fight to the last. The squabbles in Richmond, the howls in Charleston, and the disintegration elsewhere, are all good omens for us; we must not relax one iota, but, on the contrary, pile up our efforts: I world, ere this, have been off, but we had terrific rains, which caught us in motion, and nearly drowned some of the troops in the rice-fields of the Savannah, swept away our causeway (which had been carefully corduroyed), and made the swamps hereabout mere ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... himself seek the means of his own safety. He is competent to offer advice to the whole world. What need is there of telling him what he should do? We should not any longer fight. I say so unto all the troops. As regards myself, I will, with all my brothers ascend a funeral pile. Having crossed the Bhishma and the Drona oceans in this battle, that are incapable of being crossed by the timid, shall I sink with all my followers in the vestige, represented by Drona's son, of a cow's hoof? Let the wishes of king Duryodhana ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... she could not sleep. She got up and went down to the shop. It was a bright, moonlit night, and all the house, even where the moon could not enter, was full of glimmer and gleam, except the shop. There she lighted a candle, sat down on a pile of goods, and gave herself up to memories of the past. Back and back went her thoughts as far as she could send them. God was everywhere in all the story; and the clearer she saw him there the surer ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... know, to Europe, the Common Market, in farm products, is nearly three or four to one in our favor, amounting to one of the best earners of dollars in our balance of payments structure, and without entrance to this Market, without the ability to enter it, our farm surpluses will pile up in the Middle West, tobacco in the South, and other commodities, which have gone through Western Europe for 15 years. Our balance of payments position will worsen. Our consumers will lack a wider choice of goods at lower prices. And millions ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John F. Kennedy • John F. Kennedy

... book does not pretend to be a scientific treatise. It is as true as I can make it to my childhood teaching and ancestral ideals, but from the human, not the ethnological standpoint. I have not cared to pile up more dry bones, but to clothe them with flesh and blood. So much as has been written by strangers of our ancient faith and worship treats it chiefly as matter of curiosity. I should like to emphasize its universal quality, its ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... went, as usual, into the library without ringing,—but, not finding the books, proceeded in search of Mrs. Simm. That notable lady was sitting behind a huge pile of clean clothes, sorting and mending to her heart's content. She looked up over her spectacles at Ivy's bright "good morning," and invited her to come in. Ivy declined, and begged to know if Mrs. Simm had seen her books. To be sure she had, like the good ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... careful to brush his beard and twist his long mustache into its usual upward, French-looking curve, so as to regain as much as possible the air of his old self, before seating himself at his desk to look over his correspondence. There was a pile of letters, of which he read the addresses slowly without opening any ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King

... it excepting the western, which was precipitous, large old trees had found root, mantling the rock and the ancient and ruinous walls with their dusky verdure, and increasing the effect of the shattered pile which towered up from ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... committee-man is a parti-coloured officer. He must be drawn like Janus with cross and pile in his countenance, as he relates to the soldiers or faces about to his fleecing the country. Look upon him martially, and he is a justice of war, one that hath bound his Dalton up in buff, and will needs be of the Quorum to the best commanders. He is one of Mars his lay-elders; ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... and Mary, as it is still called, is at the opposite end of the main street: it is a heavy pile of building, somewhat resembling a large brick-kiln. The students were, at this time, about thirty in number; but, from their boyish appearance, the seminary ought rather to be termed ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley

... it some vast, eccentric picnic. No, it was their orderliness, their thrift and kindness, their unmistakable usefulness, which made the waste and irony of it all so colossal and hideous. Each family had its big, round loaves of bread and its pile of hay for the horses, the bags of pears and potatoes; the children had their little dolls, and you would see some tired mother with her big bundle under one arm and some fluffy little puppy in the other. You could not associate them with forty-centimetre shells or burned churches and libraries ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl

... Danny Grin started in to move a small pile of bricks. Next a tub of mixed mortar was carried to the level spot decided upon as the place whereon to erect ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock

... you understand, fellows," he told the others as they labored strenuously to remove the upper timbers from the pile, "because that one timber he mentioned is the key log of the jam. As long as it holds he's safe from being crushed. Here, don't try that beam yet, men. Take hold of the other one. And Bobolink and Wallace, help me lift this section ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren

... otherwise the fire may go out just when the heat is needed most and the solder in the pot has become too cool to wipe with. Have a catch pan and keep all the solder droppings to put back into the pot, otherwise the solder will pile up and the fingers are likely to be pushed into the pile and badly burned. Hold the ladle about 2 inches above the work, the catch cloth about 1 inches below. Do not drop the solder in the same place. Keep moving the ladle. Do not pour the solder on the pipe ...
— Elements of Plumbing • Samuel Dibble

... expected, his daughter had prepared a pile of hot cakes for supper, and her face brightened up when she saw the party return punctually. The boys had been up early, and had slept but little the night before, and were not sorry at eight o'clock to lie down on the bed of freshly cut rushes covered ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty

... children, with a shout that made the windows rattle. "Oh, goody! goody! goody! how glad we are!" and they danced round the pile which lay on the floor ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... "Pile on to him now, while I hold him still. Or shall I pick you up and put you on?" Starr smiled while he said it, but there was a look in his eyes and around his mouth that ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower

... fell. "I spent it at first as though there was no end to my little pile," he said. "I had pulled up when your letter came, but I only had enough left to pay my way back to Florida, buy this pony, and the outfit you suggested. There's nothing left. The fellows tried ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... to look upon. House after house has been shattered to pieces—broken to a pile of stones. One of the small turrets of the cathedral has been demolished, and a rent has been torn in the stone work of the tower. The station is like ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... and the landlord's fell—at least we thought so; he was confused, at any rate, notwithstanding he had not understood a word that had been said. He glanced from the little pile of gold pieces to Blucher several times and then went out. He must have visited an American, for when he returned, he brought back his bill translated into a language that a Christian ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... was so sudden; but righting herself, she shook the treasure into her lap, and fell to counting it. She counted up to ten; that was as far as her knowledge of arithmetic went. Putting aside the ten pennies into a little pile, she began to count the rest. "One, two, three," she went on until—why, there was another pile of ten, and more yet; and the "more yet" counted up to five. Polly couldn't "do sums." She couldn't add these two piles of ten and the "more yet," and ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry

... thousands, but who may in vast numbers be preserved if you, assisting and not contravening the ways of Providence, will help to save them. The two grim nurses, Poverty and Sickness, who bring these children before you, preside over their births, rock their wretched cradles, nail down their little coffins, pile up the earth above their graves. Of the annual deaths in this great town, their unnatural deaths form more than one-third. I shall not ask you, according to the custom as to the other class—I shall ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens

... in the enemy's country, is piled in a heap; the oldest Sagamo, or chieftain of the assembly gets up, and asks, "What weather it is? Is the sky clear? Does the sun shine?" On being answered in the affirmative, he orders the young men to carry the pile of peltry to a rising-ground, or eminence, at some little distance from the cabbin, or place of assembly. As this is instantly done, he follows them, and as he walks along begins, and continues his address to the sun ...
— An Account Of The Customs And Manners Of The Micmakis And Maricheets Savage Nations, Now Dependent On The Government Of Cape-Breton • Antoine Simon Maillard

... expostulations, but they found, as Mr. Ronald Barker had done, that there was something quietly compelling in this man's methods. In a very few minutes they had handed over their purses, and a pile of glittering rings, bangles, brooches, and chains was lying upon the front seat of the car. The diamonds glowed and shimmered like little electric points in the light of the lantern. He picked up the glittering tangle and ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle

... do you; but here we are at the stone pile. My! but how the fellers will grin when they see a tenderfoot like you, and a parson at that, shovelin' stone. But they won't think any the less of you for it, mind you," ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott

... Horatio Paget he would not apply. There were his employers, the editors and proprietors of the magazines for which he worked; all busy over-burdened workers in the great mill, spending the sunny hours of their lives between a pile of unanswered letters and a waste-paper basket; men who would tell him to look in the Post-office Directory, without lifting their eyes from the paper over which their restless pens ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... out again, then almost automatically he swallowed some, and they knew that he was alive, and thanked Heaven. Ten minutes later Mr. Clifford was sitting up staring at them with dull and wondering eyes, while outside the two Zulus, whose nerves had now utterly broken down, were contemplating the pile of skeletons in the corner and the white towering crucifix, and loudly lamenting that they should have been brought to perish in this ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... be stated in a celebrated figure of Pascal's. Let it be granted that reason can discover nothing as to the existence of any ground for religion. Let it be granted that we cannot know whether there is a God or not. Yet either there is, or there is not. It is even betting, heads or tails, croix ou pile. This being so, it is wiser to bet that there is a God. It is safer. If you lose, you are just where you were, except for the pleasures which you desert. If you win, you win everything! What you stake is finite, a little pleasure; if you win, ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang

... Tophet (Gesenius arbitrarily changes the nomen proprium into an appellativum, and translates: the place for burning) is ordained of old; yea, for the king it is prepared, made deep and large; the pile thereof has fire and wood in abundance." This passage supposes that, even at that time, the valley of Hinnom, or Tophet (which properly is only a part of it, but is sometimes, however, used for the whole), had that destination; that piles were constantly burning in it, on which the carcasses of ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg

... afraid you may not consider it an altogether substantial concern. It has to be seen in a certain way, under certain conditions. Some people never see it at all. You must understand, this is no dead pile of stones and unmeaning timber. It is a ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton

... and she gazed with new interest on the gray melancholy pile, as the sunshine brought it into strong contrast with the dark pines around it. "And Mr. ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... I was, I recollect, proud of knowing the identity of the building—it was one of the few things I did know in London—and I was observing with interest the wondrous livery of the two menials motionless behind the glass of its portals, when a tandem equipage drew up in front of the pile, and the menials darted out, in their white gloves, to prove that they were alive and to justify ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett

... or shrines of relics, which abound in such numbers in Thibet, have also been found in India and other countries. Some of them when opened have been found to contain what appears to be remains of a funeral pile, also vessels of stone or metal, and, occasionally, caskets of silver and gold, curiously wrought. "Some of these have been chased with a series of four figures, representing Buddha in the act of preaching; a mendicant is on his right, a lay follower on his left, and behind the latter ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight

... His head did not seem quite big enough for his body. It looked like a pea uneasily poised on an egg. He was playing dominoes with a Frenchman, and greeted the new-comers with a quiet smile; he did not speak, but as if to make room for them pushed away the little pile of saucers on the table which indicated the number of drinks he had already consumed. He nodded to Philip when he was introduced to him, and went on with the game. Philip's knowledge of the language was small, but ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... water-lilies, with the yellow trollius for its border. In the front, where the wood retreats, lie, like a great stack, the piled-together rape-stalks: the man has struck fire, has kindled the outer side of them, and with a rapidity like that of the descending lava the red fire flashes up the gigantic pile. It crackles and roars within it. In a moment it is all a burning mound; the red flames flash aloft into the blue air, high above the wood which is now no longer visible. A thick black smoke ascends up into the ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen

... my life making up reckonings and seeing to drink and men's dinners and the beds they were to sleep in. But I never was contented with such things, and the money I made didn't content me a bit more. They taught me better, boy." He put his hand on the pile of books which lay on the table in front of Neal. "They taught me that there was something better than making money and eating full and living soft, something in the world a man might fight for. Eh, but I ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham

... their horses with a friend of Gaetano's, who insisted on their finishing the best part of a bottiglia of red wine with him, the artist, under the landlord's guidance, set out to see the town. They climbed up street to the cathedral, a fine old pile trembling with music and filled with worshippers, paintings of saints in extremis, flowers, wax candles, votary offerings, and heat; then coming out, and feeling wolfish, looked round for a place where they could find dinner! Here it was! a scene that would have cheered Teniers: a ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... to Balboa. There the very town at which I had landed on the Zone five months before was being razed to give place to the permanent, reenforced-concrete city that is to be the canal headquarters. Balboa police station was only a pile of lumber, with a band of negroes drilling away the very rock on which it had stood. I took a last view of the Pacific and her islands to far Taboga, where Uncle Sam sends his recuperating children to enjoy ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck

... lived in a tumble-down stone hut about fifteen feet square, half open to the sky (its only saving quality); in one corner the entire family sleeping in a promiscuous pile on a bed of leaves; in another a domestic zoo consisting of half a dozen hens, a cock, a goat, and a donkey. They neither read, think, nor exchange ideas. The sight of a uniform means to them either a tax-gatherer, a compulsory enlistment ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... am avenged; did she not offer prayers Erst unto Jove, late unto Christ?—to e'en a Jew, she dares! Now, in thy terror, own my right to rule above them all; Alone I rest—except this pile, I leave ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... of a steamer came shooting into view, down the river. On the forward part of the deck were several soldiers and laborers, with women and children that looked like emigrants, and also a huge pile of trunks and merchandise covered with a tarpauling. Then came the paddle wheels, and then the quarter deck, with a large company of tourists, most of whom were looking about very eagerly at the scenery, with guide books and glasses ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott

... him." There is an exquisite tenderness in this laying her hand upon his hair, for it is the talisman of his life, vowed to his own Thessalian river if he ever returned to its shore, and cast upon Patroclus' pile, so ordaining that there should ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin

... we were at Ingham's. He unlocked a ravishing old black mahogany secretary he has, and produced a pile of parchment-covered books of different sizes, which were diaries of old Captain Heddart's. They were often called log-books,—but, though in later years kept on paper ruled for log-books, and often following to a certain extent the indications of the columns, they were almost wholly personal, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... "You pile wonder upon wonder," she said. "That the reality should excel the poet's ideal! That the cloud-capped towers which looked splendid from afar, with all the glamour of distance, should prove to be more splendid still, ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland

... melodrama that comes over you. The vista of this queer, cold, lonesome, hard little street, down by the great city's river front, was painted, or something very like it was painted, on back curtains long ago. The great, gloomy pile of the Bridge rises before over all. To make it right there should be a scream. A female figure with hair streaming upward should shoot through the air to black waters below, where there is a decrepit boat with a man in a striped jersey ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday

... pages. If the paper is very thick, not more than eight leaves will be in a signature; if of ordinary thickness, sixteen are generally used. The signatures are piled up in order, and a "gatherer" collects one from each pile ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan

... poor colored people. Us been so glad, us say dat us wish dey would come back again. Den after dey had left us plantation, dey would go some other place where dere was another crowd of little niggers en would left dem a pile of stuff, too. Old Massa, he been stay in de swamp till he hear dem Yankees been leave dere en den he come home en would keep sendin to de colored people houses to get a little bit of his rations to a time. Uncle Solomon en Sipp en Leve, dey been eat ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... a hundred worldly snares, Self-seeking men, by ignorance deluded, Strive by unrighteous means to pile up riches. Then, in their self-complacency, they say, "This acquisition I have made to-day, That will I gain to-morrow, so much pelf Is hoarded up already, so much more Remains that I have yet to treasure up. This enemy I have ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston

... Mrs. Foley, the janitress, told him to bring down all his heavy clothes and she would give them a beating and hang them in the court. The closet was in such disorder that he shunned the encounter, but one hot afternoon he set himself to the task. First he threw out a pile of forgotten laundry and tied it up in a sheet. The bundle stood as high as his middle when he had knotted the corners. Then he got his shoes and overshoes together. When he took his overcoat from its place ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather

... is a chair somewhere among your pile with the name 'Geo. Morris' on it. Will you ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr

... must go on. The returns here are not yet complete, but it is believed that Dougherty's vote will be slightly greater than Miller's majority over Fondey. We have some 120,000 clear Republican votes. That pile is worth keeping together. It will elect a State ticket two ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay

... after that one look at his nephew, turned again to the Earl, politely motioning him to the chair which he had already drawn forward. And the Earl, whose eyes had been wandering over the pile of documents on the senior partner's desk, glancing curiously at the open door of the strong room, and generally taking in a sense of some unusual occurrence, dropped into it and looked ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher

... with these domestic pictures—pet kittens and children playing close under its shadow, tiny cabbage and tomato beds planted to its very edge-stands the huge, angular, pyramidal pile called the ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... the pile, turning it over hastily, as if searching for something. The trader understood. He was a cool-headed Scotsman; he knew that there were some things best not inquired into, and that men must have their bad hours alone. He glanced at the brandy debatingly, but presently ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... with your model in an attitude on one side, yourself, in an attitude too, I suppose, on the other, and your pile of clay in the middle, building up, as you say. So you pass the morning. After that I hope you go out and take a walk, and rest ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... hastily swept a pile of scraps out of sight, and turned to greet her little sister with a ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston

... at the disorder and neglect everywhere visible. On deck, however, some attempt at setting things ship-shape were being made by the two mates and boatswain, the six guns were being overhauled, and a pile of muskets lying on the main hatch were being examined and passed up to the poop one by one, to old Kanka, who was in command of the contingent of Lele natives on board the barque. Similar preparations with ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke

... put 'em on Hinton's vault till they find the rest!' said Lizzy hopelessly. The excisemen had, in fact, begun to pile up the tubs on a large stone slab which was fixed there; and when all were brought out from the tower, two or three of the men were left standing by them, the rest of the party ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy

... help in fertilizing the flowers. But of this we shall learn more some day when we are talking about the flowers. This powder the bee packs down into the little rooms. Then she lays an egg on each pile of food and builds a door to shut the ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody

... Mr. Lannarck. "I think I can parry every thrust, can lead him through a mystic maze of information that will pile up a lot of useless knowledge." And the little man was getting along very well with his assignment, as Adine polished her nose at the window and Landy Spencer sat quietly, seeming uninterested ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney

... it was argued, that the city had forfeited that granted by Henry VII. It was also contended that the charter of Henry only extended to that part of the river which was within the city, and the lease at Vauxhall was, therefore, an encroachment. These arguments prevailed, the bill was passed, and a pile of buildings, called the Adelphi, was erected on the site, and disposed of by lottery. The disposal of them in this manner was to eke out the ways and means, and this mode of procuring money called forth the indignant denunciations ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... behold my mutilated pile Shall brand its ravager with classic rage; And soon a titled bard from Britain's isle Thy country's praise and suffrage shall engage, And fire with Athens' wrongs an angry age!" HORACE ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... not wish to say anything for a moment. His brother's appearance had choked him. It was one o'clock, but he was still in his dressing-gown; with sunken, pale cheeks, save for one bright spot, and with faint, dark rims underneath his eyes. There were a pile of blue papers and some ominous-looking envelopes on the table before him, and Paul could not help noticing the intense pallor of the ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... cooling down of the great Anabaptist fanaticism, the millennarian fever has raged less and less extensively. But if the literature it has produced, in ignorant and declamatory books, sermons, and tracts, were heaped together, they would make a pile as big as one of the pyramids. The preaching of Miller, about a quarter of a century ago, with his definite assignment of the time for the appointed consummation, caused quite a violent panic in the United States. ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... the napkins, sprinkling with her fingers. Harry spread up a pile on his part, dipping also into the bowl. "I used to do it when I was ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... hour warned us to return. On our way down we disturbed a peevish jackdaw from her nest; she had dragged up to that intolerable height a pile of boughs that would have made a dozen nests; she had interwoven for the cup to hold her eggs a number of strips of purloined canvas. There lay the three speckled eggs, the hope of the race, while the chiding mother stood on a pinnacle hard ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson

... I found A pumpkin, high and dry, Upon a pile of rubbish, down Behind that worn-out sty!" O, dear, I didn't cry, because I'm quite too big to cry, But, honestly, I couldn't eat ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester

... Nero forsaken is of all the world, The world of truth. O fall some vengeance downe Equall unto their falsehoods and my wrongs! Might I accept the Chariot of the Sunne And like another Phaeton consume In flames of all the world, a pile of Death Worthy the state and greatnesse I have lost! Or were I now but Lord of my owne fires Wherein false Rome yet once againe might smoake And perish, all unpitied of her Gods, That all things in their last destruction might Performe a funerall honour to their Lord! O Iove ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various

... short distance from Fort Bridger; the overland road passes by their side. They consist of a sandstone bluff, reddish-brown in color, rising with the abruptness of a pile of masonry from the perfectly level plain, carved along its perpendicular face into a series of partially connected religious edifices, the most remarkable of which is a cathedral as colossal as St. Peter's, and completely relieved from the bluff on all sides save the rear, where a portico ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... out. With him was Captain Black, a professional elephant hunter, who, three years before, on the Aberdare, had had a bad experience with an elephant. It was a cow that he had wounded but failed to kill. She charged him and knocked him down in a pile of very thick and matted brush. Three times she trampled him under her feet, but the bushes served as a kind of mattress and the captain escaped with only a few hones broken; although he was laid up for five weeks. Ashton and Black did not have much luck in ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon

... fell upon them all these things had been taken care of, and they were in fine fettle for the stay, whether it be of long or short duration, even to a pile of ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne

... being ended, I found a great circle of men assembled on the outside with a pile of yams as usual in the centre for me. I was glad to see a small pile also for the Frenchman. I made my speech in his presence, but he knows not Lifu. "Be kind to the French, give them food and lodging. This is a duty which you are bound ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and lighted a piece of candle, which she took from her pocket, when she saw, with evident amazement, a beautiful girl lying asleep upon a shawl which had been spread over a pile of seaweed in one corner of ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... this rare pile of perfection. Wherein Love reads a lecture of delight, Ows not it's use to Nature? There is love In every thing that lives: the very sunne Does burne in love while we partake his heate; The clyming ivy with her loving twines Clips the strong oake. No skill ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various

... fool according to his folly, but it takes a wise and a good man to overcome evil with good, and to love them that hate; and yet how certainly the fires of mutual antagonism would go out if there were only one to pile on the fuel! It takes two to make a quarrel, and no man living under the influence of the Spirit of God can be one of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... intervening space on both sides is dotted with villas, some green, some red, some yellow, some blue, some (and ours among the number) pink. At your back, as I have said, sir, is the ocean; with the slim Italian tower of the ruined church of St. John the Baptist rising up before it, on the top of a pile of savage rocks. You go through the court-yard, and out at the gate, and down a narrow lane to the sea. Note. The sala goes sheer up to the top of the house; the ceiling being conical, and the little bedrooms built round the spring of its arch. You will observe that we make no pretension to ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... came forward, trailing their streams of water behind them. He heard them through. He answered them craftily, smiling behind his hand, with the cunning born of the fog in his brain. Shortly they went away again, leaving on the table a pile of silver. Cable the President! What a joke! and he chuckled aloud. He would teach them to come and ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various

... gazed upon us with admiration, little dreaming the dark secrets we had discovered concerning that impressive pile, whose peaked roofs and soaring gables sheltered monk and prior before yet our own country had a name, and in whose cavernous cellars only the bravest of the servants dared to go, lest gowned and hooded spectres should ask what ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... different in size, form, quality, use, etc., and without special order or relation, the collection is miscellaneous; if the objects differ in kind, such a mixture is also, and more strictly, heterogeneous; a pile of unassorted lumber is miscellaneous; the contents of a school-boy's pocket are commonly miscellaneous and might usually be termed ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... officers' cook—a pastry cook before he was a soldier—was a nice, kindly, hard- working chap, but he lacked the quality dear to all good house- keepers—he had never learned to clean up after himself as he went along. He had used every cooking utensil in the house, and such a pile of plates and glasses! It took Amelie and me until two o'clock to clean up after him, and when it was done I felt that I never wanted to see food again as long as I lived. Of course we did not mind, but Amelie had to say, every now and then, "Vive l'armee!" just to keep ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich

... made signs at one another an' closed in on 'im. They didn't fully realize who they had to deal with, though. I hain't got much use for Toot, but he'll fight a circular saw bare-handed. He backed into a corner over a pile o' split pine-knots an' grabbed one that Thad Muntford declared wuz shaped like the jaw-bone o' Samson's ass. It had a long handle an' weighed about fifteen pounds. On my word, it seemed to me he slugged Frank and Andy at exactly the same time. You could 'a' heerd the'r skulls pop to the gate. ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben

... particularly about the basket was a well-known little Todworth envelope, superscribed in the delicate handwriting of my aristocratic cousin,—my letter of introduction, in fact,—displayed upon the very top of the pile of billets and cards. My own card I did not see; but in looking for it I discovered some curious specimens of foreign orthography,—one dainty little note to 'Madame Valtobureau'; another laboriously ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... to let them see a massive pile of mason work outlined against the cliff's facade, while too dim for them to distinguish its features. They could make out, however, what appeared to be a pair of windows with pointed arches, and between them a large doorway, ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid

... of similar dispensations during the course of the week materially reduced the great pile of chickens and turkeys which black Caesar's efforts in slaughtering, picking, ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... usually flat, probably massive stone slabs supported by pillars within. Even in the poorer sections, this was true except for the very meanest houses and out-buildings, which were thatched. Here and there, some huge pile of masonry would rear itself above its lower neighbors, and, where the streets were wider, occasional groups of large buildings would be surrounded by battlemented walls. Stranor Sleth indicated one of the larger ...
— Temple Trouble • Henry Beam Piper

... darting electricity showed him how old he was. The Town Hall, which was brand-new when he left Turnhill, had the look of a mediaeval hotel de ville as he examined it in the glamour of the corporation's incandescent gas. And it was no more the sole impressive pile in the borough. The High Street and its precincts abounded in impressive piles. He did not know precisely what they were, but they had the appearance of being markets, libraries, baths, and similar haunts of luxury; one was a bank. He thought that ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... with active men, armed with axes and poles, some freeing the ice at the arch of the bridge, others attempting to push the iceberg nearer to the shore, where, if once stranded, it would melt at leisure. If the huge pile of mischief could have found a voice, it would have ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... west; the natives of Jesso also turn the head to the west. The modern Siamese never sleep with their faces turned to the west, because this is the attitude in which they place their dead before burning them on the funeral pile. Finally, the Greeks and all other peoples, both civilized and barbarous, including ourselves, had and continue to have special customs in burying ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli

... contact of two metals, and it seemed not improbable that other nerves might be stimulated in the same manner. In the meantime Mr. John Robison had increased the Sulzer effect greatly by building up a pile of pieces of zinc with silver shillings and placing these in contact with ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... residents. Of course I had but little time or inclination for visiting the objects which usually interest strangers. I managed, however, to take a glance at the Cave of Camoens, the poet of Portugal, where it is said he composed his immortal Lusiad. It is rather a pile of granite rocks than a cave; and the garden in which it is situated is full of shrubs and magnificent trees—a romantic spot, fit for a ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston

... makes the enterprise of cities possible comes from the boys and the girls who warmed their feet on October mornings where the cows lay down; who have been brought up to work on land, to plant and hoe and harvest and look after livestock. This is all education, and very necessary education. "A sand-pile and dirt in which to dig is the divine right of every ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard

... any extent. The dimensions of an organ, in its external aspect, must depend a good deal on the height of the edifice in which it is contained. Thus, the vaulted roof of the Cathedral of Ulm permitted the builder of our Music-Hall organ to pile the facade of the one he constructed for that edifice up to the giddy elevation of almost a hundred feet, while the famous instrument in the Town Hall of Birmingham has only three-quarters of the height of our own, which is sixty feet. It is obvious also that the effective power of an organ ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... thoroughly in keeping with the spacious character of the house. It consisted of one wide flight of shallow steps, with a richly-carved balustrade on either side of it, leading straight down from a large square landing above. Both landing and steps were carpeted with thick velvet-pile carpet, so that no jarring footfall was ever heard upon them. The hall into which the staircase led was paved in coloured mosaic tiles, and was half covered over with rich Persian rugs. A great many doors, nearly all the sitting-rooms of the house, in fact, opened into it, and ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron

... and all the men of the camp mounted their ponies and they had a great hunt. The next day they returned with their ponies laden with the buffalo meat. The young woman bade them pile the meat in a great heap between two hills which she pointed out to them. There was so much meat that the tops of the two hills were bridged level between by the meat pile. In the center of the pile the young woman planted ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin

... piled edge of snow had fallen too, and nothing but snow lay below when he peered. Along the upper edge he ran for a furlong, till he came to a dip where he could slip and climb down, and then back again on the lower level to the pile of fallen snow. There he saw that the vigorous ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman

... begin on the following day, and the carpenter gave him a pile of boards to plane. He was to receive a halfpenny for each board; and to his own delight, and the carpenter's astonishment, he planed one hundred the first day, and received four shillings and twopence. Once more was Mrs. Garfield struck dumb. Her feelings of joy and thankfulness ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford

... they were ultimately betrayed—as narrated by Sir Walter and Mr. Wilson—by the track of some footpaths in a sprinkling of snow; and the implacable chieftain, giving orders on the discovery, to unroof the houses in the neighborhood, raised high a pile of rafters against the opening, and set it on fire. And there he stood in front of the blaze, hump-backed and grim, till the wild, hollow cry from the rock within had sunk into silence, and there lived ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... although I'm sittin' only a dozen feet off, half facin' his way too, I don't get even the hint of a smothered gasp. Couldn't even tell whether he'd seen the picture or not, and by the time I works up an excuse to drift over by his elbow he's halfway through the pile. ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford



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