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He reminded his listeners of Lord Beaconsfield's famous saying, and chuckled over the unfortunate woman, "plain as a pike-staff," who had become his benefactress, in consequence of a discreet allusion to the "power of beauty" and a well-placed sigh. "The woman must have been a fool!" said Joseph Fleming. "By no means; she was of brilliant intellect.
"As plain as a pike-staff," said Pash, with an ironical laugh. "You pluck it up by the roots, strip off the leaves and bark, shave off the knots, and smooth it at top and bottom; put it where you will, it will do no harm, it will never sprout. You may make a handle of it, or you may throw it on the bonfire of scoured rubbish.
Robin danced and tried to bring his own staff into action; but the beggar never gave him a chance. Biff! whack! came the pike-staff, smiting him soundly and beating down his guard. There were but two things to do; either stand there and take a sound drubbing, or beat a hasty retreat.
The evidence against him was as plain as a pike-staff. All I could find out was that on a certain day a horse had trod on the fellow's foot. So we put it to the jury whether the man could walk as far as the rag-shop with a bag of oats when he was dead lame; and we got him off." "Did you though?" said Mr Harding. "Yes, we did." "And he was guilty?" "He had been at it regularly for months."
But I'll tell you how the matter stands: you know Helen de Vaux and you were at the Springs, last summer, when she and Mr. Van Alstyne were there. Well, I say she was dead in love with him, though she did refuse him." "Was she?" replied Mr. Ellsworth. "Why, I know she was; it was as plain as a pike-staff to everybody who saw them together.
Some of these islands are the haunts of seals, but not in such numbers as at Juan Fernandez, neither is their fur so good. A very large one made at me three several times, and if I had not happened to have a pike-staff headed with iron, he might have killed me. I was on the level sand when he came open-mouthed at me from the water, as fierce and quick as an angry dog let loose.
This fact is familiar enough in talk about Moslem and oriental life generally; but I only repeat it in order to refer it back to the same simplification which is the advantage and disadvantage of the philosophy of the desert. Chivalry is not an obvious idea. It is not as plain as a pike-staff or as a palm-tree.
"There's folks, i' my opinion, they can't see ghos'es, not if they stood as plain as a pike-staff before 'em. And there's reason i' that. For there's my wife, now, can't smell, not if she'd the strongest o' cheese under her nose. I never see'd a ghost myself; but then I says to myself, "Very like I haven't got the smell for 'em." I mean, putting a ghost for a smell, or else contrairiways.
All round its circumference there trailed a number of knotted ropes'-ends, terminating in fanciful Turks' heads. These were the life-lines, for the drowning to clutch. Inserted into the middle of the cork was an upright, carved pole, somewhat shorter than a pike-staff. The whole buoy was embossed with barnacles, and its sides festooned with sea-weeds.
This was uttered with the true mendicant whine, as, setting his pike-staff before him, he began to move in the direction of Monkbarns. "But did your honour," turning round, "ever get back the siller ye gae to the travelling packman for the bodle?" "Curse thee, go about thy business!" "Aweel, aweel, sir, God bless your honour! I hope ye'll ding Johnnie Howie yet, and that I'll live to see it."
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