|
|
|
More "Thread" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reduced in size; the skin and soft parts covering them became wrinkled, shrivelled, and folded; the nails assumed a bluish, pearly white hue; the larger superficial veins were marked by flat lines of a deeper black; the pulse became small as a thread, and sometimes totally extinct; the voice sunk into a whisper; the respiration was quick, irregular, and imperfect; and the secretion of urine was totally suspended. Death took place often in ten or twelve, and generally ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... in a square box inside the office-railing. Not the big one which he had just perfected—that one was at home under the window in the old shop, in the back yard in Kennedy Square—but a smaller working model made of pine wood, with glass-tumblers for jars and imitation magnets wrapped round with thread instead of wire—the whole unintelligible to the layman, but perfectly clear to the scientist. He had with him, too, packed in a small carpet-bag, which lay within reach of his hand, all the patents ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... energy, and hopefulness. He watched his wife as she sewed, and his first effort was to devise a machine which should do what she was doing. He made a needle pointed at both ends, with the eye in the middle, that should work up and down through the cloth, and carry the thread through at each thrust; but his elaboration of this conception would not work satisfactorily. It was not until 1844, fully a year after he began the attempt to invent the machine, that he came to the conclusion ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... in his hands. How one should have liked to have known him! The Marshal[2] was privately in London last Friday. He is entertained to-day at Hampton Court by the Duke of Grafton. Don't you believe it was to settle the binding the scarlet thread in the window, when the French shall come in unto the land to possess it? I don't at all wonder at any shrewd observations the Marshal has made on our situation. The bringing him here at all—the ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... liquid notes floated nearer and nearer, and hope, almost exhausted, sprung up again in my heart. I was scarcely conscious of my own movements. I seemed to be drawn along like one in a dream by the golden thread of the bird's sweet singing. All at once I caught my foot against a stone and fell forward with some force, but I felt no pain—my limbs were too numb to be sensible of any fresh suffering. I raised my heavy, aching eyes in the darkness; as I did so I uttered ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... natural that so tender and profound a regard for my scruples would have moved me to a tender and profound gratitude; but nobody understands Halicarnassus except myself. He is a dark lane, full of crooks and turns,—a labyrinth which nobody can thread without the clew. That clew I hold. I know him. I can walk right through him in the darkest night without any lantern. He is fully aware of it. He knows that it is utterly futile for him to attempt to deceive me, and yet, with the infatuation of a lunatic, he is continually producing ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... surface, and shining clasps of silver. But the inside had far more interest for her than the outside, and she fitted the key and unlocked it with a trembling hand. It was lined with azure velvet, wrought with silver thread, in dainty wreathe of water lilies; and in the bottom, neatly folded, lay a sheet of foolscap. She opened it with nervous haste; it was a common sheet enough, stamped with fool's cap and bells, that showed it belonged to Cromwell's ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... instances, the screw has been dispensed with, and a rack and pinion have been substituted. Some of the best in use consist of a vertical iron rack, which is occasionally forced upward by the teeth of a pinion: a geer wheel on the same axle with the pinion being driven by the thread of a horizontal screw, to the head of which is attached a crank. By a machine of this construction, properly proportioned, one man may raise about twenty tons weight. Vertical screws, turned by levers, have been frequently used for the purpose of raising vessels to repair. But ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... campaigns, both of which were in progress at the same time, will be considered separately. Before entering upon either, the leading features of the twenty-sixth of the series of Washington conventions, which have run like a thread through Miss Anthony's life for more than a quarter of a century, will ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... returned to the city, sister Mary died of consumption, and father's health began to fail. I have preserved the spinning wheel on which mother converted flax yarn into thread, which she sold to aid in the support of the family, but soon the entire burden fell on her, for father's illness developed into consumption, from which ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... believe in Karma have to believe in destiny, which, from birth to death, every man is weaving, thread by thread, around himself, as a spider his web; and this destiny is guided either by the heavenly voice of the invisible prototype outside of us, or by our more intimate astral or inner man, who ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... but a brittle thread kept his earthly moorings; but this did not deter him; he must work while the day lasted; for the night cometh when no man can work. While the vital spark remained, he would not, indeed we may say, he could not stay his hand. And so ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888 • Various
... replied Blanche, laughing. "I am tall, and by no means of the thread-paper order. King Cole," she continued. leaning forward to pat the glossy neck of her black favourite, "would probably tell you he found me quite enough on his back, could he be consulted. He is as good, too, ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... Washed clean with bug-killin' dope before we stitched. Only temporary anyway. Had nothin' but linen thread, but washed ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... beheld a being of gigantic frame, capable of making the very hair stand on end, and possessed of the effulgence of the Sun or the Moon, guarding the entrance. Round his loins was a tiger-skin dripping with blood, and he had a black deer for his upper garment. He had for his sacred thread a large snake. His arms were long and massive and held many kinds of uplifted weapons. He had for his angadas a large snake wound round his upper arm. His mouth seemed to blaze with flames of fire. His teeth made his face ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... again carefully packed and strapped on the back of the sturdy horse, to be taken into the country to be spun.... Here, at each village, he had his agents, who received the wool, distributed it amongst the peasantry and received it back as yarn. The machine employed was still the old one-thread wheel, and in summer weather on many a village green might be seen the housewives plying their busy trade, and furnishing to the poet the vision of contentment spinning at the cottage door. Returning in safety with his yarn, the manufacturer had now to seek out his ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... the enemy on half a dozen points in the course of the day; making him think the provincials, as we were scornfully called, ten times as numerous as we really were. But alas, I am old, I find, and lose the thread of my story. It was of ...
— Who Spoke Next • Eliza Lee Follen
... out and wiped dry, both within and without. Put two small cloves of garlic into each, a little bit of ginger, and bruised mustard seed, enough to fill them. Replace the slice that was cut out, and tie it on with a thread. Boil some cloves, mace, ginger, pepper, and mustard seed, all bruised, and some garlic, in as much vinegar as will cover them. After a little boiling, pour the whole, boiling-hot, upon the melons. They must be quite covered with the pickle, and tied down close, when ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... of the wretched remnant of my life; and that wish is a rational one; but then the innate principle of self-preservation, wisely implanted in our natures for obvious purposes, opposes that wish, and makes us endeavor to spin out our thread as long as we can, however decayed and rotten it may be; and, in defiance of common sense, we seek on for that chymic gold, which ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... the boy felt somewhat awed by the remarkably upright figure that stalked in silence at his side, but as they continued to thread their way through the streets he ventured to attempt ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... spices, all hawked about the streets. Having cleared his way through the press, and arrived at Cheapside, he found a crowd much larger than he had as yet encountered, and shopkeepers plying before their shops or booths, offering velvet, silk, lawn, and Paris thread, and seizing him by the hand that he might turn in and buy. At London-stone were the linendrapers, equally clamorous and urgent; while the medley was heightened by itinerant vendors crying "hot sheep's feet, mackerel," and other such articles of food. Our Lickpenny ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... like Savinien, her nephew, and kept all her sweetness for the son of one of their old neighbors in the Rue Neuve-Coquenard, a small haberdasher, who had not been able to get on, but continued humbly to sell thread and needles to the thrifty folks of the neighborhood. The haberdasher, Mother Delarue, as she was called, had remained a widow after one year of married life. Pierre, her boy, had grown up under the shadow of the bakery, the cradle of the ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... it was who gave the light by which all others might see how to discover. It can not be denied to the Admiral, except with great injustice, that as he was the first discoverer of those Indies, so he was really of all the mainland; and to him the credit is due. For it was he that put the thread into the hands of the rest by which they found the clew to more distant parts. It was not necessary for this that he should personally visit every part, any more than it is necessary to do so in taking possession of an estate; as the jurists hold." This generous protest by Las Casas should receive ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... weeks afterwards a letter arrived, announcing that death had suddenly broken the thread of life of her aged father, and her mother requested them to come and take charge of the farm which was now theirs. They went. The old man had made money on the hills. They got the better of the broken china and of my black coat. Fortune broke in upon them. My ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... for ladies to leave their scissors about;—the frail thread of a worthless life is soon snipped. I wish to God my fate had been true to its first destination, and made a parson of me;—I should have made an excellent country Joll. I think I can, with confidence, pronounce the character that would have been given of me:—He was an indolent ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... biscuit; two five-pound tins of sugar, a few pounds of coffee and several cans of condensed milk; an oil stove and five one-gallon tins of oil; a rifle with one hundred rounds of ammunition and a shotgun with fifty rounds; matches, a hatchet, knives, a can opener, salt, needles and thread; and the following medical supplies: catgut and needles, bandages and cotton, quinine, astringent (tannic acid), gauze, plaster-surgical liniment, boracic acid, ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... did not come. The evening finished laboriously. They once more went back to the dining-room, where the tea was served on a Russian tablecloth embroidered with a stag-hunt in red thread; and under the tapers a plain cake was displayed, with plates full of sweetstuff and pastry, and a barbarous collection of liqueurs and spirits, whisky, hollands, Chio raki, and kummel. The servant also brought some ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... but he caught me above the knees with his claws. Alas, your highness, these trousers of mine were bad enough before, but now they are in shreds. What patching I shall have to do! And you may well imagine we are short of thread and needles and thimbles—" ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... poorer fellow-creatures. He knew well how difficult it was for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. They had the highest possible authority for that. But Scripture never said that the camel,—which, as he explained it, was simply a thread larger than ordinary thread,—could not go through the needle's eye. The camel which succeeded, in spite of the difficulties attending its exalted position, would be peculiarly blessed. And he went on to suggest that the three ladies before him, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... nurse. "For goodness' sake, Miss Patty, don't cut the material. Do look where you are putting the scissors. Do I think it, miss? I know it. Miss Marjorie, sweet pet, you shall thread these daisies. You shall make a pretty chain of them to put around your neck. There's ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... thus loosened, take the turkey by the neck, give it a pull, and the skeleton will come out entire from the flesh, as easily as you draw your hand out of a glove. The flesh will then be a shapeless mass. With a needle and thread mend or sew up any holes that may be found ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie
... father. The intervention of Victorin, and the deaths of the Comte de Forzheim, of Lisbeth Fischer and of M. and Mme. Crevel, induced comfort and security that was often menaced. But the conduct of Hector with Agathe Piquetard broke the thread of Mme. Hulot d'Ervy's life; for some time she had had a nervous trouble. She died aged ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... in the upright, the behavior of the jack depends entirely upon the surrounding members. A very common occurrence in the square piano is a broken jack-spring. This spring is concealed in a groove on the under side of the bottom, with a linen thread leading around the end of the jack and held fast by a wooden plug. If the spring is found to be long enough, drive out the plug, attach a new thread to the spring, and fasten as before. If a new spring is needed, one may be made by wrapping ...
— Piano Tuning - A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs • J. Cree Fischer
... herself. He read where Mr. Denis Oglethorpe stood, by the queer, sudden inner light in her eyes, and the unconscious fluctuation of rich color in her bright glowing face. He was struck with a secret pang in a second. There would be so frail a thread of hope for the man who was only second with a ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the thinking principle, as well as on the inmost nature of matter, we are, and with our faculties must always remain, entirely in the dark. All which we are aware of, even in our own minds, is (in the words of James Mill) a certain "thread of consciousness;" a series of feelings, that is, of sensations, thoughts, emotions, and volitions, more or less numerous and complicated. There is a something I call Myself, or, by another form of expression, my mind, which I consider ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... country. But that north country we know as landmarks, anyway. Look at that saw-tooth range. The Indians call it Echo Cliffs. At the far end it drops off into the Colorado River. Lee's Ferry is there—about one hundred and sixty miles. That ragged black rent is the Grand Canyon. Looks like a thread, doesn't it? But Carley, it's some hole, believe me. Away to the left you see the tremendous wall rising and turning to come this way. That's the north wall of the Canyon. It ends at the great bluff—Greenland Point. See the black fringe ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... rewarded with two pairs of heavy shoes, an ax, a hatchet, some packages of pins, needles, and thread, and a number of cooking utensils—pots, kettles, pans, and skillets. Just as he was about to quit for the purpose of making up his pack, he noticed in one of the wagons a long, narrow locker made into the side and fastened with a stout ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... to the window again and looked out toward the barn. From a chink in one of the shutters there was a thread of yellow candle-light. He knew there were men there playing cards to pass ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... still quite a child although he was almost taller than she, much too much of a child, he did not understand the importance of the day as yet. So all she did was to improve on his appearance a little, to take away a thread from his clothes here, to blow away some dust there and pull his tie straight. And then he had to bend his head; she made a parting again in his stiff obstinate hair, that never would remain straight. And then she could not restrain herself, but took ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... accomplished her first voyage, and was sailing in triumphantly with a box of "tops and bottoms" from the ancient firm in Threadneedle Street, which has saved so many infants from the power that cuts the thread. After that, everything went as it should go, including this addition to the commercial strength of Britain, which the lady was enabled soon to talk of as "our ship," and to cite when any question rose of the latest London fashion. But even now, when a score of years, save one, ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... 120 feet in height, and commands an extensive sweep of country, through which the Severn in the distance winds its way, in and out, like a silver thread. The gardens and grounds contain rare shrubs and trees, imported by the late Earl Mountnorris; to visit which R. Woodward, Esq., the present proprietor, like the late earl, very rarely ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... widen, and Sammy again vouchsafed some information, taking up his slender thread of narrative as if it ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... "I thought I saw her thread her way through the crowd a little while since, but I was ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... of an Elderberry shoot, punching out the pith at home with a long knitting-needle. Some white pigeon wing feathers trimmed small, and each tipped with a bit of pitch, were strung on a stout thread and fastened to the stem for a finishing touch; and he would sit by his camp fire solemnly smoking—a few draws only, for he did not like it—then say, "Ugh, heap hungry," knock the ashes out, and proceed with whatever work he had ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... excursion, at the casual suggestion of Miss Montgomerie, Hog Island was selected, as the scene of their day's amusement. Thither, therefore the boat which contained the party now proceeded, the ladies costumed in a manner to thread the mazes of the wood, and the gentlemen in equally appropriate gear, as sportsmen, their guns and fishing rods, being by no means omitted in the catalogue of orders entrusted to their servants. In the stern of the boat, the trustworthy coxswain on this occasion—sat old Sambo, whose ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... the station master, who by this time had not so much as a dry thread on him, "if you'll pull I'll twist her tail so's to divert her attention, and I guess we'll ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... upon a raised step at the foot of a building. Behind her is a bas-relief, against which her head, crowned by a chaplet of flowers, tells out with sculpturesque effect; the sharp, vertical line of thread strained between her hands, and thence in diagonal line to the ball at her feet, is curiously rigid, and by contrast makes the draperies across which it is silhouetted ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... drew, and from a green-tress'd birchen tree She pluck'd a strip of smooth white bark and fair, And many signs and woful graved she, A message of the evil things to be. Then deftly closed the birch-bark, fold on fold, And bound the tokens well and cunningly, Three times and four times, with a thread of gold. ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... Fanfaro travelled, in company with his sister, Girdel, Bobichel, and Caillette, to Algiers. Before the ship lifted anchor, Fanfaro had received from Irene's lips the promise that she would become his wife. Her mother's life hung on a thread, and as long as she remained on earth the daughter could not think ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... upon a white cravat, one of whose points threatened the stars, while the other was ready to pierce the ground. A torrent of light hair escaped from under the enormous brim of his well-worn felt-hat. He wore a hazel-coloured overcoat with a large cape, worn thread-bare and rough as a grater; from its yawning pockets peeped bundles of manuscripts and pamphlets. The enjoyment of his sour-crout, which he devoured with numerous and audible marks of approbation, rendered him heedless of the scrutiny to which he was subjected, but did not ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... you that," said Will, pointing to a little crack through which a thread of water made its way running over a few inches of rock, and then ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... things seemed rustling in ambush. He dared not look again at Mary, and he felt that she dared not look at him. But it was necessary to go on, and he took up the narrative clumsily, fearing to tangle the thread. ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... three, described as daughters of Night—to indicate the darkness and obscurity of human destiny—or of Zeus and Themis, that is, "daughters of the just heavens" they were Clo'tho, who spun the thread of life, Lach'esis, who held the thread and fixed its length and At'ropos, ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... turn'd to ice, and all my vitals Have ceas'd their working. Dull stupidity Surpriseth me at once, and hath arrested That vigorous agitation, which till now Exprest a life within me. I, methinks, Am a meer marble statue, and no man. Unweave my age, O time, to my first thread; Let me lose fifty years, in ignorance spent; That, being made an infant once again, I may begin to know. What, or where am I, To be ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... shan't go either!" promptly interrupted Cleo. "Your danger would be as great as ours, and we will never leave you until every thread of ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... once to Mozart's house. He was received most kindly and asked to play, but Mozart seemed preoccupied and paid but little attention. Ludwig, seeing this stopped playing and asked for a theme on which to improvise. Mozart gave a simple theme, and Beethoven, taking the slender thread, worked it up with so much feeling and power, that Mozart, who was now all attention and astonishment, stepped into the next room, where some friends were waiting for him, and said, "Pay attention to this young man; he will make a noise in ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... They give us happiness because they satisfy our social instinct. To realize our unity gives relish to life. To be thrust out of fellowship is the great pain. Many evil things get their attractiveness mainly through the fact that they create a bit of fellowship—such as it is. The slender thread of good in the saloon is comradeship. ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... beneath the vast splintering precipices, and emerging at last upon the "Parks," those beautiful but most perilous hunting grounds. The buffalo supplies them with almost all the necessaries of life; with habitations, food, clothing, and fuel; with strings for their bows, with thread, cordage, and trail-ropes for their horses, with coverings for their saddles, with vessels to hold water, with boats to cross streams, with glue, and with the means of purchasing all that they desire from the traders. When the buffalo are extinct, ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... respect their dress is much more decent than that of any nation of Indians on the Missouri. The seams of the leggings down the sides, are also fringed and ornamented, and occasionally decorated with tufts of hair taken from enemies whom they have slain. In making all these dresses, their only thread is the sinew taken from the backs and loins of deer, elk, ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... species of the Humming birds are less in size than the great fly wasp, and more slender than the drone. Their beak is a fine needle and their tongue a slender thread. Their little black eyes are like two shining points, and the feathers of their wings so delicate that they seem transparent. Their short feet, which they use very little, are so tiny one can scarcely see them. ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... Powder and nature of the Peece to which it belongs, and to put the same mark over the Port-hole of the Peece; that the Linstocks [or forked staves of wood, about two and a half feet long, on which the match was carried] be ready, and furnished with Match [or cotton thread, boiled in ashes-lye and powder, and kept smouldering, with a red end, when in use], and to have alwaies one lighted, and where the Cannoneer makes his Quarter to have two one above another below [this ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... another question, much more vital than emancipation in its relation to British home politics, that ran like a constant thread through the whole pattern of British public attitude toward America. It had always been so since the days of the American revolution and now was accentuated by the American war. This was the question of the future of ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... digression, if that be indeed a digression which by removing a formidable objection renders the truth of the positions we wish to establish more clear and less questionable, we may now resume the thread of our argument. Still intreating therefore the attention of those, who have not been used to think much of the necessity of this undivided, and, if it may be so termed, unadulterated reliance, for which we have ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... succeeded each other. Were the loosest and freest conversation to be transcribed, there would immediately be observed something which connected it in all its transitions. Or where this is wanting, the person who broke the thread of discourse might still inform you, that there had secretly revolved in his mind a succession of thought, which had gradually led him from the subject of conversation. Among different languages, even where ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... iron, steel, sword; —s, fetters, chains. ferme, firm, strong. fermer, to close. festin, m; feasting, banquet, feast. fte, f., feast, festival. feu, m., fire. fidle, faithful, constant. fi-er, -re, proud. firement, proudly. figurer, to figure, represent. fil, m., thread. fille, f., girl, daughter. fils, m., son. fin, f., end; la —, at last. flambeau, m., torch. flatter, to flatter, gratify. flche, f., arrow. flchir, to bend. florissant, flourishing, thriving. flotter, to float, waver. foi, f., faith, promise, word, truth, loyalty, ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... personally, but what mattered that to one so sympathetic? She lived in the lives of those she loved; and as she moved about in the subdued light of the cottage, or in the broad sunshine of the garden, a thread of disquietude ran through the pattern of her thoughts. The cause of Morva's sadness she guessed at, but how to remove it, or how to bring back the peace and happiness that seemed to have deserted the old Garthowen ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... you to think alike with him on this topic. Many a quarrel have I had with him, when we were rather older boys, and our tallness made us more obnoxious to observation in the blue clothes, because I would not thread the alleys and blind ways of the town with him to elude notice, when we have been out together on a holiday in the streets of this sneering and prying metropolis. W—— went, sore with these notions, to Oxford, where the dignity and ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... become so impregnated with the seeds of dodder that the latter will grow where the seed is sown, thus introducing it to new centers. The dodder starts in the soil and soon throws up its golden-colored thread-like stems, which reach out and fasten on the alfalfa plants that grow sufficiently near. The dodder then loses its hold upon the soil and gets its food entirely from the alfalfa plants, which it ultimately ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... cut off the downy part of several feathers, and had laid them together in a little heap. Then she took a fine thread, and tied this little tuft of down to the end of it. Then she took up the thread by the other end, and ...
— Rollo's Philosophy. [Air] • Jacob Abbott
... announced presently, courtly and spare and distinguished in his thread-bare soutane, and they went in to the breakfast-room, a round chamber in the adjoining tower which had kitchens beneath. The walls were here so thick, that only the sky could be seen from any window except the southeastern one, from which you reviewed the gray slate ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... Compton. Towards the end of the year 1620, on the eve of a probable meeting of Parliament, there was great questioning about what was to be done about certain patents and monopolies—monopolies for making gold and silk thread, and for licensing inns and ale-houses—which were in the hands of Buckingham's brothers and their agents. The monopolies were very unpopular; there was always doubt as to their legality; they were enforced oppressively and vexatiously by men like Michell and Mompesson, who acted ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... industrious, yet the men made their home utensils, bows and arrows, the several instruments used in making baskets, and also constructed nets, spinning the thread from yucca fibres, which they beat and prepared for that purpose. They also ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... eyes and of dwarfish stature. He had the ascetic's staff and water-pot in hand, and was marked with the emblem of a curl of hair on the breast. And that adorable Being wore matted locks and the sacrificial thread, and he was stout and handsome and resplendent with lustre. And that Being, arriving at the sacrificial enclosure of Vali, king of the Danavas, entered the sacrificial assembly with the aid of Vrihaspati. And beholding that dwarf-bodied Being, Vali ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... at this portfolio, my dear friend: do you see the locks with which it is decorated? Well, they once adorned the head of madame de Pompadour. She herself used them to embroider this garland of silver thread; she gave it to the king on his birthday. Louis XV swore never to separate from it, and here it is in my hands." Then, opening the portfolio, and rummaging it over, she found in a secret pocket ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... sense, that he would often leave you abruptly in the middle of a sentence; and if you chanced to meet him some weeks after, he would resume the conversation with the very word at which he had cut short the thread of your discourse. ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... from their red beards. Sandoval, Bishop of Pampluna, published in the year 1614 his monumental history of the Emperor Charles V., and through his splendid volumes the deeds of the Moslem corsairs run like the scarlet thread which is twisted through a Government rope. It is evident that the fact of having to deal with such rascals annoys the good Bishop not a little, as his severe and caustic comments frequently display. There was incident and accident enough in the life of the ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... eyes; "and never did she turn off a prettier hiding-place than this. One sleeps so quietly in it! Heigho! I suppose the ash must be kept moving, or we may yet miss our passage back to France. Shove her bows round, Captain Rule; here is the hole, which is almost as hard to find as it is to thread a needle with a cable. A good shove, and she will shoot out into ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the Letters and Memoir of Bishop Shirley, allusion is made (p. 415.) to a once popular game called "Thread the needle," the first four lines of which are given. Can any of your readers supply the remainder, or refer me to any work where they may be found? I also should feel obliged by any information respecting the age and origin of the popular nursery ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 25. Saturday, April 20, 1850 • Various
... Age used the skins of animals for clothing. Later, after weaving had begun, grasses and fibres taken from plants in a rude way were plaited for making clothing. Subsequently these fibres were prepared, twisted into thread, and woven regularly into garments. The main source of supply came from reeds, rushes, wild flax, cotton, fibres of the century plant, the inner bark of trees, and other sources according ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... Cesario,—it is old and plain, The spinsters and the knitters in the sun, And the free maids, that weave their thread with bones, Do ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... sir," replied the blind man, with a pleasant shade of confidence; "I formerly was a woodsawyer, and the saw knows me well; and then one learns everything—I go to school, indeed. They put a pile of wood at my left side, my saw and saw horse before me, a stick that is to be sawed in three; I take a thread, I cut it the size of the third of the stick—this is the measure. Every place I saw, I try it, and so it goes on till now there is nothing burned or drunk in the village without ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... hut, the three Stalos came down and carried her and the reindeer off to their own cottage. The country was very lonely, and perhaps no one would have known in which direction she had gone had not the girl managed to tie a ball of thread to the handle of a door at the back of the cottage and let it trail behind her. Of course the ball was not long enough to go all the way, but it lay on the edge of a snowy track which led ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... all strongly organized in gilds. It has cotton mills for spinning and weaving, besides many handlooms, and factories for ginning and pressing cotton. Other industries include the manufacture of gold and silver thread, silk brocades, pottery, paper and shoes. The prosperity of Ahmedabad, says a native proverb, hangs on three threads—silk, gold and cotton; and though its manufactures are on a smaller scale than formerly, they are still moderately flourishing. The military cantonment, 3 m. north ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... repetition was ludicrous. I meant so much, too! I only wanted him to understand he could best defend us there. Ah! Mr. Yankee! if you had but your brothers in this world, and their lives hanging by a thread, you too might write wild letters! And if you want to know what an excited girl can do, just call and let me show you the use of a small seven-shooter and a large carving-knife which vibrate between my belt and my pocket, ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... thread in common salt water, tie it to a small finger-ring. When you apply the flame of a candle to the thread it will burn to ashes ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... manner:—A man different from those who desire to give the pledges to one another, standing in the midst between the two, cuts with a sharp stone the inner parts of the hands, along by the thumbs, of those who are giving the pledges to one another, and then he takes a thread from the cloak of each one and smears with the blood seven stones laid in the midst between them; and as he does this he calls upon Dionysos and Urania. When the man has completed these ceremonies, he who has given the pledges commends to the care of his friends ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... to rouse even the fat boy from his heavy slumbers. He sat up in bed and listened. The female servants and female visitors were running constantly to and fro; and there were such multitudinous demands for hot water, such repeated outcries for needles and thread, and so many half-suppressed entreaties of 'Oh, do come and tie me, there's a dear!' that Mr. Pickwick in his innocence began to imagine that something dreadful must have occurred—when he grew more awake, and ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... the purple Daphne—its full flowering time over, but its scent lingering ghostlily on the salt wind from the sea. And the sea was forlorn as it always is in this inner bight of the Bay of Biscay, where no ships have any business and your whole traffic is a fishing-boat or two, or a thread of smoke out on the horizon. You are alone between sea and mountains; and all along the strip that separates them, while the sky is spring, the land and the sense of ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the railroad and the wagon roads have to thread their way from one valley to another, the latter climbing painfully the high ridges intervening, the former taking shorter cuts by deep excavations and tunnels. Within sight of Chattanooga the north ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... young girls come to take care of the baby all through its life, but no one ever sees these young girls. Each one has a strange work to do. One, called Clotho, carries a spindle on which is wound flax. The second, named Lachesis, twists a thread from the spindle, called the thread of life. And Atropos, the third, has a pair of shears ready to cut the thread ...
— The Children's Book of Celebrated Pictures • Lorinda Munson Bryant
... heaven, where they shall go about in peace, shielded by (literally, "covered with") the red war club of success, and never to be knocked about by the blows of the enemy. "Breaking the soul in two" is equivalent to snapping the thread of life, the soul being regarded as an intangible something having length, like a rod or a string. This formula, like others written down by the same shaman, contains several evident inconsistencies both as to grammar and mythology, due to the fact that ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... bridegroom rushed wildly over the country. He hears a wail. It is she herself wandering about the heath. "Seest thou not"—she says—"who leads me?" But he catches her up and bears her home. At this point the story threatened to become too moving; but the hard inquisitor, Del Rio, cuts the thread. "On lifting her veil," says he, "they found only a log of wood covered with the skin of a corpse." The Judge le Loyer, silly though he be, has ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... a rule and give them a thread upon which to hang an argument, and in a minute a free silver, demo-popocrat convention would sound tame in comparison. Go into a squad-room at any time the men are off duty, and you can have a discussion ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... Gradually, even this thread of light died out; and now, all that was left of our great and glorious sun, was a vast dead disk, rimmed with a thin circle of ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... wielded over the fate of man was significantly indicated under the figure of a thread, which they spun out for the life of each human being from his birth to the grave. This occupation they divided between them. Clotho wound the flax round the distaff, {140} ready for her sister Lachesis, who span out the thread of life, which Atropos, with ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... did all the work of the house, while the poor mother, motionless in a chair, with the little one in her lap, looked at it with weeping eyes. When the baby woke from its stupor it would wearily raise its head from its little neck, which had become a mere thread; the mother to stifle its feeble moans would press it to her breast, but the child would turn away its mouth guessing the inutility of expending its strength on that rag of flesh from which it could only succeed ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... season, was to excel all its predecessors in inventive variety. A padre's wife conceived the bright idea of appearing as Eve; and only abandoned the notion on finding that, no matter what species of thread she used, it tore the fig-leaves—a result which, besides causing her a disappointment, imperilled her immortal soul by engendering doubts as to the truth of the Scriptural narrative of the creation. Miss Priest determined ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... in war," remarked Jacques. "It hangs by a thread and you never can tell when it is going to ...
— Fighting in France • Ross Kay
... braided shoemaker's thread, with perch hook, to which adhered the mummied remains of a worm that lived and flourished many, ...
— The Real Diary of a Real Boy • Henry A. Shute
... its head downwards near the centre of the web. When disturbed, it acts differently according to circumstances: if there is a thicket below, it suddenly falls down; and I have distinctly seen the thread from the spinners lengthened by the animal while yet stationary, as preparatory to its fall. If the ground is clear beneath, the Epeira seldom falls, but moves quickly through a central passage from one to the ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... weather a ship bringing up will lose her anchors by not shortening sail sufficiently before she lets them go. She preserves too much 'way' through the water, and she snaps the great chain cable by the force of her momentum as if it had been a pack-thread. ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... blood and human flesh, when the sighs and groans and cries kept up a perpetual undercurrent that one did not notice and yet faltered before, when again and again bodies, torn almost in half, faces mangled for life, hands battered into pulp, legs hanging almost by a thread, rose before one, passed and rose again in endless procession, then, in those early hours, some fantastic world was about one. The poplar trees beyond the window, the little beechwood on the hill, the pond ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... in a golden haze, Cairo's domes and minarets were shining like a city of dreams. To the north, toy fields, vivid green, of rice and cotton lands, and the silver thread of the winding Nile, and all beyond, west and southwest, the vast, illimitable stretch of desert, shimmering in the opalescent air, sweeping on to the farthest edge ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... are a little out of practice, but all you have to do is to rub off the rust. Your voice is finer than ever—just like velvet." And Madame Strahlberg pretended that she envied the fine mezzo-soprano, speaking disparagingly of her own little thread of a voice, which, however, she managed so skilfully. "What a shame to take up your time teaching, with such a voice as that!" she cried; "you are out of your senses, my dear, you are raving mad. It would be sinful to keep your gifts to yourself! I am very sorry to discourage ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... harriers come, and instantly the hounds' second sense of smell picks up the invisible sign of the hare that has crossed it in the night or early dawn, and runs it as swiftly as if he were lifting a clue of thread. The dull surface is all written over with hieroglyphics to the hound, he can read and translate to us in joyous tongue. Or the foxhounds carry a bee-line straight from hedge to hedge, and after them come the hoofs, prospecting deeply into the earth, dashing ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... this is but the barest suspicion," he said. "The only thread of fact being that the transfer was kept secret from the directors, of which no doubt Brander will be able to give some plausible explanation, and his character stands so high at Abchester that the question, if raised, would be scouted as an atrocious libel ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... love passages with a sudden and sympathetic insight. No longer did he feel tempted to skim those pages hastily that he might resume the thread of the main and more engrossing plot. Didn't Louise live almost across the street from him? Wasn't his interest in her explained by that paragraph, "A wondrous and subtle thing is love, for here were we two who had never seen each ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... I must beg a little consideration. It is not the history of my life; the knowledge to write that is denied me. This is only a record of broken and apparently unrelated memories, some of them as distinct and sequent as brilliant beads upon a thread, others remote and strange, having the character of crimson dreams with interspaces blank and black—witch-fires glowing still and red in a ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... coinciding accurately with the sun-line. Now, cut the door completely through the card; except, of course, along the hinge, which, when the card is thick, should be partly cut through at the back, to facilitate the opening. Cut the card right through along the line FDG, and pass a thread carrying a little plummet W and a very small bead P; the bead having sufficient friction with the thread to retain any position when acted on only by its own weight, but sliding easily along the thread when moved by the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... and liberality both of mind and of purse, there is the most glowing tradition, interspersed with facts and anecdotes; and the singularly strong mutual affection that subsisted between her and her brother Robert till the close of their lives runs like a silver thread through that philosopher's biography. At our present date she was yet a young woman, but her influence among the members of her family was already recognised. Since the Irish Rebellion the fixed residence of herself and her husband had been in (Pall Mall?) London. ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... dreamed, before the altar that I led A mighty lion in a twisted thread; I shook to hold him in so slight a tie, Yet had not power to seek a remedy: When, in the midst of all my fears, a clove, With hovering wings, descended from above, Flew to the lion, and embraces spread, With wings, like clasping arms, about his head, Making that murmuring ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... is conceded in the family that Phosphor is not a cat merely: he is a person, and Lucifer is a spirit. Lucifer seldom purrs—I wonder if that is a characteristic of black cats?" [No; my black cats fairly roar.] "A little thread of sound, and only now and then, when very happy and loving, a rich, full strain. But Phosphor purrs like a windmill, like an electric car, like a tea-kettle, like a whole boiled dinner. When Phosphor came, Lucifer, ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... now in the hammock between the apple-trees he gradually became conscious and his mind resumed the thread of thought sleep had broken off. He thought, with his eyes shut, about clerical work. Mentally he took a deposit from a customer, entered it in his "blotter," wrote it in the supplementary, and posted it in a ledger; it was included in the cash-book total, and from there ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... place to run after you," said the medical man, picking a thread of cotton from his purple sleeve. "Why should we save you in particular? You see—from one point of view—people with imaginations and passions like yours have to go—they ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... married just before his arrest, tried in vain for his release; she even petitioned the House of Lords on his behalf. While he lay in prison he could do nothing in the way of his old trade for the support of his family. He determined, therefore, to take up a new trade. He learned to make long-tagged thread laces; and many thousands of these articles were furnished by him to the hawkers. While his hands were thus busied he had other employments for his mind and his lips. He gave religious instruction to his fellow-captives, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... the air, a thread of magic Binds her yet to me, an unrestful bond; It draws, it draws me faint with love toward her. Might it yet be some day that on my threshold I should find her, as erst, in the morning twilight, Her ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... heard of, and one moreover so much to the prejudice of the Empresses and Queens of the Alcarria and Estremadura, your worship will be pleased to show us some portrait of this lady, though it be no bigger than a grain of wheat; for by the thread one gets at the ball, and in this way we shall be satisfied and easy, and you will be content and pleased; nay, I believe we are already so far agreed with you that even though her portrait should show her blind ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... applied to many domestic uses. Under the old dispensation of Indian supremacy it supplied the natives their principal means of support. Its sap was variously prepared and served as milk, honey, vinegar, beer and brandy. From its tough fiber were made thread, rope, cloth, shoes and paper. The strong flower stalk was used in building houses and the broad leaves for ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... nothing—I open my cupboards, and look under my bed; I listen—I listen—to what? How strange it is that a simple feeling of discomfort, impeded or heightened circulation, perhaps the irritation of a nervous thread, a slight congestion, a small disturbance in the imperfect and delicate functions of our living machinery, can turn the most lighthearted of men into a melancholy one, and make a coward of the bravest! Then, I go to bed, and I wait for sleep ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... mentioned before, there is only a glass door between the office and the manager's private room. This, of course, accounted for the fact that the night watchman heard all that he did hear, on that memorable night, and so helped further to entangle the thread of that ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... 1798. He was of medium height, of strong muscular power, quick of apprehension, very active, and one of the greatest warriors the Crow Nation has ever produced. Around his neck he wore a perforated bullet, with a large oblong bead on each side of it, secured by a thread of sinew. He wore this amulet during the whole time he was chief of the Crows. He was one of the few honest Indian traders of whom history gives ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... got her finger mashed open, she turned pretty pale with the pain, but she never said a word. I took her in my lap, and the surgeon sponged off the blood and took a needle and thread and began to sew it up; it had to have a lot of stitches, and each one made her scrunch a little, but she never let go a sound. At last the surgeon was so full of admiration that he said, 'Well, you ARE a brave little thing!' and she said, just as ca'm and simple as if she was ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a line which is light enough to fly in the air, but yet strong enough to hold the large birds, such as albatross, without breaking. We tried fishing line with no success, but eventually managed to buy some 5-ply extra strong cobbler's thread, which is excellent for the purpose. But we wanted not only specimens, but also observations of the species, the numbers which appeared, and their habits, for little is known as yet of these sea birds. And so ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... I'd done for thimbles to go around. I can't abide brass things, that make your finger look like it had been dipped in ink, but thanks to my seven sisters who are all restin' comfortably in their graves, I have enough thimbles to provide quite a parcel of company. Here's your thread. Now sew away while we talk, and we'll have a real ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... long with a hook at the pointed end, and with a small piece of stone fastened to the other to give momentum in the spinning. With deft fingers the spinner kept this spindle whirling and at the same time kept working the wool down into the thread of yarn which she was making. As the thread lengthened she wound it around the spindle, until the wool on the distaff was all gone and she had a ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... finely twined The subtle thread that knitteth mind to mind; There that strange bridge of signs was built where roll The sunless waves that sever soul from soul, And by the arch, no bigger than a hand, Truth travell'd ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... remaining anchor-cable snapped like a rotten thread. Dimly they saw the end of the chain whip upward and crash down. A coolie, paralyzed, stood in its way. The broken end struck him in the face. He screamed and rolled down the deck until he ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... blew, and she thinned to a thread. "One puff More's enough To blow her to snuff! One good puff more where the last was bred, And glimmer, glimmer, glum will ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... subsidiary to the far more intricate matter of its use in relation to the contour of the ground within its reach. Even its elaboration as an instrument is probably still incomplete. One can conceive it provided in the future with cross-thread telescopic sights, the focussing of which, corrected by some ingenious use of hygroscopic material, might even find the range, and so enable it to be used with assurance up to a mile or more. It will probably also take on some of the characters of ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... perspicacious for my own benefit, to make discoveries about my own love affair, I suddenly abdicate, I lose my luminous faculties, I put a band over my eyes, and humbly beg a friend to lend me the thread of the labyrinth and guide my steps in the bewildering darkness. All this must appear singular to you, to me it is quite natural. Through the thousand dark accidents that love scatters in the path of life, light can only reach us by means of a friend. We ourselves are ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... skins—that piercing eye saw true— Wondrously white and beautifully new; In all the colors known to savage art, A life-size figure with a blood-red heart Guards the low door. But who shall more divine, Since not a thread of smoke, nor sound, nor sign Of human presence makes the story clear, Save ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... going by four on my way to London; but the day proves very cold, so that having put on no stockings but thread ones under my boots, I was fain at Bigglesworth to buy a pair of coarse woollen ones, and put them on. So by degrees till I come to Hatfield before twelve o'clock, where I had a very good dinner with my hostess, at my Lord of Salisbury's Inn, and ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... doctrines, the ultimate foundation, if not of an average morality, yet of all morality above the current commonplaces? Here we have substantially the religious theory upon which I have already dwelt. He illustrates it here by quotations from Mill, who admits the 'thread of consciousness' to be an ultimate inexplicability, and by a passage from Carlyle, 'the greatest poet of the age,' setting forth the mystery of the 'Me.' He believes in a Being who, though not purely benevolent, has so arranged the universe, that ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... that worked off the slave-power drive belts. In the tool holder of the lathe was clamped a chip of some hard mineral that did a good enough job of cutting the forged iron and low-carbon steel. Even more cheering was the screw-thread advance on the cutting head that was used to produce the massive nuts and bolts that secured the caroj wheels to their shafts. It could have been worse. Jason sorted out the smallest and handiest tools and put them aside for his own use in the morning. The light was almost ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... him. From the close of the Legatine court Henry would see him no more, and his favourite, Stephen Gardiner, who had become chief Secretary of State, succeeded him in the king's confidence. If Wolsey still remained minister for a while, it was because the thread of the complex foreign negotiations which he was conducting could not be roughly broken. Here too however failure awaited him. His diplomacy sought to bring fresh pressure on the Pope and to provide a fresh check on the Emperor by a closer alliance with France. But Francis was anxious to recover ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... obligation due to thee Is that, when once thou didst this greenwood thread, Thou from a rustic's fury rescuedst me, By whose ill handling was I sore bested. But for thine aid, I should not have got free, Without a broken spine or battered head: With body crooked and crushed I should have lain, Albeit I could not by ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... record of every movement on the smoked surface of a revolving drum. For instance, we begin with simple over and over stitches, measuring the time and the character of the right hand movements for 50 stitches under a variety of technical conditions. The first variation refers to the length of the thread. The thread itself, fixed at the needle's eye, varied between 3 feet and 6 inches in length. Other changes refer to the voluntary speed, to the number of stitches, to fatigue, to external stimuli, to attention, to methods of training, and so ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... all their charms. The lady of this mansion was seated at table covered with works of a different description: it exhibited the various arts of woman, in regular gradation, from the painted card-rack and gilded firescreen, to the humble thread-paper and shirt-button. Mrs. Fox was a fine, fashionable-looking woman, with a smooth skin, and still smoother address. She received her visitors with that overstrained complaisance which, to Mary's ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... that her man Should be trained on the same super-excellent plan. * * * * * Behold these lusty miners all Fettered fast in domestic thrall, Scrubbing, rubbing, baking bread, Busy with scissors and needle and thread, Spreading the brats their bread and jam, Trundling them out in the morning pram, Washing their pinafores clean and white And tucking them up in their cots at night. * * * * * Ask me not—for I cannot tell, I can only guess—how the end befell: A wifely ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various
... thing I recall hearing him say seems now to have a certain crude truth in it. He said: 'There's my old mother, seventy-eight this spring, bent, gray, and wasted with the work of raising us seven children; she's slaved so hard for fifty years that she's worn her wedding-ring to a fine thread, and her hands look as if they had a thousand knuckles and joints in them. But she smiles like a girl of sixteen, she was never cross or bitter to one of us hounds, and I believe she never even wanted to complain in all her days. And ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... pain: And my cords broke, and I began the dance To a bitter tune; and he that danced with me Was clothed in black with long red lines and bars And masked down to the lips, but by the chin I knew you though your lips were sewn up close With scarlet thread all dabbled wet in blood. And then I knew the dream was not for good. And striving with sore travail to reach up And kiss you (you were taller in my dream) I missed your ...
— Chastelard, a Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the outline of the old hovel, among the gorse and broom, and the next moment he stopped suddenly, for there, as he had been told, a thread of bright light came streaming through the shutters of the small window. He drew his lantern under his cloak, and approached cautiously. The road where he stood was now dim, but by the faint glimmer of the stars he was able to make out that there ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... painted, the gold thread work being of the cheapest, commonest kind, both as regards pattern and the quantity allowed; especially note the meagre allowance and poor pattern of the embroidery on the virgin's bosom; it is done as by one who knew she ought to have, and must have, a little gold work, but ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... Pieris nina. The wings are of a fine white colour, particularly the upper. These have their summit black, and a minute black point, near the middle. The under wings are without any spots, but are bordered behind by a cinereous thread. The underside of the upper wings have the costa and summit covered with spots and minute incontinuous lines of a yellowish colour. The underside of the lower wings are sulphureous, with very fine undulating or rather incontinuous lines of a ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... plans the transactions of the day, and follows out that plan, carries on a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... story is often called "The Rescue". Let us note how the author helps us to see the picture. Where does he place the spectator? On a "thread-like road" running between the rocky bank of the Inn River and the foot of ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... innumerable souls distinct from one another and from God and though salvation through the spirit sounds Christian, yet the Upanishads constantly celebrate Vayu (wind) and Prana (breath) as the pervading principle of the world and the home of the self. "By the wind (Vayu) as thread, O Gautama, this world and the other world and all creatures are bound together."[602] Thus the idea that the wind is the universal mediator is old and it does not seem that Madhva regarded Vayu as a redeemer or expiation for ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... smooth herb, 4-6 high. Leaves with many slender thread-like divisions. Large umbel of yellow flowers, no involucre and no involucels. C. sativum: Low aromatic herb, leaves pinnately compound, small umbels with few rays, ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... It certainly seems—It is a curiously well-connected thread of evidence. You are certain that there was red paint on this boot you discovered in ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... with this boy!" exclaimed my sister, pointing me out with her needle and thread, and shaking her head at me. "Answer him one question, and he'll ask you a dozen directly. Hulks are prison-ships, right 'cross th' meshes." We always used that name ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... sugar yet and you dare order it. And you can get me some thread and then stop at Granny Hogendobler's and ask her to come out to-morrow and help with the strawberry jelly. I got so much to make and it comes good to Granny if she gets away for a ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... head fell, and her glance would have made any one shiver who had seen it; but her eyes were on her reel of thread. ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... nice, Tom," said Mrs. Fenelby, biting off her thread, but not looking up. Mr. Fenelby turned back to his blankbook. He dipped his pen in the ...
— The Cheerful Smugglers • Ellis Parker Butler
... never woven One honest thread of life within his song; As Offenbach is to divine Beethoven So Byron is to Shelley (THIS is strong!), And on Parnassus' peak, divinely cloven, He may not stand, or stands by cruel wrong; For Byron's rank ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... eyes, though in every cheek the colour paled at the words of the mistress. The spindles revolved, the thread shot, and again there was silence more freezing ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the Desire to "Live" Selfish? Contemplation Chelas and Lay Chelas Ancient Opinions upon Psychic Bodies The Nilgiri Sannyasis Witchcraft on the Nilgiris Shamanism and Witchcraft Amongst the Kolarian Tribes Mahatmas and Chelas The Brahmanical Thread Reading in a Sealed Envelope The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac The ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... time when you will relate your own adventures; for seeing how judiciously you correct the faults into which I fall in my narrative, I may well expect that your own will be delivered in a manner equally instructive and delightful. But to take up the broken thread of my story, I say that in those hours of silence and solitude, it occurred to me among other things, that there could be no truth in what I had heard tell of the life of shepherds—of those, at least, about whom my master's lady used to read, when I went to her house, in certain books, all ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... opponents, and once or twice he had been knocked out himself; but the Chicken had fought so pluckily up to the last round that the Bruiser had put forth more of his tremendous strength than he had bargained for, and now the man's life hung on a thread. ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... spot of the universe, peopled by two only, and those two so indistinguishably blended, as it were, that they would appear as one to the casual observer. So I practiced repression, though the wall of my reserve is worn to the thinness of thread-paper, and I tried to keep my mind on the droning minor canon, and not to look at her, ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... often led to difficulties, as the slightest interruption in my work made me lose the thread of my rough draft, and I had to start from the beginning before I could recall it ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... "Everything will fall once, and the tailor directly." The robbers had placed him upon the cliff and demanded that if he would be liberated from them, his ransom should be that he should sew a suit of clothes up there; and he tried it; but at the first stitch, as he drew the thread out, he became giddy and fell down into the gushing water, and thus the rock got the name of 'The Tailor's Cliff.' One day the robbers caught a young girl, and she betrayed them, for she kindled a fire in the cavern. The smoke was seen, the caverns discovered, and the robbers imprisoned and ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... colors and patterns of her dresses? You never remarked anything curious about her ornaments? Well! I don't believe you men know, half the time, whether a lady wears a ninepenny collar or a thread-lace cape worth a thousand dollars. I don't believe you know a silk dress from a bombazine one. I don't believe you can tell whether a woman is in black or in colors, unless you happen to know she is a widow. Elsie Venner has a strange taste in dress, let me tell you. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... Through his efforts, and with the invaluable aid of such other workers as Remak, Purkinje, Henle, Muller, and the rest, all the mystery as to the general characteristics of nerve tracts was cleared away. It came to be known that in its essentials a nerve tract is a tenuous fibre or thread of protoplasm stretching between two terminal points in the organism, one of such termini being usually a cell of the brain or spinal cord, the other a distribution-point at or near the periphery—for example, in a muscle or in the skin. Such a fibril may ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... needle, and a very long thread, or you will have to be continually taking fresh. This work is sometimes done with crewel wool, and in rather a different way, see Fig. 4; but it is not so neat and pretty, in my opinion, as that done with cotton, and is more extravagant, since the wool must be used ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... war on the crown, and the seditious nobles ignobly yielded their functions merely to register royal decrees,—these contests, rivalries, cabals, and follies, ending however in the more solid foundations of absolute royal authority, are not to be here discussed, especially as nobody can thread that political labyrinth; and we begin, therefore, not with the technical reign of the great King, but with his actual government, which took place on the death of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... As if invited out to dine. And then not knowing what to do, They looked their cedar closet through And found their gray coats growing thin: So sat them down some yarn to spin, Soon, through a chink to their surprise, A cat looked in with hungry eyes— "Shall I come in and cut your thread?" "Oh, thank you, no!" they ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... door, and began raising the flags again, looking for another bed for the corpse on his back. He took up three or four flags and put them aside, and then he dug the clay. He was not long digging until he laid bare an old woman without a thread upon her but her shirt. She was more lively than the first corpse, for he had scarcely taken any of the clay away from about her, when she sat up and began to cry, "Ho, you bodach (clown)! Ha, you bodach! Where has he been that he ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... brief or precise answer. We find traces of Darwinism almost everywhere. Sociological systems differing widely from each other have laid claim to its authority; while, on the other hand, its influence has often made itself felt only in combination with other influences. The Darwinian thread is worked into a hundred patterns ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... the previous struggle. In the band that went round the low crown, a ribbon was knotted; a piece of that same ribbon which Philip had chosen out, with such tender hope, to give to Sylvia for the Corneys' party on new year's eve. He knew every delicate thread that made up the briar-rose pattern; and a spasm of hatred towards Kinraid contracted his heart. He had been almost relenting into pity for the man captured before his eyes; now he ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the mills' tall smokestacks loomed in sight. The logs thickened until it was with difficulty that Captain Marsh could thread his way among them at all. Shortly Orde, standing by the wheel in the pilot-house, could see down the stretches of the river a ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... a livid face blazoned by the red nose of a tippler and lighted by two gleaming vulture eyes, allowed his gray hair to hang loose under a three-cornered hat, wore breeches with straps that extended beyond the buckles, cotton stockings of mottled thread knitted by his niece, whom he always called "the little Saillard," stout shoes with silver buckles, and a surtout coat of mixed colors. He looked very much like those verger-beadle-bell-ringing-grave-digging-parish-clerks who are taken to be caricatures until we see them ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... "levitating" small objects from the table—by placing the medium's hands on either side of them. Sometimes the object would be raised from Dr. Ochorowicz's hand instead—while he was holding it. Of course the natural supposition is that a thread or hair of some sort was employed, but this possibility was eliminated in a number ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... A GOLDEN thread has run throughout the history of the world, consecutive and continuous, the work of the best men in successive ages. From point to point it still runs, and when near you feel it as the clear and bright and searchingly irresistible light which Truth throws ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... would not be impregnated unless the entire trees were bathed for days in the fertilizing cloud, in which only one out of many millions of floating particles can ever hit the mark. The mosquito is able to procreate without ever satisfying its ravenous appetite for blood. To swell its grey thread-like abdomen to a coral bead is a delight to the insect, but not necessary to its existence, like food and water to ours; it is the great prize in the lottery of life, which few can ever succeed in drawing. In a hot summer, when one has ridden perhaps for half a day over a low-lying ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... Jack's father really so very, very rich?" asked Anna, whose thoughts had been wandering from the thread of those ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... on Mr. Schwarz, taking up the thread of his remarks without noticing Von Barwig's apology, "you'd know that Van Praag and those fellows up at Harmony Hall are ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... not, lest thou break my thread.— "Take me to Argos, brother, ere I die, Back from the Friendless Peoples and the high Altar of Her whose ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides
... frequent periods woo th' inspiring Band Before thy days their summer-course have run, While, with clos'd shears, the fatal Sisters stand, Nor aim to cut the brilliant thread ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... enterprise which is woman's weak point; and he tilled those wide powers of masterly execution which they possess unknown to grandpapa Cant and grandmamma Precedent. As this clear head had foreseen, his women came out artisans. The eye that could thread a needle proved accurate enough for anything. Their supple, taper fingers soon learned to pick up type and place it quite as quick as even the stiff digits of the male, all one size from knuckle to nail. The same with watch-making and other trades reputed masculine; ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... There was a thin thread of white that ran across the dun-colored range and reached that half-ball and then ended. It was a highway. Joe realized that the half-globe was the Shed, the monstrous building made for the construction of the Space Platform. It was ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... either side of the head and having another roll placed across it; in other cases a ridged roof seems to rest upon the hair, a roof with the sides rolling upward and fastened at the top with a frail thread; while a third type of head-dress is of the skull-cap order, from which is suspended two ties quite twenty inches long and eight inches wide, which are doubled back midway and fastened again to the top of the skull-cap. The unmarried woman who adopts this coiffe ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... picture-books, sprawls about doing nothing, smokes my best cigarettes, hums tunes which she has picked up from barrel-organs, bends over me to see what I am writing, munching her eternal sweetmeats in my ear, and laughs at me when I tell her she has irremediably broken the thread of my ideas. Of course I might be brutal and turn her out. But somehow I forget to do so, until I realise—too late—the havoc she has ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... provided, for some reason or other, eight small glass cups, into which he placed the legs of the two tables, and in a business-like manner he set out on the large stand a piece of white paper, a pencil, and a spool of black thread. It is characteristic of Miss Jeremy, and of her own ignorance of the methods employed in professional seances, that she was as much interested and ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... have that now, it would bear disinfecting; but the Irish heath-bells that told of autumn days at Killey Marey must go, and that brief note to me that had been treasured up—yes, and the quaint old housewife, with D. L. (his aunt's maiden initials), whence his needles and thread used to come for his mending work. An old, worn pencil-case kept for his mother's sake—for Alice was on the seal—was the only thing I could rescue; but next there came an envelope with "My will" scrawled on it. Mr. Yolland thought I ought to open it, to see who had authority ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... turned round either to right or left, whichever may be the easier for his rider. When we find ourselves in such a tight corner we must, for our own safety as well as for that of our neighbours, exercise a certain amount of force in controlling our horses. The "silken thread" method of handling, which is, or should be, employed at any other time, stands us in poor stead in the face of this difficulty. There are horses which will neither slacken speed nor turn for their riders, and a runaway in the hunting field is by no means rare. If any lady ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... the screw has been dispensed with, and a rack and pinion have been substituted. Some of the best in use consist of a vertical iron rack, which is occasionally forced upward by the teeth of a pinion: a geer wheel on the same axle with the pinion being driven by the thread of a horizontal screw, to the head of which is attached a crank. By a machine of this construction, properly proportioned, one man may raise about twenty tons weight. Vertical screws, turned by levers, have been frequently used for the purpose of ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... moonlight climbing was very difficult at first, for we had to thread our way along a plain which was literally covered with glacier boulders, and the innumerable brooks which we crossed were frozen solid. However, our march brought us to the base of the great mountain, which, rising high against the east, shut out the coming daylight, and kept us in profound shadow. ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... Goodell afterwards, that she "jest looked in from the next room, at that, and if ever a woman felt cheap—all over—and as if she hadn't a right to her own toes and fingers, and as if every thread and stitch on her turned mean, all at once—it was Mrs. Gimp, ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Network (formerly Automatic Voice Network or Autovon); basic general-purpose, switched voice network of the Defense Communications System (US Department of Defense). Eutelsat-European Telecommunications Satellite Organization (Paris). fiber-optic cable-a multichannel communications cable using a thread of optical glass fibers as a transmission medium in which the signal (voice, video, etc.) is in the form of a coded pulse of light. HF-high-frequency; any radio frequency in the 3,000- to 30,000-kHz range. Inmarsat-International ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... of the God He who, in evil times, Warned by an inward voice, Heeds not the darkness and the dread, Biding by his rule and choice, Feeling only the fiery thread Leading over heroic ground, Walled with mortal terror round, To the aim which him allures, And the sweet heaven his deed secures. Peril around, all else appalling, Cannon in front and leaden rain Him duly through ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... believe I've got hold of the end of the thread at last! The senator is with us, working in the dark, as he always does. And that Hathaway business: that was one of his smooth little side-moves—his or Mrs. Honoria's. He didn't want Evan to get in too deep in the righteousness puddle, and he took ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... fact that the work had been so unexpectedly interrupted was one which filled him with joy, and gave rise to the best hopes. The only offset to all this was his own captivity, but that was a very serious one. Besides, he knew that his life hung upon a thread. Before the next day Girasole would certainly discover all, and in that case he was a doomed man. But his nature was of a kind that could not borrow trouble, and so the fact of the immediate safety of Hawbury was of far more importance, and attracted far more of his thoughts, than his own ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... launch across the river to see the new orange grove, and the children were left alone save for old Uncle Pomp who was hoeing in the truck patch, something happened that made quite a scare. Hetty went into mamma's room for a spool of white thread, and when she came out there was a frightened ...
— Dew Drops Vol. 37. No. 17, April 26, 1914 • Various
... his mind. He saw the cities along the shores of the great Lake; he saw their internal condition, the weakness of the social fabric, the misery of the bondsmen. The uncertain action of the League, the only thread which bound the world together; the threatening aspect of the Cymry and the Irish; the dread north, the vast northern forests, from which at any time invading hosts might descend on the fertile south—it all went ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... keep 'em babies forever!" My Mother tried not to look at my Father's eyes. She looked at his feet instead. When she looked at his feet instead she saw that there were holes in his slippers. She seemed very glad. She ran and got a big needle. And a big thread. My Father had to sit ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... becoming constantly more manifest that between the different departments of human inquiry there are mutual dependences and complicated interrelations, which enable us, by the truths of one science, to thread ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... axe, and hatchet, and if the log canoe is in anticipation he will also require the other tools mentioned on page 259 an oilstone being carried in order to keep the various tools in good repair; an auger, saw, and some large nails are also to be desired, and a small parcel containing needles, thread, pins, scissors, etc., will be found indispensable. "Cleanliness is next to Godliness," and there are no more luxurious necessities in camp life than a piece of soap and a clean towel. For light it is advisable to carry a supply of candles, or a lantern with a can of oil. The latter ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... us, as if by magic, the forms of two French gentlemen accompanied by a small party of soldiers, who come from the mouth of the bay, and carefully thread their way along the shore. It is a strange company of men. The leader is a native of Rouen, and he says that few of his companions are fit for anything but eating. He thought that his band comprised creatures of all sorts, like Noah's ark, but unlike the collection of the ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... of shimmering water sending slanting shafts of silver against the rocky base of the opposite Palisades, and, in the dim distance, the softly undulating Jersey hills meeting the sky line in a wavy gray thread indistinctly ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... if you interrupt in that way I shall lose the thread of my narrative. It is at your desire I recount to you the story of my past life; and how much wiser would you be if I were to compress it into a sentence like this for instance: 'Lord William came to our house in the autumn, and left us ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... part to be thoroughly enjoyed; but it will live in their memories for many a day, and as time goes on, will clear itself from the bewilderment, till it become one of the precious days that make gems on the thread of life. ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had cast an anxious glance over the wide sweep below and beyond, seeing nothing but timber and hills, with the silver thread of a creek winding serpent-wise through the green. But of habitation or trail there was never a sign. And it was after ten o'clock. They were over four ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... small, imperceptible scales, and their organs of vegetation are reduced to a stem and filiform branches that have obtained for them the names of Cheveux de Venus (Venus' Hair) and Cheveux du Diable (devil's hair) in French, and gold thread in English. Because of their destructive nature they have likewise been called by the unpoetic name of hellweed; and, for the reason that they embrace their host plants so closely, they have been called love ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... this year of loss or gain? Who knoweth? What of boon or bane? Life's thread may bright or dark be ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... you guess that the things we're seeing now will haunt us through the years; Heaven and hell rolled into one, glory and blood and tears; Life's pattern picked with a scarlet thread, where once we wove with a gray, To remind us all how we played our part in the shock ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... a reason additional to its economy why this practice should not die out. The tearing up into strips of old garments, and the tacking of their ends together with needle and thread is work eminently suited for children, and one in which they take great pride, as it gives them a share in the creation of a ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... guard of the Muscovites, when his terrified guards had dispersed, had mounted his followers, and hearing shots, was leading his cavalry into the firing line, himself at their head, with his steel raised aloft. At once Rykov cried, "Platoon fire!" A fiery thread flew along over the locks, and from the black levelled barrels three hundred bullets whistled. Three riders fell wounded, and one lay dead. The Count's steed fell, and the Count with it; with a cry the Warden ran to the rescue, for he saw that the yagers had aimed at the last ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... rich, sweet, and exquisitely beautiful. A thin thread of blue water, laughing, babbling, brawling, whooping, leaping, gliding, and stealing down from the mountains; great boulders worn smooth and ploughed hollow by the wash of ages; wet moss and lichen on the channel walls; deep, cool dubbs; tiny reefs; little cascades ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... an invalid thenceforth; probably it was only the existence of her child that saved her life. An affection of the heart in course of time declared itself, but, though her existence was believed to hang on a thread, she lived on and on, lived to see Beatrice grow to womanhood. She kept a small house in London, but spent the greater part of the year at home or foreign health-resorts. Her relatives had supposed that she would return to her own country, but Mrs. Redwing had tastes which lacked gratification ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... It was thousands of ages before the people commenced making laws for themselves, and strange as it may appear, most of these laws were vastly superior to the ghost article. Through the web and woof of human legislation began to run and shine and glitter the golden thread ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... know, and will not betray! Sanctuary! Thou seekest sanctuary, and thou shalt have it if I can aid thee; but no time is to be lost. Rush on as if thy life hung on a single thread. Turn to the right, pass the Stadium, wind quickly around the hill Pion, and thou shalt see the Temple bathed in glorious light, and close to it the sacred grove; but I fear the hour has passed to gain access, and ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... Redman, Who deals with dead men, Once cut up a fellow whose spirit had fled, man, Who (the fellow) perchance Had indulged in that dance Performed at the end of a hempen thread, man; And the cut-up one, (A sort of a gun!) Like Banquo, though he was dead, wasn't done, Insisted in very positive tones That he'd be ground to calcined manure, Or any other evil endure, Before he'd give up his right to his bones! And then, through knocks, the resolute dead man Gave his bones ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... not think of it until to-day and have mentioned it to both the Chancellor and Zimmermann, who have received it cordially, and who join me in the belief that it may be the first thread to bridge ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... chaos of the conflict of these vast and draughty Titans, it is for me to thread my precarious way. The bit of life that is I will exult over them. The bit of life that is I, in so far as it succeeds in baffling them or in bitting them to its service, will imagine that it is godlike. It is good to ride the tempest and feel godlike. I dare to assert that ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... is past, and yet it hath not sprung, The fruit is dead, and yet the leaves are green, My youth is past, and yet I am but young, I saw the world, and yet I was not seen; My thread is cut, and yet it is not spun, And now I live, and now my ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... came to her as the minutest memory of that wonderful yesterday rose to her mind, and the vow she had made to honor and obey seemed to have been too easily repented. She looked upon her hand, and the little, thin, pathetic thread of gold reaffirmed her memory of the wedding-ring, and at the next suggestion a blush coursed through her being like a redbird in the apple-blossoms: perhaps he had stolen from her chamber stealthily as he came, while she, drowned in deep ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... fire," as it was now called, were chiefly investigated by Dufay. To refine on the primitive experiment let us replace the shreds by a pithball hung from a support by a silk thread, as in figure 2. If we rub the glass rod vigorously with a silk handkerchief and hold it near, the ball will fly toward the rod. Similarly we may rub a stick of sealing wax, a bar of sulphur, indeed, a great ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... distinguished from wool by putting the suspected thread or fabric into cold concentrated hydrochloric acid. If silk is present it will ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... his eyes toward the horizon. What appeared like a thread in comparison with the vastness of space around them wavered above a small black speck. Bert watched it with eager eyes. At this moment Harry stopped in his walk as he approached the starboard side, and placing his arms on the rail looked out over the sea in the direction ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... seen across the sun; but all the golden ripples of it had become plumes, so that it had changed into two bright wings like those of a vulture, which wrapped round her to her knees. She had a weaver's shuttle hanging over her shoulder, by the thread of it, and in her left hand, arrows, ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... remembered, too, that all over the world there is a regard for things red, this colour having been once held sacred to Thor, and Grimm suggests that it was on this account the robin acquired its sacred character. Similarly, the Highland women tie a piece of red worsted thread round their cows' tails previous to turning them out to grass for the first time in spring, for, in accordance with ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... moment when only one thin thread still held me to the civilized world when an official ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... pains to be entertaining, dealing with men in preference to measures—and only the most conspicuous, the most interesting men.... Of these outstanding figures there are full length portraits—biographies, indeed, in ample detail strung on a long thread of politics, while very many minor characters have thumb-nail sketches. Few of the good anecdotes available, it would seem, have escaped Mr. Alexander, and good stories do not suffer at his hands."—The ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... I have noticed that the nut-trees have moved somewhat nearer together, and that the tablet and the fountain seem likewise to approach each other. Probably, when all is brought together again, the door, too, will once more be visible; and I will do my best to take up the thread of the adventure. Whether I shall be able to tell you what further happens, or whether I shall be expressly forbidden to do so, I ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... what else can be expected, such as fish and wild fowl: Of the latter, we killed in this excursion, three dozen. After a very hard row, against both wind and rain, we got on board about nine o'clock at night, without a dry thread ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... like one dead. At first they often thought she was dead, but at last they got used to it, and only consulted the almanac to find the moment when she would begin to revive, which, of course, was with the first appearance of the silver thread of the crescent moon. Then she would move her lips, and they would give her a little nourishment; and she would grow better and better and better, until for a few days she was splendidly well. When well, she was always merriest out in the moonlight; but even when near her worst, she ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... years, why can't an ant live a hundred?" Sarah asked the black crow who sat on a branch and stared at her. "Only, I haven't any paper or pencil or thread to tie it on ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... young gentleman with pink cheeks who sings tenor. Far worse. The irresistible man, as we know him, is often a man who is doing a man's work in the world, and doing it well. He is frequently a man of character, but through that character runs this strange, irritating thread of conceit, which blinds our eyes to whatever of real worth may be within, because of his ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... still contemporary with the introduction of Venetian lace, a Pillow lace was being made in Flanders, the origin of which is not as yet discovered. It is possible that the fine flax thread grown and manufactured there may, at the time of weaving, have suggested a looser and more ornamental material, but that remains a matter of conjecture. There must, however, have been an interchange of examples, as about this time Pillow-made lace appeared in Italy, and led to the making of the ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... doubt whether my wakefulness had not been part of my dream, and I had not dreamed the whole of my supposed adventures. There was no sign of a lady's presence left in the room.—How could there have been?—But throwing the plaid which covered me aside, my hand was caught by a single thread of something so fine that I could not see it till the light grew strong. I wound it round and round my finger, and doubted ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... folded." Similarly, the association of ideas is passive, and in consequence is a kind of passion. The association of ideas is the fact that thought passes along the same path it has already traversed, and follows in its labyrinth the thread which interlinks its thoughts, and this thread is the traces which thoughts have left in the brain. In abandoning ourselves to the association of ideas, we are passive and we yield ourselves freely to a passion. That is so true that current speech itself recognizes ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... not obtain any materials for writing, I invented, in order to note daily occurrences, a diary of a peculiar kind. If any thing pleasant occurred, I tied a knot in a white thread, which I pulled out of my shirt. When any thing unpleasant happened to us, I tied a knot in a black silken thread, from my cravat. If any thing note-worthy took place, either pleasant or the reverse, I tied together the ends of a green ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... stand any nonsense of that sort, and the sparrow ought to have known it. But it kept looking round flower-pots at Faithful and chirruping at him sideways, and didn't realise that its life hung by a thread. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 1, 1916 • Various
... than to remove evils from a man, and to lead him to heaven. That this is their joy, see Luke, XV, 7. Scarcely any man believes that the Lord has such a care for man, and this continually, from the first thread of his life to the last, and on ...
— The Gist of Swedenborg • Emanuel Swedenborg
... that evening. Next morning when the sun was shining brightly, and the clear church bells were ringing, and sedate people in their best clothes enlivened the pathway near at hand and dotted the distant thread of road, there was a pleasant Sabbath peacefulness on everything, which it was good to feel. It would have been the better for an old church; better still for some old graves; but as it was, a wholesome ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... her bosom the white silk bag which her own hands had made on the farewell night at Combe-Raven. It drew together at the mouth with delicate silken strings. The first thing she took out, on opening it, was a lock of Frank's hair, tied with a morsel of silver thread; the next was a sheet of paper containing the extracts which she had copied from her father's will and her father's letter; the last was a closely-folded packet of bank-notes, to the value of nearly two hundred pounds—the ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... their respiration with the extreme of slyness. The idea went to his vitals with a shock, and he faced about suddenly as if to defend his life. Then, for the first time, he became aware of a light about the level of his eyes and at some distance in the interior of the house—a vertical thread of light, widening toward the bottom, such as might escape between two wings of ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... the spalpeen, the whole of E Troop, at the Ring o' Bells, an' whin he shwaggers in like he was a Dhraghoon an' a sodger, ye'll up an' say 'Threes about' an' act accordin' subsequint, an' learn the baste not to desthroy an' insult his betthers of the Ould Second. Thread on the tail ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... on sleeping together for the first time tie their waists together with string or thread, and the thread gets broken in the night, the first man who puts his arm round the waist of either will have the first name of the man whom that girl will marry, whether that man is the one or not. ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... accomplished by thy mighty genius in our behalf, the pen falls powerless from my despairing hand, and I can merely point to thee as the potent champion of our down-trodden rights! Instead of dwelling in dull obscurity, victims to the caprice of men; mending their thread-bare clothing and scolding servants—base, unwomanly pursuits!—instead of listening in silence to the storms of political debate; instead of remaining within the shadow of our own roofs, and gathering around the domestic hearth the thornless roses of existence; rendering home a haven of ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... loved," came in the deep tones of Aquilina's voice. "She never went a hundred leagues to drink in one look and a denial with untold raptures. She has not hung her own life on a thread, nor tried to stab more than one man to save her sovereign lord, her king, her divinity.... Love, for ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... in fancy, half in fact, the thread of an occult idea runs through this weird theme. You cannot, even at the end, be quite sure whether the author has been making fun of you or not. Perhaps, if the truth were told, he could not quite tell you himself. The tale all hangs about one of a group of friends who lives for years ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... white robe cut rather low, with her hair loose hanging to her waist, but carefully combed and held outspread by what appeared to be a bent piece of ivory about a foot and a half long, to which it was fastened by a thread of gold." ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... most astonishing to me about that experience was how a submerged submarine can thread its way through a mine field. For though the water is luminous and translucent one can hardly make out the black hull of the boat under the turret and a mine would have to be on top of you before you could see it. The men who watch for mines must have ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... pale-faced woman with a profusion of fair hair. Rachel always remembered that scene. The hot tent with its flaps turned up to let in whatever air there might be. Her mother in a blue dressing-gown, dingy with wear and travel, from which one of the ribbon bows hung by a thread, her face turned to the canvas and weeping silently. The gaunt form of her father with his fanatical, saint-like face, pale beneath its tan, his high forehead over which fell one grizzled lock, his thin, set lips and far-away grey eyes, taking off his surplice ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... the garden, sitting with her work in Miss Jane's arbour. There was so much work to be done, and poor old Penny cried so bitterly over the black stuff that her damp needle and thread didn't get on very fast, and Angel took it quietly away from her and carried it out of doors. Penny had a sort of idea that there was something wrong in sewing at mourning dresses in the garden, but Angel thought it didn't matter. Betty felt ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... monopolized her. Anne Marie Louise d'Orleans, Souveraine de Dombes, Princesse Dauphine d'Auvergne, Duchesse de Montpensier, is forgotten, or rather was never remembered; but the great name of MADEMOISELLE, La Grande Mademoiselle, gleams like a golden thread shot through and through that gorgeous tapestry of crimson and purple which records for us the age ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... It had been determined to land Hurry at the precise point where he is represented, in the commencement of our tale, as having embarked, not only as a place little likely to be watched by the Hurons, but because he was sufficiently familiar with the signs of the woods, at that spot, to thread his way through them in the dark. Thither, then, the light craft proceeded, being urged as diligently and as swiftly as two vigorous and skilful canoemen could force their little vessel through, or rather over, ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... Kitty. 'You've tried all ways, I presume. But I notice that just now you seem to prefer the ear as a medium. Wouldn't she be splendid in the "Thread of Destiny," Stuart?' ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... his own hand, he laboured unceasingly. Money came fast—more money than he had ever hoped for. Fame came also, in a fashion, and many genial societies were open to him. But Annette was not a person to be defrauded of anything she conceived to be a right, and he soon found upon how slight a thread domestic content might hang. Invitations to Mr. Paul Armstrong were plentiful, but of Mrs. Paul Armstrong his world had no knowledge outside the jolly bachelor contingent which overflowed house and table upon Sundays. When these single invitations came Annette ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... prosperity incrusts their hearts and increases their carnality; nestling in their worldly comforts, they forget they are the creatures of a day, that an endless eternity lies before them, and only the feeble uncertain thread of life between them and that curse under which they were born. Not so the child of God; all things work together for his good—all things; his standing is not in himself; his footsteps are directed by infinite wisdom: he is kept by ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... testing is to dip a pair of ordinary forceps in the balsam, which may be stirred a little to secure uniformity. The forceps are introduced with the jaws in contact, and, as soon as withdrawn, the jaws are allowed to spring apart, thus drawing out a balsam thread. In a few moments the thread is cold, and if the forceps be compressed, this thread ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... to his isolation. His mind was broadening and deepening, and he felt that it was so. Many things that had before seemed a puzzle to him now became plain. He was compelled, despite his youth, to meditate upon life, and he resolved that when he took up its thread again among his kind he would put his new knowledge ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... were then adorned at the collar and in front with gold-thread embroidery, such as is shown in some of Clouet's portraits. In M. de Laborde's Comptes des Batiments du Roi au XVIeme Siecle (vol. ii.) mention is made of "a shirt with gold work," "a shirt with ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... impatient had we become by dint of that faint glimmer of hope. We were going to try to build a raft, on which we were going to try to embark on the stream, by which we were going to try to find our way out of the mountain. The prospect made us positively hilarious, so slender is the thread by which hope ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... all human affairs! how fleeting are riches! how brittle the invisible thread on which all earthly comforts are suspended! Peace in a moment can take an immeasurable flight; health can lose its rosy cheeks; and life will vanish like a vapor at the appearance of the sun! In one fatal day our prospects ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... the Imperial Court to sanction the succession of Iemochi was evidenced by a long delay in the transmission of the necessary Imperial document. During that interval, the feudatories of Mito and Echizen had a memorable interview with the premier, Ii, whose life seemed at that time to hang by a thread, but who, nevertheless, advanced unflinchingly towards his goal. The three feudatories offered to compromise; in other words, they declared their willingness to subscribe the commercial convention provided that Keiki was appointed shogun; the important fact ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... already provided themselves with their old solace of knitting for the slow-passing days at sea, and all settled down for the long voyage. All through the story of their three years of wandering among the islands of the South Seas runs the thread of the wife's devotion; of how she took upon herself the fatiguing details of preparations for the voyages, searching for ships and arranging for supplies; of how she walked across an island to get horses and wagon to move the sick man to a more comfortable place; of how ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... she had cut off the downy part of several feathers, and had laid them together in a little heap. Then she took a fine thread, and tied this little tuft of down to the end of it. Then she took up the thread by the other end, and handed ...
— Rollo's Philosophy. [Air] • Jacob Abbott
... never relaxes its deadly grasp. But,' said he, raising himself to a sitting posture, 'but I will not die, I must live. One fixed purpose, one great aim sustains me, and I feel that till I have accomplished this, the thread of life, frail as I know it is, strained as I feel it oft to be, still, still I have a firm presentiment it ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... merited snub, Francois could not at once catch up the thread of his ideas; but he was still less able to do so when Max said ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... Whatsoever loseth the grace and clearness, converts into a riddle; the obscurity is marked, but not the value. That perisheth, and is passed by, like the pearl in the fable. Our style should be like a skein of silk, to be carried and found by the right thread, not ravelled and perplexed; then all is a knot, a heap. There are words that do as much raise a style as others can depress it. Superlation and over-muchness amplifies; it may be above faith, but never above a mean. It was ridiculous in Cestius, ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... al-Budur, to take rest beside her, and he saw her joyous exceedingly at the glory and grandeur wherein she was; then, after reposing awhile he returned to his palace. Now Alaeddin was wont every day to thread the city-streets with his Mamelukes riding a-van and a-rear of him showering rightwards and leftwards gold upon the folk; and all the world, stranger and neighbour, far and near, were fulfilled of his love for the excess of his liberality ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... on thy knees, and pray to Heaven for pardon—make up thy dread account—repine not at the days yet thine to wash the black spot from thy soul. For, while I speak, I foresee too well that her days are numbered, and with her thread of life is entwined thine own. Within twelve hours from her last moment, we shall meet again: but now I am as ice and stone,—thou canst not move me. Her closing life shall not be darkened by the aspect of blood—by the thought of the sacrifice it demands. ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... foot-bridge, stretching like a thread, united one bank to the other. Three miles below was a suspension-bridge, across which a train was crawling from the Canadian to the ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... On the present occasion I shall chiefly follow that written by Captain Woods Rogers, taking occasionally explanatory circumstances and descriptions from Captain Cooke: But as they agree pretty well in their relations, I do not think it necessary to break the thread of the discourse, but shall proceed as near as may be in the words ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... hate. After the painful news had been told, he sat in silence; he had not spirit or inclination to tell his mother and sister anything about the dinner; they hardly cared to ask it. Apparently the mingled thread in the web of their life was so curiously twisted together that there could be no joy without a sorrow coming close upon it. Tom was dejected by the thought that his exemplary effort must always be baffled ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... almost morning; I would have thee gone, And yet no further than a wanton's bird; Who lets it hop a little from her hand, And with a silk thread plucks it back again, So ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... dog,—such amateurish bungling he disdained and swore against,—but in the good old-fashioned way of stalking with a rifle. And when he brought his bunch of birds to market, his admirers pointed with pride to the marks of his wondrous skill. Here was a bird with the head hanging by a thread of skin; there one with its neck broken; there a furrow along the top of the head; and here—perfect work!—a partridge with both eyes gone, showing the ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... principle illegal at Rome unless expressly authorized by the State. — IGITUR: the construction of the sentence is broken by the introduction of the parenthesis, and a fresh start is made with epulabar igitur. Igitur is often thus used, like our 'well then', to pick up the broken thread of a sentence. So often sed or ergo. — FERVOR: Cf. Hor. Od. 1, 16, 22 me quoque pectoris temptavit in dulci iuventa fervor. — AETATIS, QUA PROGREDIENTE: 'belonging to that time of life, but as life advances'. The ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... by seniority. I have had an immense loss in the death of the Earl of Glencairn—the patron from whom all my fame and fortune took its rise. Independent of my grateful attachment to him, which was indeed so strong that it pervaded my very soul, and was entwined with the thread of my existence; so soon as the prince's friends had got in, (and every dog, you know, has his day) my getting forward in the excise would have been an easier business than otherwise it will be. Though this was a consummation devoutly to be ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... in their hands. This meant frequent councils among the three, a vast amount of careful work, of crafty intrigue, of untiring diplomacy, and, although his candidacy had not as yet been more than whispered, the purple robe of power was daily being woven, thread ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... knowest, is dearer to me than life, do Thou bless and hallow our bond of love and friendship; watch over us in all our outgoings and incomings for good: and may the tie that unites our hearts be strong and indissoluble as the thread of man's immortal life!... ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... pity you hav'n't something worse to complain of than a button off your shirt. If you'd some wives, you would, I know. I'm sure I'm never without a needle and thread in my hand; what with you and the children, I'm made a perfect slave of. And what's my thanks? Why, if once in your life a button's off your shirt—what do you cry "oh" at? I say once, Mr. Caudle; or twice, or three times, at most. I'm sure, Caudle, no man's buttons in the world ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... scarcely any banks, as the water flowed over a wide and shallow channel. On previous nights, when the moon was shining into the valley, as we sat around our camp fire, we had noticed the stream winding like a silver thread through the dark-green herbage. Now, to our extreme wonder, instead of the narrow line, a broad sheet of water glistened before us! It seemed to cover a space of several hundred yards in extent, reaching far up the glade ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... the observance." So that when he sat down, and my turn came, the audience, instead of being convinced, was fairly rabid. I was very young at that time, and fearfully nervous; added to which I was never much of a speaker, and, if interrupted at all, usually lost the thread of my argument. ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... the city, and the 78th Highlanders were pushed forward on the Cawnpore road to the Residency, to cover the passage of the troops and baggage, etcetera; while the remainder turned short to the right, and began to thread the narrow lane ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... determination, and for another hour he struggled on, till, feeling utterly exhausted, he seated himself at the edge of the precipice at a point where he could divide the bushes and look down. Here, only a few yards away, he saw that there was a broad shelf some fifty feet below, and along it a mere thread of water trickled to a lower edge and disappeared, leaving among the stones amidst which it had meandered patch after patch of richest green, showing its ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... wing-feathers, to show what fate had fallen upon the mother. Those birds had died also, and she had wept and given them Christian burial, and had afterwards spent hours every day with her little rifle hunting the destroyer of that small home. She remembered the incident now as a small thread in the ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... she watched the youngling of the flock, in the cradle by her side. The goodwife, in linsey-woolsey short gown and red petticoat, steps lightly back and forth in calf pumps beside the great wheel, or poises gracefully to give a final twist to the long-drawn thread of wool or tow. The continuous buzz of the flax wheels, harmonizing with the spasmodic hum of the big wheel, shows that the girls are preparing a stock of linen against their wedding day. Less active, and more fitful, rattles the quill-wheel, where the younger children ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... covered her pride with her ironical smile. Mrs. Weatherbee was the only one who did not look at Banks. Her inscrutable face was turned to the valley. She might never have heard of Hollis Tisdale or, indeed, of David. But Elizabeth, who had kept the thread of both conversations, said: "You were right. There was a coroner's inquest that vindicated Mr. Tisdale at ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... must be made of the best pack-thread, and for taking Great Fowl, the Meshes must be large, two Inches at least from point to point, the larger the better; (provided the Fowle creep not through;) two Fathom deep, and six in Length, is the best and ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... Phorkys, where there was a grotto sacred to the nymphs, and it was shaded at the entrance by an olive-tree. Stone vases stood around in the grotto, and there bees had stored up honey. The nymphs spun their fine thread from stone spindles there, and wove their sea-purple robes. Springs of cool water flowed through the grotto, and there was an entrance for mortals and one which was kept holy ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... of furs that had been heaped one on top of the other, and tied together with thread from an unraveled woolen mitten. "This was my body," he said coolly. "Furs. The cell must be a storeroom for them—lucky for us. I was standing with a rock in my hand near the door, when I cried out for water.... We shall ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... attempt," said Paul, stopping in his short walk on the sand, and examining the murky vault over head. "Midnight is near; and by two o'clock the tide will be entirely up. It is a dark night to thread these narrow channels in, and to go out upon the ocean, too, in so frail a bark! ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... from some titanic past it seems As if a thread divine of memory runs; Born ere the Mighty One began his dreams, Or yet were stars ...
— By Still Waters - Lyrical Poems Old and New • George William Russell
... narrative of narratives. I will continue it as I have opportunity; and that so dexterously, that, if I break off twenty times, thou shalt not discern where I piece my thread. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... hand, which was lying on the table, between her own and lifted it to her lips. He felt her soft young fingers even through the lisle-thread gloves that encased them, and the warm moisture of her lips upon his skin. He felt himself flushing—but was unable to break the silence or change his position. The next moment she had scuttled back with her chair to her ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... Octorara, Miami, six other steamers, and seventeen of the mortar schooners. The orders of the government were peremptory that the Mississippi should be cleared. The Confederates held the river by a single thread. The fall of Memphis and the ruin of the famous river-defence fleet left between St. Louis and the Gulf but a solitary obstruction. ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... of this simple story Keats made a long poem of four books or parts. Into it he wove many other stories, his imagination leading him through strange and wondrous scenery. The poem is not perfect—it is rambling and disconnected—the story of Endymion being but the finest thread to hold a string of beads ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... century ago than of late. I have heard them speak of an immense number being taken in one day by a shepherd at East Dean, near Beachy Head. I think they said he took nearly a hundred dozen, so many that they could not thread them on crow-quills in the usual manner, but he took off his round frock and made a sack of it to put them into, and his wife did the same with her petticoat. This must have happened when there was a great flight. Their numbers now are so decreased that ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... chamber. He rose quietly and went with them; the procession set out, and at about three arrived at the Place de Greve; where the stake was ready. "Berquin had a gown of velvet, garments of satin and damask, and hosen of gold thread," says the Bourgeois de Paris. "'Alas!' said some as they saw him pass, 'he is of noble lineage, a mighty great scholar, expert in science and subtile withal, and nevertheless he hath gone out of his senses.'" We borrow the account of his actual death from a letter of Erasmus, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... seen the church spires of Haarlem, and its long canal, which like a silver thread ties it to Amsterdam. To the east the towers of Utrecht are visible, and to the north glitter in the morning sun the red roofs of Zaandam ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... live forever, or to make something as like it as possible, that will last forever. They paint their statues, and inlay the eyes with jewels, and set real crowns on the heads; they finish, in their pictures, every thread of embroidery, and would fain, if they could, draw every leaf upon the trees. And their only verbal expression of conscious success is that they have made their work ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... strangely, mechanically, like a sleep-walker. "What a dream! Ye gods, what a dream!" He stretched his limbs yawning and laughed aloud; then he paled suddenly. Was it a dream; or no—impossible. On the sleeve of his black velvet jacket something glistened and sparkled, a thread as of gold, fine and slender like silk, invisible almost as the fibrous strings of ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... a good one at a ramble" said Tom, "and not a bad one in a spree, but I cannot help thinking you are rambling out of your road; you seem to have lost the thread of your subject, and, having been disappointed with love and friendship, you are just going to sit down ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... until they begin to change colour, then place them on a piece of paper and put on one side to cool; place a thick layer of forcemeat between two slices of potato in the form of a sandwich, tie with white thread, and re-fry until the potato becomes a golden brown. Remove the thread, and serve with ...
— New Vegetarian Dishes • Mrs. Bowdich
... the caps which had dropped on the table with the one he had found upstairs. They were the same size. He tried the solitary cap on the nipple, and found that it fitted perfectly. As he did so, he saw something resembling a thread of yellow wool caught in the twisted steel of the hammer. It was a minute fragment, so small as to be hardly noticeable. Colwyn was quite unable to determine what it was, but its presence there puzzled him considerably, and he was at a loss to understand how it had got ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... with a brave smile, "Sister, I am going. This is in answer to prayer, for I do not want to linger on and endanger all of your lives." This attack was followed by pleurisy, and for ten days of severe suffering her life hung by a very slender thread. A fellow-worker wrote at this time: "She is bright and happy, although fully expecting to go. She has been so enthusiastic in her work, and always so cheerful, that she has often gone beyond her strength. I think that she has been failing ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton
... the Chinese refused their ratification to Chung How's treaty, they expressed their desire for another pacific settlement, which would give them more complete satisfaction. The Marquis Tseng was accordingly instructed to take up the thread of negotiation, and to proceed to the Russian capital as Embassador and Minister Plenipotentiary. Some delay ensued, as it was held to be doubtful whether Russia would consent to the reopening of the question. ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... the smallest creature is of vital importance to you. In the loneliness of the prison cell you learn solidarity. And one day when he is sitting reading, the spider, in its busy efforts to carry its thread past him, drops down and uses his shoulder as a temporary attachment. Never before has such confidence been shown him notwithstanding everything; the little insect knew how a hardened criminal should ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... BEATING IN THE CORD, when the child comes into the world, it may at once be separated from the mother. This is to be effected by first tying the navel-string with common sewing thread (three or four times doubled), about two inches from the body of the child, and again two inches from the former ligature, and then dividing the cord with a pair of scissors between the two. And now the means for its restoration ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... loosened, take the turkey by the neck, give it a pull, and the skeleton will come out entire from the flesh, as easily as you draw your hand out of a glove. The flesh will then be a shapeless mass. With a needle and thread mend or sew up any holes that may be found in ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie
... novel, "Skipper Worse," marked a distinct step in his development. It was less of a social satire and more of a social study. It was not merely a series of brilliant, exquisitely finished scenes, loosely strung together on a slender thread of narrative, but was a concise and well-constructed story, full of admirable portraits. The theme is akin to that of Daudet's "L'Evangeliste"; but Kielland, as it appears to me, has in this instance outdone his French confrere, as regards insight into the peculiar character and poetry ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... opened, and Roxy came in. She had been walking fast, and her color was high. Heman stole one glance at her, under cover of the saluting voices. She was forty years old, yet her hair had not one silver thread, and at that instant of happy animation, she looked strikingly like her elder sister, to whom Heman used to give lozenges when they were boy and girl together, and who died in India. Then Roxy took her place, and Heman bent over his bass-viol. The rehearsal began. Heman ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... aloft by the sustaining blast, This little golden thread Dilates into a column high and vast, A form of fear ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... considerable space, especially to the years 871, 878, and 885. The whole has gained a certain roundness and fulness, because the events—nearly all of them episodes in the ever-recurring conflict with the Danes—are taken in their connection, and the thread dropped in one year is resumed in the next. Not only is the style in itself concise; it has a sort of nervous severity and pithy rigor. The construction is often antiquated, and suggests at times the freedom of poetry; though ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... approach perilous. The bank was high and steep. We had to plunge our daggers into the ground to avoid sliding into the river. We cut steps, fastened a line to the front of the canoe, and hauled it up. Our lives hung upon a thread, as one false step might have hurled us into eternity. However, we cleared the bank before dark. The men had to ascend the immense hills with ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... boys were at liberty full two hours before him. The latter generally stayed out as long as light and hunger permitted. Mr. Audley continually stumbled on them playing at marbles, racing headlong in teams of pack-thread harness with their fellows, upsetting the nerves of quiet folk—staring contentedly at such shows as required no outlay, or discontentedly at the outside of those that demanded the pennies they never had. They were thorough little street-boys; and all that he could do for them was to enforce ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... you need is a needle and thread," said the Shaggy Man. "But do not worry, my dear; those holes do not look badly, ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... through that palace wide, Observing al the future lives around: When those already woven he had spied Upon the fatal wheel for finish wound, He a fair fleece discerned that far outvied Fine gold, whose wondrous lustre jewels ground, Could these into a thread be drawn by art, Would never equal by ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... turned upon him with a sharpness seldom seen on a woman's face when it bent toward Messer Guido of the Cavalcanti. Her smooth forehead wrinkled with an unfamiliar frown; her full lips seemed to tighten and narrow to a red thread; her eyes were as a cat's eyes are when the cat is very, ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... was afraid that their step-mother might not treat them well and might do them harm, he put them in a lonely castle that stood in the middle of a wood. It lay so hidden, and the way to it was so hard to find, that he himself could not have found it out had not a wise-woman given him a reel of thread which possessed a marvellous property: when he threw it before him it unwound itself and showed him the way. But the King went so often to his dear children that the Queen was offended at his absence. She grew curious, and wanted to know what he had ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... and chaos of the conflict of these vast and draughty Titans, it is for me to thread my precarious way. The bit of life that is I will exult over them. The bit of life that is I, in so far as it succeeds in baffling them or in bitting them to its service, will imagine that it is godlike. It is good to ride the tempest and feel godlike. I dare to assert that for a finite speck ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... of the picnic—of our merriment on the drive home—of the sentimental young lady who would quote "Childe Harold" because it was moonlight. I was absorbed by these past scenes and past amusements, when, in an instant, the thread on which my memories hung snapped asunder; my attention immediately came back to present things more vividly than ever, and I found myself, I neither knew why nor wherefore, looking hard ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... throw his tobacco quid in the sawdust box under the rusty stove, then the little man scraped his fuzzy jaw reflectively with his blackened hand as if about to speak, but he thought better of it and waxed his thread. He showed his yellow teeth in a smile, and motioned John to come closer. Then he put his head ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... to say, that even then my felicity was perfect. I had, once for all, come down from Heaven into the Earth. Among the rainbow colours that glowed on my horizon, lay even in childhood a dark ring of Care, as yet no thicker than a thread, and often quite overshone; yet always it reappeared, nay ever waxing broader and broader; till in after-years it almost over-shadowed my whole canopy, and threatened to engulf me in final night. It was the ring of Necessity whereby we are all begirt; ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... expedients. If, therefore, he whose crimes have deprived him of the favour of God, can reflect upon his conduct without disturbance, or can at will banish the reflection; if he who considers himself as suspended over the abyss of eternal perdition only by the thread of life, which must soon part by its own weakness, and which the wing of every minute may divide, can cast his eyes round him without shuddering with horrour, or panting with security; what can he judge of himself, but that he is not ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... crewel needle, and a very long thread, or you will have to be continually taking fresh. This work is sometimes done with crewel wool, and in rather a different way, see Fig. 4; but it is not so neat and pretty, in my opinion, as that done with cotton, and is more extravagant, since ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... introduced, doubtless, as a necessary love story. The little maid Anglore, half mad in her illusion, is none the less a very sympathetic creation, and surely quite original. This tale, however, running through the poem like a thread, is not the poem, nor does it fill proportionately a large place therein. The poem is, as its title proclaims, the Poem of the Rhone, a poem of sincere regret for the good old days when the muscular sons ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... is because they are endured to it from their hard life: but if the common sailors were all such little thread-papers as you, and had been brought up so carefully, they would not have gone through all you have. That's my opinion, Mr Simple— there's ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... forc'd-meat of marrow, sweet-breads, and lamb-stones just boiled, and make it up after 'tis seasoned and beaten together with the yolks of two eggs, and put it into your pockets as if you were filling a pincushion; then sew up the top with fine thread, flour them, and put melted butter on them, and bake them; roast three sweet-breads to put between, and ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... telling little of himself. Herbert's reputation became worse and worse, and he deserved all the evil that was said of him. The tradesmen refused him credit, and the carpets and furniture of their little cottage grew old and thread-bare and were not replaced. I have seen him play pool at Sudden's for half a day at a dollar a game, and perhaps lose his week's wages. He was hand in glove with the set that lurked about the 'club-room' ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... grey park, mists lying about the melancholy ornamental waters, dingy herds of huddled sheep speckling the grass here and there; no smoke rising up from the great stacks of chimneys of the building we were leaving behind us, save one little feeble thread of white which we knew came from the fire by which the lonely mistress of Newcome was seated. "Ouf!" cries Florac, playing his whip, as the lodge-gates closed on us, and his team of horses rattled merrily along ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that thy heart to hers were truly dear, Were I thine own—thou wert not lonely here: An outlaw's spouse—and leave her Lord to roam! 1470 What hath such gentle dame to do with home? But speak not now—o'er thine and o'er my head Hangs the keen sabre by a single thread;[ib] If thou hast courage still, and would'st be free, Receive this ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... thy thread of life is broken, Human skill can bring no aid to thee. There thou hast my chain—a ghastly token— And this lock of thine I take with me. Soon must thou decay, Soon wilt thou be gray, Dark although to-night ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... bow-strings, net-lines, and every other sort of ropes. The finer thongs make netting for snow-shoes—an indispensable article to these people—and of these thongs fish-nets are also woven; while the tendons of the muscles, when split, serve for fine sewing-thread. Besides these uses, the flesh of the caribou is the food of many tribes, Indians and Esquimaux, for most of the year; and, indeed, it may be looked upon as their ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... it true, as was said of his work by his associate, Dr. Wm. Hand Browne, that "one thread of purpose runs through it all. This thread is found in his fervid love for his fellow-men, and his never ceasing endeavors to kindle an enthusiasm for beauty, purity, nobility of life, which he held it the poet's first duty to teach and to exemplify." And ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... to a number of canal boats lay as a thin black line in the center of the lake. An owl left the branches of the hut tree and circled into the safety of the shore willows, and a stealthy barn cat, with thread-like legs, crept from the water's edge toward the lane with a trailing dead fish in his jaws. He turned glistening green eyes upon Tess, and leapt away with ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... distance to the overhanging ledge. What was the use of taking such a chance as this? It looked like one in a million. In another minute they would pile up. They were almost abreast of the thread-like channel when he saw the fingers on the wheel tighten. The steering gear whirred and the Petrel leaped forward to answer the ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... craft and Poet's art, Daily I learn by the heart. First, all the leather smooth I hammer, Consonants then, and vowels I stammer. Next must the thread be stiff with wax, Then I must learn ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... withs which never had been dried, And she therewith did bind him, (now there were Men lying in wait whom she had placed there,) Then she cried out, and said, Now Samson stand Thy ground, for the Philistines are at hand. And straight he brake the withs, and they became Like to a thread of tow when touch'd with flame: So was his strength not found out. Then said she, Samson, behold, thou hast deceived me, And told me lies: therefore no longer blind me, But tell, I pray thee, wherewith I may bind thee. Bind me with ropes that ne'er were us'd, said he; Then weak as ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... firing-step apparently asleep or near it. Dusty Miller had turned and opened a low-toned conversation with the next man, the frequent repetition of "I says" and "she says" affording some clew to the thread of his story and inclining Toffee to believe it not meant for him to hear. He felt he must speak to some one, and it was with relief that he saw Halliday, the man on his other side, rouse himself and look up. Something about Toffee's face caught ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... "I could thread my way in and out of the people till I found you. The girls might get ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... girl soon came up closer against her knees, and leaning on them with her arms, she looked up with her large blue eyes, while a small thread of pure saliva dribbled from her lips on ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... started on the journey a light wind sprang up, which, however, did not seriously interfere with their progress, but it was sufficient to induce them to take a course outside of the point, instead of attempting to thread their ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... whether he would presently appear in her set. His brown eyes were gentle and yet enterprising. He looked like a sportsman, she thought, and yet as if he were more intellectual, more subtle than Louth. There seemed to be a slight thread of sympathy between her and him! She had felt it immediately when they had met in Bond Street. She wondered whether he had felt ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... against his cheek as they swept past the open door. What did he care what his mother would say. He was Egbert now. Edythe was in his arms. "While we are side by side" the violins sang, glad, triumphant, that old story that runs like a thread of gold through all life's patterns; that old song, old yet ever new, deathless, unchangeable, which maketh the poor man rich and without ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... Madame; with a proviso, That as the curtains of that bed are of a flimsy transparent cotton, and appear likewise too scanty to draw close, that the fille de chambre shall fasten up the opening, either by corking pins, or needle and thread, in such manner as shall be deem'd a sufficient barrier ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... on a chair bore witness to the servant's care. As Paul, however, glanced behind the sofa, he was concerned to see a coat, which had evidently been thrust hurriedly in a corner, with the sleeve lining inside out, and a needle and thread still sticking in the seam. It struck him instantly that this had been the negro's occupation, and that the pistol-cleaning was a ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... Sir Andrew broke the thread and seal, and unrolled the parchment. Within it was written over in strange characters. Also, there was a second unsealed roll, written in a clerkly hand in Norman French, and headed, "Translation of this letter, ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... abscess in the brain, nor Gensoul when he first took away the superior maxilla, had hearts that trembled, hands that shook, minds so strained as Monsieur Bovary when he approached Hippolyte, his tenotome between his fingers. And as at hospitals, near by on a table lay a heap of lint, with waxed thread, many bandages—a pyramid of bandages—every bandage to be found at the druggist's. It was Monsieur Homais who since morning had been organising all these preparations, as much to dazzle the multitude as to keep up his illusions. Charles pierced the skin; a ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... interval between Sumatra and Ceylon is about three hundred leagues: the Chinese and Indian navigators were conducted by the flight of birds and periodical winds; and the ocean might be securely traversed in square-built ships, which, instead of iron, were sewed together with the strong thread of the cocoanut. Ceylon, Serendib, or Taprobana, was divided between two hostile princes; one of whom possessed the mountains, the elephants, and the luminous carbuncle, and the other enjoyed the more solid riches of domestic industry, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... held up her thread against the light. "There's a queer thing," she admitted. "I can't make head nor tail of it. Do you think there's an understanding between them, ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan
... at the same time that she taught me dancing, because she always said it was well to have two strings to your bow. Dancing, you see, is all very well, provided you are not too ambitious of appearing on first nights, but, unhappily, that was the case with me. I was as slender as a thread when I was twenty, and very agile, but I grew fat and scant of breath, and became rather heavy in my steps; so when my mother died, as I had my diploma as a midwife, I took her apartment and her business, and I added the title of "Midwife ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... been allowed To thread with peaceful feet the crowd Which filled that Christian street? The Decalogue he had observed, From Faith in Jesus had not swerved, And scorning pious platitudes, He saw in the Beatitudes A lamp to ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... went to the edge of the plateau to prospect. A billowy sea of white stretched out to a blue infinity. The clouds had lifted or been vaporised. He could see nothing of Odde; but he believed that he could make out a thread of silver, which must be the fiord. It would take him too long to get out there and back—and yet to stay here! That meant that the pair of them would die. It is but just to him to say that no alternative presented itself to him. The pair of them would die? Well, yes. What ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... and myself writhing in my chair a crushed and scored-off wreck. I drew the line at that. I valued my self-respect at more than sixpence. If it had been a shilling now—. So I set my teeth and turned once more to my Thucydides. Bradshaw, having picked up the thread of his story again, emitted hoarse chuckles like minute guns, until I very nearly rose and fell upon him. It is maddening to listen to a person laughing and not ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... order to get the only image that was now required, to enable him to do fitting credit to so moving a tale, suitably engraved on his imagination. There was necessarily a pause, while the respective parties were thus severally occupied. It was suddenly broken by the tailor, who clipped the thread with which he had just finished the garment, cast every thing from his hands, threw his spectacles upon his forehead, and, leaning his arms on his knees in such a manner as to form a perfect labyrinth with the limbs, he stretched his body ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... up the dropped thread and went on. "An' afther that the leprechaun reaches for his crock o' gold an' pulls out a penny. Ye can buy anythin' i' the whole world wi' ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... before, there is only a glass door between the office and the manager's private room. This, of course, accounted for the fact that the night watchman heard all that he did hear, on that memorable night, and so helped further to entangle the thread of that ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... little need to dwell upon these crepuscular stirrings of popular Latin poetry in the earlier Middle Ages. To indicate their existence was necessary; for they serve to link by a dim and fragile thread of evolution the decadent art of the base Empire with the renascence of paganism attempted in the twelfth century, and thus to connect that dawn of modern feeling with the orient splendours of the fourteenth and fifteenth ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... came to reside on my property the neighbours called, and I returned their calls, and it didn't go much beyond that. They thought me cold and unfeeling, but they were mistaken. But I must go back and take up my dropped thread. I said there was one man who got hold of my heart. I had a good stout fence of prejudices, and an inner paling of reserve about that heart of mine, but he contrived to climb over both, and get inside. ...
— Nearly Lost but Dearly Won • Theodore P. Wilson
... be so glad to-morrow," she remarked, "with all this snow. They are building a large bob-sled under Mr. Short's direction.... No!" she resumed her former thread of thought. "It doesn't count so much as we used to think—the variety of the thing you do, the change,—the novelty. It's the mind you do it with that ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... near! You exult in the friendly companionship of the rocky wall that towers above you, and in the assuring presence of the flowers and shrubs that cling there or reach out to you their thin elvish hands. You feel that here untamed Nature (that great wolf) cannot get her claws upon you. Upon this thread of water you are soothed by the thought that you are under the friendly and beneficent ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... in repressing crime and assisting justice as his knowledge in this particular case may enable him to afford; and justice, in order to ascertain whether his testimony be true, finds it necessary to subject him to torture. One would naturally imagine that an undisturbed thread of clear evidence would be best obtained from a man whose position was made easy and whose mind was not harassed; but this is not the fact: to turn a witness to good account, he must be badgered this way and that till he is nearly mad; he must be made a laughingstock for the court; his very truths ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... camest, to the merciful maws of the children of the Tree of Life or the gleaming fangs of the great white apes, for there lies speedy surcease from suffering; but insist in your rash purpose to thread the mazes of the Golden Cliffs of the Mountains of Otz, past the ramparts of the impregnable fortresses of the Holy Therns, and upon your way Death in its most frightful form will overtake you—a death so horrible that even the Holy Therns themselves, who conceived both ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... when I heard that song last night, methought it did relieve my passion much. Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain. The spinsters and the knitters when they sit in the sun, and the young maids that weave their thread with bone, chant this song. It is silly, yet I love it, for it tells of the innocence of love in the ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... moment had touched them too deeply. What a strange, wonderful unraveling of life's tangled skeins had come with the few fleeting hours. Each turned the drama over in his mind, trying to make a reality of it and spin into the warp and woof of the tapestry time had already woven this thread of new color. But so startling was it in hue that it refused to blend, standing out against the duller tones of the past with appalling distinctness; and never was it more irreconcilable than when the familiar confines of the little fishing ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... believed it if I had not seen it done," said David. "Eve, you should have seen her beautiful fingers thread in and out among the keys; it was like white fire dancing; and as for her hand, it is not troubled with joints ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... obtain any materials for writing, I invented, in order to note daily occurrences, a diary of a peculiar kind. If any thing pleasant occurred, I tied a knot in a white thread, which I pulled out of my shirt. When any thing unpleasant happened to us, I tied a knot in a black silken thread, from my cravat. If any thing note-worthy took place, either pleasant or the reverse, I tied together the ends of a green thread, which ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... girls on sleeping together for the first time tie their waists together with string or thread, and the thread gets broken in the night, the first man who puts his arm round the waist of either will have the first name of the man whom that girl will marry, whether that man is the one or not. ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... of Darkness, there can be no Kshatriyas, since there is no room or a warrior caste in the orthodox sense under an alien rule, and that therefore the Hindus who are neither Brahmans nor pariahs can at best be Shudras—a "clean" caste, but not even entitled to wear the "sacred thread" reserved ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... russulas in the autumn called aloud, "I am a fat, wholesome Mushroom," and the deadly amanita cried, "I am an Amanita. Let me alone, or you'll be a sick Bear." And the fairy harebell of the canyon-banks sang a song too, as fine as its thread-like stem, and as soft as its dainty blue; but the warden of the smells had learned to report it not, for this, and a million other such, were of no ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Thompson Seton
... mistress of the house. One was a thoughtful-looking, careful girl, who was busy in every part of the room alternately, picking up all the little odds and ends which were left after any piece of work was completed—little bits of string, ends of tape or thread, stray nails, chips of wood, or pieces of paper. These, as soon as she had gathered them up, she put safely by, where she could find them again; and it is wonderful how often she was called upon by the workmen for some little ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... see nothing above the banks. Landing to take a survey, Stonor beheld a vast treeless bottom, covered with rank grass, and stretching to low piny ridges several miles back on either hand. No tell-tale thread of smoke on the still air betrayed the camp of the ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... were permitted to have a fowl-house for chickens, separate from the white folks. We wore warm clothes and stout brogan shoes in winter; went barefooted from April until November and wore cotton clothes in summer. The master and some of the women slaves spun the thread, wove the cloth and made the clothes. My mother lived in a two-story farm house. Her children were: William, Mattie and Thomas. We never had an overseer on the place. Sometimes she'd whip the colored children, but only when it ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... wife is represented in her boat, "making her toilet at dawn using the water as a mirror." While we are assured also that the woman sitting upon her veranda "finds it very difficult to thread her needle by the pale light of the moon," which fact, few, I ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... if I got up and called my coat back to Papa she might lose the thread of her story, and the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... me of novels; indeed, his "Lives" were the means of forming that free and republican spirit, intolerant of servitude, which has been my torment. To my aunt, who knew endless songs, and used to chant them with a sweet, tiny thread of a voice, I owe my passion ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... the whole population, of whom very few were absent on the present occasion, might number a hundred—men, women, and children. They were dressed in habiliments formed chiefly of materials procured by themselves in the chase, but ornamented with cloth, beads, and silk thread, which showed that they had had intercourse with the fur- traders before now. The men wore leggings of deerskin, which reached more than half-way up the thigh, and were fastened to a leathern girdle strapped round the waist. A loose tunic or hunting-shirt of the same material ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... the glorious panorama burst upon them. There at their very feet lay the Grand Canyon. Below them lay the wonder of the world, and more than five thousand feet down, like a slender silver thread, rippled ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... [264] {223}[The thread on which the successive tropes or images are loosely strung seems to give if not to snap at this point. "Considering that Mazeppa was sprung of a race which in moments of excitement, when an enemy has stamped upon its ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... submitted to this interruption with the greatest sweetness and composure, and dilated on the beauty of the new chair-covers till Castleman and the footman had retired, when, with a coffee-cup instead of a fan in her exquisite hand, she took up the thread of her exposition. ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... the silence was electrical. Unsaid things seemed rustling in ambush. He dared not look again at Mary, and he felt that she dared not look at him. But it was necessary to go on, and he took up the narrative clumsily, fearing to tangle the thread. ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... pattern which in making the lace it is intended to follow is pricked with a pin on a strip of paper. This paper is fastened on the cushion, and then pins are stuck in through all the pin-holes, and then the thread from these bobbins is ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... said is true," she began, this ought to be a good thing for me. If I go into it, I'll go in heart, soul, brain, and pocket-book. I do know the skirt business from thread to tape and back again. I've managed to save a few thousand dollars. Only a woman could understand how I've done it. I've scrimped on little things. I've denied myself necessities. I've worn silk blouses instead of linen ones to save laundry-bills and taken a street-car or 'bus to save ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... it," replied Gladys, getting out needle and thread to sew up a small rent in her ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... a nap. So there was no one to answer the bells except Rosemary. By the time she had jumped up to be asked "Is this the grocery store?" once or twice, had admitted the butcher boy with fresh meat which must be put on the ice and had been summoned three times by Aunt Trudy to thread her needle—for glasses, declared her aunt made her warmer in summer and she would not wear them—Rosemary's ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... loquacious as a rule and give them a thread upon which to hang an argument, and in a minute a free silver, demo-popocrat convention would sound tame in comparison. Go into a squad-room at any time the men are off duty, and you can have a ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... derange the thread of Tasmanian history, the reader may be compensated by a view ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... She had been restored to opulence and honour by libertines. Little as the men of mirth and fashion were disposed to shape their lives according to her precepts, they were yet ready to fight knee deep in blood for her cathedrals and places, for every line of her rubric and every thread of her vestments. If the debauched Cavalier haunted brothels and gambling houses, he at least avoided conventicles. If he never spoke without uttering ribaldry and blasphemy, he made some amends by his eagerness to send Baxter and Howe to gaol for preaching and praying. Thus the clergy, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... me, at all), and said her father was gone for the chaise, and he must make haste and get himself ready. Then he went out again; and then she put her thimble and scissors in her pocket, and stuck a needle threaded with black thread neatly in the bosom of her gown, and put on her outer clothing smartly, at a little glass behind the door, in which I saw the reflection ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... light in hand, or heavy in hand, according to the customer he had to deal with. With Ferdinand Barnacle he was gossamer. Bar was likewise always modest and self-depreciatory—in his way. Bar was a man of great variety; but one leading thread ran through the woof of all his patterns. Every man with whom he had to do was in his eyes a jury-man; and he must get that ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... cruising o'er the ocean, Woman; While those who are not beginners should have sense Enough to make for port, ere Time shall summon With his grey signal-flag; and the past tense, The dreary Fuimus of all things human, Must be declined, while Life's thin thread's spun out Between the gaping ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... was at once a Jew and a minnesinger. Who can fathom a poet's soul? Who can follow his thoughts as they fly hither and thither, like the thread in a weaver's shuttle, fashioning themselves into a golden web? The minnesingers enlisted in love's cause, yet none the less in war and the defense of truth, and for the last Suesskind von Trimberg did valiant service. The poems of his ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... Museum at South Kensington is a curious little piece of machinery—a metal cylinder mounted on a long axle, which has at one end a screw thread chased along it. The screw end rotates in a socket with a thread of equal pitch cut in it. To the other end is attached a handle. On an upright near the cylinder is mounted a sort of drum. The membrane of the drum carries a needle, which, ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... the dishes, he cut two gee-pole spruce, trimmed them, and stuck one on each side of the hole. He got some thin thread he used to tie beaver snares and wove it back and forth between the poles, rigging a tin can alarm. It seemed likely someone or something had put the hole there, it had not just happened. If anything came through, Ed wanted to know about it. Just to make extra sure, he got ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams
... to a seamen's outfitting place, and he spent a good part of his two hundred buying needful things for me ... shirts of strong material ... heavy underwear ... oilskins ... boots ... strong thread and needles ... and a dunnage bag to pack ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... as before, she seemed strangely small and clinging in his arms. And this night he felt his passion drawn from him as if a long, live nerve were drawn out from his body, a long live thread of electric fire, a long, living nerve finely extracted from him, from the very roots of his soul. A long fine discharge of pure, bluish fire, from the core of his soul. It was an excruciating, but also an intensely ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... words in the light of all that has gone after, and to us they are familiar and almost thread-bare. But if we would appreciate their sublimity, we must think away nineteen centuries, and all Christendom, and recall these eleven poor men and their peasant Leader in the upper room. They were not very wise, nor very strong, and outside ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... see that it could be made to do for the action? Is it like a frame for a picture adapted to give the theme remoteness? Is this appropriate? Is it otherwise a mere cause for confusion? Or is it intended to add one more thread of amusement? Why does Shakespeare in "The Shrew" drop the tinker interregnum dialogue recurring regularly in "A Shrew?" May Shakespeare, therefore, be cited as finding only a limited use for "the Play outside the Play," deeming it in the way later? How has he arranged ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... in the palatial Fifth Avenue mansion of Sylvia's father, in celebration of her return home—a ball whose invitation list was precisely coincident, even down to the detective, with the persons who had appeared in the first two acts. One minute before the last curtain, Dick and Sylvia manage to thread their way out of the tangle of scandal and misconception, and satisfy each other as to the disinterested quality of their mutual adoration, falling into each other's arms just as the curtain ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... bow, quoad sacra, to the penniless Bhut, or "regular" Brahmin, who, refusing to contaminate his sanctity by doing any kind of work, ate of the temple, or lived by royal bounty or private charity, and by the free breakfasts without which a marriage, "thread ceremony" or funeral in a gentleman's house could not be respectably celebrated. Idleness and sanctity are a powerful combination, and it is written in the shastras that every day in which a holy man does no work for his bread, but lives by begging, ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... peaches. The following recipe applies to all but the peaches. Select green or half grown melons and large green cucumbers, tomatoes, or peppers. Remove a narrow piece the length of the fruit, and attach it at one end by a needle and white thread, after the seeds of the mango have been carefully taken out. Throw the mangoes into a brine of salt and cold water strong enough to bear up an egg, and let them remain in it three days and nights, then throw them into fresh cold water for twenty-four hours. If grape leaves ...
— Vaughan's Vegetable Cook Book (4th edition) - How to Cook and Use Rarer Vegetables and Herbs • Anonymous
... find my son's old comrade thus profitably occupied. I know what study is myself. But beware of prosecuting it too excitedly! Come! you must not be offended at our interruption; you will soon take up the thread again. Besides, you know, you must get accustomed to the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "callings," and T.O. had sat by, a wistful little listener and admirer. For T.O. had no talent, and who would call selling handkerchiefs from morning till night a "calling"? Even sheer, fine handkerchiefs, warranted every thread linen! ...
— Four Girls and a Compact • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... But the thread had to be broken again. Five days after Solomin's return home there drove into the courtyard a smart little phaeton, harnessed to four splendid horses and a footman in pale green livery, whom Pavel conducted to the little wing, where he solemnly handed Solomin a letter sealed with an armorial ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... the four sides sat as many matrons and elderly maidens as could crowd together, each with needle in hand. Long cords rubbed with chalk were snapped upon the surface of the quilt to mark out the lines to be stitched; wax, thread, and scissors were passed from one to another; and every woman began to sew and to talk as fast ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... me, and ere she had lived with us many months told me her whole history. Poor girl, without beauty, without mental attractions, of an humble station, and slender abilities, her life-woof had in it the glittering thread of romance—humble romance, but romance still it was. Lizzie's father was a farmer, owning a small farm in the part of the country where my Aunt Lina resided. His first wife, Lizzie's mother, was an heiress according to her station, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... with the finger, and through the midst of it a ragged dart. Carlo Formaggia had been there! He knew that mark! And then the whole truth blazed before him like a sheet of fire. He fell forward on his face. The thin thread of scarlet from Marco Zoppa's gaping throat crawled drop by drop ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... fair daughters of the house came down and made him, each of them, a present which they had worked during his illness; one was two pretty and delicate bracelets, made of beautiful tresses of gold and silver thread, so neatly that it was a marvel; the other was a purse of crimson satin, worked right cunningly. Greatly did he thank them, saying that the present came from hand so fair, that he valued it at ten thousand crowns; and, in order to do them the more ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... ascending under his guidance and anon he is away over the floe tracking the silk thread which held it. Such a task completed, he is away to exercise his pony, and later out again with the dogs, the last typically self-suggested, because for the moment there is no one else to care for these animals.... He is for the open air, seemingly incapable of ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... application; a piece of proverbial wisdom that may be quoted in a good many sets of circumstance, and which will almost bear on its face the evidence of its truth. But with a Sutra the case is different. It comes from the same root as the word "sew," and means, indeed, a thread, suggesting, therefore, a close knit, consecutive chain of argument. Not only has each Sutra a definite place in the system, but further, taken out of this place, it will be almost meaningless, and will by no means be self-evident. So I have thought best to adhere to the ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... glacier's grey today for you Rose-garlanded? The brooklet seeks you, wind, cloud, with longing thread And thrust themselves yet higher to the blue, To spy for ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... train of Edward's ally, the Count de Bearn, by singing a Provencal love ditty; while a merchant of Bristol set up a counter attempt with a long doleful English ballad. All the time the fair spinster sat in the doorway, with the utmost gravity, twisting her thread and twirling her spindle; but it might be observed that she had so placed herself as to have full command of the door, and to be able to shut herself in whenever ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his bag a thread of silk, and gave a cast of it up into the air, that it was made fast to a cloud. And then he took a hare out of the same bag, and it ran up the thread; and then took out a little dog and laid it on after the hare, and it followed yelping on its track; and after that again he brought out a little ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... under the grass, in hot coals under the ashes, and which would gladly caress a viper, believing it to be only a snake. Open your eyes! That woman does not belong to the class of which she seems to be; her thumb has never been flattened on the thread of the spindle, and that little hand, softened by essences and pomades, has never worked. Her poverty is ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... sleep. And it was already the hour of Tierce. And going in alone to the children to weep over them, he found them at play in the bed; only, in the place of the sword-cuts about their throats was as it were a thread of crimson. And he took them in his arms and carried them to his wife and said, Rejoice greatly, for thy children whom I had slain by the commandment of the angel are alive, and by their blood is ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... and oppressive pleasure, too strange for the most part to be thoroughly enjoyed; but it will live in their memories for many a day, and as time goes on, will clear itself from the bewilderment, till it become one of the precious days that make gems on the thread of life. ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... happy abstraction. I tried not to look ahead, but only to live in the present, remembering that a war was on, and that there was desperate and dangerous business before me, and that my hopes hung on a slender thread. Yet for all that I had sometimes to let my fancies go free, and ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... elves, hither to me, Over the holme so green, over the lea, Over the corrie, and down by the lake, Cross ye the mountain-burn, thread ye the brake, Stop not at muirland, wide river, nor sea: Hasten, ye fairy ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... and stood for a moment on the stage watching the Betty thread her course back through the traffic. Mr. Gow seemed to handle her with perfect confidence, and relieved on this point we turned round and set ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... as it roars and eddies in its huge turbulency with France and Paris for a background. I am largely justified in this view of Balzac's work by his own catholic and comprehensive title—The Human Comedy—suggestive certainly of a sort of uniting thread running through the whole mass of his productions. I am also justified by his trick of introducing again and again the same personages; a device which I daresay is profoundly irritating to the modern artistic mind, but which is certainly most ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... and square as a die, Some one who's steadfast in joy or in sorrow, Some one who's dearer each day that goes by. Fortune is fickle and hope is deceiving, Comradeship ends and life changes all through, There's only one thread that runs all through the weaving, Fair to me, square ...
— Some One Like You • James W. Foley
... had been nothing more than boys. It was but a tangled skein of life that Motley's book showed us at twenty-five, and older men might well have doubted whether it would ever be wound off in any continuous thread. To repeat his own words, he had crowded together the materials for his work, but he had no pattern, and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... this crazy hut a thin thread of smoke would now and then rise into the air, for there were folk living far up in that empty, airy desert, and oftentimes wild, uncouth little children were seen playing on the edge of the dizzy height, ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... and saw Schomberg reclining on a kind of couch, from which he amused himself by sending from a tube little balls of earth through a gold ring, suspended from the ceiling by a silk thread, while a favorite dog brought him back the balls as ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... with a triumphant smile she forced the Englishwoman's small, delicate feet—hardened, it is true, by many hundreds of miles of rough travelling, but shapely still—into a little pair of embroidered silver slippers. Turkish slippers! glistening with silver thread and crystal beads, turned up at the pointed toes, and finished by two silver tufted tassels, that peeped out incongruously from under the straight folds of ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... reported it to the king. He ordered them to look for some long earthworms on the island, and when they found one they brought it to the king. He ordered the people to bring the worm to a fire, and bake it before it, so that it should be thirsty. Then he ordered a thread to be tied round the tail of the worm, and to let it loose. The worm crept away immediately, while thread wound off from the clew as the worm took it away; and the people followed the worm until it sought downwards in the earth. There the king ordered them to dig for water, which they ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... great variety of them, and they all were of the same curious character. Besides the bonnet-bush, there were plants loaded down with little pinafores, and shrubs with small shoes growing all over them, like peas, and delicate vines of thread with button-blossoms on them, and, what particularly pleased Dorothy, a row of pots marked "FROCK FLOWERS," and each containing a stalk with a crisp little frock growing on it, like a ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl
... where it was hatched, thinking of its wings and never flying. His experience was of that pitiable kind which shrinks from pity, and fears most of all that it should be known: it was that proud narrow sensitiveness which has not mass enough to spare for transformation into sympathy, and quivers thread-like in small currents of self-preoccupation or at best of an egoistic scrupulosity. And Mr. Casaubon had many scruples: he was capable of a severe self-restraint; he was resolute in being a man of honor according to the code; he would ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... present day an idea of the meaning of these things, it is almost useless to print them straight as they are in the MS. Even as I have written them out, inserting nothing whatever except the names of the speakers in a bracket, you will perhaps not catch much of the thread. You may remember that at Trinity even now it takes two people to say what is substantially the same ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... time, therefore, during all those long days, even before Guy returned to England. She knew his life hung by a slender thread, which Sir Gilbert Gildersleeve might cut short at any moment. But her anxiety was as nothing compared to Sir Gilbert's own. That unhappy man, a moral coward at heart, in spite of all his blustering, lay writhing in his own room now, very ill, ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... Messrs. Nalder Brothers. It is only a little over one-thousandth of an inch in diameter. Ordinary spun glass, a most beautiful material, is about one-thousandth of an inch in diameter, and this would appear to be an ideal torsion thread (Fig. 3). Owing to its fineness, its torsion would be extremely small, and the more so because glass is more easily deformed than metals. Owing to its very great strength, it can carry heavier loads than would be expected of it. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... be a slenderer, more insignificant thread,' she says, 'in human history, than this consciousness of a girl, busy with her small inferences of the way in which she could make her life pleasant? in a time too, when ideas were with fresh vigour making armies of themselves, and the ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... A thread from the distaff of Omphale may be stronger than the club of Hercules. Here is an inconstant Romeo escaped from his Juliet, and yet unable to shake off the magnetic spell which must haunt him to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... altars inlaid with gold and jewels,—like our Pala d'Oro that cometh not forth of our treasury save on days of festa; finest statues of ivory and silver; great carven columns wrought like our columns of Acre—but vaster and of that same fineness of workmanship: and such broideries of golden thread and great pearls for draperies and altar-cloths, as one may scarce dream of! And in their market-places, strewn with the spoils of the East are faces and voices of every clime and a very babel of tongues; more—far ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... young man! thy thread of life is broken, Human skill can bring no aid to thee. There thou hast my chain—a ghastly token— And this lock of thine I take with me. Soon must thou decay, Soon wilt thou be gray, Dark although ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... was generally to be found spinning at her muckle wheel, retiring and advancing to the music of its cheerful hum, the while her spun thread was rapidly coiled up on the spindle. The others, as they busied themselves in their household duties, or brightened up the delf and pewter, and set it out on the shelf to its best advantage, would join in some plaintive Scotch ballad, with such good taste ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... itself, and this was the reason why his conversation was peculiarly rich in words that are so evidently the inspiration of the moment; yet, in spite of such seeming freedom in the treatment of the subject, the final end was not lost sight of. Schiller always held with firmness the thread which was bound to lead thither, and, if the conversation was not interrupted by any mishap, he was not prone to bring it to a close until he had reached ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... was the other day relating several strange stories that he had picked up no body knows where, of a certain great man; and upon my staring at him, as one that was surprised to hear such things in the country, which had never been so much as whispered in the town, Will stopped short in the thread of his discourse, and after dinner asked my friend Sir ROGER in his ear if he was sure that I ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... and slip out of it. The top button caught fast in its buttonhole, the coat being new and its buttonholes being stiff. He gave a sharp tug at the rebellious cloth, and the button, which probably had been insecurely sewed on in the first place, came away from its thread fastenings and lodged in the fingers of his right hand. Mechanically he dropped it into a side pocket of the overcoat and a moment later, with the garment turned inside out so that only its silk lining showed, and held under his arm, he ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... fine As if invited out to dine. And then not knowing what to do, They looked their cedar closet through And found their gray coats growing thin: So sat them down some yarn to spin, Soon, through a chink to their surprise, A cat looked in with hungry eyes— "Shall I come in and cut your thread?" "Oh, thank you, no!" ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... is she who creates all the disturbance. If I get nearer to the wall she jams me up till I am as thin as a thread-paper. If I put her inside and stay outside, she cuts me out as you do a cask, by the chine, till I ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... heard that she had been superseded in the king's affections, and it was said she tried all available means to discover the whereabouts of the Fair Rosamond, but without success, until she contrived to fasten a thread of silk to one of the king's spurs, which she afterwards followed in the maze in the castle grounds to the point where it had broken off at the secret entrance. She waited for her opportunity, and when the king was away she had the trap-door forced open, and, taking a large ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... know it. "Everything will fall once, and the tailor directly." The robbers had placed him upon the cliff and demanded that if he would be liberated from them, his ransom should be that he should sew a suit of clothes up there; and he tried it; but at the first stitch, as he drew the thread out, he became giddy and fell down into the gushing water, and thus the rock got the name of 'The Tailor's Cliff.' One day the robbers caught a young girl, and she betrayed them, for she kindled a fire in the cavern. The smoke was seen, the caverns discovered, ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... first of all; it was, oh! to tread that sunlit grassy brink once more, and to watch the merry tadpoles swarm, and the green frog takes its header like a little man, and the water-rat swim to his hole among the roots of the willow, and the horse-leech thread his undulating way between the water-lily stems; and to dream fondly of the delightful, irrevocable past, on the very spot of all where I and ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... amount of proficiency in the Biological Sciences will be convertible into, even the most modest, bread and cheese. And I believe that the case is as bad, or perhaps worse, with other branches of Science. In this respect Britain, whose immense wealth and prosperity hang upon the thread of Applied Science, is far behind France, ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... and feathering them from the dead flamingo. As soon as my work was completed, the boys crowded round me, all begging to try the bow and arrows. I begged them to be patient, and asked my wife to supply me with a ball of thick strong thread. The enchanted bag did not fail us; the very ball I wanted appeared at her summons. This, my little ones declared, must be magic; but I explained to them, that prudence, foresight, and presence of mind in danger, such as their good mother had displayed, ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... and a rash drink, or perhaps a tainted fruit—who knew? Not he, who had not even strength left to grudge the evil thing its victory—just enough to know that there were many lying here with him, that he was sore with frenzied dreaming; just enough to watch that thread of river and be able to remember faintly ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... his friends and at once raises their souls to the seventh heaven, where they shall go about in peace, shielded by (literally, "covered with") the red war club of success, and never to be knocked about by the blows of the enemy. "Breaking the soul in two" is equivalent to snapping the thread of life, the soul being regarded as an intangible something having length, like a rod or a string. This formula, like others written down by the same shaman, contains several evident inconsistencies both as to grammar and mythology, due to the fact that A'wanita is extremely ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... that thin thread of a whisper surely didn't belong to him. He tried again and achieved a sort of croak. Something moved behind him and there was an answering rattle ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... minister suggested. And David's eyes shone with silent joy. With anxious deliberation he picked out an apple from the silver wire basket on the sideboard; and when they went into the study, he presented a thread to Mrs. Richie. ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... said Nancy Wentworth, with a twitch of her thread; "why don't we scrub the pews? There's nothing in the Orthodox creed to ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... took away. And so I ceased to wish for anybody, but learned to put on my clothes and tie my strings and button, and do what Aunt Lois told me. I can wipe cups and saucers and make my bed and sweep my room and weed in the garden, and sew, and spin a little, but I cannot make very even thread yet. And to knit—I have knit a pair of stockings, Patty. Aunt Lois said those I brought ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... another department assigned to him besides catching the fish; and one that took up more of his time: since the baiting of the hooks, and looking after them, required only his occasional attention. Spinning the thread by which the skins were to be sewed together, was a much more delicate operation: since in these both strength and fineness were absolutely necessary. But as Caspar had said, Ossaroo was an adept with the distaff; and several large skeins of ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... incision with the scalpel, a glance with a lens, and their secret is betrayed. The eyes are a mockery. Externally they are organs of vision—the front of the eye is perfect; behind, there is nothing but a mass of ruins. The optic nerve is a shrunken, atrophied and insensate thread. These animals have organs of vision, and yet they have no vision. They have eyes, but they ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... Some thread of association brought his little sister's open book and pointed finger on the sudden before Winthrop, and for a moment he ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... dawn he, with much care and trouble, removed the hinges from the door. The casing and bolts prevented his opening it wide, so he chipped away the woodwork, till at length he was able to slip through, taking with him his linen ropes, which he had wound on two pieces of wood like two great reels of thread. ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... lit a torch at a sepulchral lamp, Which shot a thread of light amid the gloom; And feebly burning 'gainst the rolling damp, I bore it through the ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... Jacques, mon pauvre ami, tu n'as pas de chance, hein?" There was no help for it; it was the only thing he had that rhymed. "Imagine la joie des petites polonaises internees!" she urged, taking the necessary action. "J'y mets mon pantalon," piped a disconsolate little thread of voice. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 23, 1917 • Various
... from the shop looking as stout and trim as you please, and half an hour after I've got to work they split up the fingers and thumbs like ripe horse-chestnut shells, and I find myself with five dangling rags round my wrist, and a rotten white thread draggling after me through the wood, or tickling my nose, as if Ariadne and Arachne had lost their wits together. I go home, invoking the universe against sewing-machines; and beg the charity of a sound stitch or two from any of the maids who know their ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... Shiffney. But she was resolved to see more of Miss Fleet at whatever cost. Recently she had been conscious of a tiny something, not much more than a thread, dividing her from her mother. Since her mother knew that she had made up her face on Claude Heath's account, she had often felt self-conscious at home. Knowing that, her mother, of course, knew more. If Charmian had told the truth she would not have minded the fact that it was known. ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... those amiable amphibians in the mere below—they carried my thought back to other frog-concerts, dimly remembered, in some other lands—and gazing through the green network of branches upon that sun-scorched garden, where now a silvery thread of water began to attract my attention as it ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... cunning; he can read The inside of the earth, and spell the stars; He knows the policies of foreign lands; Can string you names of districts, cities, towns, 320 The whole world over, tight as beads of dew Upon a gossamer thread; he sifts, he weighs; All things are put to question; he must live Knowing that he grows wiser every day Or else not live at all, and seeing too 325 Each little drop of wisdom as it falls Into the dimpling cistern of his heart: For this ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... Berlin (Wicomico County) High-School commencement: "By woman was Eden lost and man cursed. If you trust her, give up all hopes of heaven. She can not love, because she is too selfish. She may have a fancy, but that is fleeting. Her smiles are deceit; her vows are traced in sand. She is a thread of candor with a web of wiles. Her charity is hypocrisy; she is deception every way—hair, teeth, complexion, heart, tongue, and all. Oh, I hate you, ye ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... of importance on the list is sewing machines. In the tests I have been able to make on this class of work I have obtained some singular results. One item of importance is the fact that the single thread machines, which are lightest running, consume the most power in operating. Paradoxical as this may seem, it is easily explained. As a rule this class of machine is used on light work, such as shirts, ladies' underwear, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... sat and worked; for I did a good deal of needle-work now, although I had never been fond of it as a girl. The constant recurrence of similar motions of the fingers, one stitch just the same as another in countless repetition, varied only by the bother when the thread grew short and would slip out of the eye of the needle, and yet not short enough to be exchanged with still more bother for one too long, had been so wearisome to me in former days, that I spent half my pocket-money in getting the needle-work done ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... highly delighted. The hair, which had excited the admiration of the travellers, was made up in the shape of a hussar's helmet, and very ingeniously traced on the top. Irregular figures were likewise braided on each side of the head, and a band of worked thread, dyed in indigo, encircled it below the natural hair, which seemed, by its tightness and closeness, to have been glued fast to the skin. This young Jenna woman was by far the most interesting, both ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... reader has observed that he seemed to like dates already marked by prestige or good luck; thus he had convened Congress for July 4, and had ordered the general advance of the armies for February 22; it was an indication of the curious thread of superstition which ran through his strange nature,—a remnant of his youth and the mysterious influence of the wilderness. But worse than a superstitious postponement arrived before nightfall on Saturday. A dispatch from Lincoln to McClellan, dated ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... a regard for my scruples would have moved me to a tender and profound gratitude; but nobody understands Halicarnassus except myself. He is a dark lane, full of crooks and turns,—a labyrinth which nobody can thread without the clew. That clew I hold. I know him. I can walk right through him in the darkest night without any lantern. He is fully aware of it. He knows that it is utterly futile for him to attempt to deceive me, and yet, with the infatuation ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... Guy Darrell resumed the thread of solitary life at Fawley with a calm which was deeper in its gloom than it had been before. The experiment of return to the social world had failed. The resolutions which had induced the experiment were finally renounced. Five years nearer to death, and the last hope that ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of the beast. Afterwards you will replace all these intestinal things in the body of the flea, who will be anxious to get them back again. Being by this means baptised, the soul of the creature has become Catholic. Immediately you will get a needle and thread and sew up the belly of the flea with great care, with such regard and attention as is due to a fellow Christian; you will even pray for it—a kindness to which you will see it is sensible by its genuflections and the attentive glances which it will bestow upon you. In short, it will ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... to it, flushed and fitfully, to do something with his interests and bring them to some settlement. It procrastinates, disappoints, tries, tortures him; wears out his sanguine hopes and patience, thread by thread; but he still looks to it, and hankers after it, and finds his whole world treacherous and hollow. Well, well, well! ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... clothes-pins, and every other article used in washing; and in the same, or another, place, are kept every convenience for ironing. In the sewing department, a trunk, with suitable partitions, is provided, in which are placed, each in its proper place, white thread of all sizes, colored thread, yarns for mending, colored and black sewing-silks and twist, tapes and bobbins of all sizes, white and colored welting-cords, silk braids and cords, needles of all sizes, papers of pins, remnants of linen and colored cambric, a supply of ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... Mother Nicneven's," answered the maid; "and she is witch enough to rein the horned devil, with a red silk thread for a bridle, and a rowan-tree switch ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... the investment. The quilt would be such a precious reminder of Johnny's boyhood some day, when he had put away childish things. Every stitch would be dear to her, because of the little stubby fingers that worked so patiently to set them, despite the needle pricks and knotted thread. ...
— The Quilt that Jack Built; How He Won the Bicycle • Annie Fellows Johnston
... condensation will be necessary) will be indicated both by touching in the briefest manner the salient points and by the references in the margin; the latter, which I have endeavoured to give as exhaustively as possible, are brought out by italics in the text. The thread of the narrative then, so far as it can be extracted from the genuine writings of Justin, will be much as ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... I lost the thread for a moment. True. The Terran Empire has one small blind spot in otherwise sane policy, ignoring that nonhuman and human have lived placidly here for millennia: they placidly assumed that humans were everywhere the dominant race, ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... It is of the essence of the procedure of measurement that the yard measure remains unaltered as it is transferred from one position to another. Some objects can palpably alter as they move—for example, an elastic thread; but a yard measure does not alter if made of the proper material. What is this but a judgment of congruence applied to the train of successive positions of the yard measure? We know that it does not alter because we judge it to be congruent to itself in various positions. ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... me, vaguely, that such a "housewife" would be useful, in case my clothes got torn, so I stuffed it into my satchel with the other things. I saw that it contained a few small sail-needles (of the kind so excellent as egg-borers) as well as some of the strong fine sail-twine, each thread of which will support a weight of fifty pounds. I put the housewife into my store with a vague feeling of being rich in the world's goods, with such a little treasury of necessaries; I had really no thought of what that chance impulse was to ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... bankers, shopkeepers and workers are all strongly organized in gilds. It has cotton mills for spinning and weaving, besides many handlooms, and factories for ginning and pressing cotton. Other industries include the manufacture of gold and silver thread, silk brocades, pottery, paper and shoes. The prosperity of Ahmedabad, says a native proverb, hangs on three threads—silk, gold and cotton; and though its manufactures are on a smaller scale than formerly, they are still moderately flourishing. The military cantonment, 3 m. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... now, indeed, there is evidence that he was incommoded again, and that more pressingly. To this matter I will return in a moment, but I digress to put in a document which, rightly or wrongly, I believe to have a bearing on the thread of the story. ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... holding the rod as before. Then going through some small strange motions with it —whether indispensable to the magnetizing of the steel, or merely intended to augment the awe of the crew, is uncertain —he called for linen thread; and moving to the binnacle, slipped out the two reversed needles there, and horizontally suspended the sail-needle by its middle, over one of the compass-cards. At first, the steel went round and round, quivering and vibrating at either ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... the road. That was easy work, but when he turned off and began to thread his way up the fell-side by what was obviously no more than a sheep-track, Spargo's troubles began. It seemed to him that he was walking as in a nightmare; all that he saw was magnified and heightened; the darkening sky above; the faint outlines of the ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... uninteresting—on inspecting them at close quarters, they were seen to be not painted but embroidered in colored silks. There hung a melon, the outside of the fruit represented by yellow, green, and brown satin, the stalk by gold thread, the little cracks and roughnesses by gray silk applique, the whole thing fearful and absurd in its exuberance. And wherever one went or stood, sat down or laid one's hand, there wandered a huge wreath of flowers in ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... the Cape of Terracina. But their attention was arrested by an object which was much nearer than this. Through that gray Campagna,—whose gray hue, the result of waste and barrenness, seemed also to mark its hoary age,—through this there ran a silver thread, with many a winding to and fro, now coming full into view, and gleaming in the sun, now retreating, till it ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... planets and clustering constellations that gradually burst into beauty, or gathered into light. At length, somewhat exhausted, he descended into the vale. The scanty rill of Siloah[45] looked like a thread of silver winding in the moonlight. Some houseless wretches were slumbering under the arch of its fountain. Several isolated tombs of considerable size[46] rose at the base of Olivet, and the largest of these Alroy entered. Proceeding through a narrow passage, he entered a small square ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... removed easily from the finger, take a string or thread and draw one end through between the ring and the flesh. Coil the other end of the string around the finger covering the part from the ring to and over the finger joint. Uncoil the string by taking the end placed through the ring and at ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... their gains and losses at the Corne d'Abondance. The Chevalier, who straggled in last, alone caught the impressive tableau at the other end of the salon; the two Jesuits and the Indian, their faces en silhouette, a thread of reflected fire following the line of their profiles, and the white head of the marquis. When the young priest turned and the light from the chandelier fell full upon his face, the Chevalier started. So did Brother Jacques, though he quickly assumed a disquieting calm as he returned ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... pangs repentant bid thee wake to weep, But halcyon peace protects thy downy sleep, And sanguine Hope, through every storm of life, Shoots her bright beams, and calms the internal strife. Yet e'en round childhood's heart, a thoughtless shrine, Affection's little thread will ever twine; And though but frail may seem each tender tie, The soul foregoes them but with many a sigh. Thus, when the long expected moment came, When forced to leave the gentle-hearted dame, Reluctant throbbings rose within my breast, ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... herself near Sulla who was very handsome and of good family; she was a daughter of Messala, and sister of the orator Hortensius: her name was Valeria,[297] and she had lately separated from her husband. This woman, going behind Sulla, placed her hand upon him, and pulling a thread out of his dress, returned to her place. As Sulla looked on her with some surprise, she said, No mischief, Imperator;[298] I also wish to have a bit of your good fortune. Sulla was not displeased at her words, and it was soon plain that he had conceived a passion for the woman; for he privately ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... girls. A mission school for the daughters of the Dakota tribes is most interestingly described. The strange ideas and beliefs of these wild people are woven into the thread of the story, which tells how a little white girl was brought up as an Indian child, educated at a mission school, and was ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... branch of a tree from which the nest will hang, the birds proceed to collect material. Each completed nest contains many yards of fibre not much thicker than stout thread. Such material is not found in quantity in nature. The bayas have, therefore, to manufacture it. This is easily done. The building weaver-bird betakes itself to a clump of elephant-grass, and, perching on one of the blades, makes ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... abstraction of thought, scarcely distinguished from the silence; the fragrant herbs; and the unnumbered and nameless flowers which formed my couch,—were all calculated to make me pursue uninterruptedly the thread of contemplation which I had, in the less voluptuous and harsher solitude of the closet, first woven from the web of austerest thought. I say pursue, for it was too luxurious and sensual a retirement for the conception of a rigid and severe train of reflection; ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... slipping along a thread. Isabelle did not formulate any plan of bedevilment for the Captain, but she watched for ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... very brilliant collection of literature. There was an old Greek Testament and the Eton Latin Grammar; a French pamphlet on the cavalry sword-exercise; an odd volume of Tom Jones with one half of its stiff leather cover hanging to it by a thread; Byron's Don Juan, printed in a murderous type, which must have been invented for the special advantage of oculists and opticians; and a fat book in a faded ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... convenience, since this is to be no sociological screed, I shall frame together the different events into a comprehensive story. For there is a certain thread of continuity and happening that runs through all the dreams. There is my friendship with Lop-Ear, for instance. Also, there is the enmity of Red-Eye, and the love of the Swift One. Taking it all in all, a fairly coherent and interesting story I ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... he said. 'The God of day is the father of poetry, medicine, music: our best friend. See him there! My Jenny will spin a thread from us to him over the millions of miles, with one touch of the chords, as quick as he shoots a beam on us. Ay! on her wretched tinkler called a piano, which tries at the whole orchestra and murders every instrument in the attempt. But it's convenient, like our modern civilization—a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... had graves that covered more of glory Than ever taxed the lips of ancient story; And in our dream we wove the thread Of principles for which had bled And suffered long our own immortal dead, In the ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... confidence, there is no reason why he should not attempt stitching a wound, providing the patient is willing, and a surgeon cannot be obtained within twenty-four hours. In this case a rather stout, common sewing needle or needles are threaded with black or white thread, preferably of silk, and, together with a pair of scissors and a clean towel, are boiled in the same utensil with the cotton and the nail brush. After the operator has scrubbed his hands and cleansed the wound, he places the ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... torches in his hand, and was lowered into the shaft by a rope. Next came my turn, and down I went, hanging to the cord like a spider to its thread, and the hole was very deep. At length I found myself standing by the side of Guatemoc at the foot of the shaft, round which, as I saw by the light of the torch he carried, an edging of dried bricks was built up to the height of a man above our heads. Resting on this ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... so far into the future, we may illustrate the course which thought has hitherto run by likening it to a web woven of three different threads—the black thread of magic, the red thread of religion, and the white thread of science, if under science we may include those simple truths, drawn from observation of nature, of which men in all ages have possessed a store. Could ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... absorbing, but we can all sit hard on him and perhaps put him in his place," responded Letitia Cockrell, as she drew a fine thread through a ruffle she was making to adorn some part of the person of one of Nell's progeny. "I do not believe in ever allowing a man to take more than his share of ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the Dame's great arm-chair. She was slowly, with dim eyes, threading a needle for the tiny maiden standing before her, clutching in her hot little hand the unhemmed duster on which she was to learn to sew. The thread approached the needle's eye; it was nearly in, when the arm-chair gave a very little shake, apparently of its own accord; the old lady missed her aim, and the needle and the thread were as far apart as ever, while the small imp sitting quiet at her ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... amid brown tresses there gleamed a silvery thread, Life pages, past and present I wonderingly then read. I saw a blithsome maiden, a child serenely fair, A woman heavey laden now lifts her first ...
— Poems - A Message of Hope • Mary Alice Walton
... left of it but some charred wood, the place was still home to them. As Fetuao moved forlornly about, picking up a few trifles that had been dropped or thrown away by the invaders—a comb, a spool of thread, a flatiron, a book or two with the covers scorched off—she lifted up a grimy rag and tossed it, with a little gesture of disdain, at her husband's feet. He spread it out and saw that it was the consul's flag, the flag he had flown above his house with such confidence ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... What a maze Of complication and entanglement! Each thread combining with the other threads Fulfills its office in the labyrinth; Each link concatenates the other links Which constitute the vast and endless chain Of human life, and human destiny,— The strange phantasmagoria ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... little from the straight line of advance. In such a play, even the old institution of the "underplot" is not inadmissible; though the underplot ought scarcely to be a "plot," but only some very slight thread of interest, involving no strain on the attention.[2] It may almost be called an established practice, on the English stage, to let the dalliance of a pair of boy-and-girl lovers relieve the main interest of a more or less serious comedy; and there ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... wild and rugged mountains, far from the world's great life, humble and homely, it was still the only place on earth where the orphaned lad had felt that he had any natural right to be. And now, even this slender thread had been rudely severed by ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... child-actor of Queen Elizabeth's time, little Salathiel Pavy, who constantly played the part of an old man. The verses relate that he acted the part so naturally that the fates mistook him for an old man and cut off his thread of life in his tender years. Now you, Elsie dear, concerned with make-believe—fiction—as you will constantly be in your study for the stage, eager, of course, to use every moment and occasion, with one subject dominating your thoughts, will need ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... always carried in his pocket; it was Arthur's present, bought with his pocket-money when he was a fair-haired lad of eleven, and when he had profited so well by Adam's lessons in carpentering and turning as to embarrass every female in the house with gifts of superfluous thread-reels and round boxes. Adam had quite a pride in the little squire in those early days, and the feeling had only become slightly modified as the fair-haired lad had grown into the whiskered young man. Adam, I confess, was very susceptible to the influence ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... songs that wove (As they burnish'd hunting blade and rifle) A golden thread with a cobweb trifle— Loud of the chase, ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... said with a scowl, "and when I'm old enough to do as I please, I'll never touch a needle and thread." ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley
... a worm wheel the cuts must be taken in a sloping direction, the slope and pitch depending on the slope and pitch of the worm thread, which, though more difficult, may also be cut with ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... connected by a maze of passages into which it was difficult to find entrance; and the Cretan, built by Daedalus, at the instance of Minos, to imprison the Minotaur, out of which one who entered could not find his way out again unless by means of a skein of thread. It was by means of this, provided him by ARIADNE, PERSEUS (q. v.) found his way out after slaying the MINOTAUR ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... answered, "in the first place, there is not a thread of evidence to connect you or me with any one of these places, or with Huntley's office. In the second place, I am not letting Lois slip out of my fingers. She will be of age in three weeks' time, and on her birthday ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... saw too truly, that that pale visitant from the spirit land, that comes to us but once, was dealing with his child. The mother and grandmother, who had watched over her so unweariedly, soon reached the bed; but the brittle thread of life was snapped, and the pure spirit had passed away, with the pale messenger, to the spirit land. There were no loud lamentations. The mother pressed her cheeks between ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... mouth, great care is required by reason of the wind cutting down the creeks and gullies with practically no warning. What a halo of tragedy lies over the dreaded Manacles! and what wonderful escapes some fortunate vessels have had. The author once saw a schooner of five hundred tons thread the narrow channels of the needle-pointed rocks in safety, but the feat was regarded by his companion, an old sailor of Falmouth, as little short of a miracle. As a matter of fact captains who get their ships among the Manacles are so anxious ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... Now Clytie's reveries at that moment were pleasant, if the brightness of her eyes and the freshened color on her cheeks were any sign, and, as she had not seen the master since then, she naturally expected to take up the thread of romance where it had been dropped. But it required all her feminine tact to conceal her embarrassment at his ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... one's tongue—for how many years has this venerable war-god blinked in the noonday sun!" "Crowds gathered about the newspaper bulletins, recalling the feverish scenes that occurred when the President's life was thought to be hanging by a thread. 'Wouldn't it be too bad,' said one, 'if, after all—no, I won't allow myself to think of it.'" "Was there ever—but I scorn to boast." "You are—no, I'll not ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... spool-thread and tape in a dry- goods store at Ogdensburg, on the St. Lawrence River, State of New York. He Rallied Round the Flag, Boys, and HAILED Columbia every time she passed that way. One day a regiment returning from the war Came Marching Along, ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... and speak comfort to that grief Which they themselves not feel; but tasting it, Their counsel turns to passion, which before Would give preceptial medicine to rage, Fetter strong madness in a silken thread, Charm ache with air, and agony with words: No, no; 'tis all men's office to speak patience To those that wring under the load of sorrow; But no man's virtue, nor sufficiency, To be so moral, when he shall ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... occupation. And as she picked she prayed to the fir-branch that she might never be lazy, but always quick and active at work. During her seclusion, too, she had to make miniatures of all the articles that Indian women make, or used to make, such as baskets, mats, ropes, and thread. This she did in order that afterwards she might be able to make the real things properly. Four large fir-branches also were placed in front of the hut, so that when she went out or in, she had to step over them. The branches were renewed every morning and the old ones thrown away into the ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... little lady, whom I have the pleasure of seeing for the fiftieth time, since I see you passing every morning, noon and evening—precisely. Immured in my apartment for political reasons, I am reduced to this species of amusement; and this hook attached to this thread contained a grain of wheat. It floated far up, and some cormorant devoured it; then the wind ceasing, it had the misfortune to strike ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... meaning of the wolf at the door. "All we've got left is this house—this house and—and—our hands," thought Ellen. She saw before her her father's poor, worn hands, her mother's thin, tired hands, jerking the thread in and out of those shameful wrappers; then she looked at her own, as yet untouched by toil, as white and small and fair as flowers. She thought of the four years before her at college, four years before she could earn anything—and in the mean time? She looked at the pile of her ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... it, too, knew that the merest thread of courage and self-respect kept them apart. His arms strained at his sides. Forcing his voice to an impersonal, level tone, he ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
Copyright © 2025 Diccionario ingles.com
|
|
|
