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More "Yarn" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to lie so outrageously in this yarn. My hero has killed more Indians on one war-trail than I have killed in all my life. But I understand this is what is expected in border tales. If you think the revolver and bowie-knife are used too freely, you may cut out a fatal shot or stab wherever you deem ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... vengefully; and one desperate accident after another, racking a crew overwhelmed with fever, almost persuades the captain to share the mate's illusion that 8 deg. 20'—The Shadow Line (DENT)—is possessed by the dead scoundrel. I found the book less interesting as a yarn than as an example of the astonishingly conscious and perfect artistry of this really great master of the ways of men and words. Mr. CONRAD never made me believe that the new captain would go so near sharing his mate's superstitious panic (which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... hanged for a yarn!" said the young Cantab. "You can drop out if you like, Fawcett, but I'll see this thing through, if I have to do it alone. I don't hedge a penny. I like the cut of him a great deal better than I liked ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... not revolve; the conveyers were still; the dam site wore an air of abandonment. In headquarters the engineers worked over tracings or notes; and in the commissary store the half-dozen white foremen gathered to smoke and yarn. That was the extent of ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... word for her. Understand? And the first thing tomorrow mornin' I want you to get out an' nail that lie that Donna Corblay kissed the feller that saved her from them tramps last night. It's a lie, Mrs. Pennycook. I was there, an' I know. I ordered O'Rourke out o' town for circulatin' that yarn. Suppose this town knew your twin brother was a murderer an' a highwayman? Would they keep ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... permitted, there was a halt about noon, of an hour or so, to rest the men and give them a chance to cool off and get the sand and gravel out of their shoes. This time was spent by some in absolute repose; but the lively boys told many a yarn, cracked many a joke, and sung many a song between "Halt" and "Column forward!" Some took the opportunity, if water was near, to bathe their feet, hands, and face, and nothing ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... one another. Master Andres and the journeyman were silent. You might as well quarrel with the sewing-machine because it purred. Jeppe was allowed to spin his yarn alone. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... and as she turned to limp down the passage, her ball of gray yarn slipped from her grasp and rolled after her until Corinna recovered it. In silence the cripple led the way, and in silence they followed her, until she opened the closed door at the end of the hall, and they entered the room, ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... all happiness without sorrow, all pleasure without pain, were not life at all—at least not human life. Take the lot of the happiest—it is a tangled yarn. It is made up of sorrows and joys; and the joys are all the sweeter because of the sorrows; bereavements and blessings, one following another, making us sad and blessed by turns. Even death itself makes life more loving; ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... Now last night when you told us that amazing yarn of yours, you said something about a mountain full of gold, and houses full of gold, among your people. Jeekie, do you think——" and ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... out I ain't done with him yet," growled Archie, and rising from his seat, he took down his gun and began polishing the barrel with an old yarn stocking ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... us wanted to. Dresses was made wid full skirts gathered on to tight fittin' waisties. Winter clothes was good and warm; dresses made of yarn cloth made up jus' lak dem summertime clothes, and petticoats and draw's made out of osnaburg. Chillun what was big enough done de spinnin' and Aunt Betsey and Aunt Tinny, dey wove most evvy night 'til dey rung de bell at 10:00 ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... lad; I am expectin' another member for our crew any time now, and it's no use spinnin' the same yarn twice." ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... Although by no means a large erection, it formed one of the most striking objects in the city, and a more beautiful piece of Gothic architecture it would be difficult to imagine. It was formerly called the Yarn Market, and was said to have been erected about the year 1378 by Sir Lawrence de St. Martin as a penance for some breach of ecclesiastical law. It consisted of six arches forming an open hexagon, supported by six columns on heavy foundations, with a central pillar square at the bottom ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... you in England call a mail is to leave camp this evening; so, that you may have no excuse for not writing to me constantly, I am sitting down to spin you such a yarn as I can under the disadvantages circumstances in which ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... "but might I inquire who is going to look after my wife and the kid if that New London congregation should tumble to the joke? No, sir. Mr. Crane, permit me to inform you, is a fearless and experienced yachtsman; every hair in his head, nautically speaking, is a rope yarn. He is, as well, a good actor, and New London is a yachting port. Not on your life! Billy Crane is too well known here, so in justice to my physical welfare I must decline the honor ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... yarn from circulation. Kennedy's interest in detective work waned after his interview with Walton. He was quite sure that Walton had been one of the band, but it was not his business to find out; even had ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... light his pipe, and I noticed that his face was grave. He was not telling us this yarn ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... next to them, after our pleasant chamber in the Schopper-house, with its warm, green-tiled stove, with the figures of the Apostles, and the corner window where I had spun so many a hank of fine yarn, and which was so especially mine own—although I was ever ready and glad to yield my right to it, when Herdegen required it to sit in and make love ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... assumed the hairy hands of Esau. He compelled us to believe him by describing with elaborate detail the setting of his story. And, having once got us in the mood of belief, he proceeded to spin a yarn that as often as not was as unlike life as A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur. His characters are inventions, not portraits. Even the dialects they speak—dialects which used to be enthusiastically spoken of as ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... besides all this, his wife bestowed on Helen lovely gifts; a golden distaff did she give, and a silver basket with wheels beneath, and the rims thereof were finished with gold. This it was that the handmaid Phylo bare and set beside her, filled with dressed yarn, and across it was laid a distaff charged with wool of violet blue. So Helen sat her down in the chair, and beneath was a ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... nor confirm the legend. "I dunno what people you! I bin tell-straight my yarn go one time like wind to Medina. What more you want? I dunno what kind people you!" One mystery at a time is ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... upon this head, But must, before I go to bed. Your idle precepts mocking, Get out my needle and my yarn And, caring not a single darn. Just ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... the yarn and needles and I straightway proceeded to master another of the domestic sciences. I was soon able to turn the seam, and knit plain; but was forced to stop very often to admire my own handicraft. However, I got on so readily that she ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... de spinners operate wid deir foots, settin' by de wheel and workin' it wid deir foots, sorta lak a sewing machine is run. Her 'low de thread dat come to her in de weave-room from dis kind of spinnin' was smoother and more finer than de other kind. After de yarn was spin, it was reeled off de spools into hanks and then took to de warper. Then she woofed it, warped it, and loomed it into cloth. Her make four yards ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... open the locker, in the hope of finding them something that might be serviceable to us; but its entire contents consisted of a coil of fine rope, some pieces of rope-yarn, an empty quart-bottle, and an old ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... a Xenophon to spin much of a yarn about my retreating army. We had to pull the enemy up twice in the next two miles when he became a bit pressing, by exchanging shots with him, but it was a fairly monotonous affair—hard breathing chiefly—until we got near the place where the hills run in towards the river and pinch the valley ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... hadn't thought she was such a little idiot, and he was sorry—so there! This touched Lucy's heart, and she felt more than ever that she had not laid out her tuppence to the best advantage. She tried to warn Harry of what was to happen in the morning, but he only said, 'Don't yarn; Billson Minor's coming for cricket. You can field if you like.' Lucy didn't like, but it seemed the only thing she could do to show that she accepted in a proper spirit her brother's apology about the planting out. So she ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... a habit of knitting the day's events in with her yarn. What she had done and said and heard were all thought over again to the rhythmic click of her needles. And the results at the end of the evening were usually a finished comforter and a comfortable feeling. This night, however, ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... beings to pine for clean air and the open road. It's the wanderlust that's in all of us, old and young alike. It's possible that the young lady who ran off with your bonds felt the spring madness and determined to hit the trail as the girl did in that yarn. Finding herself possessed of a lot of bonds belonging to a stranger, I dare say she is badly frightened. Put yourself in that girl's place, Deering—imagine her feelings, landing somewhere after a hurried journey, opening her suitcase to chalk her nose, ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... but painted or yarn mouths, the ailments of Raggedy Andy, Raggedy Ann, Uncle Clem and Henny, the Dutch doll, mostly consisted of sprained wrists, arms and legs, or perhaps ...
— Raggedy Andy Stories • Johnny Gruelle
... suppose if you could hear yourself speak you would say, 'I never knew that my voice sounded like that.' And I am quite sure that many of you, if the curtain could be drawn aside which is largely woven out of the black yarn of your own evil thoughts, and you could see yourselves as in a mirror, you would say, 'I had no notion that I looked like that.' 'There is that maketh himself rich, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... established these mills, which are now justly famous in the county, the natural result has happened and women have come here in considerable numbers. Women preponderate in spinning places, because the work of spinning yarn has always been in their hands from time immemorial. And they tend our modern machinery as deftly as of old they twirled the distaff and worked the spinning-wheel; and as steadily as they used to trudge the rope ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... hundreds of miles wide. But Page's steamers were not stopping for blizzards; they headed out of Duluth regardless of what was to come. And there were a bad few days, with tales of wreck on lake and railroad, days of wind and snow and bitter cold, and of risks run that supplied round-house and tug-office yarn spinners with stories that were not yet worn out. Down on the job the snow brought the work to a pause, but Bannon, within a half-hour, was out of bed and on the ground, and there was no question of changing shifts until, after twenty-four hours, the storm had passed, ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... "I've got three hundred dollars in a old yarn sock under one of them hearthstones and its yourn. ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... fall in the grass. In his joy over Nanny's deliverance he jumped the garden gate, whose hinges were of yarn, and cleverly caught his hat as it was leaving his head in protest. He then re-entered the mud house staidly. Pleasant was the change. Nanny's home was as a clock that had been run out, and is set going ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... alleged discovery, and made many enquiries of various people to find out if there was anything in it more than sensation such as is often got from some of the American papers. The result of my enquiries was very disappointing; most of those I interviewed considered it a yarn. I let the matter rest for some time and then decided to write a friend in St. Petersburg for particulars. Mrs. Calthorpe (nee Dunsmuir), wife of Captain Gough-Calthorpe, who was naval attache to the British ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... of aniline dyes may be detected by mixing a portion of the suspected sample with enough water to make a thin paste. Wet a piece of white wool cloth or yarn thoroughly with water and place it with the paste in an agate saucepan. Boil for ten minutes, stirring frequently. If a dye has been used the wool will be brightly colored; a brownish or pinkish color indicates the natural coloring matter of ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... promulgated on April 21, 1904, was received with general amazement, not diminished by an official gloss to the effect that it "applied only to raw cotton suitable for the manufacture of explosives, and not to yarn or tissues." It must be remembered that at the date mentioned, and for some months afterwards, Russia stoutly maintained that all the articles enumerated in her list of contraband of February 28, 1904, and in the additions to that list, were "absolutely" such; i.e. were confiscable ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... also was binding shoes, sitting on a stool before the scanty fire, rose quickly at her mother's command, went into the bedroom, and emerged with an old white yarn stocking hanging heavily from ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... than you know," put in Hawkins. "Wait until my yarn gets into print and I'll show you." He smiled broadly and put out his hand. "Then I want my rake-off, ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... hearer's nerves were in training. He waited, knowing that he should best get the whole by allowing the yarn to reel off unbroken; so now he only gave utterance to an ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... risen, and in 1776 the Andover records mention that a Miss Holt was paid eighteen shillings for spinning seventy-two skeins, and seven shillings eleven pence for weaving nineteen yards of cloth. Women generally could spin two skeins of linen yarn a day; but there is record of one, a Miss Eleanor Fry of East Greenwich, R.I., who spun seven skeins and one knot in one day,—an amount sufficient to make twelve large lawn handkerchiefs such as ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... marry thee, For a' the gear that ye can gi'e; Nor will I gang a step ajee, For a' the gowd in Gowrie. My father will gi'e me twa kye; My mother 's gaun some yarn to dye; I 'll get a gown just like the sky, Gif I 'll no gang ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... true," said De Foe, sadly. "But I didn't suppose he wanted that kind of information. I could have spun a better yarn than that of Munchausen's with my eyes shut. I supposed he wanted truth, and I ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... good for a rough life on the prairies, though I have no doubt it could be done in the settlements. Now I must go on with my work. If you and the others will come over to the hut this evening, I will go on with that yarn I was ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... the Captain, rising, after his yarn had proceeded for an indefinite length in this manner, "you and I must be goin'. I promised your ma you shouldn't be up late, and we have a long walk home,—besides it's time these little folks was ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... little hands were forward to help; some threw out flossy bits of cotton,—for which, we grieve to say, Charlie had cut a hole in the crib quilt,—and some threw out bits of thread and yarn, and Allie ravelled out a considerable piece from one of her garters, which she threw out as a contribution; and they exulted in seeing the skill with which the little builders wove everything in. "Little birds, little birds," they would say, "you shall ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... in evident disgust, "you been tellin' that yarn so many times you believes un yourself. Now, don't ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... of an oval case of sacking, filled with combustible matter, and attached to a culot of cast-iron. The whole is covered with a net of spun-yarn. Light-balls are used to light up our own works, and are not armed; fire-balls being employed to light up the works or approaches of an enemy, it is necessary to arm them with pistol-barrels, in order to prevent, any one ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... cold. A driver's ears are tipped with white. The bugler's nose is frozen on the windward side. Everyone with yarn mittens only is busy keeping fingers from freezing. Here it is good going for the long straight road is flanked by woods that protect road from drifts and traveller from icy blasts. This road ends in a half mile of drifts before a town ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... exchanged a rapid glance with the latter. "You must know, maman, that Pyotr Stepanovitch is the universal peacemaker; that's his part in life, his weakness, his hobby, and I particularly recommend him to you from that point of view. I can guess what a yarn he's been spinning. He's a great hand at spinning them; he has a perfect record-office in his head. He's such a realist, you know, that he can't tell a lie, and prefers truthfulness to effect... except, of course, in special cases when effect is more important than truth." ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... with a sort of grimace of resignation. "Fire away, old man, an' git through with yer yarn so Jackson kin come back. I wish this woman wouldn't take on so. Hit makes me orful oncomf't'ble, doggoned ef ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... thinking to snap it with the shears, fell into the ashes. The tailor cast the goose, and the goodwife the tow-cards; but it wouldn't do. The bannock ran away, and ran till it came to a wee house at the roadside; and in it runs and there was a weaver sitting at the loom, and the wife winding a clue of yarn. ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... those were now at Raf's fingertips. The blast bombs, sealed into their pexilod cases, guaranteed to stop all the attackers that Terran explorers had so far met on and off worlds, a coil of rope hardly thicker than a strand of knitting yarn but of inconceivable toughness and flexibility, an aid kit with endurance drugs and pep pills which could keep a man on his feet and going long after food and water failed. He had put them all ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... ain't believin' or disbelievin' the yarn. But I ain't believin' any such perambulatin' spirit for a bark-beetle. Especially when I finds wagon tracks leading to each place where the ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... good yarn, full of excitement. Thoroughly brisk in action, her stories are told in a virile and ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... once a devout man of the Children of Israel,[FN414] whose family span cotton-thread; and he used every day to sell the yarn and buy fresh cotton, and with the profit he laid in daily bread for his household. One morning he went out and sold the day's yarn as wont, when there met him one of his brethren, who complained to him of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... the hardest I ever served. Before I was enlisted, I had often heard it said that the Turks had no winter; but I had always thought that this was only a 'yarn,' though, indeed, it would be only a just judgment upon the unbelievers to lose the finest part of the whole year. But when I went down there I found it true, sure enough. Instead of a good, honest, cracking frost to freshen everything up, as ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... hitches, Fig. 23, especially useful for belaying, or making fast the end of a rope round its own standing part. The end may be lashed down or seized to the standing part with a piece of spun yarn; this adds to its security and ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... his distrust by suddenly drawing in his tentacles, upsetting his shell, and dropping to the bottom of the Lagoon, thus effectually cutting short any conversation. But this was only his way of protecting himself; after a time he grew bolder, and being a true sailor spun many a wonderful yarn ...
— How Sammy Went to Coral-Land • Emily Paret Atwater
... all due to that sneer of Elisha P. Bayne's. For while this was about as batty a business proposition as I ever had put up to me, this scheme of Millie's for hockin' her hubby, I'd got more or less int'rested in her yarn. And it struck me that a girl who'd done what she had wa'n't any quitter. Elisha puts on such a hard, cold sneer too; and comin' from this wise, foxy old near-plute who'd been playin' lead pipe cinches all his life, I expect, and never lettin' go of a nickel until he had a dime's worth of ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... the fresh, rosy, brown-eyed Hannah Lee, though her dress, from crown almost to toe, was drab, and somewhat faded at that. Her gray beaver hat was tied snugly under her chin, and her yarn stockings were gray. Her shoes had plain black buckles on them. But there were other little gray birds as well, and some Quaker damsels were in cloth ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... in bottles and side elevations of premature babies," surmised Killigrew; "you're a foul old thing! But we'll come and have a yarn over 'em anyway. I'm not in a hurry to face my revered parents and I daren't take this good little boy to some places you and I know of. I'm responsible ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... anything work prettier," Moore said with a grin as he put down his saddle on a boulder. "Ridley hadn't ought to be let out without a nurse. He swallowed my whole yarn—gobbled down bait, sinker an' line. Where's ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... the cause of a lot of trouble," he said, dispassionately. "In the Morayshire, I remember, we had once a passenger—an old gentleman—who was telling us a yarn about them old-time Greeks fighting for ten years about some woman. The Turks kidnapped her, or something. Anyway, they fought in Turkey; which I may well believe. Them Greeks and Turks were always fighting. My father was master's mate ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... knee is tied a necessary item of an Ojibwa's dress, a garter, which consists of a band of beads varying in different specimens from 2 to 4 inches in width, and from 18 to 20 inches in length, to each end of which strands of colored wool yarn, 2 feet long, are attached so as to admit of being passed around the leg and tied in a bow-knot in front. These garters are made by the women in such patterns as they may be able to design or elaborate. On Pl. XXIII are reproductions of parts of two patterns which are of more than ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... lord of Cowden Knowes is said by tradition to have had a way of putting his prisoners in barrels studded with iron nails, and rolling them down a brae. This is the side of the good old times which should not be overlooked. It may not be pleasant to find blue dye and wool yarn in Teviot, but it is more endurable than to have to encounter the bandit Barnskill, who hewed his bed of flint, Scott says, in Minto Crags. Still, the reading of the "Rivers of Scotland" leaves rather a sad impression on the reader, and makes him ask once more if there is no ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... up at the teller with a wink. "He can tell a good yarn," chuckled the policeman. "Shouldn't wonder if he ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... make a long yarn short, I joined Hunky and allowed him to lead, seein' that he understands the navigation ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... rolled up her knitting in a napkin, picked a few stray bits of yarn from her black dress, and stepped to the window. She looked out across the valley toward the Cleft to see if perchance the clouds would open enough to permit her a view of the Peak. Not once, but many times that day had she arisen from her work to search ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... But Bulger's yarn was intercepted. At that moment the boatswain piped, "All hands to quarters!" In a surprisingly short time all timber was cleared away, the galley fire was extinguished, the yards slung, the deck strewn with wet sand, and sails, booms, and boats liberally drenched with ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... in possessions. The mud-wooden Caesters and Chesters had become steepled, tile-roofed, compact towns. Sheffield had taken to the manufacture of Sheffield whittles. Worstead could from wool spin yarn, and knit or weave the same into stockings or breeches for men. England had property valuable to the auctioneer; but the accumulate manufacturing, commercial, economic skill which lay impalpably warehoused in English hands and heads, what auctioneer ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... went on, rising and lighting his pipe, "if you fellows like, I will spin you a yarn. I was telling one of you the other night about those three lions and how the lioness finished my unfortunate 'voorlooper,' Jim-Jim, the boy whom we buried in ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... a man spins us a yarn the conditions of its being interesting are tolerably simple. The first condition obviously is, that the plot must be a good one, and good in the sense that a representation in dumb-show must be sufficiently exciting, without the necessity of any explanation of motives. The novel of sentiment or ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... thet-thar yarn o' Seth Jones's," he said. "As I remember, Dan Hodges threw me—hard!" He grinned wryly at the recollection. "I don't see how I could have thrown ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... rose and laid aside her street garb. When she turned back again she still had in her hands the long knitting needles, the ball of yellowish yarn, the partially knitted garment, which of late had been so ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... called in the councils of their elders. So a name was printed by Santa Claus on a large red card and pinned upon each receptacle, FLOSSY or LAURA, while all were willing to accept of his bounties contained within, even if they did not recognize yarn or knitting as familiar. Matty hurried back with their treasures. She brought from her own room the large red tickets, already prepared, and then, on the floor by her mother's bedside, assorted the innumerable parcels, and filled ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... lodge War Eagle told a queer yarn. I shall modify it somewhat, but in our own sacred history there is a similar tale, well known ...
— Indian Why Stories • Frank Bird Linderman
... repeats that yarn to the Germans, it will allay all suspicion," Ralph said, when they were left alone. "Otherwise the sergeant might have taken it into his head to come to have a look at us and, although it would not very much matter that he should discover that the birds had flown, still it would have ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... thoughts. Baby seemed quite used to this mode of proceeding, for he put his thumb in his mouth (as if it were quite a thing of course), and seemed soon absorbed in his own reflections, while the mother seated herself, and taking out a long stocking of mixed blue and white yarn, ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... there's a yarn about a monkey what made the cat pull chestnuts out of the fire; and I'm jiggered if I'm ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... by setting her afloat, when she saved them the trouble, and at that moment jumped overboard, surrounded by flames; on which the birds vanished, the storm cleared away, and the tempest-tossed Tiger went peacefully on her course! Ever since the occurrence of this "astounding yarn," the birds have been called "Mother Carey's Chickens," and are considered by our sailors to be the most unlucky of all the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 547, May 19, 1832 • Various
... feud between Khalid's father and uncle shall now help to forward Khalid's love-affair. Indeed, the father of Najma, to spite his brother, opens to the banished nephew his door and blinks at the spooning which follows. And such an interminable yarn our Scribe spins out about it, that Khalid and Najma do seem the silliest lackadaisical spoonies under the sun. But what we have evolved from the narration might have for our readers some ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... machinery," you says. "I was brought up to it for a livin'," says you, "an' it's the only thing," you says, "as I've got to yearn my daily bread by the sweat of my brow by," you says. Lord! I've had as much as ninepence in a day out o' that yarn on the very road ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... inches in circumference. A slightly smaller ball is used in junior play; that is, for boys under sixteen. The best construction of baseballs is that in which there is a rubber center wound with woolen yarn, the outside covering being of white horsehide. Good balls cost from fifty cents to $1.50 each, but baseballs may be had at five ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... where they probably informed their companions of such an adventure and escape, as I believe had never happened before to American bees." Must one regard this as a fable? It is by no means as remarkable a yarn as one may find told by other naturalists of the same century. There is, for example, that undated letter of John Bartram's, in which he makes inquiries of his brother William concerning "Ye Wonderful Flower;" [Footnote: see "A Botanical Marvel," in The ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... connected with agriculture, commerce, and manufacture." Another contributor urged the necessity of protecting and cherishing the manufacture of everything—from a toothpick to a ship, from a needle to a cannon, a thread of yarn to a bale of cloth—unless we could exchange some commodity for them. "You spread too much canvas," was the reason reported to have been given an American by an Englishman for certain restrictive measures on ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... get what you want of Mercy, my dear. I put some runs of yarn in your trunk, dear nephew, you may give them with my love to sister Abigal, and tell her the wool is from white Kitty. She will remember the sheep. Give my love to brother Abiram ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... Instant, A Negro Boy called Bedford or Ducko, aged about Sixteen or Seventeen Years; SPEAKS VERY GOOD ENGLISH wears a dark brown colored Coat and Jacket, a Pair of white Fustian Breeches, a grey mill'd Cap with a red Border, a Pair of new Yarn Stockings, with a Pair of brown worsted under them, or in his Pockets. Whoever brings him to his said Master, or informs him of him so that he may be secured, shall be satisfied for their ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... Am I amusing you? No! Then I must go and find that funny little Pole and beseech him to tell us his best before breakfast story. Gad! He has some rippin' after dinner ones. He had us all roaring last night, and the funniest thing was to hear him spinning the same yarn in the local lingo, so that Nesimir and the other Serbs could share in the festivities. Prince Michael and Alec had the pull of me there, because they could laugh twice. By the way, Princess, Monsieur Poluski was well acquainted with your husband a good many years ago. They first ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... reading book was Webster's Speller. "When I got him through that," said Uncle Dennis, "I had only a copy of the Indiana Statutes. Then Abe got hold of a book. I can't rikkilect the name. It told a yarn about a feller, a nigger or suthin', that sailed a flatboat up to a rock, and the rock was magnetized and drawed all the nails out, and he got a duckin' or drowned or suthin',—I forget now. [It was the "Arabian Nights."] Abe would lay on the floor with a chair under his head and laugh over ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... sticks at a time; she missed the other plate at her tiny round table, the other chair beside her fire; she missed that dark, thin, sensitive face, with its rare and sweet smile; she wanted her story-teller, her yarn-winder, her protector, back again. Good gracious! to think of an old lady of forty-seven entertaining such sentiments for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... expected to concoct, and sent down his agent to the districts of Gweedore in Donegal and Maam in Galway, with instructions to engage as many families as possible to work in the mills of the firm, noted all over the world for thread, yarn, and linen-weaving. An enormous affair, employing a whole township. The agent was provided with a document emanating from the priest of the district into which they were invited to migrate, setting forth that no proselytism was intended, and that the migrants ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... which the smack was fitted up with concealments. The letters A and A indicate two portions of the deck planking, each portion being about a couple of feet long. These were movable, and fitted into their places with a piece of spun-yarn laid into the seams, and over this was laid some putty blackened on the top. At first sight they appeared to be part of the solid planking of the deck, but on obtaining a chisel they were easily removed. There was now revealed the entrance to a space on each side of the rudder-case ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... Randolph put a book of essays in his pocket and went round to spend an hour with Joseph Foster. Foster sat in his wheeled chair in his own room. He was knitting. The past year or two had brought knitting-needles into countenance for men, and he saw no reason why he should not put a few hanks of yarn into shape useful for himself. He might not have full command of his limbs nor of his eyes, but he did have full command of his fingers. He had begun to knit socks for his own use; and even a muffler, in the hope that on some occasion, during the ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... poor house there, and the boy she bore was named MARTIN LUTHER. Strange enough to reflect upon it. This poor Frau Luther, she had gone with her husband to make her small merchandisings; perhaps to sell the lock of yarn she had been spinning, to buy the small winter-necessaries for her narrow hut or household; in the whole world, that day, there was not a more entirely unimportant-looking pair of people than this Miner and his Wife. And yet what were all Emperors, Popes and Potentates, in comparison? There was ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... attacked the captain, and threw him, still alive, over the side to drown. Coyle was elected captain, and they sailed as pirates, in which capacity they were a disgrace to an ancient calling. After a visit to Minorca, which ended with ignominy, they sailed to Tunis, where Coyle told such a plausible yarn as to deceive the Governor into believing that he had been the master of a vessel lost in a storm off the coast of Sardinia. The pirates were supplied with money by the British Consul in Tunis; but Coyle, while in his cups, ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... cotton thread there was none, excepting, possibly, a little of very poor quality in small skeins. The small wheel that we see in the far corner of the garret—just like Marguerite's—was used for spinning the fine thread. A larger wheel was used to spin the tow into yarn for the coarse clothing for boys and negroes or for "filling" in the coarser linens. All the boys, and very often the men—perhaps even our M.C. himself—wore in summer trousers made of linen cloth, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... little laugh, though her brows contracted slightly, as if with pain. "Oh, yes, Mother dear!" she said; "Miss Graham has heard all about me, and knows what a very important person I am. But where is the yarn that I was to wind for you? I thought you wanted to begin weaving ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... regarded by a good many persons, competent to judge, as being the cleverest writer of English alive today. The story was beautifully done from the standpoint of composition; it bristled with flashing metaphors and whimsical phrasing. The scene of the yarn was supposed to be Chicago and naturally the principal figure in it was a millionaire. In one place the author has this person saying, "I reckon you'll feel pretty mean," and in another place, "I reckon I'm not ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... usually include a list of various sorts of thread suited to lace-making, varying from 60 francs to 1800 francs per pound. Instances have occurred, in which as much as 10,000 francs have been paid for a pound of this fine yarn. So high a price has never been attained by the best spun silk; though a pound of silk, in its raw condition, is incomparably more valuable than a pound of flax. In like manner, a pound of iron may, by dint of human labor ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... surmounted. One thing that is rather remarkable in this class of story, the hero gets himself and his companion out of every difficulty by his own ingenuity. The story moves along with interest and thrills in every paragraph, and is really my ideal of a "super-scientific" yarn; i.e., not stuffed with tiresome technical data. Let's have more from this interesting author.—C.E. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... W. Rider, &c., for 500 ton of hempe, which, because it is a secret, I have the trouble of writing over as well as drawing. Then home to dress myself, and so to the office, where another fray between Sir R. Ford and myself about his yarn, wherein I find the board to yield on my side, and was glad thereof, though troubled that the office should fall upon me of disobliging Sir Richard. At noon we all by invitation dined at the Dolphin with the Officers of ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... foodstuffs, petroleum and petroleum products, chemicals, transport equipment, iron and steel, machinery, textile yarn and fabrics, grains ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... would take me forty-eight hours to tell you all that," replied the representative of the Bellevite, taking out his watch. "If you will meet me here to-morrow night at sundown, I will make a beginning of the yarn, and I think I can finish it in two days. But really you must excuse me now; for I have to dine with the Chinese admiral at noon, and I must go ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... by being busie in her houskeeping, amongst her children and servants. Here you may behold her driving the maid forwards, and setting her a spinning, to keep the sleep out of her eys; and with this intent also that she may have the delight to get yarn enough ready towards Winter, to let a brave Web of Linnen be woven for the service of the Family. Yea, and here she shews you, that though before she was but a Bartholomew Baby, that she is now grown to be a brave houswife. And that, if need requires, she ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... said, showing Antonio. There he is cursing the mate. And there he is now, he added, the same fellow, pulling the skin with his fingers, some special knack evidently, and he laughing at a yarn. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... yet was a stowaway who did not invent a plausible yarn. Nevertheless, I believe, and Mr. Boyle agrees with me, that the man ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... a pink muslin dress, with a tiny white ruffle around her white throat. She was armed with four steely needles, which were so many bright arrows that pierced my heart through and through. Over her fingers glided a small blue thread, which proceeded from the ball of yarn I held in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Hervey hastily, and sat down on one of the hall chairs. "It's this way, since you won't let me skip until I tell you. This almighty aristocrat came to Pierside on the same afternoon as I cast anchor. While Bolton was on board, he looked in to have a yarn of sorts." ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... the falsehoods I propose to hear!" This rejoinder astounded his two listeners. "I see into this matter clear to the bottom. I am amazed that you should think such a silly yarn would deceive me for a moment." He had pressed one of the buttons. To the man who opened the door he said: "Tell Mr. Bradish that I want to see him here at once. He is in ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... going?" he groaned. "To one of the grandest houses in England! Oh, Lord! I ought to have told you. You 'll need all the clothes you have down here. And—and a valet and maid will unpack the bags—oh, hell!" After more of the same kind of talk, he began to cook up some yarn to ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown
... into trouble by monkeying with the accentuations of a buzz saw," he said, "I could see only one way out, and that was to put you into a position where even the disembodied spirit of Calumny itself could not pretend to believe old Napper Tandy's yarn. You know Tandy is fond of playing tricks, especially upon me, and as the president and controlling spirit of a rather strong bank, he has been able to give me a good deal of trouble now and then. A year ago Stafford and I decided that it might ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... rainy days in summer, the women of the field had to card the wool and spin it into yarn. They generally worked in pairs, a spinning wheel and cards being assigned to each pair, and while one carded the wool into rolls, the other spun it into yarn suitable for weaving into cloth, or a coarse, heavy thread used in making bridles and lines ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... another out—the more one writes, the more one recalls. These random jottings, however, will call up many more to the reader's memory. Such is my hope—that, having started you in a reminiscent frame of mind you will now carry on "spinning the yarn" yourself. ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... the board show that in this industry the actual manufacturing cost, aside from the question of the price of materials, is much higher in this country than it is abroad; that in the making of yarn and cloth the domestic woolen or worsted manufacturer has in general no advantage in the form of superior machinery or more efficient labor to offset the higher wages paid in this country The findings show that the cost of turning wool into yarn in this country is about double ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... 9s. 2 3/4d. from three little boys, being the produce of their Orphan-box; 2s. 6d. for Reports; and 1l. 10s., being the profit of the sale of ladies' baskets. Thus we were again supplied for yesterday and today. This evening were also sent, by order of an Irish sister, 33 1/2 lbs. of woollen yarn. Respecting this donation it is to be remarked, that last Saturday we had asked the Lord in our prayer-meeting, that He would be pleased to send us means to purchase worsted, in order that the boys might go on with ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Third Part • George Mueller
... know, maman, that Pyotr Stepanovitch is the universal peacemaker; that's his part in life, his weakness, his hobby, and I particularly recommend him to you from that point of view. I can guess what a yarn he's been spinning. He's a great hand at spinning them; he has a perfect record-office in his head. He's such a realist, you know, that he can't tell a lie, and prefers truthfulness to effect... except, of course, ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... me see. I think they had spices, that is, I'm not quite sure, for Captain Klister was there, and he got to 'reeling off a yarn,' as he said, about the mutiny at Benares in '57, when he was buying silks and shawls there, and I didn't notice just what was served, I was ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... part in an extended parley before the door was opened to him. He came to me on the bench a moment later, bearing a ball of scarlet yarn, a large crochet hook of bone, and something begun in the zephyr but as yet ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... the fact that it was worked by water power. Later, in 1779, Crompton invented the "mule," which was really a combination of the principles of both machines. This was a long step forward, and greatly facilitated the spinning of the raw material into yarn. The invention was, in fact, a revolution in itself. Like so many other great inventors, Crompton ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... figger any. Once you get goin' you won't find no trouble. It's dead easy after you're started. That's the way it is with passons. They jest get a holt of a notion, an' then—why, they jest yarn." ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... "That's the best yarn I've heard in a good many days; it's enough to make any one sleepy—so ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... Squaw, and, although he did not believe such a phenomenon possible, it appealed seductively to his love of the marvellous. Victor had turned over to sleep, but Nick was very wide awake and interested. He could not let such an opportunity slip. Victor was good at a yarn. And, besides, Victor knew more of the mountain-lore than any one else. So he roused the ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... mean condition, how rich soever he might be, worthy of a gentlewoman and seeing him moreover, for all his wealth, to be apt unto nothing of more moment than to lay a warp for a piece of motley or let weave a cloth or chaffer with a spinster anent her yarn, resolved on no wise to admit of his embraces, save in so far as she might not deny him, but to seek, for her own satisfaction, to find some one who should be worthier of her favours than the wool-monger appeared to her to be, and accordingly fell so fervently in love with a man of very good ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... talk about 'em whenever he got a chance. Of course, discipline being what it is on board ship, he couldn't talk as free with me as I s'pose he did with his mates. But once in a while he'd reel off a yarn, an' then he'd hint kind of mysterious like that he knew where some of the old Pirates' doubloons were buried an' that some day, if luck was with him, ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... There were also strings of the pieces of Haliotis from the Gulf of California, so valued by the Indians on this side of the Rocky Mountains. The body had been elaborately dressed for burial, the costume consisting of a red- flannel cloak, a red tunic, and frock-leggins adorned with bead-work, yarn stockings of red and black worsted, and deerskin bead-work moccasins. With the remains were numerous trinkets, a porcelain image, a China vase, strings of beads, several toys, a pair of mittens, a fur collar, a pouch of the ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... while, lad; I am expectin' another member for our crew any time now, and it's no use spinnin' the same yarn twice." ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... from time to time; if the thread stretches and reaches its due length again, the danger is removed. The wise woman must never ask money for her trouble, but take what is given." In another part of Germany, "a woman is stript naked and measured with a piece of red yarn spun on a Sunday." Sembrzycki tells us that in the Elbing district, and elsewhere in that portion of Prussia, the country people are firmly possessed by the idea that a decrease in the measure of the body is the source of all ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... Ted. That was a curious thing that you should come across that youngster Jimmy, just through having a yarn with a sailor on ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... food, I pointed it out to the bo'sun, suggesting that we should try and capture it. And so, there being by now scarce any wind, he bade us get out a couple of the oars, and back the boat up to the weed. This we did, after which he made fast a piece of salt meat to a bit of spun yarn, and bent this on to the boat hook. Then he made a running bowline, and slipped the loop on to the shaft of the boat hook, after which he held out the boat hook, after the fashion of a fishing rod, over the place where I had seen the crab. Almost immediately, ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... convey'd, And o'er the door the spell in secret laid, My wheel I turn'd, and sung a ballad new, While from the spindle I the fleeces drew; The latch mov'd up, when who should first come in, But in his proper person—Lubberkin. I broke my yarn, surpris'd the sight to see, Sure sign that he would break his word with me. Eftsoons I joined it with my wonted slight, So may his love again with mine unite. With my sharp heel I three times mark the ground, And turn me thrice around, around, around. This lady-fly ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... the Brahman began the whole story over again, not missing a single detail, and spinning as long a yarn as possible. ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... account of the deed of reckless courage for which Pinkey had been decorated, and the Smith boy told it so well that everyone's eyes had tears in them. Mrs. Appel, fumbling for her handkerchief, dropped her ball of yarn over the railing, where the cat wound it among the rose bushes so effectively that to disentangle ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... to see you—ma wants a new strainer, and Bugsey needs boots, and Mary has to have another hank of yarn to finish the sweater she's knitting—these are all very urgent, and I'll get them attended ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... Accompaniment of blind-man's-buff, And whirling plate, and forfeits paid, His winter task a pastime made. Happy the snow-locked homes wherein He tuned his merry violin, Or played the athlete in the barn, Or held the good dame's winding-yarn, Or mirth-provoking versions told Of classic legends rare and old, Wherein the scenes of Greece and Rome Had all the commonplace of home, And little seemed at best the odds 'Twixt Yankee pedlers and old gods; Where Pindus-born ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Rankin linen printer William Maxwel do. James Duncan do. Alexander Dalgliesh do. John Dalgliesh do. James Adam cutler John Strong do. John Brown bleacher John Niven yarn washer John Miller John Craig David Shephard weaver James Lang do. William Swap do. John Young do. Thomas Robertson do. William Dunlop do. Robert Stevenson do. John ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... you must be a good way parst the meridian, if yer don't mind my sayin' so.... Funny thing, on the way down I run across a chap wot's visitin' pals in this 'ere village, and 'e pulls me the strangest yarn as ever a body 'eard. Summink to do wiv flames it were—Frozen Flames or icicles or frost of some kind. But 'e was so full up of mystery that there weren't no gettin' nuffin out er' im. Any one 'ere tell me the story? 'E fair got me curiosity ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... spinning-wheel rises fitfully upon the breeze, like the fancied notes of a hobgoblin, as they are sometimes imitated in the stories with which we frighten children. In these laboratories the negro women are employed in preparing yarn for the loom, from which is produced not only a comfortable supply of winter clothing for the working people, but some excellent ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... to spin a hard-luck yarn," Frank went on, "but I have not had the best of everything, dear. I started wrong with uncle. He never liked my father nor any of my father's family. His treatment of his wife was infamous. My poor governor was one of those easy-going fellows who was always in trouble, and ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... Hewlett—every word, my son. That is why I want you back with me. First you leave my employment without offering any reason; then you take hold of my business affairs and try to pull off a deal over my head, and then you tell me a yarn about a ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... habit of knitting the day's events in with her yarn. What she had done and said and heard were all thought over again to the rhythmic click of her needles. And the results at the end of the evening were usually a finished comforter and a comfortable feeling. This night, however, the knitting lagged ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... weather, when the necessities of the service permitted, there was a halt about noon, of an hour or so, to rest the men and give them a chance to cool off and get the sand and gravel out of their shoes. This time was spent by some in absolute repose; but the lively boys told many a yarn, cracked many a joke, and sung many a song between "Halt" and "Column forward!" Some took the opportunity, if water was near, to bathe their feet, hands, and face, and ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... all these years? What right had he to look for a welcome from one he had treated so cruelly? She had been true to him, but had he been true to her? Sailor Ben must have guessed what was passing in her mind, for presently he took her hand and said—"Well, lass, it's a long yarn, but you shall have it all in good time. It was my hard luck as made us part company, an' no will of mine, ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... but it's better so. I've reckoned mebbe she was a little crazy, and since you've told me that Spanish yarn, it mout be that she was sort o' playin' she was that priest, and trained that mustang ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... could remember all he said; 'twould make a book as big as a dictionary, but 'twould be worth the trouble of writing it down. 'Fore he got through he talked a thousand dollars out of Cap'n Jonadab, and it takes a pretty hefty lecture to squeeze a quarter out of HIM. To make a long yarn short, ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... have to say that much for him I You saw, didn't you, how he worked away merely to save the expense of paying the blacksmith a few farthings? Now his daughter is marrying another rich fellow; she'll get a dowry, I tell you! I happened to pass the linen closet; flax, yarn, tablecloths and napkins and sheets and shirts and every possible kind of stuff are piled up to the ceiling in there. And in addition to that the old codger will give her six thousand thalers in cash! Just glance about you; don't you feel as if you were ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... The British captain then braced back his yards, remarking that if he did fall aboard it would be purely accidental. "Well," said Porter, "you have no business where you are; if you touch a rope-yarn of this ship I shall board instantly." [Footnote: "Life of Farragut," p. 33.] The Phoebe, in her then position, was completely at the mercy of the American ships, and Hilyar, greatly agitated, assured Porter that he meant ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... stirred, the wool entered, and the temperature raised to boiling, which is continued for 21/2 to 3 hours, that is, until a sample taken does no longer surrender any color to a hot solution of soap. Loose wool and worsted slubbing can be entered at 60 deg. C. (140 deg. F.). In dyeing yarn and piece-goods, however, it is advisable to enter the bath cold, work for about 1/4 hour in the cold, and then slowly to raise the temperature in about one hour to the boiling point. With this precaution, level and thoroughly ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... Evelington Heights. Eveling—Well, the damn Yankees dragged their guns up there, too.... If the beehive's there, then the apple tree's here—Grandma, if you'll ask him not to whip me I'll never take them again, and I'll hold your yarn every ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... author in London happened to hear of the correspondence between the editor and the author, it appealed to his sense of humor, and the published story was the result. If it mattered, it is possible that Brander Matthews could accurately reveal the originator of the much-published yarn. ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... 5,394,729 quarters were exported in 1879; and it may be said generally that Roumania receives in return almost every article of consumption in the way of manufactured productions, and notably from this country cottons and cotton yarn, ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... doing laborious work, it was customary with The Lifter, as well as with our hero, to sit among the women and assist them in such offices as the peeling of turnips or potatoes; and holding the yarn skein whilst one of the women rolled the thread into a ball; or in scouring the knives and forks. One afternoon while all the men save The Lifter were absent, the group was seated round a small open fire. Hanging from ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... any one sing, or tell a yarn, or whistle a tune, or dance a jig?" said "Bill" in a muffled tone. "If some one does not start some kind of excitement I will go to sleep in my tracks, and Doctor 'Gangway' says I mustn't sleep out of doors." His speech ended in a fit of coughing ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... greatest durability are produced by the weaving together of colored yarns. When yarn is dyed, the coloring matter penetrates to every part of the fiber, and hence the patterns formed by the weaving together of well-dyed yarns are very fast ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... "All a big yarn. I just happened around in time to jerk down a few curtains and stamp on the fire. They were nearly in ashes anyhow. Anybody could have done the same thing. Why, it was a picnic, you know. Good-bye, Ferd," and jerking loose he ran off, leaving the other looking after ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... public places, such as theatres, churches, etcetera, there is always a portion divided off for the negro population, that they may not be mixed up with the whites. When I first landed at New York, I had a specimen of this feeling. Fastened by a rope yarn to the rudder chains of a vessel next in the tier, at the wharf to which the packet had hauled in, I perceived the body of a black man, turning over and over with the ripple of the waves. I was looking at it, when a lad came up: probably his curiosity was excited ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... nation than 400,000l. 6thly. The quality of your imports must be considered as well as the quantity. To state the whole of the foreign import as loss, is exceedingly absurd. All the iron, hemp, flax, cotton, Spanish wool, raw silk, woollen and linen-yarn, which we import, are by no means to be considered as the matter of a merely luxurious consumption; which is the idea too generally and loosely annexed to our import article. These above mentioned ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... hung with spatter-work that the biggest brother had done, and with photographs and magazine pictures in splint frames. Over the front door was tacked the first yarn motto that the little girl had ever worked. It was faded, but her mother, though her eyes were dimming, could read the uneven line: "God Bless Our Home." The new cane-seated chairs were set about against the walls, and a bright blue cover hid the round, oak center-table. ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... was supposed to be on duty at the annunciator, in his dual capacity of hall boy and host, heard not its alarm, for he was well under way with a yarn. ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... growing curiosity in voice and manner. "I'd like to know for a fact what you could call larger game than a non-stop flight to Berlin and back, starting from the Channel here. Are you planning a trip to the moon, after Jules Verne's yarn?" ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... Oriental sovereigns, reserved to himself the monopoly of certain imported articles, such as yarn, chariots, and horses. Egyptian yarn, perhaps the finest produced in ancient times, was in great request among the dyers and embroiderers of Asia. Chariots, at once strong and light, were important articles of commerce at a time when their use in warfare ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... see by this little yarn," remarked the President, "that these boisterous people make too much noise in proportion ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... was nothing whatever in it—mild chaffing, a yarn or two, a guarded description by Peter of his motor drive from Abbeville, and then more drinks. And so on. The atmosphere was warm and genial, but Peter wondered inwardly why he liked it, and he did not like it so ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... perfect skeleton of the fibre after burning off the organic matter. It is by such means that the mantles used in the Welsbach system of incandescent lighting are prepared. A purified cotton fabric—or yarn—is treated with a concentrated solution of the mixed nitrates of thorium and cerium, and, after drying, the cellulose is burned away. A perfect and coherent skeleton of the fabric is obtained, composed of the mixed oxides. Such mantles have fulfilled the requirements of the industry up to ...
— Researches on Cellulose - 1895-1900 • C. F. Cross
... as, indeed, what story-teller does not? A cold and critical man like the professor froze the spring of narration at its source. Besides, Renmark had an objectionable habit of tracing the recital to its origin; it annoyed Yates to tell a modern yarn, and then discover that Aristophanes, or some other prehistoric poacher on the good things men were to say, had forestalled him by a thousand years or so. When a man is quick to see the point of your stories, and laughs heartily at them, you are apt ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... left with the comfortable feeling that the prize was well earned. You will rightly judge that most of The House of Courage is rather more frankly sensational than Mrs. RICKARD'S previous war-work; but it remains an excellent yarn. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 12, 1919 • Various
... "His whole figure has a loose, shackling air," wrote a contemporary. "A laxity of manner seemed shed about him ... even his discourse partook of his personal demeanor. It was loose and rambling." With his blue coat and red waistcoat, his green velveteen breeches, yarn stockings, and slippers down at the heels, he seemed to an English visitor, who saw him in 1804, "very much like a tall, large-boned farmer." Jefferson would have been the last to resent this epithet. No man had a more profound respect for tillers of the soil. ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... others—but there were a few items common to every emergency, and those were now at Raf's fingertips. The blast bombs, sealed into their pexilod cases, guaranteed to stop all the attackers that Terran explorers had so far met on and off worlds, a coil of rope hardly thicker than a strand of knitting yarn but of inconceivable toughness and flexibility, an aid kit with endurance drugs and pep pills which could keep a man on his feet and going long after food and water failed. He had put them ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... be made from almost any fabric—satin, velvet, georgette, maline, ribbon, soft leather, oilcloth, yarn, and chenille. A scrapbag for odds and ends should always be kept for small pieces of materials. Any piece two inches square may be used for flowers or fruits. Such a bag of pieces will prove a veritable gold mine to use in making flowers and fruit trimmings. Each year brings out ...
— Make Your Own Hats • Gene Allen Martin
... different yarn to the one you told on the stairs this afternoon," said Will. "See Monty and tell ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... only sort of burdens that were speedily rejected by their bearers. As the rebels marched out of Stockbridge, nearly every man was loaded with miscellaneous plunder. Some carried bags of flour, or flitches of bacon, some an armful of muskets, others bundles of cloth or clothing, hanks of yarn, a string of boots and shoes, a churn, an iron pot, a pair of bellows, a pair of brass andirons, while one even led a calf by a halter. Some, luckier than their fellows, carried bags from which was audible the clink of silverware. Squire Woodbridge, ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... the year out, but don't sell. We've got a cow and the filly and some sheep; and mother shears and cards, and Lurindy spins,—I can't spin, it makes my head swim,—and I knit, knit socks and sell them. Sometimes I have needles almost as big as a pipe-stem, and choose the coarse, uneven yarn of the thrums, and then the work goes off like machinery. Why, I can knit two pair, and sometimes three, a day, and get just as much for them as I do for the nice ones,—they're warm. But when I want to knit well, as I did the day Aunt Mimy was in, I take ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... cry for quarter;" and was only released after the loss of his uniform jacket and some other articles of male attire. Of course, we witnessed no demonstration of this kind, and I do not vouch for the truth of the "yarn"—telling it only "as 'twas told ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... back and forth, over and under, filling up the hole with a deftness which even his Aunt Hannah could not have excelled. But Neil saw only her soft, girlish beauty, and cared nothing for her deftness and thrift. In fact he was really rebelling hotly against the whole thing—the socks, the yarn, the porcelain ball, and more than all, the darning-needle she handled so skillfully. What had the future Mrs. Neil McPherson to do with such coarse things? he thought, as, forgetful of his ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... our personal equipment I may mention that each man had a suit of sealskin from Greenland. Then there were such things as darning-wool, sewing-yarn, needles of all possible sizes, buttons, scissors, tapes — broad and narrow, black and white, blue and red. I may safely assert that nothing was forgotten; we were well and amply equipped in ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... tall yarn!" M. Fuselier protested. "What on earth do you base it all upon? The Princess would never have shown the man the drawer where ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... my master. I know well enough how he manages to eke out a livelihood. He is up before dawn every day, and with a basket of pan leaves, twists of tobacco, coloured cotton yarn, little combs, looking-glasses, and other trinkets beloved of the village women, he wades through the knee- deep water of the marsh and goes over to the Namasudra quarters. There he barters his goods for rice, which fetches ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... almost entire reliance was placed on the paint for keeping the joint sound. Joints for acetylene, like those for steam and high-pressure water, must be made tight by using well-threaded fittings, so as to secure metallic contact between pipe and socket, &c.; the paint or spun-yarn is only an additional safeguard. In making a faced joint, washers of (say, 7 lb) lead, or coils of lead-wire arc extremely convenient and quite trustworthy; the packing ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... winked at Josh Helston, and Josh Helston winked solemnly at old Mike Polree, who threw a couple of hake slung on a bit of spun yarn over one shoulder, his strapped-together boots stuffed with coarse worsted stockings, one on each side, over the other shoulder, squirted a little tobacco juice into the harbour, and went off barefoot over the steep stones to the ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... Page's steamers were not stopping for blizzards; they headed out of Duluth regardless of what was to come. And there were a bad few days, with tales of wreck on lake and railroad, days of wind and snow and bitter cold, and of risks run that supplied round-house and tug-office yarn spinners with stories that were not yet worn out. Down on the job the snow brought the work to a pause, but Bannon, within a half-hour, was out of bed and on the ground, and there was no question of changing shifts until, after twenty-four hours, the storm had passed, and elevator, annex ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... to me so fair a doom intends!" But, ah! those sounds whose sweetness laps my sense, The strong desire of more that in me yearns, Restrain my spirit in its parting hence. Thus at her will I live; thus winds and turns The yarn of life which to my lot is given, Earth's single siren, sent to us ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... neighboring houses once held in affectionate communion by a straight path through the clover and a gap in the wall. This was the road to much friendly gossip, and there were few bright days which did not find two matrons met at the wall, their heads together over some amiable yarn. But now one house is closed, its windows boarded up, like eyes shut down forever, and the grass has grown over the little path: a line erased, perhaps never to be renewed. It is easier to wipe out a story from nature than to wipe it from the heart; and these mutilated pages of the ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... broken plaster, showing the laths underneath, with here and there, over them, sketches with burnt coal, showing that her predecessor had been an artist in his way,—his name, P. Teagarden, emblazoned on the ceiling with the smoke of a candle; heaps of hanks of yarn in the dusty corners; a half-used broom; other heaps of yarn on the old toppling desk covered with dust; a raisin-box, with P. Teagarden done on the lid in bas-relief, half full of ends of cigars, a pack of cards, and a rotten apple. That was ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... visited the other room of the cabin, which was fitted up as the living room of a family of the olden time. It had log walls, bare rafters overhead, a tall old-fashioned clock in a corner, a canoe cradle, a great spinning-wheel on which the ladies, dressed like the women of the olden times, spun yarn, and gourds used for drinking vessels. Some of the ladies were knitting socks, some carding wool, while they talked together, after the fashion of the good, industrious dames of the olden ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley
... old fellow proceeded with a rambling "yarn," giving more guesses than actual information and continued on ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... would not care to see it. I go miles on end about it to visit my sick folk, and mostly in a day's riding I see nobody but a stray shepherd, a flash pedlar twanning his way across country with his gewgaws, and now and then a weaver scouring the outlying cottages for yarn." ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... Hal plenty of time," resumed Riley Sinclair. "Since Lowrie told me that yarn I been wondering how Hal felt when you and the other two left him alone. You know, a gent can do some pretty stiff thinking before he makes up his mind to blow his ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... a short talk with Captain Simms when she docked. Not much of a yarn. She didn't have a ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... that yarn to John Milton," said Wingate ironically; "it's about in the style o' them stories he slings in ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... tell you what, lads," said Johnny; "you've made noise enough to frighten all the jackdaws out of the steeple, and there they are flying all about with a pretty cawarring. You've spun a yarn as long as all the posts and rails round my seven acres, and I dunna see as you've yet hedged in so much as th' owd wise men o' Gotham did, and that's a cuckoo. I've heard just one sensible word, and that was to recommend a cast-iron pulpit, in preference ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... Duchene, likewise, who worked at her spinning-wheel for many a night after death, striking fear to her son's heart, by its droning, because he had not bought the fifty masses for the repose of her soul, but when he had fulfilled the promise she came no more. Another yarn was about the ghost-boat of hunter Sebastian that ascends the straits once in seven years, celebrating his return, after death, in accordance with the promise made to Zoe, his betrothed, that—dead or alive—he would return to her from the ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... From the demure manner of Esther, who accepted the introduction as a matter of course, I surmised she was concealing our acquaintance from her sister and my rival. We had hardly reached the arbor before Uncle Lance created a diversion and interested the mail contractors with a glowing yarn about a fine lot of young mules he had at the ranch, large enough for stage purposes. There was some doubt expressed by the stage men as to their size and weight, when my employer invited them to the outskirts of the grove, where he ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... morning, Colonel Burr called at the cottage. Mary was spinning in the garret, and Madame de Frontignac was reeling yarn, when ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... ugly ones, was the first business of Grummidge, after he had hastily staunched the blood which was flowing copiously from his own cheek. The stout seaman was well able to play the part of amateur surgeon, being a handy fellow, and he usually carried about with him two or three odd pieces of spun-yarn for emergencies—also a lump of cotton-waste as a handkerchief, while the tail of his shirt served at all times as ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... not say one word. Friend Barbara took up her knitting, and I saw that she was rounding the heel of a stocking; and I trust I am truthful, if volatile, when I remember me that I wished I were her knitting-needle. She was very quiet: her ball of yarn slipped away, lacking proper gravitation. "My!" said she, and went ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... overtaken by a sturdy country lad, who was going to London to see what he could do for himself there, and, like me, had given his friends the slip. He could not be above seventeen, was ruddy, well featured enough, with uncombed flaxen hair, a little flapped hat, kersey frock, yarn stockings, in short, a perfect plough boy. I saw him come whistling behind me, with a bundle tied to the end of a stick, his travelling equipage. We walked by one another for some time without speaking; at length we joined company, ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... sum of money, he bribed the person in whose hands it was, and brought it with him to these parts; but he keeps it jealously from all eyes, in order that the Duke may not get wind of it, fearing he should in some way be deprived of his treasure." While spinning out this lengthy yarn, Messer Alfonso did not look at me, because we were not previously acquainted. But when that precious clay model appeared, he displayed it with such airs of ostentation, pomp, and mountebank ceremony, that, after inspecting it, I turned to Messer Alberto and said: "I am indeed ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... and lowly, Eyes with weeping nearly blind; Pessyeh-Tsvaitel, slowly, slowly, With the yarn creeps on behind. ...
— Songs of Labor and Other Poems • Morris Rosenfeld
... began to gather into Boston. Tan, lanky, awkward fellows came in squads, and companies, and regiments, swaggering along, dressed in their brown homespun clothes and blue yarn stockings. They stooped as if they still had hold of the plough-handles, and marched without any time or tune. Hither they came, from the cornfields, from the clearing in the forest, from the blacksmith's forge, from the carpenter's workshop, and from the shoemaker's seat. ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that the flicker of the fire-light was some slight convulsive motion. But the dim, staring eyes struck chill to her heart. At last she ceased her delicate, busy cares: but she still held the head softly, as if caressing it. She thought over all the possibilities and chances in the mingled yarn of their lives that might, by so slight a turn, have ended far otherwise. If her mother's cold had been early tended, so that the responsibility as to her brother's weal or woe had not fallen upon her; if the fever had not taken ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... on to other stations, and in particular to the China one, where several notable incidents occur. This book is a very good yarn, and it makes a very ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... have something to say by and by; but I think I had better go on with my yarn in proper ship-shape fashion, narrating events in the order in which they occurred—merely stating, in order to give a full account of all concerning us, that, in addition to the particulars of our cargo as already detailed, we had sundry items of live freight in the shape of some ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... and strong enough to weigh the gun. The best mode of securing the buoy-rope to the gun is to form a clinch or splice an eye in the end which goes over the cascabel, and take a half-hitch with the bight around the chase of the gun, and stop it with spun-yarn. ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... for anything when he sets out," said Stephen, with a grave air of superiority. "I don't go in for anything of that kind myself. We wasn't none of us much to boast of; but Dick, he went too fur. I say, Dirk, what do you s'pose all that yarn means about to-morrow night? And what be we goin' to do about it? Dick, he said it was all a game to get hold of us somehow, and he wasn't goin' to have ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... ball cast from a shop-door, was the signal for the commencement of the Fun. It was merely a ball of rope-yarn, or of some other similar material, saturated with turpentine, and it burned with a bright, fierce flame until consumed. As the first of these fiery meteors sailed into the street, a common shout from the boys, apprentices, and young men, ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... have been excavated. These are as black as any coal can well be, and are sufficiently hard to allow of their being used in the manufacture of brooches and other ornamental objects. Another use to which peat of some kinds has been put is in the manufacture of yarn, the result being a material which is said to resemble brown worsted. On digging a ditch to drain a part of a bog in Maine, U.S., in which peat to a depth of twenty feet had accumulated, a substance similar to ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... this gear is all entangled, Like to the yarn-clew of the drowsy knitter, Dragg'd by the frolic kitten through the cabin, While the good dame sits nodding o'er the fire! Masters, attend; 'twill crave some skill to clear ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... and which I have not yet related here. I have promised it for tonight; but they must subscribe largely to my money-box, and you shall profit by it. Without extra charge, I will write it out for your children. My yarn will amuse them; very religious people would read this ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... inarticulate but infinitely expressive answer to the question of Maurice Kirkwood. The good-hearted woman thought it time to leave the young people. Down went the stocking with the needles in it; out of her lap tumbled the ball of worsted, rolling along the floor with its yarn trailing after it, like some village matron who goes about circulating from hearth to hearth, leaving all along her track the story of the new engagement or of the arrival of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... gravity, which his name expressed. As we know nothing of his family, of course it will be understood that Calvin was his Christian name. He had times of relaxation into utter playfulness, delighting in a ball of yarn, catching sportively at stray ribbons when his mistress was at her toilet, and pursuing his own tail, with hilarity, for lack of anything better. He could amuse himself by the hour, and he did not care for children; perhaps something in his past was present to his memory. He had absolutely no bad ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... explain? I can't reel off a long yarn all about how you did it all, and so on. It would ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... book, Life's Handicap, On Greenhow Hill is a story; The Lang Men o' Larut is an anecdote. On Greenhow Hill is founded on a study of the human heart, and it is upon the human heart that the tale constrains one's interest. The Lang Men o' Larut is just a yarn spun for the yarn's sake: it informs us of nothing, and is closely related (if I may use some of Mr. Howells' expressive language for the occasion) to "the lies swapped between men after the ladies have left the table." ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... she had again the half soul that was imprisoned in the depths of the ocean. Anne Lisbeth was taken to her home, but she never was the same as she had formerly been. Her thoughts were disordered like tangled yarn; one thread alone was straight—that was to let "the apparition of the beach" see that a grave was dug for him in the churchyard, and thus to win back her ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... me, Friend PUNCHINELLO, that greasy yarn seems rather too slipperry to swaller, but I guess ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... Aspect, large Legs, and heavy in his Going. He had on, when he went away, a felt Hat, a white knit Cap, striped with red and blue, white Shirt, and neck-cloth, a brown coloured Jacket, almost new, a frieze Coat, of a dark Colour, grey yarn Stockings, leather Breeches, trimmed with black, and round to'd Shoes. Whoever shall apprehend the said runaway Servant, and him safely convey to his above said Master, at the blue Ball, in Union street, ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... Mrs. McMurtrie, flinging her gesture upward with a cluck of the fingers. "I wouldn't give that for your yarn! You're a hussy, from the looks of the whole business, and I've a mind to be suing the railroad station for the sending of you to me. You mentioned the husband of your own free will. Your husband! Faith, and not so much as a relation turning up to be with you in your trouble. ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... same old place, made more than equal to the entire estate, of which a quarter only came to them. Thousands and tens of thousands of tons of golden butter and cheese, hundreds of thousands of bushels of rye, oats, flaxseed, buckwheat, and corn, millions of eggs and skeins of linen and woollen yarn have been bartered at Belfield Green by the country folks, in exchange for rum, molasses, tea, coffee, salt, and codfish, enough to freight the royal navy. Time was when folks came twenty miles to Belfield post-office, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... Master Pathfinder, to a yarn. Walking about streets, going to church of Sundays, and hearing sermons, never yet made a man of a human being. Send the boy out upon the broad ocean, if you wish to open his eyes, and let him look ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... painted, and as it were gilded with various colours, which grow the livelier the oftener they are washed. There is also other cotton cloth that is woven of divers colours and is of great value. They also make at St Thome a great quantity of red yarn, dyed with a root called saia, which never fades in its colour, but grows the redder the oftener it is washed. Most of this red yarn is sent to Pegu, where it is woven into cloth according to their own fashion, and at less cost than can be ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... up at the thought of hearing something wonderfully mysterious and romantic that I started to make a long yarn out of that incident on the wharf just for her benefit. Miss Edith was interested too, but I was convinced, as I polished up the points of the little tale and endeavoured to pull in a thrill, that the elder sister was deriving her pleasure from ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... near-scientists and adventurers linked together for the purpose of awarding the yearly Woolman prizes for the most spectacular addition of empiric facts to various branches of science. One of the members of the club, an explorer, had told a wild yarn about a tribe of Brazilian Indians, headed by Sir Basil Addington, an English scientist, who was conducting secret experiments in biochemistry in his jungle laboratory. The explorer had said that the scientist, half-crazed by a powerful narcotic, had seemingly discovered some secret ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... a small rock," cried young "Skylark" as soon as he reached the top-gallant-yard and had taken the glass from his shoulders, across which he had slung it with a three-yarn fox. ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... told it to me," admitted Merritt, "I'd have made up my mind right away he was trying to pull the wool over my eyes with a silly yarn. And yet there was Grandfather Crawford just as sober as you ever saw anyone, and vouching for every word ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... at Jonathan Boxall's, the Star and Garter, one of the pleasantest and best-conducted houses in all Brighton. It is close to the sea, and just by Mahomed, the sham-poor's shop. I likes Jonathan, for he is a sportsman, and we spin a yarn together about 'unting, and how he used to ride over the moon when he whipped in to St. John, in Berkshire. But it's all talk with Jonathan now, for he's more like a stranded grampus now than a fox-hunter. In course I brought down a pair of kickseys ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... came to his own door. The one-eyed cobbler was at work, astride of his little bench with a brown pot of coals beside him. From time to time, when he had drawn the waxed yarn out through the leather on both sides, he blew into his black hands. Griggs stood still and looked at him in idle indetermination, and only struggling against the power that drew him towards ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... the Cimarron last year when we mixed two herds," said Quince, who had taken the bait like a bass and was now fully embarked on a yarn. "We were in rather close quarters, herds ahead and behind us, when one night here came a cow herd like a cyclone and swept right through our camp. We tumbled out of our blankets and ran for our horses, ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... himself with sufficient champagne to proceed; "were two retired merchants, a venerable logician, a doddering banker, and a half-blind college professor. Of course, I had to make some excuse for Mrs. Fermnore's absence. For the life of me I cannot now remember what yarn I told them; but they were too anxious to be presented to the gay, young women not to swallow it—whole. The old boys fairly swamped the girls with their senile attentions. It was a lively supper party—my word! And they went home unanimously declaring ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... Wisht that yarn was true about him, as it 'peared to be— Truth made out o' lies like that-un's good enough far me!— Wisht I still wuz so confidin' I could jes' go wild Over hangin' up my stockin's, like the little child Climbin' in my ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... the calves of his plump legs wonderingly. Sure enough, there were dozens of little round holes through which the pink skin was showing. There were even little stains of blood on the ravelled yarn. ...
— Master Sunshine • Mrs. C. F. Fraser
... preached during the festival had much the same value. You are aware that these friars never fail to go begging for their Easter eggs, and receive not only eggs, but many other things, such as linen, yarn, chitterlings, hams, chines, and similar trifles. So when Easter Tuesday came, and the friar was making those exhortations to charity of which such folks as he are no ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... selected; but although the parties, so far as commercial pursuits, may be considered as no longer in existence, yet they cannot fail to be well remembered. The former firm of Phillips and Lee of Manchester, were extensive spinners of cotton yarn for exportation, and extensive purchasers of other cotton yarns for exportation also; but for home manufacture they never could produce a quality of yarn equally saleable in the home market with other yarn of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... the custom of selling goods at two prices, according as the payment is in money, or in knitted articles or yarn, still prevails. By Messrs. Pole, Hoseason, & Co., it has been ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... well; but all my spinning was of little avail, as we had no idea of weaving. Schillie promised if she was not bothered by having to build more houses, she would try her hand at inventing a weaving machine the next rainy season. Luckily my yarn or thread was as coarse as needs be, and answered very well for crocheting and knitting. In both these arts we became wonderfully skilful; sewed crochet boots and shoes, while others knitted petticoats and jackets, so that we were in no particular fear that when our present ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... up his hands in a gesture of frank wonder. "Professor Lambert," he said, "I can't believe what I have seen myself. If I told such a yarn to the reporters, they'd never forget it. They'd kid ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... went off in his boat, and the Indians followed him even to the ships, some by swimming and others in their canoes, carrying parrots, clews of spun cotton yarn, javelins, and other such trifling articles, to barter for glass beads, bells, and other things of small value. Like people in the original simplicity of nature, they were all naked, and even a woman who was among them was entirely destitute of clothing. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... great fabric it was, this homespun, with nothing but wool in it, not attractive in pattern but able to stand no end of wear. It was fashioned for the habitant's use into roomy trousers and a long frock coat reaching to the knees which he tied around his waist with a belt of leather or of knitted yarn. The women also used this etoffe for skirts, but their waists and summer dresses were of calico, homemade as well. As for the children, most of them ran about in the summer months wearing next to nothing at all. A single garment without sleeves and reaching to the ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... bed linen, cotton cloth, yarn), rice, leather goods, sports goods, chemicals, manufactures, ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... tell you for?" pursued Mr. Tredgold, returning to Mr. Chalk. "He wanted you to make an offer. He hasn't got the money for such an expedition; you have. The yarn about passing his word was so that you shouldn't open your mouth too wide. You were to do the persuading, and then he could make his own terms. Do you see? Why, it's as plain ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... in a steel-gray silk and new cap and ribbons, her delicate, frail shoulders covered by a light scarf, little Jim following behind her with her ball of yarn and needles, and a low stool for her feet. The only change in Jim was a straggly groove down the middle of his wool, where he had attempted a "part" ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the geese, which are sure to come with this wind, a certain amount of feeding-grounds which are not likely to be frozen up this winter. Come," continued he, turning away; "the geese will be getting cold, and we want to have time to hear a good yarn before we go ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... me—and—— Oh, yes, well, pretty soon here comes Eg, beaver hat and mustache and all, purrin' and wantin' to know what was the matter. And, of course all hands of 'em started to tell him, 'specially that Aurora Chase, who is so everlastin' deaf she hadn't heard the yarn more'n half straight and wan't sure yet whether 'twas a funeral or a ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... You're working for me. Listen. I've got a yarn to spin. The man that took the money—or one of them—was short, and slim, and clean-shaved, and he didn't wear a puncher hat. You weren't scared of him because he was a coward. You tried to get him to play square and he talked to ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... been dried, and she bound him with them. She had the men lying in wait in the inner room, but when she said to him, "The Philistines are upon you, Samson!" he snapped the bowstrings as a piece of yarn is snapped when it comes near the fire; so they did not find out the secret of ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... far as it goes," he admitted. "Fairly straight, for a Bayport yarn. It doesn't go far enough, though. Here is ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... particular as to material, so that it be of the nature of strings or threads. A lady friend once told me that, while working by an open window, one of these birds approached during her momentary absence, and, seizing a skein of some kind of thread or yarn, made off with it to its half-finished nest. But the perverse yarn caught fast in the branches, and, in the bird's effort to extricate it, got hopelessly tangled. She tugged away at it all day, but was finally obliged to content herself with a few detached ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... friend, and let the marines blubber about love and lullaby, it'll never do for the sailors. As we are overhauling old friends, do you remember Charley Capstan, the coxswain's mate of the Leander V "Shiver my timbers, but I do; and a bit of tough yarn he was, too: hard as old junk without, and soft as captain's coop meat within. Wasn't I one of the crew that convoyed him up this very street when returning from a cruise off the Straits, we heard that Charley's old uncle had slipt his cable, and left him cash ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... gone out, but he pulled at it two or three times, before he said, "Well, Abel, I don't wonder Sally is excited. I suppose you would be, if you believed a word of this yarn?" ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... was a lot of Yellow Yarn, all bunched up like a mop; Z was a jagged piece of Zinc, ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... of yarn stockings for his feet, raised the window, and crept out on the snowy roof. There was a crust of ice on the snow, but Jim jabbed his heels through it and stood up in the moonlight, his legs bare, his single garment flapping gently in the light winter breeze. Then he started ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... manufactures, would Jocelin only tell us what. Jocelin is totally careless of telling: but, through dim fitful apertures, we can see Fullones, 'Fullers,' see cloth-making; looms dimly going, dye-vats, and old women spinning yarn. We have Fairs too, Nundinae, in due course; and the Londoners give us much trouble, pretending that they, as a metropolitan people, are exempt from toll. Besides there is Field-husbandry, with perplexed settlement of Convent rents: corn-ricks pile themselves within burgh, in their ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... Nova Scotia Irishman, and a very sociable fellow, prone to talk as long as he can find a listener. In the afternoon, while the cook was below asleep and I was peeling the everlasting potatoes, Louis dropped into the galley for a "yarn." His excuse for being aboard was that he was drunk when he signed. He assured me again and again that it was the last thing in the world he would dream of doing in a sober moment. It seems that he has been seal-hunting regularly each ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... found. "I best pass you these. That's from Peterman. There's not much written, but a deal lies under the writing. You'll see he asks permission for a representative of the Skandinavia to wait on us. I wirelessed back, 'I'd just love to death meeting him.' By the same mail came Father Adam's yarn. An' I guess that's where the soup thickens. He says some woman's coming along from the Skandinavia folk. He guesses they're going to put up some proposition that looks like butting in on the plans laid out for Sachigo. But that don't seem to worry him a thing. I guess his ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... plump maiden, with a round, rosy face, an extensive latitude of shoulders, and a general plentitude and solidity of figure. All these she had; but what had captivated Hopeful's eye was her trim ankle, as it had appeared to him one morning, encased in a warm white yarn stocking of her own knitting. From this small beginning, his great heart had taken in the whole of her, and now he was desperately in love. Two or three times he had essayed to tell her of his proposed departure; but every time that the words were coming ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... to the cabin before we uncork the entire yarn," suggested Frank. "To tell you the truth, boys, I didn't have half enough breakfast, and I'm about ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... possibly, a little of very poor quality in small skeins. The small wheel that we see in the far corner of the garret—just like Marguerite's—was used for spinning the fine thread. A larger wheel was used to spin the tow into yarn for the coarse clothing for boys and negroes or for "filling" in the coarser linens. All the boys, and very often the men—perhaps even our M.C. himself—wore in summer trousers made of linen cloth, for which the yarn was spun at home by the maids, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... something ten thousand miles away. I tell you I nearly jumped out of my skin with astonishment, thought there couldn't be two men with the same face and build, so smacked you on the back, discovered I was right, and here we are. Now spin your yarn. But stay, let's first find a ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... still," replied Aunt Sarah, with a merry twinkle in her kind, clear, gray eyes, "for that pale-green suesine skirt, slightly faded, will make an excellent lining, with cotton for an interlining, and pale green Germantown yarn with which to tie the comfortable. At small cost you'll have a dainty, warm spread which will be extremely pretty in the home you are planning with HIM. I have several very pretty-old-style patchwork quilts in a box in the attic which I shall give you when you start housekeeping. That ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... however, I found too illegible to allow of its being copied; and over the tomb was spread a pall of silk, striped in red, green, and white, but much faded. Against a pillar, which supports the roof, were hung rows of coloured rags and threads of yarn, with snail-shells and sea-shells strung among them by way of further ornament. A wooden bowl, at one end of the tomb, was probably intended to receive alms for the support of the devotee who claims the place, and who practises the curing ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... I told you I will invent some yarn to put him off the scent? He wouldn't be suspecting mischief, anyhow. I tell you I'm not going drifting round this river in the dark any longer. Next thing we know we may ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... the Lady Venus. You expect an immediate onslaught; when, to your astonishment, the Greek politely craves some information touching a genealogical point in the history of his antagonist's family; whereat the other, nothing loath, indulges him with a yarn about Assaracus. Tros being out of breath, the Argive can do nothing less than proffer a bouncer about Hercules; so that, for at least half an hour, they stand lying like a brace of Sinbads—whilst Ajax, on the right, is spearing his proportion of the Dardans, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... being unusually stilted, the plot unpleasant, and the South African atmosphere, for which I have gladly praised her before now, so negligible that but for an occasional name and a page or two of railway journey the yarn might as well have been placed in a suburb of London or Manchester as in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 7, 1917. • Various
... It's a long story, though, so if you please I shall top off with something hot. I'm glad you've come, however, for I had some doubts how far this sort of original Petersham would inspire confidence as to my credit in the bosom of the fair M'Tavish. It's all right now, however, so here goes for my yarn." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... money to come clear. That, and a range war that grew out of the killing, and some kind of a business deal just about broke them. That's the way this fellow had it; said a trail-boss told him at Ogalalla that spring. I didn't take much stock in the yarn at the time, but I'm beginning to think he had it straight. You didn't hear anything ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... "The same old yarn. I've been all over that ground. There's no reef there, and if there had been it would have been found and skinned years ago," said dogmatic Billy, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... with the maiden, awkwardly holding a skein of yarn for her to wind, when a messenger arrived in frantic haste bringing terrible news from the village. Miles Standish was dead, shot down by a poisoned arrow as he was leading his men to battle. Remorseful and yet glad that nothing now stood between him and the fulfillment of his hopes, John Alden ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... with the yarn," replied Jabez Kolt, patiently. "Now, Dave Pollard, the inventor of the boat, is a powerful bright young man, on theory, some folks says, but he ain't much use with tools in his hands. But he an' young Jake Farnum hang 'round, watching and bossing, and they ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... the coffee-houses of the Latin Quarter where the rich students read their reviews. He says sweet things to her. He weeps, she weeps. They drink; and when they are drunk, they fight. He loves her. He calls her his chaste one, his cross and his salvation. She was barefooted; he gave her yarn and knitting-needles that she might make stockings. And he made shoes for this unfortunate girl himself, with enormous nails. He teaches her verses that are easy to understand. He is afraid of altering her moral beauty by ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... I know about it some other time, lad. I haven't the time to spin the yarn now. It's a long one. I've been sailing up and down these waters, fair weather and foul, for a good many years, and I've seen a fair cargo of strange things in my time, but this Digger outfit is the most peculiar one I ever came across. They are a living example ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... frequently until they became quite worn out; as often, however, as a hole appeared in these choice articles, she very carefully darned it up; but for this purpose, having no silk, she was obliged to use white yarn. She usually appropriated Saturday evenings to this exercise. Finally, she had darned them so much that not a single particle of the original material or color remained. Yet such was the force of habit with her that as often as Saturday evening came she would say to her granddaughter, 'Anny, bring ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... harrud yarn to belave, profissor; but it goes av you soay so," said Barney, thinking it best to smooth over ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... establishment with which he was now connected was a large hempen manufactory; and it was his chief employment to register the quantities of hemp given out to the spinners, and the number of hanks of yarn into which they had converted it, when given in. He soon, however, began to take long walks; and the old women, with their yarn, would be often found accumulated, ere his return, by tens and dozens at his office-door. At ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... slight clues which led him to take an interest in the house and its inmates, until finally the truth began to glimmer up out of the depths. The commissioner listened with eager interest. "Then you believed this elaborate yarn told by the tramp?" he interrupted once, at the beginning ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... This "yarn" about one of them went the rounds and was enjoyed by all, for the "victim" was a merry fellow and always ready for a joke, no matter how great the privations and anxieties. The story runs thus: Jim sat before a fine fire washing his feet. Soothed by the warmth of the room and the water, he ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... that she had to fill laboriously, two sticks at a time; she missed the other plate at her tiny round table, the other chair beside her fire; she missed that dark, thin, sensitive face, with its rare and sweet smile; she wanted her story-teller, her yarn-winder, her protector, back again. Good gracious! to think of an old lady of forty-seven entertaining such sentiments for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... of lovely weather and uninterrupted fair winds brought us to this southern fairyland. In my last letter I told you a considerable yarn about Madeira, I guess, and so for fear lest you should imagine me scenery mad I will spare you any description of Rio Harbour. Suffice it to say that it contends with the Bay of Naples for the title of the most ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... larger financial rewards for his labor than he is likely to gain by writing articles. Non-fiction rarely brings in more than one return upon the investment, but a good short story or novel may fetch several. First, his yarn sells to the magazine. Then it may be re-sold ("second serial rights") to the newspapers. Finally, it may fetch the largest cash return of all by being marketed to a motion picture corporation as the plot for a scenario. ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... the dare-devil. What a detective he'd 'a' made, wouldn't he, if he'd only a-turned his attention that way, and been on the side of the law instead of against it? He walked in bold as brass, sat down and talked with the superintendent over some cock-and-bull yarn about a 'Black Hand' letter that he said had been sent to him, and asked if he couldn't have police protection whilst he was in town. It wasn't until after he'd left that the superintendent he sees a note on the chair where the blighter had been sitting, and when he opened it, there it ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... Pretty talk we're having, and Saint Nicholas's Eve almost here! What wonder the yarn pricks my fingers! Come, Gretel, take this cent, *{The Dutch cent is worth less than half of an American cent.} and while Hans is trading for the skates you can buy a waffle ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... of the story-tellers was B.J., whose favorite and most successful yarn was the account of the great ice-boat adventure, when the hockey team was wrecked upon Buzzard's Rock, and spent the night in the snow-drifts, with the blizzard howling outside. The memory of that terrible escape made the blood ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... real. I instantly liked Mrs. Farnsworth. She uttered a few commonplaces in an uncommonplace tone without pausing in her knitting. Mrs. Bashford had been knitting too, and as she sat down she took up her yarn and needles. It was a sweater, I think; it doesn't matter. What matters is that her hands moved swiftly and deftly. Her manner of knitting was charming. She knew that I was watching her hands and remarked with a ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... pull at the black jug under the elder-bushes in the fence-corner, she took her sickle and bent to work. It was her boast that she could beat both men and women on their own ground. She had spun her twenty-four cuts of yarn, in a day, and husked her fifty shocks of heavy corn. For Gilbert she did her best, amazing him each day with a fresh performance, and was well worth the additional daily quart of ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... desired, and that it should be so wrapped up as not to be known. They were also directed to make enquiry into the amount of the customs, both inwards and outwards; the weights, measures, value of coins, and prices of indigos, calicos, cotton-yarn, and other commodities fit for us to lade with; also to endeavour to get the Jew to come aboard who was in the Ascension when cast away near the bar of Surat, who could give us certain intelligence respecting ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... penetrated the canvas, and made it nearly as uncomfortable inside, as it would have been out. We were not prepared to catch water, having nothing to put it in. Our next object was to get fire, and after gathering some of the driest fuel to be found, and having a small piece of cotton wick-yarn, with flint and steel, we kindled a fire, which was never afterwards suffered to be extinguished. The night was very dark, but we found a piece of old rope, which when well lighted served for a candle. On examining the ground under the roof, we found perhaps thousands of creeping ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... gals to dis ole 'omen. I done know um fo' you wuz borned. W'en you see Miss Compton you see all de balance un um. Deze is new times. Marse Tom's mammy useter spin her fifteen cents o' wool a day—w'en you see Miss Compton wid a hank er yarn in 'er han', ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... now among our sick, his cutting tools are but few, and these mostly broken and bound about with rope-yarn as fast as may be. Thus our pinnace, on which lyeth so much of our hope of escape, is but ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... as our legs was danglin' over the pile of stuns, "onwind your yarn, but don't let your immaginashun go further ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... water."—"And the girl," said a third voice, which Mr. Kelly knew to be the steward's—"and the girl did not jingle her bag for nothing the other day, when she walked by me: something there, or my head 's a ball of spun-yarn." ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... up her knitting in a napkin, picked a few stray bits of yarn from her black dress, and stepped to the window. She looked out across the valley toward the Cleft to see if perchance the clouds would open enough to permit her a view of the Peak. Not once, but many times that day had she arisen from ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... just to see you—ma wants a new strainer, and Bugsey needs boots, and Mary has to have another hank of yarn to finish the sweater she's knitting—these are all very urgent, and I'll get them ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... o' the Commodore's crew,— Under me the fellows that manned his fine gig, Spinning him ashore, a king in full fig. Chirrupy even when crosses rubbed me, Bridegroom Dick lieutenants dubbed me. Pleasant at a yarn, Bob o' Linkum in a song, Diligent in duty and nattily arrayed, Favored I was, wife, and fleeted right along; And though but a tot for such a tall grade, A high quartermaster at ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... up a large ball of spun yarn, and placing a splinter on it, I advanced the piece of wood gradually until he saw the whole of it. "Now, this splinter represents that ship," I said, pointing to it. "As we also are moving towards her, we shall soon see all her ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... for the well-made, with usually some ingenious little twist at the finish, and (so to speak) a neatly tied bow to end all. As an instance of this kind I commend to your notice the admirably shaped little yarn called "Two-penn'orth." Mr. PALMER has a pretty wit (perhaps here and there a trifle thin), shown nowhere to better advantage than in "A Picked Eleven," one of the most entertaining, and at the same time human, short stories that I have ever ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... she threaded her needle and snipped off the yarn before she answered, "No, thank you, Becky. Mother couldn't do without me, and I hate going to school. I can read and write and cipher as well as anybody now, and that's enough for me. I'd die rather than teach school for a living. The winter'll go fast, for Will Melville ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... produce of their Orphan-box; 2s. 6d. for Reports; and 1l. 10s., being the profit of the sale of ladies' baskets. Thus we were again supplied for yesterday and today. This evening were also sent, by order of an Irish sister, 33 1/2 lbs. of woollen yarn. Respecting this donation it is to be remarked, that last Saturday we had asked the Lord in our prayer-meeting, that He would be pleased to send us means to purchase worsted, in order that the boys might go on with ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Third Part • George Mueller
... $1500 base coin in a week from us, let him testify. If any land agent of the general government has received wagon loads of base coin from us in payment for lands, let him say so. Or if he has received any at all, let him tell it. These witnesses against us have spun a long yarn." ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... brown suit exploded. "Stop being a dadblasted fool, Tom! You expect us to swallow a yarn like that? We know you don't drink. How can you expect us to believe you ran the ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... a long string wrapped over the ring like a slipnoose. When the ring was placed over the mouth of the invalid the string was pulled and the ring dropped and rolled out of the lodge, the long tail of white cotton yarn, with eagle plume attached to the end, extending far behind. Hoslgoboard repeated this ceremony with a second ring, and so did Hostjobokon and Hostjoboard alternately, until the twelve rings were disposed of. Three of the rings were afterward taken to the east, three to the ...
— Ceremonial of Hasjelti Dailjis and Mythical Sand Painting of the - Navajo Indians • James Stevenson
... that there are now too many factories. Cotton-spinning has not been very successful and the number of mills in 1911, eight, was the same as in 1903-4. The weaving is almost entirely confined to yarn of low counts. Part is used by the hand-loom weavers and part is exported to the United Provinces. Good woollen fabrics are turned out at a factory at Dhariwal in the Gurdaspur district. There were in 1911 fifteen flour mills, ten ironworks, ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... us. And I am sure I should be a monster of ingratitude," she added smiling, and relapsing, in spite of herself, into the very trifling she had condemned, "if I did not remember, with lively emotions, his skill at holding silk and yarn." ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... in their blanketry, which is one of the most important industries of any Indians within our domain. The greater portion of the wool from their hundreds of thousands of sheep is used in weaving, and in addition a considerable quantity of commercial yarn is employed for the same purpose. The origin of the textile art among the Navaho is an open question. It is probable that they did not learn it from anyone, but that it developed as a part of their domestic culture. ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... keeping the joint sound. Joints for acetylene, like those for steam and high-pressure water, must be made tight by using well-threaded fittings, so as to secure metallic contact between pipe and socket, &c.; the paint or spun-yarn is only an additional safeguard. In making a faced joint, washers of (say, 7 lb) lead, or coils of lead-wire arc extremely convenient and quite trustworthy; the packing can ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... the taxicab man! I've heard that yarn before! You come with me. And you too," he added to Mr. Bunn. "I want you for a witness. ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Rocky Ranch - Or, Great Days Among the Cowboys • Laura Lee Hope
... to a few seemingly slight strands, that, to one unpractised, appear wholly unworthy of his confidence. Signal-halyards are ropes smaller than the little finger of a man of any size; but they are usually made with care, and every rope-yarn tells. Wychecombe, too, was aware that these particular halyards were new, for he had assisted in reeving them himself, only the week before. It was owing to this circumstance that they were long enough to reach him; a large allowance for ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Land the winter's long and black. The silence seems a solid thing, shot through with wolfish woe; And rowelled by the eager stars the skies vault vastly back, And man seems but a little mite on that weird-lit plateau. No thing to do but smoke and yarn of wild and misspent lives, Beside the camp-fire there we sat — what tales you told to me Of love and hate, and chance and fate, and temporary wives! In Rory Borealis Land, beside ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... dream that she works with yarn, foretells that she will be proudly recognized by a worthy man as ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... thorough business man might be expected to concoct, and sent down his agent to the districts of Gweedore in Donegal and Maam in Galway, with instructions to engage as many families as possible to work in the mills of the firm, noted all over the world for thread, yarn, and linen-weaving. An enormous affair, employing a whole township. The agent was provided with a document emanating from the priest of the district into which they were invited to migrate, setting forth that no proselytism was intended, and that the ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... knew him well and loved him, and told me many things about him. He was very tall and thin, and 15 dressed very plainly. He wore a suit of plain black cloth, and common yarn stockings, which fitted tightly to his legs and showed how thin they were. He was a very great walker, and would often walk out to his farm, which was several miles from Richmond. But sometimes he went on horseback, and once he was met riding out with a bag ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... "Mr. Mayhew is an officer and a gentleman. I admit that my yarn does sound fishy to a stranger. Besides, fellows, Mr. Mayhew represents the naval officers through whose good opinion our employers hope to sell a big fleet of submarine torpedo boats to the ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies - The Prize Detail at Annapolis • Victor G. Durham
... cotton or yarn, being careful to keep winding even. When the winding is completed, draw the end of cotton underneath the winding with ...
— Spool Knitting • Mary A. McCormack
... sallow, and the rough butts, when sawn off before the sharping, supplied the firing for the boiling. Green ash is splendid for burning: "The ash when green is fuel for a Queen." Later, when I adopted a Kentish system of hop-growing on coco-nut yarn supported by steel wire on heavy larch poles, our visits to the woods were less frequent, and much wear and tear of horses and waggons was saved. Some of our journeys, in the earlier days, took us to the estate of the Duc d'Aumale, on ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... them abused and over-worked at their tender age. And people think their father might support us; but how can I help it that he spends all his earnings in drink? And rich as Mrs. Percy is, she did not pay me my wages to-night, and now I cannot get the yarn for my baby's stockings, and her little limbs must remain cold awhile longer; and I must do without the flour, too, that I was going to make into bread, and ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... drained and tilled, covered with yellow harvests, beautiful and rich in possessions. The mud-wooden Caesters and Chesters had become steepled, tile-roofed, compact towns. Sheffield had taken to the manufacture of Sheffield whittles. Worstead could from wool spin yarn, and knit or weave the same into stockings or breeches for men. England had property valuable to the auctioneer; but the accumulate manufacturing, commercial, economic skill which lay impalpably warehoused in English hands and ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... no cotton-wool growing, because the country is cold, yet they wear mantles thereof, as your honor may see by the show thereof; and true it is, that there was found in their houses certain yarn made of cotton-wool."—Coronado's Relation, Hakluyt's Coll. of Voyages, London ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... things in a general way. Seeing would naturally be believing, if cross-eyed people were the only ones who saw crooked, and hearing will be believing when deaf people are the only ones who don't hear straight. It's a pretty safe rule, when you hear a heavy yarn about any one, to allow a fair amount for tare, and then ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... dedicated to the Seven Sleepers were pointed out to us. The church or chapel was cut out of the solid rock as to the walls, with a groined roof of stone. We have all heard of the "Seven Sleepers" from our boyhood, perhaps the toughest yarn incident to that period. The Turks and Persians have their legends about them as well as the Christians. The Mohammedans preserve one set of names and the Christians another, so an inquirer may take his choice. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... to be spinning quite a yarn, and I'm not much of a hand at painting a portrait, but ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... again, a chance career ended, with option of picking up the severed threads—his inheritance at the loom—and of retying them, warp and weft, and continuing the pattern according to the designs of the tufted, tinted pile-yarn, knotted in ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... his diary, which is always cool, rippling, sunny, no matter how acute the crisis, "Jim Lane marshalled his Kansas warriors today at Williard's; tonight (they are in) the East Room."(1) Hay's humor brightens the tragic hour. He felt it his duty to report to Lincoln a "yarn" that had been told to him by some charming women who had insisted on an interview; they had heard from "a dashing Virginian" that inside forty-eight hours something would happen which would ring through the world. The ladies thought this meant the capture or assassination ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... Coble, "you know more about this matter than any one, so just spin us the yarn, and then we shall be able to talk the ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... did not show to advantage. Her deck was begrimed with dirt. A body of riggers were at work in parcelling and serving with spun yarn the eyes of the shrouds. An officer in a rough canvas suit was superintending ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... about 'em, Buzzby—do, like a good chap," said Davie Summers, burying his nose in the skirts of his hairy garment to keep it warm. "You're a capital hand at a yarn; now, fire away." ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... rocking-chair, picked up a gray yarn sock, and began to knit unconcernedly; but in a significant tone, she ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... of the board show that in this industry the actual manufacturing cost, aside from the question of the price of materials, is much higher in this country than it is abroad; that in the making of yarn and cloth the domestic woolen or worsted manufacturer has in general no advantage in the form of superior machinery or more efficient labor to offset the higher wages paid in this country The findings show that the cost of turning wool into yarn in this country is about double that in the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft
... difference. The popular side—I won't say patriotic, for we find in our steamboats a man who has a plaguy sight of property in his portmanter, is quite as anxious for its safety, as him that's only one pair of yarn stockings and a clean shirt, is for his'n—the popular side are not so well informed as t'other, and they have the misfortin' of havin' their passions addressed more than their reason, therefore they are often out of the way, or rather ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... while, he seemed to take a sight of notice of Major. I can't say he ever stopped bein' clever to me, for he didn't; but he seemed to have a kind of a hankerin' after Major all the time. He'd take her off to walk with him; he'd dig up roots in the woods for her posy-bed; he'd hold her skeins of yarn as patient as a little dog; he'd get her books to read. Well, he'd done all this for me; but when I see him doin' it for her, it was quite different; and all to once I know'd what was the matter. I'd thought too much of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... taken away to be smoked; the guardians put on board to see that we held no communication with the shore—without them we should still have had four more days' quarantine; and with twelve Greek sailors besides, we started merrily enough picking up the Canea cable.... To our utter dismay, the yarn covering began to come up quite decayed, and the cable, which when laid should have borne half a ton, was now in danger of snapping with a tenth part of that strain. We went as slow as possible in fear of a break at every instant. My watch was from eight to twelve in the morning, and during ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... kind. This was one of Mrs. Wright's charities too. Livingstone remembered the note the preacher had written him afterwards—it had rather jarred on him, it was so grateful. He hated "gush," he said to himself; he did not want to be bothered with details of yarn-gloves, flannel petticoats, and toys. He took out his pencil and wrote Mrs. Wright's name on the stub. That also should be charged to Mrs. Wright. He carried in his mind the total amount of the contributions, and ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... she was pitching him a yarn, but did not think so; if she was, she would surely do better for herself than a three hundred acre farm, and an apparently unlimited dominion over the bodies and souls of clergymen. By this time he was liking her very much, and as he understood she ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... Princes of Greece had gone to war. Her maids were with her, and they set a chair for her near where Menelaus was and they put a rug of soft wool under her feet. Then one brought to her a silver basket filled with colored yarn. And Helen sat in her high chair and took the distaff in her hands and worked the yarn. She questioned Menelaus about the things that had happened during the day, and as she did she ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum
... remarked as he left to go upstairs that the Prince would finish the story. But of course the Prince was not equal to the occasion, and when he got hopelessly stuck he proposed an adjournment upstairs where Sheridan would be able to complete his own yarn. It was then Selwyn realized that he had been fooled, for the first to greet him upstairs was Sheridan himself, now a full member of the club, with profuse bows and thanks for Selwyn's "friendly suffrage." Happily Selwyn had too keen a sense of humour ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... find it," said that sage; "I've found good yal maks good yarn. Folks that wad put doon good yal ought to ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... spirit, whereby she deemed no man of mean condition, how rich soever he might be, worthy of a gentlewoman and seeing him moreover, for all his wealth, to be apt unto nothing of more moment than to lay a warp for a piece of motley or let weave a cloth or chaffer with a spinster anent her yarn, resolved on no wise to admit of his embraces, save in so far as she might not deny him, but to seek, for her own satisfaction, to find some one who should be worthier of her favours than the wool-monger appeared to ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the kitchen one afternoon when he came home from school, with his lips set and his jaws even squarer than usual. Miss Salome was making some of her famous taffy, and Clemantiny was spinning yarn ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... filly and some sheep; and mother shears and cards, and Lurindy spins,—I can't spin, it makes my head swim,—and I knit, knit socks and sell them. Sometimes I have needles almost as big as a pipe-stem, and choose the coarse, uneven yarn of the thrums, and then the work goes off like machinery. Why, I can knit two pair, and sometimes three, a day, and get just as much for them as I do for the nice ones,—they're warm. But when I want to knit well, as I did the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... my little whim must be humoured," answered Staunton with a slight smile. "Sit down, please, Jesson. It's quite an amusing little yarn, and I would like your opinion ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... turned up his hands in a gesture of frank wonder. "Professor Lambert," he said, "I can't believe what I have seen myself. If I told such a yarn to the reporters, they'd never forget it. They'd kid me out ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... us a yarn about man-of-war life, and told us how the men serve out the officers when they don't ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... "The Yarn of the Essex, Whaler" is abridged from a quaint account written by the Mate and published in an old volume which is long since out of print and very scarce. The papers on the Tonquin, John Paul Jones, and "The Great American ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Rebstock's from Williams Cache," continued Sassoon. The yarn would have sounded decently well in the circumstances for which it was intended, but in the searching gaze of the eyes now confronting and clearly recognizing him, it sounded so grotesque that de Spain would fully as lief have been ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... fire-balls are formed of an oval case of sacking, filled with combustible matter, and attached to a culot of cast-iron. The whole is covered with a net of spun-yarn. Light-balls are used to light up our own works, and are not armed; fire-balls being employed to light up the works or approaches of an enemy, it is necessary to arm them with pistol-barrels, in order to prevent, any one from extinguishing them. When made of very combustible ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... billion (f.o.b., FY95/96 est.) commodities: crude oil and petroleum products, cotton yarn, raw cotton, textiles, metal products, chemicals ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Dick, in evident disgust, "you been tellin' that yarn so many times you believes un yourself. Now, don't ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... buried for generations in peat, have been excavated. These are as black as any coal can well be, and are sufficiently hard to allow of their being used in the manufacture of brooches and other ornamental objects. Another use to which peat of some kinds has been put is in the manufacture of yarn, the result being a material which is said to resemble brown worsted. On digging a ditch to drain a part of a bog in Maine, U.S., in which peat to a depth of twenty feet had accumulated, a substance similar to cannel coal itself was found. As ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... 20 Quelle ne pigna oncques That she kembyth neuer Laine si bien; Wulle so well; Pour ce lui payera on bien. Therfor men shall paye her well. Cecile la fyleresse Cecyle the spinster 24 Vint auecques elle. Cam with her. Elle prise moult vostre fylet She preyseth moche your yarn Qui fu filee a le keneule; That was sponne on the dystaf; Mais le fil But the yarne 28 Quon fila au rouwet That was sponne on the whele A tant de neuds Hath so many cnoppes Que cest merueille a veoir. That it is meruaylle to ...
— Dialogues in French and English • William Caxton
... counselled Jeremy. "We daren't tell father or Tom, for they'd think it just a wild-goose chase, and we'd have to promise not to leave the cabin. You know it is an improbable sort of yarn. Besides, we'd better go careful. Do you know who I think is at the head of that crew, over in ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... wans, th' big wans 'll not harm ye.' 'Teddy, lad, always wear ye'er Agnus Day.' An', whin th' time come f'r th' thrain to lave, th' girls was up to th' lines; an' 'twas, 'Mike, love, ye'll come back alive, won't ye?' an' 'Pat, there does be a pair iv yarn socks in th' hoomp on ye'er back. Wear thim, lad. They'll be good f'r ye'er poor, dear feet.' ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... Sutherland said, "will you be so good as to fetch me another skein of this sweater-coat yarn from the storeroom?" Christina went obediently, inwardly hot and raging. She wanted to rush in by The Woman's side and stand up for Gavin and tell how chivalrous and brave he really was. But how ridiculous she would look speaking up to Wallace's mother in that fashion. And ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... the Post Mistress, "that the Indians tell that yarn, that a cyclone never came to Seth's ranch. It may be a fool notion and it may not.... Look at him," leaning forward and gazing out the window. "See how gaunt and haggard and wistful he looks. I don't believe he gets enough to eat. There ain't a sadder ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... 'Treasure Island' in German. Then there was revelry in the balcony! I read the tale aloud, and I wish R.L.S. might have seen the shining of Ingo's eyes! Alas, the vividness of the story interfered with the little lad's sleep, and his mother was a good deal disturbed about this violent yarn we were reading together. How close he used to sit beside me as we read of the dark doings at the Admiral Benbow: and how his face would fall when, clear and hollow from the sounding-board of the hills, came the quick clop, clop of the ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... fancy boxes of thread and other useless knick-knacks to which certain shopkeepers appear to cling though they can seldom find customers for them. A woman stood at one of these tables untangling a skein of red yarn. Behind her I saw another leaning in an abstracted way over a counter which ran from wall to wall across the extreme end of the shop. This I took to be Bess. She had made no move at my entrance and she made no move now. The woman ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... Rob, who was a great tease, "I only touched Lena's arm to let her know the 'scare' part of the yarn was coming." ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks
... faith, this gear is all entangled, Like to the yarn-clew of the drowsy knitter, Dragg'd by the frolic kitten through the cabin, While the good dame sits nodding o'er the fire! Masters, attend; 'twill crave some skill ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... be tedious to dwell on the well-known process of cotton spinning; but as this manufactory produces the cleanest and most perfect yarn made in England, of its numbers from 6 to 100, it may be worth while to state, that this perfection appears to arise, from the systematic perfection of all the machines, and from the astonishing cleanness of every part of this ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... to death. They had had nothing to do for days but talk over the terrible fate that awaited them if the bloodthirsty population of Brussels ever got at them; the stories had grown so that the crowd had hypnotised itself and was ready to credit any yarn. The authorities showed the greatest consideration they could under their orders. They got the crowd started and soon had them stowed away inside the Cirque Royale, an indoor circus near the Consulate. ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... managed the Mount Vernon household, but she looked after the spinning of yarn, the weaving of cloth and the making of clothing for the family and for the great horde of slaves. At times, particularly during the Revolution and the non-importation days that preceded it, she ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... I remembered the yarn Uncle Yaddie once spun at the expense of Uncle Rastus. Rastus looked sour and said: "You bettah not go too fur; I'll tell about dem watermillions what disappeared frum Mas. Landon's watermillion patch." But Uncle Yaddie was undismayed by the threatened attack upon ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... the cotton manufacture has been as beneficial to Liverpool as to those districts where the yarn is spun and woven. The canal system has fed, not rivalled or "tapped," the trade of the Mersey. The steamboats on which the seafaring population of Liverpool at first looked with dislike and dismay, have created for their town—first, a valuable coasting trade, ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... central fibre of his faith, there were strands of a strange philosophy; he held strongly the doctrine of Illusion, by which the one impersonal Spirit, "in the illusion which overspreads it, is to the external world what yarn is to cloth, what milk is to curds, what clay is to a jar, but only in that illusion," that is, "he is not the actual material cause of the world, as clay of a jar, but the illusory material cause, as a rope might be of a snake"; and the spirit of man "is that Spirit, personalised and limited ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... 'There's t' yarn for thy stockings as is yet to spin; but she can go, for I'll do a bit at 't mysel', and ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... companions. The Fairport boy was not long in discovering that there was about as little Christian patriotism on board the Molly, as there is verdure in Sahara. In the freedom of the mess-table, the late achievements of the crew were the occasion of many a "yarn," and of many a fierce discussion as to who had been the boldest and most reckless in the excitement of attack and victory. It was plain that the crew of the Molly were little better than a den of ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... mound of gray yarn, uncut skein after uncut skein of it, rose off the brocade divan, more of them piled in systematic pyramids on three chairs. She dropped at sight of it to the floor beside the couch, burying her face in its fluff, grasping it in handfuls, writhing into ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... we're in distress about," answered the boatswain. "Sit down, sir, please, and let's get on with our tea; and while we're gettin' of it I'll spin ye the yarn. That's why me and Chips is havin' tea down here, aft, this afternoon. At other times we messes with the rest of the men in the fo'c'sle; but as soon as you comed aboard we all reckernised that you'd want to know ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... more furious than ever, and did nothing but plot mischief against the man's daughter, who was daily growing more and more beautiful. At last, one day the wicked woman took a large pot, put it on the fire and boiled some yarn in it. When it was well scalded she hung it round the poor girl's shoulder, and giving her an axe, she bade her break a hole in the frozen river, and rinse the yarn in it. Her stepdaughter obeyed as usual, and went and broke a hole in the ice. When she was in the act of wringing out the yarn a magnificent ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... and weighed the applicant, and tested his eyesight with printed letters and bits of colored yarn, and the lieutenant kept tally on the sheet, and bit the end of his pen and watched the applicant's face. There were a great many applicants, and few were chosen, but none of them had quite the air about him which this one had. Lieutenant Claflin thought Corporal Goddard was just a bit ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... she was not wont to haunt the palace, but all day long was busied in Hecate's temple, since she herself was the priestess of the goddess. And when she saw them she cried aloud, and quickly Chalciope caught the sound; and her maids, throwing down at their feet their yarn and their thread, rushed forth all in a throng. And she, beholding her sons among them, raised her hands aloft through joy; and so they likewise greeted their mother, and when they saw her embraced her in their gladness; and she with many sobs ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... I cried to my companion, who was holding the head of the fish by a loop of yarn passed through its gills, while I carried it by getting a good grip of ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... putting his prisoners in barrels studded with iron nails, and rolling them down a brae. This is the side of the good old times which should not be overlooked. It may not be pleasant to find blue dye and wool yarn in Teviot, but it is more endurable than to have to encounter the bandit Barnskill, who hewed his bed of flint, Scott says, in Minto Crags. Still, the reading of the "Rivers of Scotland" leaves rather a sad impression on the reader, and makes him ask once more if there ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... going to London to see what he could do for himself there, and, like me, had given his friends the slip. He could not be above seventeen, was ruddy, well featured enough, with uncombed flaxen hair, a little flapped hat, kersey frock, yarn stockings, in short, a perfect plough boy. I saw him come whistling behind me, with a bundle tied to the end of a stick, his travelling equipage. We walked by one another for some time without speaking; ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... fellow who had just told us of his tragical encounter with Apollyon, a yarn which quite put Bunyan's narrative in the shade! It was useless talking; my irritation gave place to mirth, and, stretching myself out on the grass, I roared with laughter. The more I thought of Lechuza's stern rebuke the louder I laughed, ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... blowed for a yarn!" cried the driver, forgetting his benefits in the virtuous indignation of ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
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