"Coil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Harding try to extinguish the false hope of money which had been so wretchedly raised to disturb the quiet of the dying man! One other week and his mortal coil would be shuffled off; in one short week would God resume his soul, and set it apart for its irrevocable doom; seven more tedious days and nights of senseless inactivity, and all would be over for poor Bell in this world; and yet, with his last audible words, he was demanding his moneyed rights, ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... the typewriter rose and withdrew, thrusting her pencil into the coil of her hair, closing the door behind ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... very fond of ours," said Vince thoughtfully. "It's a long time since it was new, and we don't want to have any accidents. You bring a coil of new rope from your boat-shed: we'll take care of it. And, I tell you what, I'll bring that little crowbar of ours next time, and a big hammer, so as to drive the bar into some crack. It will be ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... me a coil of this wire, one or two of the lamps, and an accumulator, or indeed half a dozen of them, I will trouble ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... the under-water boat approached them. When it was quite near the shore it rose to the surface and the top parted and fell back, disclosing a boat full of armed Skeezers. At the head was the Queen, standing up in the bow and holding in one hand a coil of magic rope ...
— Glinda of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... vine, where each branch of its tendril represents a modified leaflet; or they are transformed flower stalks or other organs. Occasionally the tendril of a grapevine reveals its ancestry by bearing a blossom or a cluster of flowers, and sometimes even fruit, about midway on the coil, which attempts to fill all offices at once ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... an' fair going mad— What can be done with this wild, wicked lad? Plaguin' t'poor cat till it scratches his hand, Or tolling some door wi' a stone an' a band; Rolling i't' mud as black as a coil, Cheeking his mates wi' a "Ha'penny i't' hoil;" Slashin' an' cuttin' wi' a sword made o' wood, Actin' Dick Turpin or bold Robin Hood— T'warst little imp 'at there is i't' whole street: O! he's a ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... "A pretty coil!" he said with a sneer. "Here! You talked about my price. I'm quite content to hold my tongue if you'd tell me something about what happened seventeen ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... and now a bear, And now a coil of hissing snakes; At last a Dragon she became, And furious she the ...
— The Nightingale, the Valkyrie and Raven - and other ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... roofs and over the apple-trees behind, high up the slope, and backed by the plantation on the crest, was the house yet occupied by her future husband, the rough-cast front showing whitely through its creepers. The window-shutters were closed, the bedroom curtains closely drawn, and not the thinnest coil of smoke ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... just after the Master heard that little bleating cry which told of new life in the world, that Tara, with infinite care and precaution, lowered her great bulk upon the bed in a coil—she had been standing—the centre of which was occupied by four glossy Irish Wolfhound puppies, who had arrived respectively at ten, eleven, twelve, and half-past twelve that night. The four, then blindly grovelling over ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... danger stifle within my breast every tender thought of awakening love. But in my surge of excitement love and faith were alike forgotten. I ran from the walls, and without consulting anyone returned but a few minutes later with a coil of rope in my hands. To fasten this to one of the parapets, to tie a few knots at intervals so as to give me handhold and foothold—all this was the work of another minute or two. Then, slowly and cautiously, hand under hand, I was descending ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... bubble and boil; The old man cast in essence and oil, He stirred all up with a triple coil Of gold and silver and iron wire, Dredged in a pinch of virgin soil, ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... wire round a bar of soft iron, and attaching its extremities to the poles of a galvanic battery, when it will be found that its strength will be proportioned to the strength of the current and the turns of the coil. This is especially the case when the bar is bent into the form of a horse-shoe, and the wires are insulated and coiled round its limbs. The force communicated to a magnet of this kind, which is often immense, is the product of the chemical action which goes on in the battery, and, ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... is squeezed on from one coil to another through the intestine, it naturally has more and more of its nourishing matter sucked out of it; until, by the time it reaches the last loop of the twenty feet of the small intestine, it has lost over ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... is briefly stated. The space, around a wire carrying an electric current, or in the neighborhood of a magnet, has a directive effect upon a magnetic needle, and is hence called a magnetic field. Now if a conductor, or coil of wire, be placed in the field across the direction of a magnetic needle, and the field be varied either by varying the current or moving the magnet, a current will be developed in the conductor. It is impossible at this distance to appreciate ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... introduce a small quantity of the gaseous mixture into a tube. This mixture should not contain oxygen, carbonic oxide, or carbonic acid; and the pressure is to be reduced to not more than twenty millimetres. Then if a hydrocarbon is present, the passage of a spark from a Ruhmkorff's coil will cause the appearance of a sky-blue light. Viewed with the spectroscope, this presents the spectrum of carbon, and generally so brilliant as to mask totally the spectra of ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... knock came to the door, and the servant entered, carrying a large mahogany chest of chemicals, with a long coil of steel and platinum wire and two rather curiously-shaped ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... now the soothing softness of a mother's lullaby to a tired child, and as the liquid notes quavered delicately on the otherwise deep stillness, the formidable reptile began to coil itself ascendingly round and round the ebony rod, . . higher and higher,—one glistening ring after another,—higher still, till its eyes were on a level with the "Eye of Raphon" that flamed on Lysia's breast, . . there it paused in apparent ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... breathe again. Immediately he asked himself, however, IF he could live with his father and wear a mask, and never betray his dreadful secret. So he wandered homeward in the most miserable of all conditions; he was paralysed by the intricacy of the coil which enveloped and ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... the Parenthesis. Also the reparenthesis, the re-reparenthesis, and the re-re-re-re-re-reparentheses, and likewise the final wide-reaching all-enclosing king-parenthesis. I would require every individual, be he high or low, to unfold a plain straightforward tale, or else coil it and sit on it and hold his peace. Infractions of this law should ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... are much softened, she has learned to carry herself with ease, if not grace. The curly crop has lengthened into a thick coil, more becoming to the small head atop of the tall figure. There is a fresh color in her brown cheeks, a soft shine in her eyes, and only gentle words fall from ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... eyes, which smarted with the tears she had shed. Looking at herself in the mirror she saw a pale plaintive little creature, without any freshness of beauty—all the vitality seemed gone out of her. Smoothing her ruffled hair, she twisted it up in a loose coil at the back of her head, and studied with melancholy dislike and pain the heavy effect of her dense black draperies against her ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... The men gather all theirs into a tuft at the poll, where it is secured with a silk marling, the extreme ends forming a sort of fringe, like a plume of feathers. The very fine, long, and glossy hair of the women is rolled jauntily on the top of the head in a loose spiral coil, resembling the volutes of a shell. Through this rather graceful head-dress they stick a long silver pin, in some cases a ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... lap like a golden serpent, with a kind of tension which gave it life, such as Medusa's hair must have known as the serpent-life entered into it. There is—or was—in Florence a statue of Medusa, seated, in her fingers a strand of her hair, which is beginning to coil and bend and twist before her horror-stricken eyes; and this statue flashed before Jasmine's eyes as she looked at the loose ends of gold falling beyond the blue ribbon with which she ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... opened, and the top of a box 6 in. square was seen embedded in a barrel containing 25 lbs. of 'excellent gunpowder,' a bottle full of sulphuric acid, and other explosives, as well as a number of detonators, and the blade of a knife (apparently) with a spring attached by a coil of string to the door, the machine being so arranged as to be liable to explode in two ways. The expert who examined the machine said that had the sulphuric acid been liberated, as meant, all our party, twenty in all, must ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton
... realm seems as blank and tenantless as yon vacant air. But when a seeker of powers beyond the rude functions by which man plies the clockwork that measures his hours, and stops when its chain reaches the end of its coil, strives to pass over those boundaries at which philosophy says, 'Knowledge ends,'—then he is like all other travellers in regions unknown; he must propitiate or brave the tribes that are hostile,—must depend for his life on the tribes that are friendly. Though your science discredits the ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and, there being little to do, we had also planned to try our luck in the morning. When, at sunrise, we were walking down the cow-path to the woods I saw Uncle Eb had a coil of ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... cantie Coil may count the day, As annual it returns, The third of Libra's equal sway, That gave another B[urns], With future rhymes, an' other times, To emulate his sire; To sing auld Coil in nobler style, With more ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... of his body might be convulsed during the culinary operations, there could be no feeling of consciousness therein, the communication with the brain being cut off; but if the woman were immediately to stick a fork into his eye, skin him alive, coil him up in a skewer, head and all, so that in the extremest agony he could not move, and forthwith broil him to death: then were the same Almighty Power that formed man from the dust, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, to call the eel into a new existence, with a knowledge of the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... the changes that had occurred of late in the kingdom, and in particular of the coil there was betwixt the cures who had taken the oath and the nonjuring cures. She knew likewise there had been wars and famines and portents in the sky. She did not believe the King was dead. They had contrived his escape, she would have it, by a subterranean passage, and had handed over ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... in women of a certain—let us not say age, but youth," says the professor. "An electrical current passing through a coil of wire makes a magnet of a bar of iron lying within it, but not touching it. So a woman is turned into a love-magnet, by a tingling current of life running round her. I should like to see one of them balanced ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... ground by the reptile. Thereafter Knowlton kept his own counsel, listening to the excited curses of the men and observing their pallor and their nervous scanning of the shadows. Jose said the screech undoubtedly was the death shriek of some animal caught and crushed in the snake's tremendous coil. McKay concurred with a nod. And when Knowlton casually said it was tough that nobody had been awake to shoot the thing as it passed ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... she inclined her head, while Regina twisted the wreath around the coil of neatly braided hair. Then, kissing the girl lightly on her cheek, Mrs. Lindsay closed the drawer and rose. Drawing a silver cup from her pocket, Regina filled it with water, placed it close to the mirror, and proceeded to arrange the violets and honeysuckle. ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... as skilful as his voice. "Well, I guess your having mine proves this one is yours." He rode up and received the coil which the Virginian held out, unloosing the disputed one on his saddle. If he had meant to devise a slippery, evasive insult, no small trick in cow-land could be more offensive than this taking another man's rope. And it is the small tricks which lead to the big ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... hat and gloves, and seated herself before the organ in an admirable pose, looking upward; while the submissive and sad Jocosa took out the one comb which fastened the coil of hair, and then shook out the mass till it fell in a smooth light-brown stream far ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... whose name was Gilson, opened a small square door in the wall of the corridor, and dragged forth a coil of hose. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... hundred and three feet of copper wire in one length were coiled round a large block of wood; other two hundred and three feet of similar wire were interposed as a spiral between the turns of the first coil, and metallic contact everywhere prevented by twine. One of these helices was connected with a galvanometer, and the other with a battery of one hundred pairs of plates four inches square, with double coppers, and well charged. When the contact was made, there was a sudden and very slight ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... creek at the Burnt Ranch, Joe Conley, leading a horse by a riata which was looped as it had fallen about the animal's neck, came through the big corral gate across the road from the house. At the barn Joe disappeared through the small door of the saddle room, the coil of the riata still in his hand, thus compelling his ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... the Prairie, we call him in the trade—he don't seem to ha' much amiss with him, do he now, miss?—he had a bit of a fall—only on them pads—a few minutes ago, the more shame to the Sarpint, the rascal!" Here he pretended to hit the Sarpint, who never moved a coil in consequence, only smiled. "But he ain't the worse, never a hair—or a scale I should rather say, to be kensistent. Bless you, we all knows how to fall equally as well's how to get up again! Only it's the most remarkable ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... 175 With others that pursu'd the chace; But found himself left far behind, Both out of heart and out of wind: Griev'd to behold his Bear pursu'd So basely by a multitude; 180 And like to fall, not by the prowess, But numbers of his coward foes. He rag'd, and kept as heavy a coil as Stout HERCULES for loss of HYLAS; Forcing the vallies to repeat 185 The accents of his sad regret. He beat his breast, and tore his hair, For loss of his dear Crony Bear; That Eccho, from the hollow ground, His doleful wailings did resound 190 More wistfully, by many times, Than in small poets ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... loved it for itself, too; they were born on it, or within the sound of its surges; they lived on it, they fought on it, and it was their wish through life to die on it, as if only on its boundless expanse their free spirits could be emancipated from this mortal coil. This same spirit still exists and animates the breasts of the officers and men of our navy, of our vast mercantile marine; and, though mentioned last, not certainly in a less degree of the owners of the superb yacht fleets which grace the waters of the Solent, ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... which overhung the ravine, for the purpose of letting myself down into the water, as the sides were precipitous; when under my hand, as the branch yielded to the weight of my body, a large liffa, the worst kind of serpent this country produces, rose from its coil as if in the very act of striking. I was horror-struck, and deprived for a moment of all recollection—the branch slipped from my hand, and I tumbled headlong into the water beneath; this shock, however, revived me, and with three strokes ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... account," shouted a voice in bitter blasphemy. "Well climbed, Jan, well climbed," and they looked up to see, sixty feet above their heads, seated upon the arm of the lofty Rood, a man with a candle bound upon his brow and a coil of ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... does wait motionless. That is how the spider waits for the fly. But the spider spins her web. And if the fly, like my hero, shows a strength that promises to extricate him, how swiftly does she abandon her pretence of passiveness, and openly fling coil after coil about him until he is ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... artificial aid. Let us take the imaginary case of a man-like monkey, or of an arboreal man, born with a cord of great length attached to his waist, which could be either dragged after him or carried in a coil. After many accidents, experience would eventually teach him to put it to some use; practice would make him more and more skilful in handling it, and, indirectly, it would be the means of developing ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... close to the water was Chris flat on his back, his mouth open, fast asleep. A half dozen fine bass lay on the grass beside him, the end of his fishing line was tied to one ebony leg, and a coil of slack line ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... twisted shell From the fathomless caves below; I've heard of the things in those dismal gulfs, Like fiends that hemm'd him round— I would not lead a diver's life For every pearl that's found. And I've heard how the sea-snake, huge and dark, In the arctic flood doth roll; He hath coil'd his tail, like a cable strong, All round and round the pole: And they say, when he stirs in the sea below, The ice-rocks split asunder— The mountains huge of the ribbed ice— With a deafening crack like thunder. There's many an isle man wots not of, Where the air ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... minutes, with never a glance at the book, King paid out the glorious hexameters (and King could read Latin as though it were alive), Winton hauling them in and coiling them away behind him as trimmers in a telegraph-ship's hold coil away deep-sea cable. King broke from the Aeneid to the Georgics and back again, pausing now and then to translate some specially loved line or to dwell on the treble-shot texture of the ancient fabric. He did not allude to the coming interview with Mullins except at the last, when he ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... as ere yet its earthly day was done It lived above the coil about us curled: A soul whose eyes were keener than the sun, A soul whose wings were wider than ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... these are strung at pleasure upon the long elastic fibre that traverses the branches of the cocoanut tree. Some of these tapers are eight or ten feet in length; but being perfectly flexible, one end is held in a coil, while the other is lighted. The nut burns with a fitful bluish flame, and the oil that it contains is exhausted in about ten minutes. As one burns down, the next becomes ignited, and the ashes of the former are knocked into a cocoanut shell kept for the purpose. ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... off this," said Dr. Trevelyan, drawing a large coil from under the bed. "He was morbidly nervous of fire, and always kept this beside him, so that he might escape by the window in ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... all hope when a heavy coil—of a brace, I suppose—fell upon my head, nearly knocking me over. Half stunned as I was, desperation lent me strength to scramble up her side hand over hand, while the boat floated away from under my feet. I was done up when I got on the poop. A yell came from forward, "Hard aport." Then ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... no probable chance of his recovery. Sir Omicron Pie is, I believe, at present with him. At any rate the medical men here have declared that one or two days more must limit the tether of his mortal coil. I sincerely trust that his soul may wing its flight to that haven where it may forever be at rest and ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... with winds unapt, Now crosseth here, then there, then this way rapt, And then hath one point reach'd, then alters all, And to another crooked reach doth fall Of half a bird-bolt's[120] shoot, keeping more coil Than if she danc'd upon the ocean's toil; 130 So serious is his trifling company, In all his swelling ship of vacantry And so short of himself in his high thought Was our Leander in his fortunes brought, And in his fort of love ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... were more numerous than those of the men, and comprised necklaces, bracelets, ankle, finger, and ear rings; their hair was separated into bands and kept in place on the forehead by a fillet, falling in thick plaits or twisted into a coil on the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... away and nothing was advanced one single step. He went home to his dinner excited, and he was dangerous. It is very trying, when we are in a coil of difficulty, out of which we see no way of escape, to hear some silly thing suggested by an outsider who perhaps has not spent five minutes in considering the case. Mrs. Furze, knowing nothing of Mr. Eaton's contract, of the blacksmith's failure, of the advance in iron, of the trust ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... long before, have circulated the report all over South America and the United States that there is but one toad in the Latin language. If I hadn't believed everything I see in print, hadn't been so cock-sure, and hadn't been so ready to parade borrowed plumage as my own, all this linguistic coil would have been averted. I suppose Mr. Henderson would send me to jail again for this. I certainly didn't do my best, and therefore I am immoral, and therefore a ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... only they faced each other. Then, Pete's eyes dropped as the eyes of an abashed dog before his master. He stooped for the rope, which had fallen to the ground, and slowly gathered it into a little coil. But still ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... certainly deserved no compensation for having to sleep on the cabin floor and finding absolutely nothing fit for human food in the whole filthy embarkation. We made up for lost time by sleeping on deck a good part of the forenoon. When I awoke, Simpson was still sleeping the sleep of the just, on a coil of ropes and (as appeared afterwards) his own hat; so I got a bottle of Bass and a pipe and laid hold of an old Frenchman of somewhat filthy aspect (fiat experimentum in corpora vii) to try my French upon. I made ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... dull red chasm in the coals. She had taken off her gray felt hat, and she looked older without it, the traveller thought, in spite of her wealth of waving dark brown hair, gathered into a great coil of plaits at the back of the graceful head. Perhaps it was that thoughtful expression which made her look older than she had seemed to him in the railway carriage, the gentleman argued with himself; a very grave anxious expression ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... conducted her to the door of her apartments. There I kissed her hand, and bade her sleep sound and wake to happy days. Then I changed my clothes and went out. Sapt and Fritz were waiting for me with six men and the horses. Over his saddle Sapt carried a long coil of rope, and both were heavily armed. I had with me a short stout cudgel and a long knife. Making a circuit, we avoided the town, and in an hour found ourselves slowly mounting the hill that led to the Castle of Zenda. The night was dark and very stormy; gusts of wind and spits of rain caught us ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... coil of rope than he had imagined. The boat was twenty yards away at least, and still paying out. By the way, where was the rope? With a cry of horror Tubbs sprang to the anchor and began hauling in. The rope came in gaily, but not the "Eliza." She danced merrily cut to sea ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... and she stood on the lower guard abaft the paddle box and watched Tom through a blur of tears until he melted into the throng of people and disappeared; then she looked no more, but sat there on a coil of cable crying till far into the night. When she went to her foul steerage bunk at last, between the clashing engines, it was not to sleep, but only to wait for the morning, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... from a ditch at the side of the road, a child of five stared at her. It had its foot close by a stacked heap of hand grenades; a shawl was wrapped round it and the thin hands held the ends together. What child? Whose? How did it get here, when not a house stood erect for miles and miles—when not a coil of smoke touched the horizon! Yes, something oozed from the ground! Smoke, blue smoke! Was life stirring like a bulb under this whiter ruin, ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... taller than the messenger-boy that stood before her; a fair, white face; calm, gray eyes; hair with a glint of golden brown, which waved and rippled about a low, broad brow, and was gathered in a great shining coil behind; and a mouth clear-cut and firm, but now drawn and quivering with deep emotion. The comely head was finely poised upon the slender neck, and in the whole figure there was an air of self-reliance and power that accorded well with the position which she held. A simple gray dress, with a bright ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... body, here's a coil, indeed, with your jealous humours! nothing but whore and bitch, and all the villainous swaggering names you can think on! 'Slid, take your bottle, and put it in your guts for me, I'll see you pox'd ere I follow you ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... was turning over the gun and the anchor, after which, with a wink and grin, he drew a little coil of new fishing-line from out of his breast. "We shall be ...
— The Little Skipper - A Son of a Sailor • George Manville Fenn
... and stiff. Each looked at the other abruptly, then Kendall moved. From the receiver, he ripped out the recording coil, and instantly jammed it into the analyzer. He started it through once, then again, then again, at different tone settings, till he found a very shrill whine that seemed to clear up most of Nichols' bad key-work. "T-247—T-247—Emergency. Emergency. Randing reports the—over ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell
... I have been down here! Oh, Tunis! While we were making up our plot on that bench on Boston Common and planning to lie to these dear, good people down here—and everybody; while we were beginning this coil of deceit and trouble, I might have gone back there to the store and found all this out. And—and I would never have needed to lie and deceive as I ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... voice that does very well to express endearment, or other subdued emotions, but it is not effective at a County Fair. Spectators see the wonderful play of my features, but they only hear the low refrain of the haughty Clydesdale steed, who has a neighsal voice and wears his tail in a Grecian coil. I received $150 once for addressing a race-track one mile in length on "The Use and Abuse of Ensilage as a Narcotic." I made the gestures, but the sentiments were those of the four-ton Percheron charger, Little Medicine, ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... out. But what is the use of recalling unpleasant truths. Why don't you silence memory, when you have ceased to feel remorse. But I tell you what it is, Moncton. The presence of the one proves the existence of the other. The serpent is sleeping in his coil, and one of these days you will feel the strength of his fangs. Is this the door that leads to his chamber? You have chosen a sorry dormitory for the heir of the proud ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... was all. In three-quarters of an hour we were in Yonkers. In fifteen minutes I had it on this bed, and had begun to unroll the shawl in which it was closely wrapped. Did you ever see the child about whom there has been all this coil?" ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... at the moment when his weapon was wrenched from him, two long grey arms come out of the darkness and coil about the largely-looming form of Slabberts. Enveloped in the neutral-tinted tentacles of this mysterious embrace, the big Boer struggled impotently, and a quick, imperative voice said, between the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... become by consent of all an accessory of great importance. Will any one affirm that it is a matter of indifference how the hair is dressed? Whether in plaits or bows? Whether in a crop, or twisted up in a coil? There is nothing which affects a lady's personal appearance more than the style in which she dresses her hair. We confess that we have a strong prejudice against a too submissive following of the fashion. Because in the first ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... agile grace of the lad as he bestirred himself upon the deck the last morning of our voyage. With him young Poole (clothed once more like a Christian, in borrowed garments) was engaged in the task of shifting a great coil of rope; and the sturdy, fair-skinned English youth was a pretty ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... out himself. He was also able to procure some strong lines, but the use of flies seemed to be altogether unknown. However, during his stay he made half a dozen different patterns, and with these in a small tin box and a coil of line stowed away at the bottom of one of his holsters, he felt that if opportunity should occur he ought to be able to have fair sport. He had suffered a good deal during the heavy rains, which came on occasionally, from the fact that his infantry cloak was not ample enough to cover his legs when ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... silent toil That spread his lustrous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step its shining archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last-found home, and knew ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... winds her form Close in the coil of his curving arm, And whirls her away in a gust of sound As wild and sweet as the poets found In the paradise where the silken tent Of the Persian blooms in the Orient,— While ever the chords of the music seem Whispering sadly,—"Only ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... exclaimed: "Why no, I stuck a few of them in one of these here coffins one day for safe keeping," and he stepped over to a grim pine coffin keeping company with a pile of gay bandanas, and brought forth another bunch of bills. But his foot caught in a coil of barbed wire as he started over to the auditor with them and it was at that moment that Steve came to the station door to get something and Mr. Follet called out, "Here, Steve, hand these over to the gentleman." The boy started ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... a glance: the box contained a tiny, crude, but workable atomic generator. And I had been right about the wire: there was a great orderly coil of it on one spool, and the other end was attached to an empty spool. The upright of rusty metal was the pole of an electro-magnet, energized by the ...
— The God in the Box • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... get into a "snarl:" the mystery all turns upon a single point which we will not spoil the reader's pleasure by mentioning, and, arrived at the last pages, the various threads of the story unwind themselves easily and naturally like a single coil. The same skill is displayed in the management of the characters. Though drawn with unequal power, many of them being seized with much vividness, whilst others must be accounted failures, they are ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... and the air you breathe is embalmed with blessings. With returning health the bosom strife will begin. Your thoughts will no longer centre on me. Helen will once more absorb your affections, and then the serpent envy will come gliding back, so cold and venomous, to coil itself in my heart." ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... two feet long, eighteen inches broad. It encircles the biggest tree in one clasp of its rhizomes, which travellers mistake for the coil of a boa constrictor. Furthermore, this species emits the vilest stench known to scientific persons, which is a great saying. But these points are insignificant. The charm of Bulbophyllums lies in their machinery for trapping ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... deer, and moreover very fierce and dangerous. The pursuit of these was exciting and hazardous in the extreme. The men who took part in it showed not only the utmost daring but the most consummate horsemanship and wonderful skill in the use of the rope, the coil being hurled with the force and precision of an iron quiot; a single man speedily overtaking, roping, throwing, and binding down the fiercest ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... dragon-flies chasing each other, and love like the sun warming them through and through. Her youth! So long ago—when Phil and she—And since? Nothing—no one had been quite what she had wanted. And so she had missed it all. But what a coil was round those two young things, if they really were in love, as Holly would have it—as her father, and Irene, and Soames himself seemed to dread. What a coil, and what a barrier! And the itch for the future, the contempt, as it were, for what ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... with baskets of unhappy chickens. But I made a reckless dash over them, in spite of frantic cacklings which hurt my soul, and succeeded in finding a way to the cabin-roof. It was entirely occupied by water-melons, except one corner, where there was a big coil of rope. I put melons inside of the rope, and sat upon them in the sun. It was not comfortable; but I thought that there I might have some chance for my life in case of a catastrophe, and I was sure that even the gods could give no help ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... brilliant idea occurred to Chapeau. He still had plenty of rope in his possession, and having fastened one end of a long coil with weights and blocks on the riverside, he passed over with the other end into the island, and fastened it there. The rope, therefore, traversed the river, and by holding on to this, and passing it slowly through their hands, while they strained against the raft with their feet, ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... a little coil of some very fine steel wire which would make a beautiful telegraph. Newton even dreamt of making the trolley, too, in the Main Street, but that would be a very troublesome job; and as for the railway station, it was easy enough to build a shed and a platform, but what is a railway station ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford
... assistant, or make the attempt alone, his love of gain overcame his fears, and he decided upon the latter plan. Accordingly, having armed himself with various weapons, including a stout oaken staff then ordinarily borne by the watch, and put a coil of rope and a gag in his pocket, to be ready in case of need, he set out, about ten ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... hole was enlarged, and Robert passed from the arms of his sister to those of Lady Helena. Round his body was rolled a long coil of flax rope. ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... so pretty," sighed Betty, hopelessly, "Is the rose in place, do you think?" She had fastened a white rose in the thick coil on her neck, where it lay ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... morning Flint had bought some things, and he and Fetlock had brought them home to Flint's cabin: a fresh box of candles, which they put in the corner; a tin can of blasting-powder, which they placed upon the candle-box; a keg of blasting-powder, which they placed under Flint's bunk; a huge coil of fuse, which they hung on a peg. Fetlock reasoned that Flint's mining operations had outgrown the pick, and that blasting was about to begin now. He had seen blasting done, and he had a notion of the process, but he had never helped in it. His conjecture was right—blasting-time had come. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... of the time fixed for the nuptials, the beautiful virgin while at play with companions of her own sex, her time having come, impelled by fate, trod upon a serpent which she did not perceive as it lay in coil. And the reptile, urged to execute the will of Fate, violently darted its envenomed fangs into the body of the heedless maiden. And stung by that serpent, she instantly dropped senseless on the ground, her colour faded and all the graces of her person went off. And with dishevelled hair she became ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... need, if I may so put it, four things: truth for the understanding, love round which the heart may coil, authority for the will which may direct and restrain, and energy for the practical life. But, apart from the quest after Christ, men for the most part seek these necessary goods in divers objects, and fragmentarily look ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... soft jaws covering over the dark, hard ones? In the moths and butterflies these jaws are different. Each one is long, and has a deep groove on the inner side. These two grooves fit together, and make a slender tube called a proboscis. When flying this long tube is rolled up in a tight coil under the head; alighting, the proboscis is quickly uncoiled and dipped into the throat of the flower, and the sweet nectar sipped from it. See here, Jack, what have ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... natural consequence and development. But it is curious that as a system worked out by many minds pointed architecture should thus begin. First come thorns and cusps and lanceolate forms without foliage. Then, not perfect leaves, but buds. In due time the bud opens, at first into the profile coil, and by-and-by into the full-spread leaf. Then comes the flower, and finally the fruit. After that, rottenness and decay. It is curious that this should actually take place through a course of centuries. That it should be reflected in book ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... window-portes; a circular glassite front to the forward control-observatory cubby, with the propellors just above it, and the pilot cubby up there behind them. And underneath the whole, a landing gear of the Fraser-Mood springed-cushion type: and an expanding, air-coil ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... informs me that these snakes coil themselves upon the shore, living on the seaweed, and that they lay their eggs on the shore. They are often found asleep upon the sea, when they are easily caught, as they cannot sink without first throwing themselves ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... JULIA. Why, that's quite my idea. LUD. I shouldn't make it one of your hoity-toity vixenish viragoes. JULIA. You think not? LUD. Oh, I'm quite clear about that. I should make her a tender, gentle, submissive, affectionate (but not too affectionate) child-wife—timidly anxious to coil herself into her husband's heart, but kept in check by an awestruck reverence for his exalted intellectual qualities and his majestic personal appearance. JULIA. Oh, that is your idea of a good part? LUD. Yes—a wife who regards her husband's slightest wish as an inflexible law, and who ventures ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... us we could get some meat (carne) from them. These men were finely mounted, wore long leggins made of hide, dressed with the hair on, which reached to their hips, stiff hats with a broad rim, and great spurs at their heels. Each had a coil of braided rawhide rope on the pommel of the saddle, and all these arrangements together ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... Old-time hacker David Cargill's theory on the causation of computer glitches. Your typical electric utility draws its line current out of the big generators with a pair of coil taps located near the top of the dynamo. When the normal tap brushes get dirty, they take them off line to clean them up, and use special auxiliary taps on the *bottom* of the coil. Now, this is a problem, because when they do that they get not ordinary or 'thin' electrons, but the ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... of the coil of sennit, and tossing back one end over an empty water-cask. "Make fast there, Snowey! I dare say we can lay alongside safe enough till daylight! After that we'll splice together in a ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... pouring out her tale of woe. A slight creak which the door made caused the girls to turn their heads, and there stood Susy, shedding articles of her wardrobe, as usual, as she walked. Her flaxen hair was partly unpinned and lay in a rough coil on her fat neck. She came with elephantine weight into the room, and ignoring Annie Forest altogether, held out a ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... disentangled all his coil of policies. His letter to the Holy Father was all drafted and ready to be put into fine words. But, before he sent it, he must be sure of peace ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... wanders thy sequestered stream, WAINSBECK, the mossy-scattered rocks among, In fancy's ear making a plaintive song To the dark woods above, that waving seem To bend o'er some enchanted spot, removed From life's vain coil; I listen to the wind, And think I hear meek Sorrow's plaint, reclined O'er the forsaken tomb of him she loved!— Fair scenes, ye lend a pleasure, long unknown, To him who passes weary on his way;— Yet recreated here he may delay A while to thank you; and when years have flown, And haunts ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... through it were favourable, he was delighted; but, if the contrary, his irascibility knew no bounds; and snatching his pipe from the mouth of the senseless man who could not see the value of "steam for India," he would impatiently coil it round his arm, and, with a recommendation to the less sanguine to give the subject the attention due to its importance, would whisk himself off to urge his point in some other quarter! I have already said that Mr. Greenlaw lived to see the overland ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various |
