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Spindle   /spˈɪndəl/   Listen
Spindle

noun
1.
(biology) tiny fibers that are seen in cell division; the fibers radiate from two poles and meet at the equator in the middle.
2.
A piece of wood that has been turned on a lathe; used as a baluster, chair leg, etc..
3.
Any of various rotating shafts that serve as axes for larger rotating parts.  Synonyms: arbor, mandrel, mandril.
4.
A stick or pin used to twist the yarn in spinning.
5.
Any holding device consisting of a rigid, sharp-pointed object.  Synonym: spike.



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"Spindle" Quotes from Famous Books



... for the propagation of rotative oscillations is shown to the left of Fig. 3, and consists of a cylinder, A, mounted on a tubular spindle, and which is set into circular oscillations around its axis by the little vibrating membrane, C, which is attached to the axis of the cylinder by a little crank and connecting rod shown in detail in Fig. 4. This membrane is set into vibration by a rapidly pulsating ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various

... covered with rushes; though in some instances the walls were of brick, the use of which they seem to have learned from the Peruvians, as they used the Peruvian term tica for that material. From the wool of the Chilihueques they manufactured cloth for their apparel, using the spindle and distaff for spinning this wool into yarn, and two different kinds of looms for weaving the yarn into cloth. One of these, called guregue, is not very unlike the ordinary loom of Europe; but the other is vertical or upright, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr

... of Orchomena, the Saphria of the Patraeans, Aphia of AEgina, Bendis of Thrace, and Stymphalia with the leg of a bird. Triopas, in place of three eyeballs, has nothing more than three orbits. Erichthonius, with spindle-shanks, crawls like ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert

... and speaketh not anything." During this pause, the "conveyor" is told "to get the fig-leaves ready." Then Lucifer is ordered to "come out of the serpent and creep on his belly to hell;" Adam and Eve receive the curse, and depart out of Paradise, "showing a spindle and distaff"—no badly-conceived emblem of the labour to which they are henceforth doomed. And ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins

... a Maxwell disc, and is nothing more than a circle of firm cardboard, pierced with a central hole to fit the spindle of a rotary motor, and with a radial slit from rim to centre, so that another disc may be slid over the first to cover any desired fraction of its surface. Let us paint one of these discs with Venetian red and the other ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell

... in the flanks was Michael Scott,[2] who verily knew the game of magical deceptions. See Guido Bonatti,[3] see Asdente,[4] who now would wish he had attended to his leather and his thread, but late repents. See the forlorn women who left the needle, the spool, and the spindle, and became fortune-tellers; they wrought spells ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri

... at once ordered his dogs to break in the door of the mountain, which they did. He entered, and saw a beautiful maiden who sat spinning gold thread on a spindle of gold. He stepped forward and spoke to her. She was much astonished, and said—"Who are you, that dare to come into the giant's hall? For seven long years have I lived here, and never during that time have I looked on a human being. Run away, for Heaven's sake, before the giant comes, ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various

... liturgy is recited, the "heaven-startling" Kami, having girdled herself with moss, crowned her head with a wreath of spindle-tree leaves and gathered a bouquet of bamboo grass, mounts upon a hollow wooden vessel and dances, stamping so that the wood resounds and reciting the ten numerals repeatedly. Then the "eight-hundred myriad" Kami laugh in unison, so that the "plain of high heaven" ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... at the empty air where she points, and finds in his hand a fragment of stuff, which again is proved to be torn from the witch's dress. It is easy to see how this trick could be played. Again, a possessed girl cries that a witch is tormenting her with an iron spindle, grasps at the spindle (visible only to her), and, lo, it is in her hand, and is the property of the witch. Here is proof positive! Again, a girl at Stoke Trister, in Somerset, is bewitched by Elizabeth ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang

... it is not only unchristian, but effeminate and childish, to hold such a view. A woman will win distinction for herself by handling the spindle or the needle more deftly than another, or by adjusting her bonnet more becomingly than her neighbor can; in fact, she may secure prominence by things even more insignificant. To say the least, no woman thinks herself less a woman than any other. The same is true of ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther

... might settle on her before she knew, but, when she took away some of the figs and saw it, she said, "So here it is," and held out her bare arm to be bitten. Others say that it was kept in a vase, and that she vexed and pricked it with a golden spindle till it seized her arm. But what really took place is known to no one. Since it was also said that she carried poison in a hollow bodkin, about which she wound her hair; yet there was not so much as a spot found, or any symptom ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... best representative; and, later, Mons. MARIUS, who, as the French sporting nobleman, in Family Ties, in love with an English "Mees," and so proud of his English slang, was simply the character to the life, without any more exaggeration than was artistically necessary. On "the Spindle Side," Miss LILY HANBURY looks handsome, and is generally fairly well-suited; Miss PATTIE BROWNE has the most difficult part of the three, and it is not to be wondered at if she a bit out-tommies Tommy. Miss ELLALINE TERRIS ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 29, 1893 • Various

... muslin cap with a high puff in the crown, a short woolen gown, a white and blue checked apron, and shoes with heels. She did not regard me, but stood facing the wheel, with the left hand near the spindle, holding lightly between the thumb and forefinger the white roll of wool which was being spun and twisted on it. In her right hand she held a small stick. I heard the sharp click of this against the spokes of the wheel, then the hum of the wheel, the buzz of the spindles as the twisting yarn was ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... dye-liquor while the upper chambers are above it. The sides of this casting are formed of metal plates which fit tightly against the casting and form as nearly air-and water-tight joints with it as it is possible to make. These metal plates are on a spindle and can be rotated. They are perforated and made to carry spindles, on which are placed the cops to be dyed. The two lower chambers are in connection with a pump which draws the air from them and so creates a vacuum ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech

... was wearing on, beguiled by the young girls as best it might be, with the spindle and distaff, and incessant chatter and laugh, save when they joined their voices in some popular chant. Signora Martina was delivering fresh flax to the spinners; Marietta, the maid, was busy about the fire, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... with a fresh supply of cotton, he came home before his wife expected him. Supper was not ready, and in her haste to rise to prepare it, she overturned the wheel when it was still in motion. Hargreaves, entering at that moment, noticed that the spindle, usually horizontal, was now revolving in an upright position. This gave him the idea, and a short time afterwards he invented a machine with which one person could spin several threads at once (at first ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education

... changes quickly, says an old Icelandic adage. By morning, the weather had turned its spindle and the wind shifted to the south. Jon sent no message to anyone, nor did he proclaim that the old hay was available. He first wished to see what the thaw would amount to. By the following day, the whole valley was impassable because of slush ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various

... take the very early reports with caution. For instance, the one on August 9, 1762, which describes an odd, spindle-shaped body traveling at high speed toward the sun. I recall that Charles Fort accepted this, along with other early sightings, as evidence of space ships. But this particular thing might have been a meteor—meteors as such were ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe

... luckless Courtier, who having seated himself on a chair with some projecting nail on it, and therefrom rising, to pay his devoir on the entrance of Majesty, instantaneously emitted several pecks of dry wheat-dust: and stood there diminished to a spindle, his galloons and slashes dangling sorrowful and flabby round him. Whereupon the Professor publishes ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... pleasure gave, and she'd reply: Good sister stay!—consider, we must die; Each feature perishes:—'tis naught but clay; And soon will worms upon our bodies prey: Superior needle-work our fair could do; The spindle turn at ease:—embroider too; Minerva's skill, or Clotho's, could impart; In tapestry she'd gained Arachne's art; And other talents, too, the daughter showed; Her sense, wealth, beauty, soon were spread abroad: But most her wealth ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine

... certainly excite unfavourable comment at Newmarket. Their 'points' are undoubtedly coarse and clumsy: their heads are big, thick, stupid, and ungainly; their manes are bushy and ill-defined; their legs are distinctly feeble and spindle-shaped; their tails more closely resemble the tail of the domestic pig than that of the noble animal beloved with a love passing the love of women by the English aristocracy. Nevertheless there is little ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... Those aunts of a former generation—I sometimes felt—would have suited our habits better. But even by us children, to whom few places were private or reserved, the room was visited but rarely. To be sure, there was nothing particular in it that we coveted or required,—only a few spindle-legged gilt-backed chairs; an old harp, on which, so the legend ran, Aunt Eliza herself used once to play, in years remote, unchronicled; a corner-cupboard with a few pieces of china; and the old bureau. But one other thing ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame

... an Apostel-Krug, of Kruessen, was solemnly dancing a minuet with a plump Faenza jar; a tall Dutch clock was going through a gavotte with a spindle-legged ancient chair; a very droll porcelain figure of Littenhausen was bowing to a very stiff soldier in terre cuite of Ulm; an old violin of Cremona was playing itself, and a queer little shrill ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee

... for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weathercock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... time from all passion and emotion. It is, therefore, not only a slave, but a supernatural slave. And why should one say that the machine does not live? It breathes, for its breath forms the atmosphere of some towns. It moves with more regularity than man. And has it not a voice? Does not the spindle sing like a merry girl at her work, and the steam- engine roar in jolly chorus, like a strong artisan handling his lusty tools, and gaining a fair day's wages for a ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... in their case the want of competition, and still more the lack of standards of comparison, tended to retard and injure production. While improved machinery for spinning and weaving was common in England, the old spindle, wheel, and house-loom still held their own in France. In the year 1786, a commercial treaty was signed between the two countries. By its provisions French wines were put on a better footing, and many manufactured ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... when they have doubled or trebled their production of cotton, when they are producing the greater part of their food, when they are developing their manufactures of iron and steel, and introducing the spindle and loom into the cities and villages, it seems to me that men of the south surely will appreciate, if they do not approve, what I said in the Senate early ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... restricted to no class, and we have a Burns as well as a Chaucer, a Keats as well as a Gower, yet I am glad that the result of my studies tends to prove that it is but an unfounded assumption. By the Spear-side his family was at least respectable, and by the Spindle-side his pedigree can be traced straight back to Guy of Warwick and the good King Alfred. There is something in fallen fortune that lends a subtler romance to the consciousness of a noble ancestry, and we may be sure this played no small part in the making ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes

... of this hall or family room had been brought from Montreal; spindle chairs and a pier table of mahogany; a Turkey carpet, laid smoothly on the polished floor to be spurned aside by young dancers there; some impossible sea pictures, with patron saints in the clouds over mariners; an immense stuffed sofa, with an arm dividing ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... although not usually deem'd an Actor of the first Rank, yet the Characters allotted him were such, that none besides, then, or since, ever topp'd; for his Figure, which was diminutive and mean, (being Round-shoulder'd, Meagre-fac'd, Spindle-shank'd, Splay-footed, with a sour Countenance and long lean Arms) render'd him a proper Person to discharge Jago, Foresight and Ma'lignij, in the Villain.—This Person acted strongly with his Face,—and (as King Charles said) was the best Villain ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn

... spouting music,' she said. 'Look! See how it goes up to mother Mary. She twists it round her distaff and spins it with her spindle. See, ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald

... Harkless," he said in a shaking spindle of a voice, as plaintive as his pale little eyes. "Mother Wimby, she sent some roses to ye. Cynthy's fixin' 'em on yer table. I'm well as ever I am; but her, she's too complaining to come in fer show-day. This morning, early, ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington

... year relaxed still more, and was nearer breaking, when Arbaces, who commanded the Median contingent of the army and was himself a Mede, chanced to see in the palace at Nineveh the King, in a female dress, spindle in hand, hiding in the retirement of the harem his slothful cowardice and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... much-confused knight, recognizing, step by step, the path of the night before. The turf hut was before him—the door was open—and in the doorway sat the maiden herself, spinning, the distaff by her side, the spindle dancing on the ground, and the pilgrim's hat no longer hiding her beauteous brow and wealth of dark braided hair. But, intolerable sight, seven or eight of last night's loungers were dispersed hither and thither in the bushes, gazing with ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... divided into two parts: (A) Spindle Turning, and (B) Face-Plate Turning. The same order is followed in each part; the related information is supplied where required ...
— A Course In Wood Turning • Archie S. Milton and Otto K. Wohlers

... that," he said, his articulation very thick; "but it takes nerve—if you've got it, you spindle-legged little cockney!" ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers

... father sang aforetime, As he carved his hatchet's handle, And my mother taught me likewise, As she turned around her spindle, When upon the floor, an infant, At her knees she saw me tumbling, 40 As a helpless child, milk-bearded, As a babe with mouth all milky. Tales about the Sampo failed not, Nor the magic spells of Louhi. Old at length became the Sampo; Louhi ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous

... Church compositions were impregnated with a light gaiety, he replied: "I cannot help it; I give forth what is in me. When I think of the Divine Being, my heart is, so full of joy that the notes fly off as from a spindle, and as I have a cheerful heart He will pardon me if ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden

... inserted on corolla tube; 1 pistil with 2 stigmas. Stem: 1 to 3 ft. high, usually branched, leafy. Leaves: Opposite, upper ones acute at tip, broadening to heart-shaped base, seated on stem. Fruit: A spindle-shaped, 2-valved capsule, containing numerous scaly, ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... weaving, in and out, in and out, she was a twentieth century version of any one of the Fates, with the Klinger darner and mender substituted for distaff and spindle. There was something almost humanly intelligent in the workings of Martha's machine. Under its glittering needle she would shove a sock whose heel bore a great, jagged, gaping wound. Your home darner, equipped only with mending egg, needle, ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... purpose, for, even had an alias been beyond the invention of the knaves of that generation, it is known that servants were often called by their masters' names, as slaves are now. On what the heralds call the spindle side, some, at least, of the oldest Virginian families are descended from matrons who were exported and sold for so many hogsheads of tobacco the head. So notorious was this, that it became one of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... otherwise bear, on that account, must tumble and roll off, so I made a fire and turned smith; for with a great deal to do breaking off the wards of a large key I had, and making it red-hot, I by degrees fashioned it into a kind of spindle, and therewith making holes quite round the bottom of my cart, in them I stuck up sticks about two feet high that I had tapered at ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock

... Sir, he's a tall, stooping, lantern-jawed, asthmatic-voiced, spindle-shanked fellow.' Here he put his foot on the rail of my chair, and slightly scratched the calf of his leg. 'Hair the color of a cock-canary,' thrusting his fingers through his own coal-black ringlets; 'with light ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various

... auld wife, and weel mat she be, That busks her fause rock wi' the lint o' the lee (lie), Whirling her spindle and twisting the twine, Wynds aye the richt pirn into the ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... trench. On the sides of the papillae, embedded in the epithelium, are small oval bodies called taste-buds. These taste-buds consist of a sheath of flattened, fusiform cells, enclosing a number of spindle-like cells whose tapering ends are prolonged into a hair-like process. As the filaments of the gustatory nerves terminate between these rod-like cells, it is probable that they are the true ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... tenth year upwards Jasper and myself daily attended the vicarage, in order to be taught Greek, Latin, and other matters by the Reverend Mr. Timotheus Herrick, vicar of Beechcot. He was a tall, thin, spindle-shanked gentleman, very absent-minded, but a great scholar. It was said of him, that if he had not married a very managing woman in the shape of Mistress Priscilla Horbury, he would never have got through the world. He had one child, Rose, of ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher

... morning while they were at work as usual, and Nora's hand was pausing on her spindle, and her eyes were fixed upon the narrow path leading through ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... and live in the sunlight and the welcome air. They work, they eat, they sleep out of doors. Mothers of families sit about their doors and spin, or walk volubly up and down with other slatternly matrons, armed with spindle and distaff while their raven- haired daughters, lounging near the threshold, chase the covert insects that haunt the tangles of the children's locks. Within doors shines the bare bald head of the grandmother, who never ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... with the two ladies and Perrote. Amphillis, as a newcomer, was excused for that evening; and she sat studying her neighbours and surroundings till Mistress Perrote pronounced it bed-time. Then each girl rose and put by her spindle; courtesied to the ladies, and wished them each "Good-even," receiving a similar greeting; and the three filed out of the inner door after Perrote, each possessing herself of a lighted candle as she passed a window where ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt

... know do as I have said; and for those maidens from the Hyperboreans, who died in Delos, both the girls and the boys of the Delians cut off their hair: the former before marriage cut off a lock and having wound it round a spindle lay it upon the tomb (now the tomb is on the left hand as one goes into the temple of Artemis, and over it grows an olive-tree), and all the boys of the Delians wind some of their hair about a green shoot of some tree, and they also place ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus

... the maid To twirl the spindle by the twisting thread, To fix the loom, instruct the reeds to part, Cross the long weft, and close the web with art: An useful gift; but what profuse expense, What world of fashions, took ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... the native plant by means of a very primitive spindle, which consists of a small rod of wood at the end of which is a top-shaped piece of the same material which serves to sustain the necessary rotation. A tuft of cotton is attached to the end of this bar, and, as the top ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband trusteth in her; good and not evil will she do him all the days of her life; she riseth, while it is yet night, giveth food to her household and a task to her maidens. She putteth her own hands to the spindle; she stretcheth out her hand to the poor—strength and honor are her clothing and she looketh forth smilingly to the morrow; she openeth her mouth with wisdom and the law of kindness is on her tongue—she looketh well to the ways of her household and eateth not the bread of idleness. Deceitful ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... in the arrangement of their fibres, as relates to their tendinous structure. Sometimes they are completely longitudinal, and terminate, at each extremity, in a tendon, the entire muscle being spindle-shaped. In other situations, they are disposed like the rays of a fan, converging to a tendinous point, and constituting a ra'di-ate muscle. Again they are pen'ni-form, converging, like the plumes of a pen, to one side ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter

... interesting experiments with the object of determining the amount of mechanical work produced by the machine (when worked as an electro-magnetic engine), and the corresponding consumption of the elements of the battery: Attached to the spindle of the machine was a small pulley, Q Q (Fig. 3), for the purpose of driving, by means of a cord, another pulley on a horizontal spindle carrying a drum on which was wound a cord carrying a weight, and on the same spindle was also a brake and brake-wheel, the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various

... sees it back in the clean-swept kitchen, A part of her girlhood's little world; Her mother is there by the window, stitching; Spindle buzzes, and reel is whirled With many a click; on her little stool She sits, a child by the open door, Watching, and dabbling her feet in the pool Of sunshine ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... prepared, when twisted by the spindle, and made into a firm thread, is called the warp, and the art which regulates these operations the art of spinning ...
— Statesman • Plato

... fidelity. The ceremony was begun by sacrificing a sheep to Juno, the fleece being spread upon two chairs on which the bride and bridegroom sat: then a prayer was said over them. The young wife, carrying a distaff and spindle filled with wool, was conducted to her house, a cake, baked by the vestal virgins, being carried before her. The threshold of the house was disenchanted by charms, and by annointing it with certain unctuous perfumes; but as ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier

... American industry. He is in favor of the great interests of labor, and opposed to such tinkering with the tariff as will make vain the toil of the industrious farmer, paralyze the arm of the sturdy mechanic, strike down the hand of the hardy laborer, stop the spindle, hush the loom, extinguish the furnace-fires, and degrade all independent toilers to the level of the poor in other lands. The architect of his own fortune, he has a strong and abiding sympathy for those bread-winners who struggle ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... little boys who were totally destitute of clothing, and who seemed to enjoy with infinite zest the pastime of shooting-practice with little bows and arrows. No wonder that these Indians become expert bowmen. There were urchins there, scarce two feet high, with round bullets of bodies and short spindle-shanks, who could knock blackbirds off the trees at every shot, and cut the heads off the taller flowers with perfect certainty! There was much need, too, for the utmost proficiency they could attain, for the very existence of the Indian tribes of the prairies depends on their ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... the huge pear-shaped lintel, which had stretched over its little door, and which, according to tradition, a great Fingalian lady had once thrown across the Dornoch Firth from off the point of her spindle—had all disappeared, and I saw instead, only a dry-stone wall. The men of the present generation do certainly live in a most enlightened age—an age in which every trace of the barbarism of our early ancestors is fast disappearing; and were we but more zealous ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... spectacle.... He had seen such sights before, but not under such circumstances. In an iron scoop on the oven some game was being roasted; it might have been an enormous hare, but was not. Like a hare, it was very spindle-shanked and lean over back and breast; only the hinder-parts seemed well developed; the head was placed, between the two fore-paws.... No! they were not fore-paws, but two five-fingered hands, and ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg

... neatly kept, but poorly furnished, with that old-fashioned spindle-legged furniture which seems peculiar to lodging-houses. Yet the little sitting-room had an aspect of simple rustic prettiness, which is almost pleasanter to look at than fine furniture. There were pictures,—simple water-colour ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... "siphonostomatous" applied to the shell. Some of the carnivorous forms belong to extinct types, such as the Purpuroidea of the Great Oolite; but others are referable to well-known existing genera. Thus we meet here with species of the familiar groups of the Whelks (Buccinum), the Spindle-shells (Fusus), the Spider-shells (Pteroceras), Murex, Rostellaria, and others which are not at present known to occur in any ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson

... Japanese collection he chose a design representing a cluster of flowers emanating spindle-like, from a slender stalk. Taking it to a jeweler, he sketched a border to enclose this bouquet in an oval frame, and informed the amazed lapidary that every petal and every leaf was to be designed with jewels and mounted on ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... whose seed is much more beautiful than its flower. By the way, I have two, for the Spindle Tree is in seed, which has a quite insignificant blossom. But the plant I mean is a wild peony, which I dug up in a brake on the slopes of Helikon. It is a single white whose flower lasts, perhaps, three days. It makes a large seed-pod, which burst a short time ago, and revealed ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett

... Jan Koekebakken, prisoner, be conducted by the executioner from the Chancery to Brol-bridge, and that he be put into the pillory there. He shall remain standing there for two hours with a spindle under each arm, and with the letter in which he pledged faith to the said Aucke Sijbrant hanging from his neck. He shall remain for ever within the town of Leeuwarden, under penalty of death if ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... was humming a quick measure and Dorothy trod lightly back and forth, the wheel-pin in one hand, the other holding the tense, lengthening thread, which the spindle devoured again. ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote

... Wagner's first love, nor even his first wife. For in November, 1836, he had married Wilhelmina Planer, the leading actress of the theatre in Magdeburg where he was musical director of opera. Her father was a spindle-maker. It is said that her desire to earn money for the household, rather than the impetus of a well-defined histrionic gift, led her to go on the stage; but, once on the stage, she discovered that she had unquestionable talent, and played leading ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb

... chairs against the wall, polished by age and careful rubbing to that stage of dark shininess which makes even mahogany pleasant to the eye, and with seats of flowering silk damask whose texture must have been very good to be so faded without being worn; there were spindle-legged side-tables holding inlaid "papier-mache" desks and rose-wood work-boxes, and two or three carved cedar or sandal-wood cases of various shapes. And, most tempting of all to my mind, there were glass-doored cupboards in the wall, with great treasures of handleless teacups ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth

... in our first dejection, I thought I saw a place where a flat roller would remedy the whole misfortune; but a flat roller at Cape Spartivento, hard, easily unshipped, running freely! There was a grooved pulley used for the paying-out machinery with a spindle wheel, which might suit me. I filled him up with tarry spunyarn, nailed sheet copper round him, bent some parts in the fire; and we are paying-in without more trouble now. You would think some one would praise me; no—no more praise than blame before; perhaps now they ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... upon a solid block of the same diameter, the contiguous surfaces of each being previously cut in notches or small grooves, and worked backwards and forwards horizontally by two handles or transverse arms; a spindle fixed in the centre of the lower cylinder serving as an axis to the upper or hollow one. Into this the grain is poured, and it is thus made to perform the office of the hopper at the same time with that of the upper, or movable stone, in our mills. In working ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... greatly enhances the cost, carrying it up as high as ten to twenty cents per pound, according to the degree of fineness; for the filaments must be separated from the stem by immersion in water, must be kept in parallel lines, and prepared for the spindle ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various

... braces with eyes bolted upon the stern-post for the pintles of the rudder to work in, as upon hinges. Also, the notches made in the carrick-bitts for receiving the metal bushes wherein the spindle ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... old as I am; and if my countenance seems to belie me a little or so, why—trouble, concern for the good of my country, sir, and this tyrannical, villainous Constitution have made me look so; but my health is sound, sir; my lungs are good, sir, [Raising his voice.]—ugh, ugh, ugh,—I am neither spindle-shank'd nor crook-back'd, and I can kiss a pretty girl with as good a relish as—ugh, ugh,—ha, ha, ha. A man of five and forty, old, forsooth! ha, ha. ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low

... "Augustus was a freckle-faced, spindle-shanked little critter, with spectacles and a soft, polite way of speakin' that made you want to build a fire under him to see if he could swear like a Christian. He had a big head with consider'ble hair on the top of it and nothin' underneath but what he called 'science' and 'sociology.' His ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln

... the long stone-seat beneath the eaves Of his old cottage,—as it chanced, that day, 20 Employed in winter's work. Upon the stone His wife sate near him, teasing matted wool, While, from the twin cards toothed with glittering wire, He fed the spindle of his youngest child, Who, in the open air, with due accord 25 Of busy hands and back-and-forward steps, Her large round wheel was turning. [3] Towards the field In which the Parish Chapel stood alone, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth

... snarled Shrimp, beside himself. "Is that what ye call letting yer arms hang naturally. Where did ye get yer ideas of nature, anyway, ye spindle-shanked ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock

... Tissue.—The transformation of this temporary granulation tissue into scar tissue is effected by the fibroblasts, which become elongated and spindle-shaped, and produce in and around them a fine fibrillated material which gradually increases in quantity till it replaces the cell protoplasm. In this way white fibrous tissue is formed, the cells of which ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... body which result from active methods of winning a livelihood. The former are, to a great extent, victims of that generic and hereditary tabes mesenterica which produces the peculiar pot-bellied and spindle-shanked type of savage; their manners are milder; their virtues and vices are done in water-color, as comports with their source of supply. There are some tribes which partake of the habits of both classes, living in mountain-fastnesses ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... clean through, as if some one had struck it with the head of an axe, and one of the pallets of the spindle was stuck fast in the crack. He could knock it out easily enough, but when the crack came around again, the pallet would catch and the clock would stop once more. It was ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke

... cows, five hens, and a cock, a cat and two kittens. Now the old man looked after the cows, the cock looked after the hens, the cat looked after a mouse in the cupboard, and the two kittens looked after the old wife's spindle as it twirled and tussled about on the hearthstone. But though the old wife should have looked after the kittens, the more she said, "Sho! Sho! Go away, kitty!" the more they looked ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel

... though loose habit of most Arachnida, crabs, and other articulates. It was also proposed to secure several spiders in the above manner upon the periphery of a wheel, the revolution of which would give a twist to their conjoined threads, carried through a common eyelet upon the spindle; but this can be accomplished without the inconvenience of whirling the spiders out of sight, by modifications of the apparatus which has always been used for twisting ordinary silk. It will probably be inferred from the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various

... position of the quadrants must be only changed for reversing. In arranging the independent cut-off on the Joy gear, it is only necessary to increase the length of the vibrating link beyond the point of attachment for the main valve spindle connection to obtain a point from which motion may be taken to actuate the cut-off valve; even then the cost of the Joy gear for both cylinders is but little more than for a single ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various

... to the plough, and another, as it were, goad on the oxen, mitigating their sense of labour, by the usual rude song: {50} one man imitating the profession of a shoemaker; another, that of a tanner. Now you may see a girl with a distaff, drawing out the thread, and winding it again on the spindle; another walking, and arranging the threads for the web; another, as it were, throwing the shuttle, and seeming to weave. On being brought into the church, and led up to the altar with their oblations, you will be astonished to see them suddenly ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis

... of the young human being can be readily discriminated from that of the young puppy; but, at a tolerably early period, the two become distinguishable by the different form of their adjuncts, the yelk-sac and the allantois. The former, in the Dog, becomes long and spindle-shaped, while in Man it remains spherical; the latter, in the Dog, attains an extremely large size, and the vascular processes which are developed from it and eventually give rise to the formation of the placenta (taking root, as it were, in the ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... to notice that in the early representations of Athena, while she is very warlike in her bearing and raises her lance in her right hand, she also carries in her left the distaff and the spindle and the lamp of knowledge. In the later art of Phidias she is still stern and severe, but her face also expresses dignity and grandeur of thought and character. Later still, her warlike attributes are made less prominent: the shield rests on the ground, and the lance is more like a sceptre, ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement

... love. Pleased with his pipe, he sits and smokes in his elbow-chair; totally unknown to him is the ardent passion that actuates the sentimental soul: alas! unhappy man! he never indulged in the pleasing reverie which inspires the spindle-shanked lover, as he strays through nodding forest by gliding stream; if he marries, he chooses a companion fat as himself; they lie together, and most musical is their snore, they melt like two pounds of butter in one plate ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell

... by different sowings from the end of October till April, or the following month. They should have a light fine mould, and the more early sowings be made on borders, under warm walls, or other similar places, and in frames covered by glasses. The common spindle-rooted, short-topped sorts are mostly made use of in these early sowings, the seed being sown broadcast over the beds after they have been prepared by digging over and raking the surface even, being covered in with a slight ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... increasing acquiescence) that I was now the mistress of the fair estates of Castlewood, and, the male line being extinct, might claim the barony, if so pleased me; for that, upon default of male heirs, descended by the spindle. And as to the property, with or without any will of the late Lord Castlewood, the greater part would descend to me under unbarred settlement, which he was not known to have meddled with. On the contrary, he confirmed by his last will the ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... crowd, and now slowly working towards the cross, was a banner on a high-raised cross-pole, a picture of a man and woman half-clad in skins of beasts seen against a background of green trees, the man holding a spade and the woman a distaff and spindle rudely done enough, but yet with a certain spirit and much meaning; and underneath this symbol of the early world and man's first contest with nature ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris

... embroidered with gold, showed off her dainty feet, and a French hairdresser stood behind her chair putting the finishing touches to the imposing fabric of powder, flower, and feather upon her head. A little hand-mirror, framed in carved ivory inlaid with coral, and a fan, lay on a tiny spindle-legged table close in front of her, together with a buff-coloured cup of chocolate. At a somewhat larger table Mrs. Loveday, her woman, was dispensing the chocolate, whilst a little negro boy, in a fantastic Oriental costume, waited ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and, at this time, in consequence of the Dutch-Spanish War, and the multitude of Protestant refugees, it was getting filled with ingenious industries; and rising to be, what it still is, the busiest quarter of Germany. A Country lowing with kine; the hum of the flax-spindle heard in its cottages, in those old days,—"much of the linen called Hollands is made in Julich, and only bleached, stamped and sold, by the Dutch," says Busching. A Country, in our days, which is shrouded at short intervals with the due canopy of coal-smoke, and loud with sounds ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle

... are long, spindle-shaped, fleshy, and sometimes weigh three pounds; its stems stout, herbaceous, fluted, often more than 4 feet tall, and hollow; its leaves long-stalked, frequently 3 feet in length, reddish purple at the clasping bases, and composed, in ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains

... pressures over 160 pounds and degrees of superheat above 70, all valves 3 inches and over should have valve bodies, caps and yokes of steel castings. Spindles should be of some non-corrosive metal, such as "monel metal". Seat rings should be removable of the same non-corrosive metal as should the spindle ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.

... opponents have had a special revelation, we find in the existing state of England much that appears to us to need control. We are unable to share the optimism which animates Remenham and his friends as to the direction and effects of the new forces of industry. Above the whirr of the spindle and the shaft we hear the cry of the poor. Behind our flourishing warehouses and shops we see the hovels of the artisan. We watch along our highroads the long procession of labourers deserting their ancestral villages for the cities; we trace ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson

... small boy came walking along the path—an urchin of nine or ten. The child, who was diminutive for his years, had an aged expression of countenance, a pale complexion, and sharp little features. He was dressed in knickerbockers, with red stockings, which displayed his poor little spindle-shanks; he also wore a brilliant red cravat. He carried in his hand a long alpenstock, the sharp point of which he thrust into everything that he approached—the flowerbeds, the garden benches, the trains of the ladies' dresses. ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James

... the short and slender limbs, which served for its support. And yet, as if all this wretched deformity were not enough, one leg was shorter than the other, and the foot was a club one. To assist him in walking, he carried a pair of crutches, apparently much too long for him, which raised his spindle arms in their loose sockets, and rendered the hump more horrible. When he moved, his crutches spread out on either side of him, as he swung along between them, taking up a vast deal of room without any apparent necessity. His coat had apparently been the property of some ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa

... had anticipated, in short, up to its own high and difficult standards. And along had come a ruck of stuff that was dark and dingy and old-fashioned; awkward articles with a vast dull expanse of mahogany, ending in clumsy claw feet; spindle-legged tables inlaid with white wood; old-fashioned mirrors in scarred gilt frames; awkward-looking highboys and the plainest of sofas and lounges. The chief sideboard boasted not the tiniest bit of brass; even the handles were ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... there by the queen, torn away from his book and drawn to a dejeuner on the grass! When that was over, and Louis had gone back to his book, Marie Antoinette hastened to her cows to see them milked, or she went into the rocking-boat to fish, or else reposed on the lawn, busy as a peasant, with her spindle. ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach

... their height to the summit. The second order of these two pavilions is Corinthian. The two piles of building, which come next, as well as the two pavilions of the wings, are of a Composite order with fluted pillars. From a tall iron spindle, placed on the pinnacle of each of the three principal pavilions is now seen floating a horizontal tri-coloured streamer. Till the improvements made by Lewis XIV, the large centre pavilion had been decorated with the Ionic and Corinthian ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... the antiquated finery of the Iron Duke, with which the old soldier sought to please his young mistress. It provoked a smile or two from the more frivolous as the grey, gaunt, spindle-shanked old man stalked by, yet it was not without its pathetic side. The Duke wore a scarlet coat, a tight fit, laced with gold, with splendid gold buttons and frogs, the brilliant star of the Order of ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler

... we were happy to find no one hirt. The next morning we found that the buffaloe in passing the perogue had trodden on a rifle, which belonged to Capt. Clark's black man, who had negligently left her in the perogue, the rifle was much bent, he had also broken the spindle, pivit, and shattered the stock of one of the bluntderbushes on board, with this damage I felt well content, happey indeed, that we had sustaned no further injury. it appears that the white perogue, which contains our most valuable stores, is attended by some evil gennii. This morning we set ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... girls of her own age was a certain excellently named Minnie Smellie, who was anything but a general favorite. She was a ferret-eyed, blond-haired, spindle-legged little creature whose mind was a cross between that of a parrot and a sheep. She was suspected of copying answers from other girls' slates, although she had never been caught in the act. Rebecca ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... dreams the quiet dame, Who plies with rack and spindle, The patient flax, how great a flame Yon little spark shall kindle! The lurid morning shall reveal A fire no king can smother, When British flint and Boston steel Have clashed against each other! Old charters shrivel ...
— Tea Leaves • Various

... powerful, simple and effective. It is always in readiness for work, can be worked by inexperienced workmen. The bed plate has T slots, to receive a parallel vise, which can be fixed at any angle for angular cutting. The articulated lever carries a saw of 10 in. or 12 in. diameter, on the spindle of which a bronze pinion is fixed, gearing with the worm shown. The latter derives motion from a pair of bevel wheels, which are in turn actuated from the pulley shown in the engraving. The lever and the saw ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various

... rooms was furniture belonging to many a different age. Carpets and chair-cushions worked in tent stitch and cross stitch and old-fashioned harpsichord; gaudy white and gold furniture of the Louis Quatorze time, mixed with the spindle-legged tables ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... enters the social force of workmen, labors for a time, and drops out of the line, and can see that society is composed of transient material; but society itself is an abiding thing. So we can study a particular bit of ore or wool or leather or a particular hammer or spindle or sewing machine, and in those cases we shall be studying capital goods and finding how perishable they are; but we shall also see that a stock of them always abides as the capital of economic society. We can cease to look ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark

... round the loins So slender of his shape, was Michael Scot, Practis'd in ev'ry slight of magic wile. "Guido Bonatti see: Asdente mark, Who now were willing, he had tended still The thread and cordwain; and too late repents. "See next the wretches, who the needle left, The shuttle and the spindle, and became Diviners: baneful witcheries they wrought With images and herbs. But onward now: For now doth Cain with fork of thorns confine On either hemisphere, touching the wave Beneath the towers of Seville. Yesternight The moon was round. Thou mayst remember well: For she good service ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... called a woman, sprang up from the bushes, and pulled at the cord about the cow's neck. From beneath the crimson handkerchief about the woman's head, fair matted hair escaped, something as tow hangs about a spindle. She wore no kerchief at the throat. A coarse black-and-gray striped woolen petticoat, too short by several inches, left her legs bare. She might have belonged to some tribe of Redskins in Fenimore Cooper's novels; for her neck, arms, and ankles looked as if they ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac

... the spot. The Target Society were out on a street parade, and the policemen marched before them to clear Broadway of all vehicles and foot-passengers, and to stop short, for the time, the business of a great city, in order that these twenty spindle-legged and melancholy little cobblers might have a proper opportunity of showing their utter ignorance of all rules of marching, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 25, September 17, 1870 • Various

... think they had. There's that Lokodi with four others. He himself plays the heroic parts; a spindle-shanked, barber's apprentice sort of fellow, takes the aged father parts; and there's a matron, well advanced in years, who acts the young missies. They are now making ready to give a representation ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai

... at all; he wouldn't tell lies then. But of course, here he is, in the very nick of time," continued Marfa Timofeevna, looking down the street. "Here comes your agreeable man, striding along. How spindle-shanked he is, to be sure—just ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... the surface of the soil, (28) and round the circle of the crown the cord-noose. The cord itself and wooden clog must now be lowered into their respective places. Which done, place on the crown some rods of spindle-tree, (29) but not so as to stick out beyond the outer rim; and above these again light leaves, such as the season may provide. After this put a final coating of earth upon the leaves; in the first place the surface soil from the holes just dug, and ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon

... pully was fastened. Round this piece of timber a stage or platform was constructed, four feet broad, and about eighteen feet long, which was strongly fastened with iron. The entrance was lengthways, and it could be moved about the piece of timber, first described, as on a spindle, and could be hoisted within six feet of the top. Round this there was a parapet, knee high, which was defended with upright bars of iron, sharpened at the end. Towards the top there was a ring, through which a rope was fastened, by means of which they could raise and lower the engine ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... and distinguished men: one, whose name was Biorn, they nicknamed Ironsides; another, Sigurd, Snake in the Eye; another, White Sark, or White Shirt—I wonder they did not call him Dirty Shirt; and Ivarr, another, who was king of Northumberland, they called Beinlausi, or the Legless, because he was spindle-shanked, had no sap in his bones, and consequently no children. He was a great king, it is true, and very wise, nevertheless his blackguard countrymen, always averse, as their descendants are, to give credit to anybody for any valuable quality or possession, must needs ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... never by excessive circumscription afford matter for disputation; which is much more in place among students in the schools, than among us, whose powers are scarce adequate to the management of the distaff and the spindle. Wherefore I, that had in mind a matter of, perchance, some nicety, now that I see you all at variance touching the matters last mooted, am minded to lay it aside, and tell you somewhat else, which concerns a man by no means of slight account, but a valiant king, being a chivalrous action ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio

... However, the reformers were as great sticklers for medals as the "papelins." Of Pope John VIII., an effeminate voluptuary, we have a medal with his portrait, inscribed Pope Joan! and another of Innocent X., dressed as a woman holding a spindle; the reverse, his famous mistress, Donna Olympia, dressed as a Pope, with the tiara on her head, and the keys of St. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... or The Beauty of Sleeping Wood, as it comes to us from Perrault's hands, is the story of a maiden who was cursed by an offended fairy to pierce her hand with a spindle and to die of it—a curse afterwards mitigated into a sleep of a hundred years. Every effort was made by the king, her father, to avert the doom, but in vain; and for a whole century the princess and all her court remained in the castle in a magical sleep, while the castle itself and all ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... reached Stirling's house, and was left to wait a few minutes in a very artistically-furnished room. Its floor was of polished parquetry with a few fine skins from British Columbia spread upon it here and there, and the dainty, spindle-legged chairs, the little tables, the cabinets and the Watteau figures were, he fancied, either of old French manufacture or excellent copies. The big basement heater had apparently been extinguished, but a snapping ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss

... fleecy pile it made, to be sure! And what fun it was to take up a handful of it, roll it into a string between her fingers, then twist one end of it around a spindle which she would throw out in the air with a twirl that would make it spin. Of course this would twist the wool into a thread, fine or large, according to whether the spindle was ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True

... was crazy," she went on, "but I wasn't long makin' 'em understand. An' I tell you, the way they took it made me love 'em all. If you want to love folks, just you get in some kind o' respectable trouble in Friendship, an' you'll see so much lovableness that the trouble'll kind o' spindle out an' leave nothin' but the love doin' business. My land, the Sodality went at the situation head first, like it was somethin' to get acrost before dark. ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale

... wantonly, to swell your treasure? Whence o'er the heart his empire free? The elements of Life how conquers he? Is't not his heart's accord, urged outward far and dim, To wind the world in unison with him? When on the spindle, spun to endless distance, By Nature's listless hand the thread is twirled, And the discordant tones of all existence In sullen jangle are together hurled, Who, then, the changeless orders of creation Divides, and kindles into rhythmic dance? Who brings the One to join the general ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... persisted Sally, in genuine enthusiasm. "See how wide and high, sweeping straight through to that door at the back. And see the wide, low staircase with the spindle railing and the curved posts at the bottom. See the carving over the doors—and the fanlight over the outside ones. And look at ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond

... costume which he had worn during the heyday of his existence, and to which he clung after it had been obsolete for half a century. And with each year his slim figure became yet thinner, his back more bent, and his spindle legs more bowed, till at length the man who had been born early in the reign of George III. witnessed the dawning of the year 1850; after which the quaint figure of the once-famous Sir Lumley Skeffington was seen ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)

... he opened the door, he beheld the form of the maiden Seated beside her wheel, and the carded wool like a snow-drift Piled at her knee, her white hands feeding the ravenous spindle, While with her foot on the treadle she guided ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... dame Who plies with' rock and spindle The patient flax, how great a flame Yon little spark shall kindle! The lurid morning shall reveal A fire no king can smother Where British flint and Boston steel Have clashed against each other! Old charters shrivel in its track, His Worship's bench ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... sings: "O joy, O joy, From the humming street, and the child with its toy! From the priest, and the bell, and the holy well; From the wheel where I spun, And the blessed light of the sun!" And so she sings her fill, Singing most joyfully, Till the spindle drops from her hand, And the whizzing wheel stands still. She steals to the window, and looks at the sand, And over the sand at the sea; And her eyes are set in a stare, And anon there breaks a sigh, And anon there drops a tear, From a sorrow-clouded eye, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... lived in them, and died in them perhaps, in the days that are gone. But if you come to them, they shall be made bright and pretty, and we will chase the shadows of the mediaeval age away. There are old pictures, old musical instruments, quaint spindle-legged chairs and tables, tapestries that crumble as you touch them—the ashes and relics of many generations. Gustave says we will sweep these poor vestiges away, and begin a new life, when I come to Cotenoir; but I cannot find it in my heart to obliterate every trace of those dead feet ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... a complexion suggesting old sole leather; Greeks, with frilled petticoats; Romans, of course with the toga; Kabeles, with black hair and wearing a robe like a big gas-bag; Moors, with the Duke's nose and spindle shanks; Mohammedans, carrying bannocks with holes in them; and dragomans, with "bakshish" stamped on every department of their anatomy. But beneath the furtive glance and in the wicked eyes you see the cut-throat still lurking, awaiting the first opportunity ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne

... was of maize, "which is a sort of corn which grows here, with a spike like a spindle." The Indians and their guests parted with regret that they could not understand each other's conversation. All this passed in the house of the elder Indian. The younger then took them to his house, where a similar collation was served, and they then returned to ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale

... dark, polished stairs to an upper hall where stood a tall clock and a spindle-legged table with a vast jar of pot-pourri. A door opened, framing Jacqueline, dressed in white, and wearing her mother's wedding veil. "I knew your step," she said. "Oh, Unity, ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... of bomb which has proved to be the most successful is pear-shaped. The tail spindle is given an arrow-head shape, the vanes being utilised to steady the downward flight of the missile. In falling the bomb spins round, the rotating speed increasing as the projectile gathers velocity. The vanes act as a guide, keeping the projectile ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot

... evident disarray it, however, exhibited fewer signs of the strange, long-past agitation. In dimensions it was similar to the dining-room, running from front to back of the house. Here, too, was another elaborate candelabrum, somewhat smaller than the first, queer, spindle-legged, fiddle-backed chairs, beautiful cabinets and tables, and an old, square piano, still open. The chairs stood in irregular groups of twos and threes, chumming cozily together as their occupants had doubtless done, and over the piano ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman

... department-store bed of brass, with its brave, gay canopy; the mill-made wash-stand, with its pitcher and bowl of blinding red and green china, the straw-framed lithographs of symbolic female figures against the multi-coloured, new wall-paper; the inadequate spindle chairs of white and gold; the sphere of tissue paper hanging from the gas fixture, and the plumes of pampas grass tacked to the wall at artistic angles, and overhanging two astonishing oil paintings, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... forth from the house and garth, and forbidden to go back thither till dusk. While the days were long and the grass was growing, I had to lead our goats to pasture in the wood-lawns, and must take with me rock and spindle, and spin so much of flax or hair as the woman gave me, or be beaten. But when the winter came and the snow was on the ground, then that watching and snaring of ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris

... however hot and wild and savage in the gentlemen, was generally calm and good, though steadfast, in the weaker vessels. For the main part, however, a family takes it character more from the sword than the spindle; and their sword hand had ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... arrangement somewhat resembles a comb. It will be seen that the first application perforates the stamps of one row on three sides. The application of the machine to the next row below completes the fourth side. In the best perforating machines the needles are arranged in circles around a spindle. The sheets pass under this roller and are perforated in one direction. A similar machine makes the perforations in the ...
— What Philately Teaches • John N. Luff

... all is still, no flocks grazing on the shore, no picturesque groups, no songs. The spinning-wheel no longer whirls, the hand of the queen no longer turns the spindle; she has learned to hold the sceptre and the pen, and to weave public policy, and not a net of linen. The trees with their variegated autumn foliage are reflected in the dark water of the pond; some weeping-willows droop ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach

... special character—Rhizaphora. Very diverse indeed are the means by which plants are distributed. While some are borne, some fly and others float. The mangrove is maritime. While still pendant from the pear-shaped fruit of the parent tree, the seed, a spindle-shaped radicle, varying in length from a foot to 4 feet, germinates—ready to form a plant immediately upon arrival at a suitable locality. A sharp spike at the apex represents the embryo leaves ready to unfold, ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... as his spindle legs could carry his fat, round body, and soon the Chief Counselor entered the cavern. The King scowled and ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... spreading consternation and terror everywhere. Whereas Sardanapalus, as if he had entirely renounced his sex, spent all his time in the heart of his palace, perpetually surrounded with a company of women, whose dress and even manners he had adopted, applying himself with them to the spindle and the distaff, neither understanding nor doing any other thing than spinning, eating and drinking, and wallowing in all manner of infamous pleasure. Accordingly, a statue was erected to him, after his death, which represented him in the posture of a dancer, with ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... the first in all Hesperia, fed The turning spindle with the twisting thread; The woof, the shuttle follow'd her command, Till various garments grew beneath her hand. And now, while all her thoughts with Capac rove Thro former scenes of innocence and love, In distant fight his fancied dangers share, ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... into rolls. Then, day after day, for weeks, the noise of the spinning-wheel was heard, accompanied by the steady beat of the girls' feet, as they walked forward and backward drawing out and twisting the thread and running it on the spindle. This was work that required some skill, for on the fineness and evenness of the thread the character of the fabric largely depended. Finally, the yarn was carried to the weavers ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... Sanctitude. Past midnight this poor Maid hath spun, And yet the work is not half done, Which must supply from earning scant A feeble bed-rid parent's want. Her sleep-charged eyes exemption ask, And Holy hands take up the task: Unseen the rock and spindle ply, And do her earthly drudgery. Sleep, saintly poor one, sleep, sleep on; And, waking, find thy labours done. Perchance she knows it by her dreams; Her eye hath caught the golden gleams, Angelic presence testifying, That round her every where ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... all the plants, you will have to admit that it is the plant itself which has taught man to spin. Look right into the heart of the flower and you will find the filaments wound round the style like flax round a spindle. And to make her meaning even more plain, nature has planted a parasite, the bind-weed by its side, which winds itself round and round the plant up and down, to and fro, like a weaver's shuttle. And isn't it wonderful that not a man, but a butterfly, first thought of spinning the flax? People call ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg

... furnished with a sober grandeur, in perfect tone with its architecture. Everything was solid and ponderous, save here and there, where in some lady's bower there appeared the spindle-legged tables and inlaid cabinets of the Chippendale period, which had an air of newness where all else was so old. The upper rooms were low and somewhat dark, the heavily mullioned windows being designed to exclude rather than to admit light. There was much tapestry, subdued in ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... soon became evident that the main contest lay between these two, but Don had gained on his competitor in the sixth round by sending a fourth bullet into the bull's-eye, to Barry's second, when Ben Buster was seen strolling up the hill. Instantly his substitute, a tall, nervous fellow, nicknamed Spindle, proposed to resign in Ben's favor, and the motion was carried by acclamation,—the Blues hoping everything, and the Reds fearing nothing, ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge

... together, and roll them up in balls. These "rope-yarns'' are constantly used for various purposes, but the greater part is manufactured into spun-yarn. For this purpose, every vessel is furnished with a "spun-yarn winch''; which is very simple, consisting of a wheel and spindle. This may be heard constantly going on deck in pleasant weather; and we had employment, during a great part of the time, for three hands, in drawing and knotting ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... succeeded in bringing with them to Canada some sticks of furniture or some family heirlooms. Here and there a family would possess an ancient spindle, a pair of curiously-wrought fire-dogs, or a quaint pair of hand-bellows. But these relics of a former life merely served to accentuate the rudeness of the greater part of the furniture of the settlers. Chairs, benches, tables, beds, ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace

... the top of a hill close by the village, and were surveying the country from thence, keeping a sharp look-out all the while for Mexican remains in the furrows. For a wonder, we found nothing but some broken spindle-heads; but, while we were thus occupied, two Indians suddenly made their appearance, each with his machete in his hands, and wanted to know what we were doing on their land. We pacified them by politeness and a cigar apiece, but we were still evidently objects ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor



Words linked to "Spindle" :   fiber, spinning frame, drive, stick, rotating shaft, spinning wheel, biology, wood, shaft, piece, fibre, biological science, holding device



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