"Thimble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... beautiful, thoroughly furnished work-box from Mamma Vi, with "actually a gold thimble in it," to encourage her in learning to sew. One for Gracie also exactly like it, except that Lulu's was lined with red satin and Gracie's with blue. Each had beside a new doll with a neat little trunk packed full of clothes made to fit it, and a box ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley
... you." So saving, the woman pulled up her dirty apron, then her gown, and at last arrived at a queer fustian pocket, out of which she produced a missive, which had been jumbled in company with a bit of wax, a ball of blue worsted, some halfpence, a copper thimble, and a lump of Turkey rhubarb, from all of which companions it had received a variety of hues and colours. Vanslyperken seized the letter as soon as it was produced, and passing by the woman, went into the dining-parlour, where, with feelings of anxiety, he sat down, brushed the perspiration from ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... is melted and dropped upon the letter, if Dolly fumbles too long for her thimble, till the wax is over hardened, it will not receive the mark of her thimble from the usual impulse which was wont to imprint it. Very well. If Dolly's wax, for want of better, is bees-wax, or of a temper too soft,—tho' ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... to know what you want, you little grasshopper!" cried the woman very angrily, and she seized a shred of cloth to strike him; however, the tiny tailor popped under a thimble, and from it he peeped, putting out ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... busying himself on this momentous occasion, there passed by, to the pools of water, one of the royal elephants, about the size of a broad-wheeled waggon, rich in ivory teeth, and shaking, with its ponderous tread, the tailor's shop to its remotest thimble. As he passed near the window, the elephant happened to look in; the tailor lifted up his eyes, perceived the proboscis of the elephant near him, and, being seized with a fit of facetiousness, pricked the animal with ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... on this point: with them, a wife always knew enough when the extent of her genius enabled her to distinguish a doublet from a pair of breeches. She did not read, but she lived honestly; her family was the subject of all her learned conversation, and for hooks she had needles, thread, and a thimble, with which she worked at her daughter's trousseau. Women, in our days, are far from behaving thus: they must write and become authors. No science is too deep for them. It is worse in my house than anywhere else; the deepest secrets are understood, ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... happened last year I came back on business—another confounded legacy; end of June too, just as I was off to Finland. But Messrs. Thimble and Rigg, the highly respectable firm who look after my affairs, represented that I owed it to others, whom I kept out of their share of the legacy, to stay near town till affairs were wound up. They told me, ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... it." Mr. Broad nodded affirmatively. "I'm a jolly tar, a bo'sun's mate, a salt-horse wrangler. I just jumped a full-rigged ship—thimble-rigged!" He winked at Phillips and thrust his tongue into his cheek. "Here's my papers." From his shirt pocket he took a book of brown rice-papers and a sack of tobacco, then deftly fashioned ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... These he used to good advantage, drying his face and hands on the white counterpane of the bed, and laughing quietly as he did so. Next he lit a pipe, whose capacity for tobacco was rather less than that of a lady's thimble, sat in a chair by the window, smoked quietly, and gazed down on the ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... hanged if I know who or what he was or is. I haven't been able to find out. No, I don't know. He may have been anything. All I know is that once, years ago when I went to see the Derby with a friend, I saw a pea- and-thimble chap who looked just like that old mystery father out ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... to contain a wonderful quantity of things, almost all new to me. There were two brushes, twelve combs, three pair of scissors, a penknife, a little bottle of ink, some pens, a woman's thimble, a piece of wax, a case of needles, thread and silk, a piece of India ink, and a camel's hair brush, sealing-wax, sticking plaster, a box of pills, some tape and bobbin, paper of pins, a magnifying-glass, ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... This young man was the nephew of one of the Nob Hill magnates, who run the San Francisco Stock Exchange, much as more humble adventurers, in the corner of some public park at home, may be seen to perform the simple artifice of pea and thimble: for their own profit, that is to say, and the discouragement of public gambling. It was thus in his power - and, as he was of grateful temper, it was among the things that he desired - to put John in ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... them very well together; you must not make it very thin, if you do it will not stick to the apple; take a middling apple and pare it, cut out the core, and cut the rest in round slices about the thickness of a shilling; (you may take out the core after you have cut it with your thimble) have ready a little lard in a stew-pan, or any other deep pan; then take your apple every slice single, and dip it into your bladder, let your lard be very hot, so drop them in; you must keep them turning whilst enough, and mind that they be not over brown; as you ...
— English Housewifery Exemplified - In above Four Hundred and Fifty Receipts Giving Directions - for most Parts of Cookery • Elizabeth Moxon
... a globe of glass, with a hole like a thimble in the top to contain ink. Hannibal found himself looking at this, and noting the perfect miniature reproduction of the big calendar on the wall, as it was refracted by the glass. With his thoughts far away, his eyes continued to look at the neat little ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... here's my purse and my thimble; A fig for Poll Ady and fat Sukey Wimble; I now could jump over the steeple so nimble; With joy ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... ball—the corpse of a glorious hope that seemed once as if it would live for ever, so strong was it, so full of joy and sunshine: there, in your writing-desk, among a crowd of unpaid bills, is the dirty scrap of paper, thimble-sealed, which came in company with a pair of muffetees of her knitting (she was a butcher's daughter, and did all she could, poor thing!), begging "you would ware them at collidge, and think of her who"—married a public-house three weeks afterwards, ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... from the golden thimble he had nearly crushed under foot. He half wondered if she would know what it was. He never saw her do anything. She was never 'engaged,' nor in haste about any occupation. The perfect freedom from the universal Yankee necessity of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... be as you please," she said coldly. "Since Thimble Cottage burned, I've tried to make you understand that you are to use my place as your own. If you don't want ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... inquisitive, after a great horse-bite. And she always let me look at the arm, as I had been first doctor; and she held it up in a graceful manner, curving at the elbow, and with a sweep of white roundness going to a wrist the size of my thumb or so, and without any thimble-top standing forth, such as even our Annie had. But gradually all I could see, above the elbow, where the bite had been, was very clear, transparent skin, with very firm sweet flesh below, and three little blue ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... sleeping Fever, and how caused Bradley returns A doctor wanted A doctor's fee at the mines Medicine scarce A hot air bath and a cold water bath Indians engaged to work Indian thimble-rigging An Indian gamester, and the stake he plays for More sickness Mormons move off A drunken dance by Indians An Indian song about the yellow earth and the fleet rifle An ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... broken into a glass of water, and the shapes which it assumes foreshadow the fate of the person concerned. Again, seven saucers are placed in a row, filled respectively with water, earth, ashes, keys, a thimble, money, and grass, which things signify travel, death, widowhood, housekeeping, spinsterhood, riches, and farming. A blindfolded person touches one or other of the saucers with a wand and so discovers his or her fate. Again, three broad beans are taken; one ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... in deft fashion, putting thimble and thread away in a bag which, in time, became something of a marvel to Gus, who declared a man never wanted anything but she'd find it in that bag; then went about preparing breakfast, and soon Gus was sipping what seemed like nectar to the poor fellow, ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... answered pleasantly, "I think we might venture as far without fear of the workhouse! But what on earth made you bring such a thimble ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... himself. "Tuesday the old lady said her daughter was bringing her grey hairs with sorrow to the grave, because the cook had not boiled the potatoes. Wednesday she said Caroline was an assassin, because she could not find her own thimble. Thursday she vowed Caroline had no religion, because that old pair of silk stockings were not darned; and this can't be," reasoned Fitch. "A gal ain't a murderess, because her ma can't find her thimble. A woman that goes to slap her grown-up ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... his blankets in the winter, in summer with his one old coat carefully hung on that peg; I can see him before me now. On certain days he would wash his few poor clothes, and hang them out on the bushes to dry; then he would patiently mend them with his great brass thimble and coarse thread. Poor old garments! they were ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... better set to," sniffed Mrs. Updyke, fitting on a huge steel thimble open at the top; "they ain't much arternoons to these short days, anyhow. I'll take this star, an' you, Sairay, may work on the next, so't I kin kinder watch ye. 'Twon't do to hev any ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... determined upon for hiding, such as a coin, a button, a thimble, etc. A pupil is sent from the room. During his absence the object is hidden. Upon his return the children buzz vigorously when he is near to the object sought and very faintly when he is some distance away. The object is located by the intensity of ...
— School, Church, and Home Games • George O. Draper
... very nicely," said Avrillia. "Now a thimble—a really good one, please, that is thoroughly finger-broken, and has a tractable disposition and some sense. The one this little girl has now is simply abominable, and wouldn't push a needle through ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... just recovered from the effects of the heat, and resumed his accelerated pace when he noticed at the foot of a tree a knife, a child's small knife. When he picked it up, he discovered a thimble and also a needle-case ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... sight of some special mystery inside, for Dr. Boaze, the chief doctor of the place, and Murdock had been busy all the afternoon. Murdock came out, and asked my informant to run down to a shop near by for a thimble. On returning with the thimble, the boy pretended to have lost it, and, whilst searching in every pocket, he managed to slip inside the door of the workshop, and then produced the thimble. He found Dr. Boaze and Murdock with ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... were close by; but, for a wonder, the busy fingers were idle. In vain Daisy's frock pleaded for that great rent made yesterday, and Harold's socks showed themselves most disreputably out at heels. Charlotte Home neither put on her thimble nor threaded her needle; she sat gazing into the fire, lost in reverie. It was not a very happy or peaceful reverie, to judge from the many changes on her expressive face. The words, "Shall I, or shall I not?" came often to her lips. Many things seemed to tear her judgment in divers ways; ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... with needle, thimble and thread. She offered to mend the tear for me, but I had a horror of being made conspicuous ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... the damsels present, seeing the penury of the house, said to Preciosa, "Nina, will it be of any use to make the cross with a silver thimble?" ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... glued together again with a ribbon attached to each. Those drawing nuts having the same colored ribbon are partners. The one whose nut has a ring in, is to be married next; if a coin, he is to be the most wealthy; if a thimble, a spinster all her life. The other nuts may have slips of paper with prophecies ...
— Games for Everybody • May C. Hofmann
... his head was crowned with what had once been a white felt sombrero, now tanned by desert sun, wind, and dirt into a dingy mud-color; his powerful legs were encased in worn deer-skin breeches tucked into low-topped, broad-soled, well-greased boots; his waist was girt with a rude "thimble-belt," in the loops of which were thrust scores of copper cartridges for carbine and pistol; his carbine, and those of all the command, swung in a leather loop athwart the pommel of the saddle; revolvers in all manner of cases hung at the hip, the regulation holster, ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... and without knowing what he did he stooped his head and kissed the bit of stuff in his hold. As his lips rested on it he felt it glide slowly from beneath them, and saw that Mattie had risen and was silently rolling up her work. She fastened it with a pin, and then, finding her thimble and scissors, put them with the roll of stuff into the box covered with fancy paper which he had once brought to ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... each other. I believe I heaved a deep sigh, and dropped my thimble, which "Joey" instantly seized, and with a low chirrup of intense delight, commenced to poke down between the boards of the verandah. It was too bad of us to give such broad hints by looks if not by words. Poor Mr. C. H—— was a bachelor in those days: he had not been at his little out-of-the-way ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... his unsuspecting sire to put up for the night. And there the rook has been ever since. As I said, I have neither heard nor seen him, but I'm positive he's there. I am unable to give the precise date on which he first led the conversation to the good old English game of "rigging the thimble"—that also was before I came. All I can state with certainty is that he interested his host in it so effectually that now the infatuated old fool is playing it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... drew from his pocket a small silver thimble. "This'd be a password to the lydy. The minute she'd see it she'd know that the time ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... examination of the assessors or acolytes, or witch-doctor's chorus, by which it was established at length that the thimble had been lost three days before, when Tabitha was sitting on a stone sewing, that she believed it had fallen into a crevice of ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... is made, and I am a rich man for life," exclaimed Pierre, clapping his hands; "why, I shall have to marry you like the girls of Acadia, with a silver thimble on your finger and a pair of scissors at your girdle, emblems of industrious habits and proofs ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... to thank you," so the letter began, "not only for accepting my verses on 'A Thimble,' but also for the words of encouragement with which you accompany the acceptance. You say that you are especially glad to print the verses because they suggest a return to the type of womanhood of an earlier day, for which you retain an old-fashioned ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... file, determine the character of the party, and not the thimble-rigging games of their political leaders, who support themselves and have "made a good thing" out of Socialism by carrying water on one shoulder for gullible voters, and on the other for their credulous disciples. This is not the first time that self-serving, ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... Au Fait - That she couldn't audit the gossips' accounts. 'Tis true, to her cottage still they came, And ate her muffins just the same, And drank the tea of the widowed dame, And never swallowed a thimble the less Of something the reader is left to guess, For all the deafness of Mrs. S. Who SAW them talk, and chuckle, and cough, But to SEE and not share in the social flow, She might as well have lived, you know, In one of the houses in Owen's Row, Near the New River Head, ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... a great many on each stem. Here there are no petals, but what we see and admire so much is the bell-shaped corolla, purple-red in colour. This purple bell is spotted with white inside. Bell-shaped is perhaps not a very good description; the flower is more like a large thimble or the finger of ...
— Wildflowers of the Farm • Arthur Owens Cooke
... when she leads him on too wild a chase, he turns, lightly about and breaks out with a song is precisely analogous to a burst of gay and self-satisfied laughter, as much as to say, "Ha! ha! ha! I must have my fun, Miss Silverthimble, thimble, thimble, if I break every heart in ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... call it," said Mab, flirting away her thimble. "Call it a chapter in Revelations. It makes me want to do something good, something grand. It makes me so sorry for everybody. It makes me like Schiller—I want to take the world in my arms and kiss it. I must kiss you instead, little mother?" ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... is the thimble-berry with its big, light yellow, sprawling leaves, and its attractively red, thimble-shaped, but rather tasteless berries. The Indians, however, are very fond of them, and so are some of the birds and animals, likewise of the service berries, which look much ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... about the kitchen door clamoring for their breakfast, she thought it best to stop and knock. No response followed the repeated blows from her hard knuckles. She then tapped smartly on Mrs. Butterfield's bedroom window with her thimble finger. This proving of no avail, she was obliged to pry open the kitchen shutter, split open a mosquito netting with her shears, and crawl into the house over the sink. This was a considerable feat for a somewhat rheumatic elderly lady, but this one never grudged ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... elephants and the giraffes, though they could look over. There was a bit of pasture-land shut in for the cows, who fell to nibbling as soon as they were put in it. A clover-leaf lasted one of the sheep two days. The tinman sent some little tin dippers no bigger than a thimble, and the children were delighted to see the animals drink. The boys handed one of the dippers into the ark for the tigers. The giraffes found a bush just high enough for them to eat from. The doves sat on the eaves of the ark, ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... his wife, he would regard it as no better than lost. He was therefore obliged to excuse his conduct, being caught in the act of poring after something, to tell, if not a lie, at least the very smallest part of the truth, and say that he had lost his thimble. The money was not found, and to make bad worse, he was in danger of losing a good job, and all the Ritter's ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... sewing out upon the cliff; she would be demure and busy; she would finish the selvage seam; but the sun blazed, the sea shone, the birds sang, all the world was at play,—what could it matter about selvage seams? So the little gold thimble would drop off, the spool trundle down the cliff, and Harrie, sinking back into a cushion of green and crimson sea-weed, would open her wide eyes and dream. The waves purpled and silvered, and broke into a mist like powdered amber, the blue distances melted softly, ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... seized her, turned her pockets inside out, and found a bunch of keys; item, a printed dialogue between Peter and Herod, omitted in the canonical books, but described by the modern discoverer as an infallible charm for the toothache; item, a brass thimble; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... a swan that rides upon the water? Oh no, it is that other gentle bird, Which is the patron of our noble calling. I well remember, in my early years, When these young hands first closed upon a goose; I have a scar upon my thimble finger, Which chronicles the hour of young ambition. My father was a tailor, and his father, And my sire's grandsire, all of them were tailors; They had an ancient goose,—it was an heirloom From some remoter tailor of our race. It happened I did see it on a time When none was near, and ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... finds, wins; and them that can't finds, loses.' Turning my eyes in the direction from which the words proceeded, I saw six or seven people, apparently all countrymen, gathered round a person standing behind a tall white table of very small compass. 'What,' said I, 'the thimble-engro of —- Fair here at Horncastle.' Advancing nearer, however, I perceived that though the present person was a thimble-engro, {288a} he was a very different one from my old acquaintance of —- Fair. {288b} The present one was a fellow about half-a-foot ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... a gilded arrow apparently shot through their brains. I traversed the Street of the Great Arcades, and saw the statue of Gutenberg, of whom, as well as of Peter Schoeffer, the natives seem to be proud, though they were but type-setters. Finally, in the Beer-hall, that of the dauphin, I tasted a thimble-ful of inimitable beer, the veritable beer of Strasburg. Already, at half-past eight on that fine May morning, I persuaded myself that I had seen everything, so painful had my feet become by ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... until there was little left. The miner examined the remainder and then gave it more water and more swirling around in the pan. This process he repeated several times. Presently he held the pan where Davy and Jim could see a fifth of a thimble full of tiny flakes and two small dots not much larger than pinheads. "That's the object of the meeting, gentlemen," Welborn said grimly. "That's gold.... Tomorrow," he added, "we will get the old rocker going, but just now, I want to ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... have already seen, by his own accounts, he excelled; and a lady in Southwell, among other precious relics of him, possesses a thimble which he borrowed of her one morning, when on his way to bathe in the Greet, and which, as was testified by her brother, who accompanied him, he brought up three times successively from the bottom of the river. His practice ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... was only in fun! I'll find you a thimble. It's in my work-box that was given me on Christmas. It's real silver, too. Mother's going to change it when she goes to New York, only she never remembers. My fingers are so fat. Oh, Hanny, what a little mite of a hand! It'll never ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... but it seemed selfish and horrible to talk of love and marriage by that bedside. "I wish you might live to need it all yourself, dear," he answered, and laid his hand softly on hers. The strip of embroidery caught his eye. "What's this?" he said in blank surprise. "And your thimble! Sissy, you mustn't bother yourself about this work now." He would have drawn it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... translated into "Remorse of Conscience." Grund-weall and word-hora were displaced by "foundation" and "vocabulary." The German language still retains this power and calls a glove a "hand-shoe," a thimble a "finger-hat," and rolls up such clumsy compound ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... of the Marquis of Kildare be ever blessed with the tailor's thimble,' declaimed the portentous toast master. 'May the needle of distress be ever pointed at all mock patriots; and a hot needle and a burning thread to all sewers of sedition!' and ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... suspected the want; but Lysbet's face expressed only a little worry about the missing damask. Slowly, though her heart beat almost at her lips, she folded away her work, and put her needle, and thread, and thimble, and scissors, each in its proper place in her house-wife. So deliberate were all her actions, that Lysbet's suspicions were almost allayed. Yet she thought, "If out she wishes to go, leave I have now given her; and, if not, still the walk will do her some good." And ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... an art. So many things had to go in it—the darning needle, thimble, picayune, ring, and button. The makers would have scorned utterly the modern subterfuge of baking plain, and thrusting in the portents of fate before frosting. They mixed the batter a trifle stiff, washed and scoured everything, ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... that same, sir, if you please," said the seaman, tossing off the cupful, which, indeed, scarcely sufficed to fill his capacious mouth. "Why they should take their liquor in these parts out o' things that ain't much bigger than my old mother's thimble, passes my comprehension. You wouldn't ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... spectacles on nose, thimble on twisted finger, ivory-egg in hand, in active preparation for that work, woman's par excellence, that alone rivals Penelope's. Surely that assortment of yellow, ill-mated, half-worn, and holey hose, was a treasure ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... materially from that of the strawberry in its formation. We will take that of the raspberry as our example; for though the berries of the whole tribe are on the same construction, we cannot have one better known or which would better illustrate the subject. If you pull off the little thimble-shaped fruit from its stem, you will find beneath a dry, white cone; this is the receptacle, and the very part which you eat in the strawberry. If you look attentively at a ripe raspberry, you will find that it is composed of many separate ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... her up-stairs front window sewing carpet rags. Grandma Dudley at her sitting room window is darning her grandchildren's stockings and carefully watching the street. Whenever anybody passes to whom she wants to talk she taps on the window with her thimble. She is a dear entertaining old soul but hard to get away from. Women with bread at home waiting to be put into pans and men hungry for their supper try not to let Grandma Dudley ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... wouldn't hardly believe how clear it is to me. There's our line from the paregoric bottle right along to the snuff box. D'ye see? Well, then, the pill box is for Hougoumont on the right—where we was—and Norah's thimble for La Haye Sainte. There it is, all right, sir; and here were our guns, and here behind the reserves and the Belgians. Ach, them Belgians!" He spat furiously into the fire. "Then here's the French, where my pipe lies; and over here, where I put my baccy pouch, was the Proosians ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... new children," nodded Chlorippe confidently. "I suppose they've hidden the cunning little things somewhere on the yacht, and it's like hunt the thimble and lots and lots of fun." And she ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... heard him in the garden; and when he suddenly appeared she was not able to hide a certain agitation. She got up and began vaguely to put away her silks and thimble. ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that we have a pint. For all your colloguing,[3] I'd be glad for a knoggin:[4] But I doubt 'tis a sham; you won't give us a dram. 'Tis of shine a mouth moon-ful, you won't part with a spoonful, And I must be nimble, if I can fill my thimble, You see I won't stop, till I come to a drop; But I doubt the oraculum, is a poor supernaculum; Though perhaps you may tell it, for a grace if ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... was very fat, and, besides, had the rheumatism, came into the room quite breathless, looking very much surprised and a little frightened. She had dropped her thimble that day, when she was sewing up the stuffing in the turkey, and had not had time to look for it; and she was panic struck lest her master had found it roasted in the very middle of the turkey, and was going to ask her if she thought she was cooking for an ostrich, ...
— Red, White, Blue Socks, Part First - Being the First Book • Sarah L Barrow
... weep with sympathy over the fictitious woes exhibited in a novel. And waking from her reverie of grief, while her eye was yet wet with tears, would call her little waiter, and if she did not appear at the first call, would rap her head with her thimble ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... care for the Church—the Church, indeed! Wait until I see them—any of them—Erhaupt by choice, and I'll make them give up every franc you've lent them, or I'll horsewhip and expose them for the gang of welshers and thimble-riggers they are; or if they prefer their own methods, I'll call them out in rotation and shoot their arms and legs off." He stopped and drew a long breath, either of content that he had discovered the ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... housewives dried some for winter use or preserved them in molasses. The last we gathered were the swamp, or high-bush blueberries. These had a sub-acid, delicious flavor, not unlike the smell of the swamp pink, which grew in the same spot. The black raspberry, which we called thimble berry, was found along the stone walls, but was not abundant. I knew a few bushes and kept it secret, for if I found a saucerful I was sure of a small pie baked by my mother, and all my own. If I could not ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... Trapper, "and a solemn and a lively time I had of it, for I hadn't but six big needles in the cabin and I broke five on 'em the fust night, for the cones was gummy and hard, and it takes a good, stiff needle to go through one ef the man who is punchin' it through hasn't any thimble and the ball of his thumb is bleedin'. Lord-a-massy, Bill, Rover knew the trouble I was havin' as well as I did, for arter I had broken the second needle and talked about it a moment, the old dog got oneasy and began to edge away, and by the time I had broken the fourth ...
— Holiday Tales - Christmas in the Adirondacks • W. H. H. Murray
... first he had hinted, in surprising, furtive, agitating moments, at poetry, imagination, hidden, romantic secrets. Tom, May, Clare, the older children, had never been known to hint at anything—hints were not at all in their line, and of imagination they had not, between them, enough to fill a silver thimble—they were good, sturdy, honest children, with healthy stomachs and an excellent determination to do exactly the things that their class and generation were bent upon doing. Mrs. Scarlett was fond of them, of course, and because ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... Government, as I get the chance or can make it, and go over with them the A B C of the President's principle: no territorial annexation; no trafficking with tyrants; no stealing of American governments by concession or financial thimble-rigging. They'll not recognize another Huerta—they're sick of that. And they'll not endanger our friendship. They didn't see the idea in the beginning. Of course the real trouble has been in Mexico City—Carden. They don't know yet just ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... the door, with the things dropping from her lap. One of these was a spool, that rolled down the steps and out upon the sandy road. She turned to pursue it, and recovered it at the cost of dropping her scissors and thimble out of opposite sides of her skirt, which she had gathered up apronwise to hold her work. When she rose from the complicated difficulty, in which Mrs. Maynard had amiably lent her aid, she confronted ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... brought her from England—cloth for a frock, trimmin' fer a hat, a box of scented soap, a machine fer mincin' meat. An' the children—the boys an' gels—what about them, eh? You brought 'em toys an' dolls an' pictur' books, whips, boxes of paints, needlecases with scissors an' thimble all complete. You've filled their little hearts with a joy they never knowed afore. ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... in his pockets, one after another. A few small coins, a thimble, and some thread and big needles, a piece of pig-tail tobacco bitten away at the end, his gully with the crooked handle, a pocket compass, and a tinder-box, were all that they contained, and ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... granted to persons of a certain rank, and property, and age. Say, for instance, that none under fifteen years shall be allowed a license; that livery servants, apprentices, clerks in counting-houses, coach and wagon offices, hair-dressers, and tailors who use the thimble in person, should be considered as unqualified persons. This would render duelling more select ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 368, May 2, 1829 • Various
... such a good one, I became very generous towards my parents; and a capital way it is to encourage liberality in children. I gave mamma a very neat brass thimble, and she gave me a half-guinea piece. Then I gave her a very pretty needle-book, which I made myself with an ace of spades from a new pack of cards we had, and I got Sally, our maid, to cover it with a bit of ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... tea-kettles, probably with tea-cosies. On the other hand, if you showed an Ancient Briton a revolver, I doubt if he would know it was a weapon—until it was fired into him, of course. Perhaps somebody introduced a firearm so new that it didn't even look like a firearm. Perhaps it looked like a thimble or something. Was the bullet ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... have silver ones,—the crystal puff box, with a gold top ornamented only by a monogram; no, it was not a monogram either, but interlaced initials trailing diagonally across it; the mirror, a carelessly crumpled handkerchief, and a gold thimble—he picked up each article with a delightful sense ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... upon the floor all day long, with his big eyes watching Hannah knit, sew, spin, or weave, as the case might be. And if she happened to drop her thimble, scissors, spool of cotton, or ball of yarn, Ishmael would crawl after it as fast as his feeble little limbs would take him, and bring it back and hold it up to her with a smile of pleasure, or, if the feat had been a fine one, a little laugh of ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... answered Hum, "In preference to these, I'll merely taste A thimble-full of old Jamaica rum." "A simple boon," said Elfinan; "thou mayst Have Nantz, with which my ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... luciferous, illuminating all the obscure hiding-places of Nature. It is the magic-lantern of creation; it is the key to all mysticism, to the three-card trick, and to the basket-trick; it sheds a glory upon thimble-rigging, a halo upon legerdemain; it even radiates vagabond beams of splendour upon pocket-picking and the cognate arts. It explains how the apples get into the dumpling; how the milk comes out of the cocoanut; how the deficit issues from the surplus; how matter evolves ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... boiled, and hashed up together, and, of what remained, all that was required was to make it into balls and fry it. This was not a matter to occasion much delay. In fifteen minutes from the time she laid aside her needle and thimble, the table had been set, with its one dish upon it, and Harry and little Emma were eating with keen appetites their simple meal. But, to Mrs. Gaston, the food was unpalatable; and Ella turned from it with ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... equipment: Needles, pins, thread, tape-measure, thimble, scissors, box for work. Talk on cleanliness and neatness (care of hands, etc.). Discussion of hemming. Hems folded ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Science in Rural Schools • Ministry of Education Ontario
... progress of opinion, marked by no dramatic incidents; and analogy was hard to find in either Testament for a change of fiscal policy based on imperial advantage. Dr Drummond liked a pretty definite parallel; he had small opinion of the practice of drawing a pint out of a thimble, as he considered Finlay must have done when he preached the gospel of imperialism from Deuteronomy XXX, 14. "But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it." Moreover, to preach ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... because this is the Lord's business. You will be sure please, that you make no mistake should we chance to meet again." And immediately the new arrival would produce the modern weapon of the Christian warfare, needle, thread and thimble; and—hurrying to the side of some valiant comrade of her own set—join ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... rose and bowed quite gravely. She deliberately put down thimble, scissors, work; descended with precaution from her perch, and curtsying with unspeakable seriousness, said, "How ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... the author of the Slang Dictionary, but we need not go to India of the present day for a term which is familiar to every Gipsy and "traveller" in England, and which, as Mr Simson discovered long ago, is an excellent "spell" to discourage the advances of thimble-riggers and similar gentry, at fairs, or ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... the least submissive of you all. She put on her thimble, threaded the needle of her robin-headed brain, and worked all your fuss and agitations and futile parades down to a formula by which you can actually obtain the ballot," ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... game, which, when found, he chased, fought, and overcame in a struggle perhaps desperate, while we shoot it at a distance with little risk or effort. In warfare he fought hand to hand and eye to eye, while we kill "with as much black powder as can be put in a woman's thimble." He caught and domesticated scores of species of wild animals and taught them to serve him; fished with patience and skill that compensated his crude tools, weapons, implements, and tackle; danced to exhaustion in the service of his gods or in memory of his forebears imitating every animal, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... our breaths away to see them settin' there, staring at us with their thimble eyes, an' a-wearin' their little straw ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... pre-arrangement than is the adaptedness of gold and silver to the purposes of currency. Your standard or measure, for instance, must, in the first place, possess a certain uniformity; if it be a measure of capacity, it must not be of the size of a thimble in the morning, and as big as a haystack at night, like the mystic bottle of the fairy tale; if a measure of length, it must not be made of caoutchouc, as long as your finger to-day, and as long as the Atlantic Cable to-morrow; and so, if a measure of value, it must ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... indiscreet glass of spirits. It was then, and then only, that poor Bridget became discomposed. Beefsteaks, sausages, and pigs' fry, though they were taken three times a day, were not disgraceful in her line of life; but that little thimble of brandy, taken after much pressing and in the openness of good fellowship, went sorely against the grain with her. "When one has to be badgered like this, one wants a drop of something more than ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... are neither numerous nor expensive. The following is a complete list: Tracing cloth, leather or toile ciree, lace braids of various kinds, linen thread, two or three sizes of needles, a good thimble and a pair ...
— The Art of Modern Lace Making • The Butterick Publishing Co.
... Thou liest, thou thread, thou thimble, Thou yard, three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail, Thou flea, thou nit, thou winter-cricket, thou:— Brav'd in mine own house with a skein of thread! Away, thou rag, thou quantity, thou remnant; Or I shall so be-mete thee with thy yard, As thou shalt ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... perpetually frightened to death with the expectation of hearing them crack and let her down from a great height,—seemed beautiful to me from the mere fact of daily breathing the same air with such an angel, sharing her liquorice-stick, and borrowing her sweet little thimble. ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... intimate thoughts; she cleared up all my doubts. One day I expressed surprise that God does not give an equal amount of glory to all the elect in Heaven—I was afraid that they would not all be quite happy. She sent me to fetch Papa's big tumbler, and put it beside my tiny thimble, then, filling both with water, she asked me which seemed the fuller. I replied that one was as full as the other—it was impossible to pour more water into either of them, for they could not hold it. In this way Pauline ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... daily; To-morrow I start with a petrified heart, On a regular course of Old Bailey. There's confidence tricking, bad coin, pocket-picking, And several other disgraces— There's postage-stamp prigging, and then thimble-rigging, The three-card delusion at races! Oh! A baronet's rank is exceedingly nice, But the title's uncommonly dear ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... poor dear Jack!' exclaimed his lordship, throwing himself off his horse, and wringing his hands in despair, as a select party of thimble-riggers, who had gone to Jack's assistance, raised him up, and turned his ghastly face, with his eyes squinting inside out, and the foam still on his mouth, full upon him. 'Oh, my poor dear Jack!' repeated his lordship, sinking ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... Prince to watch over you in your sleep." "I could," cried Mrs. Mary Clerk, "wipe your shoes with pleasure, and think it my honour to do so, when I reflect that you had the Prince for your handmaid!" Perhaps not the worst gift sent to Flora, during her stay at Leith, was a thimble and needles, with white thread of different sorts, from Lady Bruce. This act of friendship Flora felt as much as any that she received, for she had suffered as much from the state of idleness during her being in custody, as from any ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... don't know the right way to throw with a thrawn man, like Andrew, and to come round a soft man, like Jamie, I'm sorry for you! A woman with a thimble-full of woman-wit could ravel them both up—ravel them up like ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... whole road between London and Epsom was choked with vehicles of all kinds, from four-in-hands to donkey-carts and wheelbarrows. My friends and I mingled freely in the crowds, and saw all the "humours" of the occasion. The thimble-riggers were out in great force, with their light, movable tables, the cups or thimbles, and the "little jokers," and the coachman, the sham gentleman, the country greenhorn, all properly got up and gathered about the table. I think we had "Aunt Sally," too,—the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... of games were played. One was "hide the thimble," and when it was Madeline's turn to hide it she put it right between the front legs of her Candy Rabbit as he sat on the table. Not one of the boys or girls thought of looking there for it, so they had to give up, and it was Madeline's turn to ...
— The Story of a Candy Rabbit • Laura Lee Hope
... and spoke again in her sleep. She uttered the following deep and mystic words: "Gustel, bring in the shark, please; mother can't eat the thimble." ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... enough perhaps after the rains, but already yielding up its life; overhead and on all sides, a bower of green and tangled thicket, still fragrant and still flower-bespangled by the early season, where thimble-berry played the part of our English hawthorn, and the buck-eyes were putting forth their twisted horns of blossom; through all this, we struggled toughly upwards, canted to and fro by the roughness ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of fine sugar, being finely beat, and the yolks of four new laid eggs, and a grain of musk, a thimble full of caraway seed searsed, a little gum dragon steeped in rose-water, and six spoonfuls of fine flour beat all these in a thin paste a little stiffer then butter, then run it through a butter-squirt of two or three ells long bigger then ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... pay the forfeit, or your thimble remains in my possession! I won't be coaxed over, this time!" ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... of a gentleman of the scamp. The blowen kidded the swell into a snoozing ken, and shook him of his dummee and thimble; the girl inveigled the gentleman into a brothel and robbed him of his pocket book ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... Pancks. 'I should like to have a look at it. Don't let me be troublesome.' He was so far troublesome that he was not at all wanted there, but she laid her work in her lap for a moment, and held out her left hand with her thimble on it. ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... purpurea) which every one knows and admires for its long graceful spikes of elegant bell-shaped brilliant blossoms seen in our woods and hedges, is also called the Thimble Flower, or the Finger Flower, from the resemblance of these blossoms to a thimble or to the fingers of a glove. The word digitalis refers likewise to the digits, or fingers of a gauntlet. In France ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... which she had not noticed before: a little old-fashioned work-box with a picture of a little boy in a pinafore on the top. Beside this work-box lay, as if just laid down by the user, a spool of black silk, a pair of scissors, and a large steel thimble with a hole in the top, after an old style. Louisa stared at these, then at the sleeves of her dress. She moved toward the door. For a moment she thought that this was something legitimate about which she might demand information; then she became doubtful. Suppose ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... her hand into her dress pocket, and turned it wrong side out, scattering the contents—thimble, thread, two "scalybarks," and some "ground peas" over the floor. Then stooping, she slipped off one shoe, turned it upside down, and hung it thus on a horseshoe fastened ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... did, and I'm glad of it," said Carol stoutly. "Such apples you never saw, Prudence. They're about as big as a thimble, and two-thirds core. They're good, they're fine, I'll say that,—but there's nothing to them. I could have eaten as many again if Jim hadn't been counting out loud, and I got kind of ashamed because every one was laughing. If I had a ranch as big as yours, Jim, ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... to borrow his head. He always charged everybody just the same no matter what it was that they'd lost. One dollar was what he charged. It was just as much trouble to him he said to think about a thimble that was lost as it was to think about an elephant that was lost.—I never knew anybody ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... the shaded lamp and slipped a finger into her thimble. But her needle, which in the afternoon had glanced and glinted swiftly, as the dainty braid was being fastened into place, somehow refused to do its work. The little blue suit fell from her hands; the ...
— A Melody in Silver • Keene Abbott
... the effect. I was waiting for her to ask "Who did that?"—so that I could fetch out my news. But it was an error of calculation. When she got through with her silence she didn't ask anything about it—she merely gave me a crack on the skull with her thimble that I felt all the way down to my heels. Then I broke out with my injured innocence, expecting to make her very sorry that she had punished the wrong one. I expected her to do something remorseful and pathetic. I told her that I was ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... the sunny brightness of her childhood. From twelve to fourteen, I told her stories; astonished her with narratives of my own exploits at Eton, and caused her serene blue eyes to open in admiration at the marvels of London. At fourteen, I began to pick up her pocket-handkerchief, hunt for her thimble, accompany her in duets, and to read poetry to her, as she occupied herself with the little lady-like employments of the needle. About the age of seventeen I began to compare cousin Anna, as I was permitted to call her, with the other young girls of my acquaintance, and the comparison was ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... see th' A.B.C.F.M.!—Lucina Rand's put in 'the avails of a hen,'—and Semela Briggs sold the silver thimble her aunt gin her. 'T all helps the good work. I told the Widow Rand she'd ough' to do somethin' for the heathen, so she's gone to raisin' mustard. She said she hadn't more 'n a grain o' that to spare, she was so poor; but I told her 't would be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and thimble-rigger had been prodigally employed to save the candidate of Mozart Hall. Even the sachems of Tammany, to avert disaster, nominated James T. Brady, whose great popularity it was believed would draw strength from both Opdyke and Wood; but Brady refused to be used. Opdyke had been a liberal, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... wild plants and flowers have been now called to your notice. But children have sharp eyes, and you will find many more to inquire about in your vacation days. Then the blackberries and thimble-berries will be ripe, and the pink salmon-berry in the redwoods. Perhaps you will look for and dig up the soaproot, that onion-like bulb of one of the lily family with which the Indians make a soapy lather to wash their clothes. Let us hope you will know ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... nine; it was Caroline's time for going home. She gathered up her work, put the embroidery, the scissors, the thimble into her bag. She bade Mrs. Pryor a quiet good-night, receiving from that lady a warmer pressure of the hand than usual. She ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... had new occupation which kept him so busy that he had no more time for coasting. Grandma Orde gave him a spool of stout linen thread, a thimble, and a long needle with a big eye. Bobby, a pan of cranberries between his knees, threaded the pretty red spheres in long strings. He liked to pierce their flesh with the needle, and then to draw them down the long thread, like beads. The juice ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... horses, or cows surprised, and they seem to get through life a great deal easier than we do, at all events they have less worry, and they never leave their children at their neighbour's doors and run away—what can have got it?—I'm quite sure I put it there last night with the thimble and scissors." ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... Between the entrance door and stove, are in each room a small pantry or closet for dishes, or otherwise, as may be required. The chimney stands in the center of the house, with a separate flue for each front room, into which a thimble is inserted to receive the stovepipes by which they are warmed; and from the inner side of these rooms each has a door passing to the kitchen, or chief living room. This last apartment is 22x15 feet, with a broad fireplace containing a crane, hooks, and trammel, if ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... wore, it had no form—the queerest, high, shapeless boots. She wore a little close-fitting bonnet and a long, loose, grayish cape. She was a most particular person in some ways. A lady who lived there as a housekeeper said she was never allowed to leave her thimble on the window sill for a few moments; and it was well known that when a caller rang the front door bell the maid who answered had orders to scan the costume closely. If there was "bugle trimming" among its adornments ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... as if recess would never come that afternoon, and when it came it wasn't "any longer than your little finger." The fire was kindled the very first minute, the thimble-biscuits rolled out, and then the three children sat on the grass around their hearth to watch the baking. Seven dolls sat there too, with their party-dresses on, waiting very politely. There was a dictionary in the middle of the room for a table, with a pocket-handkerchief ...
— The Twin Cousins • Sophie May
... frightful gashes that agonized my hapless nether integuments, which thou calledst "ducks;"—Didst thou not expressly declare, that all these things, and more, thou wouldst do for me, despite my own quaint thimble, fashioned from the ivory tusk of a whale? Nay; could I even wrest from thy willful hands my very shirt, when once thou hadst it steaming in an unsavory pickle in thy capacious vat, a decapitated cask? Full well thou knowest, Jarl, that these things ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... chandeliers (partly brass, partly glass), ecclesiastical ornament, lantern, letter-clip, mathematical instrument, brass and metallic bedstead, military ornament, brass nail, saddlers' ironmonger, (chiefly brass), scale, beam, and weighing machines, stair rod, moulding and astrigal, brass thimble makers, tube, brass and copper-wire drawers, wire workers and weavers, and many other trades ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... born at the village of Eton Constantine, in 1615. He received from officiating curates of the little church such literary instruction as could be given by men who had left the farmer's flail, the tailor's thimble, and the service of strolling stage-players, to perform church drudgery under the parish incumbent, who was old and well-nigh blind. At the age of sixteen, he was sent to a school at Wroxeter, where he spent ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... both hemispheres. Then an empty purse—with a hole in it; a silver-embroidered gauntlet such as horsemen wear on the Mexican frontier; a white table-doily partly embroidered with silky blue forget-me-nots—the threaded needle still jabbed in the work—and the small thimble, Stanton could have sworn, still warm from the snuggle of somebody's finger. Last of all, a fat and formidable edition of Robert Browning's poems; a tiny black domino-mask, such as masqueraders wear, and a shimmering gilt picture frame ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... next door to which was housed the firm of Ray, St. Cloud & Stiggany, leather- dressers, the three partners in which all presently become suitors for the hand of Becky. This in effect is the story—under which thimble will the heart of the heroine be eventually found?—a problem that, in view of the obviously superior claims of young St. Cloud over his two elderly rivals, will not leave you long guessing. An element of novel complication ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... I lost my silver thimble, a gift from my mother when I was a young girl. I prized it very highly. I looked everywhere, long and faithfully. The tears would come, at the best, it had been so long a constant companion. I gave up the search after a while, thinking some ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... whether this be the binder's fault or a deviltry set therein by their authors I am at a loss to say. But Shaw would be of this kind, flopping and spry to mix you up. And in general, Shaw's humor is like that of a shell-man at a country fair—a thimble-rigger. No matter where you guess that he has placed the bean, you will be always wrong. Even though you swear that you have seen him slip it under, it's but his cunning to lead you off. But Murray was not that kind. It would stand at its post, ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... Lares, the relaxing, handsome ruffian sat in the quiet room, bending his still regular profile over the sheepskin books, the harmless pen in that strong well-shaped hand, Mrs. Crane watched him with a softening countenance. To bear him company, she had actively taken, herself, to work,—the gold thimble dragged from its long repose,—marking and hemming, with nimble artistic fingers, new cravats for the adopted son! Strange creature is woman! Ungrateful and perfidious as that sleek tiger before her had often proved himself, though no man could less deserve one kindly sentiment in a female ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... cried Ruth, dropping scissors, thimble and spool with a clatter as she got up from her chair. "Oh, Charlotte, I wish you would let me do something I ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick |
