"Needle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one barracks or encampment. Without doubt, there was always an abundance of good sound food. Further, the men were well-armed. All military authorities are agreed, I believe, that the Chassepot rifle—invented in or about 1866—was superior to the Dreyse needle-gun, which was in use in the Prussian army. Then, too, there was Colonel de Reffye's machine-gun or mitrailleuse, in a sense the forerunner of the Gatling and the Maxim. It was first devised, I think, in 1863, and, ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... affirms that Lord Byron, during the whole voyage, seldom tasted wine; and that, when he did occasionally take some, it was never more than half a glass mixed with water. He ate but little; and never any meat; only bread and vegetables. He made me think of the ghoul taking rice with a needle." ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... fourteen she left school and took up the needle that she might aid her sisters in gaining for the family an honorable maintenance. She has been known to ply the needle with all diligence till ten o'clock at night, and then turn to her Sunday school book to make preparation for the ...
— Our Gift • Teachers of the School Street Universalist Sunday School, Boston
... passions are animating or darkening the scene, we do not want to be detained by a botanist's description of plants or a geologist's sketch of rocks. The broad, free sweeps of Scott's brush in "The Pirate" are more effective than the delicate needle-point lines of the writer ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... were occupied in examining numerous papers and documents referring to the Mission, while Lady Montefiore amused herself by taking daguerreotype views of Cleopatra's Needle. ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... any color and any flavor and any odor they chose. In the pickling of hams they had an ingenious apparatus, by which they saved time and increased the capacity of the plant—a machine consisting of a hollow needle attached to a pump; by plunging this needle into the meat and working with his foot, a man could fill a ham with pickle in a few seconds. And yet, in spite of this, there would be hams found spoiled, some of them with an odor so bad that ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... lying—I wist not where— Above or below, in earth or air; For it glimmered o'er with a doubtful light, One couldn't say whether 'twas day or night; And 'twas crost by many a mazy track, One didn't know how to get on or back; And I felt like a needle that's going astray (With its one eye out) thro' a bundle of hay; When the Spirit he grinned, and whispered me, "Thou'rt now ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Daisy The Darning-Needle Delaying is not Forgetting The Drop of Water The Dryad Jack ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... sketch the outlines of a history of Oxford. They are merely records of the impressions made by this or that aspect of the life of the University as it has been in different ages. Oxford is not an easy place to design in black and white, with the pen or the etcher's needle. On a wild winter or late autumn day (such as Father Faber has made permanent in a beautiful poem) the sunshine fleets along the plain, revealing towers, and floods, and trees, in a gleam of watery light, and leaving them once more in shadow. The melancholy mist creeps over the city, the ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... as sharp as a needle, and, though only thirteen years of age, he proved to be a perfect "man" of business, rising early every day to go to the morning market and gardening ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... sufficient to justify its being compared to a hedgehog. Some of the kinds have spines 4 in. long, broad at the base, and hooked towards the point, the hooks being wonderfully strong, whilst in others the spines are long and needle-like, or short and fine as the prickles on a thistle. The stems vary much in size and form, being globose, or compressed, or ovate, a few only being cylindrical, and attaining a height of from 5 ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... his finger along the protuberances, and finally selected the space between the twelfth dorsal and the first lumbar vertebrae—in other words, the space just above the small of the back. He then took an ordinary hypodermic needle, and slowly pushed it through the skin and tissues until it entered the small opening between the lower and upper vertebrae, not stopping until it reached the open space just this side of ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... his sixteenth year he had lived amongst the Indians almost exclusively and had little English and could not read nor write. He was adept in all wilderness arts. An axe, a rifle, a flaying knife, a skin needle with its sinew thread—with all these he was at home; he could construct a sled or a pair of snow-shoes, going to the woods for his birch, drying it and steaming it and bending it; and could pitch ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... But it waited in vain, for Carse did not come dropping down. A touch of the control switch and he stayed at the new level, collecting himself. The lemak, puzzled and angry, wheeled up to see what had become of the victim that did not descend, and found instead a searing needle of heat which burnt through its broad right wing. Then, screaming with pain and in a frenzy to escape, it went with a rush ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore
... little soft-voiced woman! Well, I can't say I like you any the worse for it. How long will schoolkeeping take to kill you? Is it possible the poor thing works with her needle, too? I don't like those marks on the side ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... needle flicked to zero. There were clanking sounds. The long halves of the boat-blister stirred and opened, and abruptly the landing boat was in an elongated cup in the hull-plating, and above them there were many, many stars. The enormous disk of a nearby planet ...
— Sand Doom • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the course of the morning came in, by sale of articles, l2s. We were able likewise to dispose of one of the articles, which were sent last evening, for 5s. This afternoon one of the labourers gave me 10s., and 3s. came in for needle-work. By means of this 1l. 10s. we were able to supply all ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Third Part • George Mueller
... obscurity caused by the vast boughs of the tree, made night come on early. We then lighted a candle, fixed in a gourd on the table, round which we were all assembled. The good mother laboured with her needle, mending the clothes; I wrote my journal, which Ernest copied, as he wrote a beautiful hand; while Fritz and Jack taught their young brother to read and write, or amused themselves with drawing the ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... The needle-like boat threaded its way in and out among the islands, and leaped into the mouth of a sluggish gulfward-stealing bayou. Here a few strokes of the paddle swept pirogue and paddler into a strange ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... article in one of the daily papers lately presented the condition of needle-women in England. There might be a presentation of this class in our own country which would make the heart bleed. Public attention should be turned to this subject in order that avenues of more profitable employment ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... together, those designs might be held to represent a life's good work; yet they represent but a fraction of what he executed during his seven-and-twenty years' hard labour. If after a close study of all his productions with pencil and etching-needle, you ask yourself what constitutes his real life's-work, you will probably choose to ignore his book plates—even those to the Comic Histories of Rome and England, to the sporting novels of "Mr. Sponge," and the rest—and point to his "Pictures ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... a change came to the lagoon. Little shivers ran over it, and the sun went away and shadows stole across the water, turning it cold. Wendy could no longer see to thread her needle, and when she looked up, the lagoon that had always hitherto been such a laughing place ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... again; hit him in the shoulder with his pistol. Then Starlight come to his senses, and we clear. My word, he couldn't see the way the old horse went. Ha, ha!'—here the young devil laughed till the trees and rocks rang again. 'Gallop different ways, too, and met at the old needle-rock. But they was ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... disappeared, and also the deadly-struck maiden lay no longer in his arms. He looked on the ground to find traces of her blood, which he had seen gush out. There lay the beautiful butterfly, transfixed with a needle shaped like an arrow, as men keep such insects in a collection. He took it from the ground, and perceived again the wooden box and golden key which he had formerly opened and dropped. In doubt whether he were awake or ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... on the work of the poor. One can hardly imagine the utter heartlessness of a man who stands between the wholesale manufacturer and the wretched women who make their living—or rather retard their death—by the needle. How a human being can consent to live on this profit, stolen from poverty, is beyond my imagination. These men, when known, will be regarded as hyenas and jackals. They are like the wild beasts which follow herds of cattle for the purpose of devouring those that are injured or those that have fallen ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Still Jim, and eat them toasted crackers. You didn't eat any supper to speak of and you're as pindlin' as a knitting needle. Don't slop on your clean suit. That ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... the maker of a book better than the maker of a coat? Needle and thread, pen and ink; cloth uncut and paper unsoiled; where is the preference? except that the tailor's materials are the more costly. In days of yore, the gentlemen of the thimble gave us plenty of ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... busy. Suddenly setting up a bawling on his own account Neewa turned tail to the nest and ran. Miki was not a hair behind him. In every square inch of his tender hide he felt the red-hot thrust of a needle. It was Neewa that made the most noise. His voice was one continuous bawl, and to this bass Miki's soprano wailing added the touch which would have convinced any passing Indian that the loup-garou devils were ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... a map one must know the scale and also where the North is. This is always indicated by an arrow pointing either to the magnetic North or the true North. If to the magnetic North the needle will have but one barb away from the true North. The angle between the magnetic and the true ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... in the possession of "sound common sense," who declared the prediction to be skilled guesswork, and the fulfillment manifest coincidence, ridiculed the idea of finding Doctor Lagarde as closely akin to that other celebrated idea of finding the needle in the bottle of hay. But Bervie's obstinacy was proverbial. Nothing shook his confidence in his ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... her work (she was very skilful with the needle, and neither of her sisters could vie with her in delicate embroidery), she slipped a cold little ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... not ignorant that our British Ladies allege they comprehend under this general Term several other Conveniencies of Life; I could therefore wish, for the Honour of my Countrywomen, that they had rather called it Needle-Money, which might have implied something of Good-housewifry, and not have given the malicious World occasion to think, that Dress and Trifles have always the uppermost ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... though probably better than in England. Thomas Hood's ballad The Song of the Shirt, published in 1843, depicts the hardships of the English woman who strove to keep body and soul together by means of the needle: ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... others. "Gad, you might as well hunt for your grandmother's needle in a bottle of straw. The truth is, the man's not in the country, and whoever gave the information as to the parson keeping him was some enemy of the parson's more than of Reilly's, I'll go bail. Come, now, let us go back, and give an account ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... answered, but the key which I had brought out of the cupboard on my finger dropping off while I was thus employed, no sooner was it disengaged but away it went to it. After that I tried several other pieces of iron-ware with the like success. Upon this, and the needle of my compass standing stiff to the rock, I concluded that this same rock contained great quantity of loadstone, or was itself one vast magnet, and that our lading of iron was the cause of the ship's violent course thereto, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... many interrogatories, I was enregistered as No. 1, flesh-color. Noah as No. 1, sea-water color, and his mates 2 and 3, accordingly. Bob as No. 1, smut-color, and the crew as Nos. 1, 2, 3, etc., tar-color. The officer now called upon an assistant to come forth with a sort of knitting-needle heated red-hot, in order to affix the official stamp to each in succession. Luckily for us all, Noah happened to be the first to whom the agent of the stamp-office applied, to uncase and to prepare ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... close for a few minutes, for he acted as if he might start running amok. 'I can't sleep!' he kept yelling at me, 'I can't sleep, I tell you! . . . That dope you're giving me's no good. . . . Christ Almighty! give me a shot of cocaine, Cox, or morphine, and get me a supply of the stuff and a needle, will you? ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... occupation during the day and who is willing to work at night. She should make a point of choosing one who sews well, so that the services of a seamstress might be combined with the duties of a night nurse. There is always some mending to do in all families and a woman who is clever with her needle might make herself very useful to her employer. Thousands of women sew by artificial light in dressmaking establishments and factories; in all probability just as many women could be found to sew by artificial light in private homes. Perhaps ...
— Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework • C. Helene Barker
... since the first breath that begun the wrack Of her free quiet from Leander's lips, She wrought a sea, in one flame, full of ships; But that one ship where all her wealth did pass, Like simple merchants' goods, Leander was; For in that sea she naked figur'd him; Her diving needle taught him how to swim, And to each thread did such resemblance give, For joy to be so like him it did live: Things senseless live by art, and rational die By rude contempt of art and industry. Scarce could she work, but, in her strength of thought, She fear'd ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... easily frightened, and had stopped her needle only that she might listen the better. She heard nothing. Of course it was but a fancy! Her hands went on again with their work.—But that was really very like a tap at the window! And now her heart did beat a little faster, if ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... work-basket and the lamp. She placed it just in front of her grandpapa's chair, and between Guly and Wilkins. With a smile she seated herself at it, and began to embroider a strip of insertion; nimbly plying her needle among the slender vines ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... declination magnet was undisturbed, the horizontal force curve was accidentally interrupted, but the vertical force curve indicated a very perceptible shock. Beginning at 9.52 P.M. (Wilhelmshaven mean time, or 9h. 29m. 29s., G.M.T.), the curve was broken for four minutes, for the rapid swinging of the needle could not be registered until the motion became fainter. Further disturbances also occurred at 9.59, 10, 10.2, and ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... the villages, for most of the nobility knew no more of reading and writing than the peasants. If any one fell ill, he found no help but the secret remedies of some old village crone, for there was not an apothecary in the whole country. If any one needed a coat he could do no better than take needle in hand himself—for many miles there was no tailor, unless one of the trade made a trip through the country on the chances of finding work. If any one wished to build a house he must provide for artisans from the West as best ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... the girls are pretty then, and are quite conscious of it—you know, Marsham. Behind them, at the end of the street, one of these great cypress wind-screens showed black against the sky, a ragged edge something like the line the needle draws on a rainfall chart; and you could only tell whether they were men or women under the plantains by their voices rippling and chattering and suddenly a deeper note.... Once I heard a muffled scuffle and a sound like a kiss.... It was then that Rangon's little trouble ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... nicely. When all the flesh is thus loosened, take the turkey by the neck, give it a pull, and the skeleton will come out entire from the flesh, as easily as you draw your hand out of a glove. The flesh will then be a shapeless mass. With a needle and thread mend or sew up any holes that may be found in ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie
... Bain's and one wire 3; Cook and Wheatstone's and two wires 5. But if Bain's had a second wire, a second set of clerks would be requisite to attend to it. The errors from the tracing telegraph are less than those from the magnetic needle; but the difference is very trifling. No extra clerk is wanted by Cook and Wheatstone's, as all messages are written out by a manifold writer. Every message sent by telegraph in England has a duplicate copy sent by rail to the "Clearing Office," at Lothbury, to be compared with the ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... says she; 'as sharp as a needle, but she's gone quite aupy, and can't remember nout rightly; and Jack the Giant Killer, or Goody Twoshoes will please her as well as the king's court, or the ...
— Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Seville, and Solinus, give a similar description of the manner of painting the body in use among the Picts. "The operator delineates the figures with little points made by the prick of a needle, and into those he insinuates the juice of some native plants, that their nobility, thus written, as it were, upon every limb of their body, might distinguish them from ordinary men by the number of the figures they were decorated ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... the corporation chest is preserved a man's shirt, wrought in the loom about a century ago, by a weaver of the name of Inglis. The shirt was formed without a seam, and finished without any assistance from the needle; the only necessary parts he could not accomplish were the neck ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various
... crucial moment when the budding author was supposedly to be racked with the throes of composition; but seemingly there were no throes. Other girls could wield the darning or crochet or knitting needle, and send the tatting shuttle through loops of the finest cotton; hemstitch, oversew, braid hair in thirteen strands, but the pencil was never obedient in their fingers, and the pen and ink-pot were a horror from early childhood to ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and excellent acquirements. And yet, in a long friendship and familiarity with her, I could never obtain a satisfactory account from her on this head; only she said, she had received some little instruction from the minister of the parish, when she could spare time from her needle-work, to which she was closely kept by her mother. She wrote elegantly both in verse and prose, and some of the most delightful hours I ever passed were in the conversation ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... Every woman should be independent. Every woman should learn a trade. It was their duty to push in where they were least welcome. Then they were martyrs to the cause, and pioneers to their weaker sisters. Why should the wash-tub, the needle, and the housekeeper's book be eternally theirs? Might they not reach higher, to the consulting-room, to the bench, and even to the pulpit? Mrs. Westmacott sacrificed her tricycle ride in her eagerness over her pet subject, and her two fair disciples drank in every word, and noted every ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the Kingfisher about their persons, as a protection against both moral and physical evils; the feathers are used as love-charms; and it is believed, that, if the body of the Kingfisher be evenly fixed upon a pivot, it will turn its head to the north, like the magnetic needle. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... if correct, would have its needle point directly to the real or true North. But practically no compass with which you will become familiar will be correct. It will have an error in it due to the magnetism of the earth. This is called Variation. It will also have an error in it due to the magnetism of the ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... and all went off to admiration. The gentlemen presided over the cricket, and the ladies over 'blind man's buff' and 'thread my needle;' but perhaps Mary was a little disappointed that, though she had Sir Guy's bodily presence, the peculiar blitheness and animation which he usually shed around him were missing. He sung at church, he filled tiny cups from huge pitchers of tea, he ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Mystery about how the knife got into his foot? Not at all; that's simple enough. He swallowed the knife during some fight or other, and it worked around in his system and down into his foot just as a needle ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... man with the bloody finger let him pass. An adorable Fury, as Corneille would have called her, whose hair was held up by a dagger with a blade as sharp as a needle, barred his way, saying: "Morgan, you are the handsomest, the bravest, the most deserving of love of all the men present. What have you to say to the woman ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... were worked with porcupine, and fitted closely her small feet; the leggins were ornamented with ribbons of all colors; her cloth shawl, shaped like a mantilla, was worked with rows of bright ribbons, and the sewing did honor to her own skill in needle-work. Her breast was covered with brooches, and a quantity of beads hung round her neck. Heavy ear-rings are in her ears—and on her head is a diadem of war eagle's feathers. She has a bright spot of vermilion on each cheek, and—behold ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... very young servant, in a very clean cap and apron. Silence possessed the dwelling; he did not venture to tread with natural step. He entered the drawing-room, and there, from amid a heap of household linen which required the needle, rose the penitent wife. Ostentatiously she drew from her finger a thimble, then advanced with ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... a reason additional to its economy why this practice should not die out. The tearing up into strips of old garments, and the tacking of their ends together with needle and thread is work eminently suited for children, and one in which they take great pride, as it gives them a share in the creation of a ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... these substances into forage; a second into wool; a third into thread; a fourth into cloth; and a fifth into garments. Who can pretend to say, that all these contributions to the work, from the first furrow of the plough, to the last stitch of the needle, are ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... freely, so He spent it frank and freely too. For Saints themselves will sometimes be 495 Of gifts, that cost them nothing, free. By means of this, with hem and cough, Prolongers to enlighten'd stuff, He cou'd deep mysteries unriddle As easily as thread a needle. 500 For as of vagabonds we say, That they are ne'er beside their way; Whate'er men speak by this New Light, Still they are sure to be i' th' right. 'Tis a dark-lanthorn of the Spirit, 505 Which none see by but those that bear it: A light that ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... the book and talk to him instead. He found the greatest pleasure in the time they spent together, when Philippa would take up her embroidery and sit beside him, and he would lie on the sofa with his eyes on her, watching her every movement as her dexterous needle slipped rapidly through ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... children, but seemed to avoid, with a sort of horror, their tumultuous amusements, and liked best to be alone. She would then retire into a corner of the garden, and read, or work diligently with her needle; often also you might see her sitting, as if deep in thought, or impetuously walking up and down the alleys, speaking to herself. Her parents readily allowed her to have her will in these things, for she ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... are here, how are you going to start to look for Nick Jasniff?" questioned Roger. "It seems to me that it will be a good deal like looking for a needle in a haystack." ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... hamper, in which he made herculean efforts to lift himself. There was another man who received with perfect gravity the chaffing statement of a comrade, to the effect that he had shot a wood-pigeon at the North Pole, and that the bird had fallen on the needle on the top of the Pole, and had frozen so hard that it was impossible ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... lasted from twenty minutes to half an hour, I gained the ridge which had seemed but three minutes away, and there sat down to a silent lesson in geography. I had given up all hope of following the hogs or discovering my comrades. I knew now what it means to search for a needle in a bottle of hay, but with many prickles I had gathered some wisdom, and learnt that, whether I decided to go forward or to retreat, I must survey the macchia before attempting ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... ports? Did Christians build this esplanade, or this gate of the Sun above our heads? Or that Caesareum on our right here? Look at those obelisks before it!' And he pointed upwards to those two world-famous ones, one of which still lies on its ancient site, as Cleopatra's Needle. 'Look up! look up, I say, and feel small—very small indeed! Did Christians raise them, or engrave them from base to point with the wisdom of the ancients? Did Christians build that Museum next to ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... sir," he said, going off to the boat, and grumbling as he went. "If Miss Sheila was here, it would be no going away to Glesca without any things wis you, as if you wass a poor traffelin tailor that hass nothing in the world but a needle and a thimble mirover. And what will the people in Styornoway hef to say, and sa captain of sa steamboat, and Scarlett? I will hef no peace from Scarlett if you wass going away like this. And as for sa sweerin, it is no use sa sweerin, for I will get sa boat ready—oh ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... for communication; by no known means could this time be lessened. But with the advent of the telegraph and telephone, communication and locomotion were divorced. In a few hours, at most, there could be performed what by the old way would have required months. In 1837 the needle telegraph was invented, and nine years later the Electric Telegraph Company was formed for the purpose of bringing it into general use. Government postal systems also came into being, later to consolidate into an international union and to group the nations of the earth into ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... greatness, placed her very young in the monastery of Erford, of which her grandmother Maud, who had renounced the world in her widowhood, was then abbess. Here our saint acquired an extraordinary relish for prayer and spiritual reading; and learned to work at her needle, and to employ all the precious moments of life in something serious and worthy the great end of her creation. She remained in that house an accomplished model of all virtues, till her parents married her to Henry, son of ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... voices, and pouring out incoherent exclamations. Sylvia cried a little at the comforting sight of her mother's face and was taken up on Mrs. Marshall's lap and closely held. Judith never cried; she had not cried even when she ran the sewing-machine needle through her thumb; but when infuriated she could not talk, her stammering growing so pronounced that she could not get out a word, and it was Sylvia who told the facts. She was astonished to find them so few and so quickly stated, having been under the impression ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... were but two dry-goods stores! And what fabulous prices we had to pay! Pins twenty dollars a paper. Poor people and children had to make shift with thorns of orange and amourette [honey locust?]. A needle cost fifty cents, very indifferent stockings five dollars a pair, and other ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... of all existence, and yet by the very constitution of the human mind we are compelled to take for granted a certain amount of individual initiative and self-direction. I think of the human will much as I do about the mariner's compass. It is well known that the needle does not always point steadily and consistently to the pole; its tiny aberrations have to be taken into account. But these are no real hindrance to the sailing of the ship, and the compass itself ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... respected by one and all and loved by little children, he went his earnest way, and little by little Margaret Cranston found herself leaning more and more upon his opinions as to the pursuits and studies of her boys, and would sit with her needle-work listening to the long discussions between him and her husband, who read not much outside the papers, and presently it got to be the established thing for the Parson to read aloud to them when he came, and though Wilbur scandalized her by going to sleep and snoring on two occasions, ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... home. Slowly he passed between the gateless posts Before the unused front door, slowly too Beyond the side porch with its woodbine thick Draping autumnal splendor. Thus he came Before the kitchen window, where he saw A gray-haired woman bent o'er needle-work In gathering twilight. And without a voice, Rooted, he stood. He stirred not, but his glance Burned through the pane; uneasily she turned, And seeing that shaggy stranger standing there Expectant, ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... peculiar swinging gait, with which the men seemed to urge themselves over the ground with ease and rapidity. There was little or no straggling, and being strong, lusty young fellows, and lightly equipped—they carried only needle-guns, ammunition, a very small knapsack, a water-bottle, and a haversack —they strode by with an elastic step, covering at least three ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... are compelled to acknowledge that things the most reliable are the most unpretending. The star, by which the mariner has steered for ages, is not a 'bright particular star;' the needle of his compass is shaped from one of the baser metals, (though in a figurative sense gold is highly magnetic.) The inner bears such a relation to the outer, that the inner senses are named from the outer; we are slow to perceive that also all objects of the outer senses, are but types of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... when she put a darnin' needle into the armchair cushion, and I sed, said I, 'twas a ticklesome thing and might do hurt. She did it once too often. Her old man sat down ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... maintained the little man, "and the professor says we'll strike water that'll drown us out before we've gone a hundred feet. Emeline here she's afraid of it because it sounds like a meracle, but I tell her it's pure science. It isn't any more wonderful than a needle traveling toward a magnet: the machine tells where the water is, and how far off it is, something like a compass—I don't understand it, but I can see that it ain't any more meraculous than ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... as if she had been a butterfly, with a glance as sharp as a needle, Mrs. Culpeper demanded sternly, "How much do you know of this affair, ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... a camel to pass through the eye of a needle is it for a man to become a member of the Stoics' Club, except by virtue of the hereditary principle; for unless he be nourished he cannot be elected, and since by the club's first rule he may have no occupation whatsoever, he must be nourished by the efforts of those ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... they had laid by for a rainy day. There would be no need for Aunt Mary to work for those hard shop-people any more. And Rhoda's eyes sparkled as she thought of packing up the last parcel of fine needle-work and taking it back with the message that ...
— Miss Merivale's Mistake • Mrs. Henry Clarke
... was at the very top of a big building near the end of Adelphi Terrace; the main window beside my desk, a big undivided window of plate glass, looked out upon Cleopatra's Needle, the corner of the Hotel Cecil, the fine arches of Waterloo Bridge, and the long sweep of south bank with its shot towers and chimneys, past Bankside to the dimly seen piers of the great bridge below the Tower. The dome of St. Paul's just floated into view on the left ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... resembles certain passages in the Upanishads, and the resemblance is particularly strong in such statements as that the Buddha nature reveals itself in dreams, or that it is so great that it embraces the universe and so small that the point of a needle cannot prick it. The doctrine of Maya is clearly indicated, even if the word was not used in the original, for it is expressly said that all phenomena are unreal. Thus the teaching of Bodhidharma is an anticipation of ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... delighted at having safely got over the Scheldt, we by no means relished the prospect of going on to the Zuyder Zee. 'Shall we go down?' asked Louis Godard. There was a moment's pause. We consulted together. Suddenly I uttered a cry of joy; the position of the needle of my compass indicated that the balloon had made a half turn to the right, and was now going due east. The aspect of the stars confirmed this assertion. Forward! was now the cry. We threw out a little ballast, mounted higher, and started ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne
... long tail of waves breaking and snapping like some demon's jaws. As we struck into them they swept over us like combers on the beach in a great storm. It seemed to me here and at other similar places that we went through some of the waves like a needle and jumped to the top of others, to balance half-length out of water for an instant before diving to another trough. Being in the very bow the waves, it appeared to me, sometimes completely submerged me and almost took my breath away with the sudden impact. At any rate it was lively work, with ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... In such cases it is necessary to refresh the imagination constantly with the facts. As in the latter days wise youths read messages from the quivering needle of the talking machine, so Ralph read his message flash by flash as it pulsated upward from a ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... darning his socks, but engaged in the Eskimo equivalent—mending his waterproof boots. These were made of undressed sealskin, with soles of walrus hide; and the pleasant-faced little woman was stitching together the sides of a rent in the upper leather, using a fine sharp fish-bone as a needle and a delicate shred of sinew as a thread, when ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... shrug, rather of the back than of the shoulders, and shuffled to the box which bore the smoky lamp. Holding a needle in the flame, he dipped it, when red-hot, into an old cocoa tin, and withdrew it with a bead of opium adhering to the end. Slowly roasting this over the lamp, he dropped it into the bowl of the metal pipe which he held ready, where it burned ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... lessons in her presence, and she herself began to work large pieces of tapestry. Her mind was too much occupied with passing events and surrounding dangers to admit her of applying herself to reading; the needle was the only employment which ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the effort to work a needle pointed at both ends, with the eye in the middle, that should pass up and down through the cloth, suddenly the thought flashed through his mind that another stitch must be possible, and with almost insane devotion he worked night ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... in the biographical section of my studies. He gave me the history of a gentleman who used a blue dye for his moustache and murdered his wives with impunity. Then he related the adventures of a lady who slept for a hundred years from the wound of a spinning needle. I had to confess (although a constant reader of the Lancet) I had never heard of the case before. Then he recounted the adventures of a traveller who seems to have had a life of considerable interest. This person obtained quite a number of diamonds, with the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 25, 1892 • Various
... from the Cape in November: "Write to me constantly; write me pages and volumes. Tell me the dress thou wearest, tell me thy dreams, anything, so do but talk to me and of thyself. When thou art sitting at thy needle and alone, then think of me, my love, and write me the uppermost of thy thoughts. Fill me half a dozen sheets, and send them when thou canst. Think only, my dearest girl upon the gratification which the perusal and reperusal fifty ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... for a more complete splash had never been made by any descending mass, the "lights out" bells were ringing in all the corridors. Miss Woodhull had only to press a series of buttons arranged in the hall just outside her study door to produce the effect of the needle-prick in the fairy tale. Every inmate immediately dropped asleep. Every? Well, exceptions prove a rule, it ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... into the spirit of this magnificence. She still sat in her nursery with her younger children as much as possible, darning all the stockings of the family; an occupation which Adeline thought very ungenteel, for she never condescended to use her needle at all. To make Mrs. Taylor a fine lady had been one of the least successful of Mr. Taylor's efforts; she was much too honest by nature to assume a character for which she was so little qualified. There was but one way in which she could succeed in interesting ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... she said; "be quick, and fetch as many dock leaves as possible. I will thread a needle so as to sew up the poor dead 'uns in their coffins. We must get through the pwivate funerals as quick as possible this morning, and then we'll ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... a back hair out of place, they must have accepted the results as a testimony to the value of the personal factor in uniform. Respect for individual tastes was rather a mark of that time in the navy. Seamen handy with their needle were permitted, if not encouraged, to embroider elaborate patterns, in divers colors, on the fronts of their shirts, and turned many honest pennies by doing the like for less skillful shipmates. Pride in personal appearance, dandyism, is quite consonant ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... called. The voyage was delightful, but every sight and sound was a source of new terror to the sailors. An eruption of a volcano at the Canaries was watched with dread as an omen of evil. They crossed the line of no magnetic variation, and when the needle of the compass began to change its usual direction, they were sure it was bewitched. They entered the great Sargasso Sea and were frightened out of their wits by the strange expanse of floating vegetation. They entered the zone of the trade winds, and as the breeze, day after ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... was always cutting out leather. This grave man was a German, and there was a rumour among young sportsmen that old Neefit paid this highly-skilled operator L600 a year for his services! Nobody knew as he did how each morsel of leather would behave itself under the needle, or could come within two hairbreadths of him in accuracy across the kneepan. As for measuring, Mr. Neefit did that himself,—almost always. To be measured by Mr. Neefit was as essential to perfection as to be cut out for by the German. There were rumours, indeed, that from certain classes ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope |
