"Reel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... anniversary of Chilian independence. Participation of a certain class of Yankees therein. The procession. A Falstaffian leader. The feast. A twenty-gallon keg of brandy on the table, gracefully encircled by quart dippers. The Chilenos reel with a better grace, the ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... squinted along one side, he did, En he squinted the other side twice, En then he told me, "You squint it, kid," 'Cause the coppenter man's reel nice. ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... with such an attraction I expected something heavy. My float was a large-sized pike-float for live bait, and this civilized sign had been only a few minutes in the wild waters of the Atbara, when, bob! and away it went! I had a very large reel, with nearly three hundred yards of line that had been specially made for monsters; down went the top of my rod, as though a grindstone was suspended on it, and, as I recovered its position, away went the line, and the reel revolved, not with the ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... whirled the busy wheel, Piled the thread upon the reel— Saw she not his spirit kneel, Praying ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... been shrouded in the obscurity of night. The dark masses of combatants, stretching along the dike, were seen struggling for mastery, until the very causeway on which they stood appeared to tremble, and reel to and fro, as if shaken by an earthquake; while the bosom of the lake, as far as the eye could reach, was darkened by canoes crowded with warriors, whose spears and bludgeons, armed with blades of "volcanic glass," ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... understand it all by-and-bye," observed the maniac; "but it will be necessary that you wait until I have finished the story, when it will all reel off like a skein of silk, which at present but appears to ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the moment the song was done, without pause, or anything to separate or chill the succession of the arts, the fiddles diverged with a gallant plunge into "The Dusty Miller." The dancers found their feet by an instinct as rapid, and a rattling reel shook the floor like thunder. Jean Carnie assumed the privilege of a bride, and seized his lordship; Christie, who had a mind to dance with him too, took Flucker captive, and these four were one ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... penetrable, fleecy wreaths in the heaven, to give light upon the earth, which move together hand in hand, company by company, troop by troop, so measured in their unity of motion that the whole heaven seems to roll with them, and the earth to reel under them. And then wait yet for one hour, until the east again becomes purple, and the heaving mountains, rolling against it in darkness, like waves of a wild sea, are drowned one by one in the glory of its burning; watch the white glaciers blaze in ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... their sewing together, after this, without speaking very much more, at the present time, about it. Mrs. Goldthwaite was thinking it over in her motherly mind, and in the mind of Leslie thought and hope and anticipation were dancing a reel with each other. It is time to tell the reader of the what ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... adoring hands—-waiting, watching, trembling, praying for the trumpet's call to rise from dust forever! Ah, vision too fearful of shuddering humanity on the brink of mighty abysses!—-vision that didst start back, that didst reel away, like a shivering scroll before the wrath of fire racing on the wings of the wind! Epilepsy so brief of horror, wherefore is it that thou canst not die? Passing so suddenly into darkness, wherefore is it that still thou sheddest thy sad funeral blights upon the gorgeous ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... from good San Antonio, my Lady Bird—when the sea-breeze makes—then the old brig will reel off the knots! But see! just now not a breath to keep a tropic bird's wings out. There, look ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... favourite cutty, occasionally a half naked brute, in the shape of a man or a woman, would stagger in, their heads nodding on their shoulders, like the equally sensible and oblivious looking pate of a Chinese figure in a grocer's window; and if there was space enough, would reel a step or two, and then measure their length upon the floor, muttering sundry threatening sounds. These, of course, were soon picked up, and in their attempts to play at a la Randall, had their arms carefully pinioned, their bodies placed upon a seat, ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... not reel or tremble, but she felt that the bolt had pierced a vital part, and wisely forbore to offer ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... will I with reel and rod And cure his taste for dainty dishes By favour of whatever god Decides the destiny of fishes; And that were vengeance passing sweet— ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... know anything, either," he agreed. "But I generally know where I can look up what I need." He set a compact reel of tape ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole
... estates on which large sums had been paid. The list included the names of the deceased and also the amounts on which probate duty had been paid. I decided to commit these names and figures to memory and to take an occasion the next day to reel them off to ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... She minds her dairy, While I go a-hoeing and mowing each morn. Merrily runs the reel And the little spinning-wheel While I am ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... humming through its bowels; and I came out in time to see Billy Lusk climb its front with callow, enterprising shouts. That was child's play; and the universal yell now raised by the horsemen was their child's play too; but the whole thing could so precipitately reel into the fatal that my thoughts stopped. I could only look when I saw that they had somehow recognized the man on the engine for a sheriff. Two had sprung from their horses and were making boisterously toward the cab, while Lin ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... is that?" quoth he. "I know your meaning," Joan replied, "But, Sir, my tongue shall not be tied; I will go on, and let you know What work poor women have to do: First, in the morning, though we feel As sick as drunkards when they reel; Yes, feel such pains in back and head As would confine you men to bed, We ply the brush, we wield the broom, We air the beds, and right the room; The cows must next be milked—and then We get the breakfast ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... enter her door again till Bartley opened it; she would die there in the house, she and her baby, and as she stood wringing her hands and moaning over the sleeping little one, a hideous impulse made her brain reel; she wished to look if Bartley had left his pistol in its place; a cry for help against herself broke from her; she dropped ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... clasped adoring hands—waiting, watching, trembling, praying for the trumpet's call to rise from dust for ever! Ah, vision too fearful of shuddering humanity on the brink of almighty abysses!—vision that didst start back, that didst reel away, like a shrivelling scroll from before the wrath of fire racing on the wings of the wind! Epilepsy so brief of horror, wherefore is it that thou canst not die? Passing so suddenly into darkness, wherefore is ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... thirteen years old. He was a brilliant scholar at Balliol, but had been compelled to give up study and leave the University temporarily owing to brain trouble. He never published anything, but would reel off brilliant short poems or essays for friends at a moment's notice. I used always to remark that in whatever company he was, he was always deferred to as an authority in anything approaching classics. He could read and quote Greek ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... point. Some 480 feet of sail surface were thus spread to the wind, working on a radius of fifteen feet. The horizontal drive wheel had a diameter of ten feet, carried eighty-eight wooden cogs which engaged a pinion with fifteen leaves, and there were nine arms on the reel at the other end of the shaft which drove the chain. The boards or buckets of the chain pump were six by twelve inches, placed nine inches apart, and with a fair breeze the pump ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... one! I have one!—a fish! What kind is it?" screamed Bess Bangem, who was the Professor's companion, as her light trout-pole bent from a sudden tug, and the reel whirred ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... over a very big pulley or sheave at the bows, passed six times round a big barrel or drum; which will be turned round by a steam-engine on deck, and thus wind up the cable, while the Elba slowly steams ahead. The cable is not wound round and round the drum as your silk is wound on its reel, but on the contrary never goes round more than six times, going off at one side as it comes on at the other, and going down into the hold of the Elba, to be coiled along in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on the moving-picture machine, sir?" suggested the negro deferentially. "There's a good one-reel comedy in this machine to-day, or I can put in a serious piece in a moment, if ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... bill-of-fare; calling for everything that I dared to, just to see what each was like, and to be able to say afterwards that I had partaken of it; all these bewildering delights of the first realization of what a boy has read and wondered much over, and longed for, would dance their rout and reel through my somnolent brain. Then I would awake to find myself a half-naked, half-starved, vermin-eaten wretch, crouching in a hole in the ground, waiting for my keepers to fling me ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... why my pulse beat such a furious ratan when I looked and fingered over her little hand, to pick out the cruel nettle-stings and thistles. Among her love-inspiring qualities, she sung sweetly; and it was her favourite reel to which I attempted giving an embodied vehicle in rhyme. I was not so presumptuous as to imagine that I could make verses like printed ones, composed by men who read Greek and Latin; but my girl sung a song which was ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... hearts were cased with buffalo hocks, our souls were cased with steel, And the hardships of that summer would nearly make us reel. While skinning the damned old stinkers our lives they had no show, For the Indians waited to pick us off ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... hurdle the Stand arose plain, All the flags, horns and cheers beat like blows on his brain, And he thought, "Time to race when I come here again, If I once lose my head, I'll be lost past appeal." All the crowd flickered past like a film on a reel. ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... not have raged more against Jacob, the supplanter, than did Dick, when Austin carried off Viviette from beneath his nose. Until this visit of Austin he had no idea that he would find a rival in his brother. The discovery was a shock, causing his world to reel and setting free all the pent-up jealousies and grievances of a lifetime. Everything he had given up to Austin, if not willingly, at least graciously, hiding beneath the rough, tanned hide of his homely face all pain, disappointment, and ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... say, "but 'pluck' is one thing, endurance another. A man who doesn't reel on receipt of his death-warrant may yet break down when he has had time to think it over. How did the Duke acquit himself when he came to the end of his cigarette? And by the way, how was it that after he had read the telegram you didn't give ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... through which the merest thread of milky water trickles disconsolately. The sun blazes overhead and hours pass, while you trudge through the fiery inferno; scintillations of heat rise from the stones and still you crawl onwards, breathless and footsore, till eyes are dazed and senses reel. One may well say bad things of these torrid deserts of pebbles which, up till lately, were the only highways from the lowlands into the mountainous parts. But they are sweet in memory. One calls to mind the wild savours that hang in the stagnant air; the cloven hill-sides, ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... and his hands trembled with anxiety and trepidation as they felt in vain for it along the smooth and lofty wall. Richard's brain began to reel. He leaned his trembling brow against the cold iron of the spout, and endeavored to think the matter out. He was sure of Balfour; he felt certain that nothing but sudden and dangerous illness would have prevented him from keeping his word. But perhaps he had not been able to ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... running after the reel of cotton when the cook dropped it, or playing with the tassel of the blind-cord, or pretending that there were mice inside the paper bag which I knew to be empty, I confess that I had no heart or imagination for ...
— Pussy and Doggy Tales • Edith Nesbit
... and before long he let himself be drawn up again to the surface. Once he was so close to the shore that the angler made a thrust at him with the landing-net, and just grazed his side. It frightened him worse than ever, and he raced away again so fast that the reel sang, and the line swished through ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... the stables, came in with a black boy he found there, who had his fiddle; and as the Colonel Mansfield party came in from the dining-room, Steve screamed out, "Take your partners for a Virginia Reel." No! I do not know whose partner was who; only this, that there were seventeen boys and men and seventeen girls or women, besides me and Mrs. Van Astrachan and Colonel Mansfield and Pauline's mother. And we danced till for one I was almost dead, and then we went ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... that; it is a very simple dance—the Virginia Reel; every one can dance that; only do as others do,' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... his head, for, looking straight forward, he could conjure up the laughing vision; but when he glanced to the empty saddle he heard once more the last unlucky shot fired from the train as they raced off with their booty, and saw Hal reel in his saddle and pitch forward; and how he had tried to check his horse and turn back; and how Dick Wilbur, and Patterson, and big Phil Branch had forced him to go on and leave that form ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... cried poor M'Guire: and with uneven steps, for the pavement of the square seemed to lurch and reel under his footing, he fled from the scene of this disaster. Fled? Alas, from what was he fleeing? Did he not carry that from which he fled, along with him? and had he the wings of the eagle, had he the swiftness of the ocean winds, could he have been rapt into the uttermost quarters of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mountains. The young man kept his promise. When the sun first came in view, there was not a cloud on the face of the sky. In the space of a breath, thick darkness overspread the earth, rendering it as dark as the darkest night, and the thunders rolled so awfully, that the very earth seemed to reel like a man who has drunken twice of the fire-eater, which the brothers of our friend sell us in the Village of the High Rock.[A] But what astonished our people most was, that no lightning accompanied ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... cravings. For he laid his hand upon the mantle, and his rash example tempted the rest to join in his enterprise of plunder. Thereupon the recess shook from its lowest foundations, and began suddenly to reel and totter. Straightway the women raised a shriek that the wicked robbers were being endured too long. Then they, who were before supposed to be half-dead or lifeless phantoms, seemed to obey the cries of the women, and, leaping suddenly up from their seats, attacked the strangers with ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... blue banner of the flax, to walking on frosty roads on great nights of stars.... To riding with the hunt, clumsily, as a sailor does, but getting in at the death, as pleased as the huntsman, or the master himself.... To the whir of the reel as the great blue salmon rushed ... Pleasure, and ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... flatteries' worthless store, Ne scandal's forked tongue—that ancient liar, Ne music's magic breath, ne giddy wheel Of gay lascivious daunce, ne ill-raised mirthe, Ne promised state doth cause her mind to reel, Or lure from thoughts of heaven to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... glides Swift without stop: the old bashaws click time, As if on polish'd ice; in trance sublime The iman hoar with some spruce courtier slides. Nor rank nor age from capering refrain; Nor can the king his royal foot restrain! He too must reel amid the frolic row, Grasp the grand vizier by his beard of snow, And teach the aged man once more to bound amain!" WIELAND, Oberon ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... muttered: "An even break! By God, an even break!" And over and over did Carson's heart rise in his breast as he saw Bud Lee drive Trevors, and over and over did his heart sink when he saw Lee sway and reel under the sledge-hammer blows beating at face ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... Padraic Colum, and dazzlingly illustrated by Willy Pogany. The Colum-Pogany School of Thought is one which the commercial producers have not yet condescended to illustrate in celluloid, and it remains a special province for the Art Museum Film. Fairy-tales need not be more than one-tenth of a reel long. Some of the best fairy-tales in the whole history of man can be told in a breath. And the best motion picture story for fifty years may turn out to be a reel ten minutes long. Do not let the length of the commercial film tyrannize over your mind, O ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... hooked up that it seems to fly from her mouth; yet for all that she looks charmingly, for she has a large mouth, and did she not lack half a score or a dozen front teeth she might pass and make a figure among the fairest. I say nothing of her lips, for they are so thin that, were it the fashion to reel lips, one might make a skein of them; but, being of a different color from what is usual in lips, they have a marvellous appearance, for they are streaked with blue, green, and orange-tawny. Pardon me, good my lord governor, ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... room were of tiered logs, the bark still on, and the chinking between the logs, plainly visible, was arctic moss. Through the open door that led to the dance-room came the rollicking strains of a Virginia reel, played by a piano and a fiddle. The drawing of Chinese lottery had just taken place, and the luckiest player, having cashed at the scales, was drinking up his winnings with half a dozen cronies. The faro- and roulette-tables were busy ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... make-believe. Jerry, the best fisherman of the four, believed, as he said, in "making the bait fit the fish's mouth." His tackle-box held every kind of hook and lure; his steel rod and multiple reel were the best Timkin's Sporting Goods Store in town could furnish; they had cost him a whole ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... drank the health of you and all the rest of both families that were absent. After dinner we cleared away the table and danced. Mother looked just as pretty as a picture and I had a lovely waltz with her. Mrs. Lodge and I danced the Virginia Reel. ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... fortune let every dollar of it be clean. You do not want to see in it drunkards reel, orphans weep, widows moan. Your riches must not make others poorer and ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... that—a furlong on—why, there! What bad use was that engine for, that wheel, Or brake, not wheel—that harrow fit to reel Men's bodies out like silk? with all the air Of Tophet's too!, on earth left unaware, Or brought to sharpen its ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... the cannonade, the clash of the onslaught, the shrieks of the wounded, the groans of the dying, the last gasp of him whose life has reached its end. Such is the infernal music of war. See the victim of the conflict reel in the saddle and fall headlong. Cast your eyes on the mangled forms of godlike men, fallen in the midst of fullest life. Come in the night after the battle and look upon the ghastly faces upturned in the moonlight. Gaze on the windrows of the dead, Mars's awful harvest, that impoverishes ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... years was this agitation increasing in intensity, and so bitter had it made animosities arising out of it, that reason seemed to reel, and justice to forget her duty. Men were chosen indiscriminately to office because of party proclivities. Intelligence and moral worth were entirely disregarded—families divided—husbands and wives quarrelled—father and sons were estranged, and brothers were ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... than I did. Arrange it somehow for them to meet. She'll—she'll like him and then—by George, she'll thank us both for the interest we take in her future. It wouldn't surprise me if she fell in love with him right off the reel. And you may be sure he'll fall in love with her. He can't help it. The knowledge that she'll have fifty millions some day won't have anything to do with his feeling ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... and might, who hast walked amidst the passions of the world, with no changes on thy brow, art thou tossed at last upon the billows of tempestuous fear? Does thy spirit reel to and fro?—knowest thou at last the strength ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... waiting there in the Golden House, seemed to stretch out her arms for him to come. Still behind him rose a picture of that bacchanalian breakfast—the Major and Carmen and Mavick and Miss Tavish dancing a reel on the sloping deck, then the rising wind, the reckless daring of the race, and a vision of sudden death. He shuddered for the first time in a quick realization of how nearly it came to being all over with life ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... men have suffered more from the evils of intemperance than our brave sailors, fishermen, and rivermen. Foreigners tell our missionaries to convert our drunken sailors abroad, and when they wish to personify an Englishman, they mockingly reel about like a drunken man. And what lives have been lost through the intemperance of captains and crews! The 'St. George,' with 550 men: 'The Kent,' 'East Indiaman,' with most of her passengers and crew: 'The Ajax,' with 350 people: 'The Rothsway Castle,' with ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... and reels. These young people, although they are as Irish-speaking as the people of Connemara, are pushing forward in their ways of living and dress; so that this group of dancers could hardly have been known, by their appearance, from any Sunday party in Limerick or Cork. After a long four-hand reel, my friend, who was dressed in homespun, danced a jig to the whistling of a young man with great energy and spirit. Then he sat down beside me in the corner, and we talked about spring trawling and the price of nets. I told him about ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... my pulse beat such a furious rantann when I looked and fingered over her hand to pick out the nettle-stings and thistles. Among her other love-inspiring qualifications she sang sweetly; and 'twas her favourite Scotch reel that I attempted to give an embodied vehicle to in rhyme. I was not so presumptive as to imagine I could make verses like printed ones composed by men who had Greek and Latin; but my girl sung a song which was said to be composed by a small country laird's son, ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... days she came as before, but on the fifth day she seemed to want something else. Prompted by a kindred feeling, one of the loafers suggested that "She wants another round." His guess was right, and having got it, that abandoned old Bear began to reel, but she was quite good-natured about it, and at length lay down under a table, where her loud snores proclaimed to all that she was asleep—beastly drunk, and asleep—just like one of ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... never did think Ah would have sech fine troosos fer my marritch. When Ah married Bill Ah diden have nawthin' but a new cambric dress and a sun-bunnet. But this marritch will be the reel thing, what with all ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... work in fields where the wheat stood straight, but also where it had become tangled and beaten down by wind and rain. In 1831, he produced his first practicable machine, making every part of it himself by hand. Its three essential features have never been changed—a vibrating cutting-blade, a reel to bring the grain within reach of the blade, and a platform to receive the falling grain. The ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... the wine I've drank Has made me reel again.—Yet while I sat, How sober I suppos'd myself!—But I No sooner rose, than neither foot, nor ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... was very gentle and mild, and she had none of that strength of will which she admired in Alice. One night there was a sleighing party to a hotel in the suburbs, where they had dancing and then supper. After the supper they danced "Little Sally Waters" for a finale, instead of the Virginia Reel, and Alice would not go on the floor with Dan; she said she disliked that dance; but she told him to dance with Miss Langham. It became a gale of fun, and in the height of it Dan slipped and fell with his partner. They laughed it off, with the rest, but after ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... heard those dreadful words: "He's dead, miss, didn't you know? and buried yesterday"—her jaw dropped, and for a moment she felt the solid earth reel beneath her. The colour left her face and returned to it, red chasing white as one breath follows another, and she glared at the woman. For her first indignant thought was that she was being insulted with a falsehood. The thing ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... strong. In his hand he upholds sun, moon, and stars; thrones break, nations reel to and fro, when ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... the Lord, And his wonders in the deep. For he commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, Which lifteth up the waves thereof. They mount up to the heaven, They go down again to the depths; Their soul melteth away because of trouble. They reel to and fro, And stagger like a drunken man, And are at their wits' end. Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, And he bringeth them out of their distresses. He maketh the storm a calm, So that the waves thereof are still. Then ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... the long grass is a-mow'd an' a-carr'd, An' the turf is so smooth as a bwoard an' so hard; There's a bank to zit down, when y'ave danced a reel drough, An' a tree over head vor ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... lid of the old piano was raised, a spinet, really, and one of the girls began running her fingers over the keys; and later on it was agreed that the first dance was to be the Virginia reel, with all the hospitable chairs and the fire screen and the gouty old sofa rolled ...
— The Little Gray Lady - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... like you; I didn't suppose there was one left in the whole town. You are one of us—the old settlers, the aborigines. Do you know what I'm going to do some time? I'm going to have a regular aboriginal pow-wow, and all the old-timers shall be invited. We'll have a reel, and forfeits, and all sorts of things; and off to one side of the wigwam there shall be two or three beautiful young squaws to pour firewater. Will ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... tears swam in his eyes, making the whole radiant vision reel and run together in a blaze of passionate light ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... name from the wooden reel or spool on which thread is wound; "bottom" simply meaning the base or foundation of the reel. The names of his comrades have no specific connection with the trades they ply; but "Starveling" is appropriate by tradition for a tailor—it takes seven ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... around the long sewing table under the trees, when the ladies' aid was at work with needle and tongue, should be the principal incident of this reel devoted ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... her masts and rigging swung in a slow drunken reel. Presently she settled back to normal with a heavy crushing sound as the water in her hold rushed forward. She seemed some mighty leviathan weltering in agony. She lay on even keel for four or five minutes while a hissing and spewing of air compressed ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... decision. He ran the car around the yard two or three times, testing its condition, and then returned it to its shed. Mr. Conant got his rod and reel and departed ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... time fer sure. We've got the material to work up; we've got the people to buy the goods; we've got the lot; and there we're stuck, fer we can't get the house. I can't anyway. We're jes' like the feller that went fishin'; had a big basket to carry home his fish; a nice new jointed pole with a reel and fixin's, a good strong linen line, an' a nice bait box full of big fat worms, an' when he got to the river he didn't have no hook, and the fish just swum 'round under his nose an' laughed at him 'cause he couldn't touch 'em—and still I believe that God will ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... her and it's all right! Everything's all right! Look at this world, Doctor. Did you ever see a more beautiful one? For Heaven's sake reel off some poetry ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... always a swell to beware of; Omorishima, even loftier, which rises from the ocean in enormous ruddy precipices. There seemed to be some grim force in those sinister bulks; some occult power which made our steamer reel and shiver as she passed them. But I saw a marvellous effect of colour under those formidable cliffs of Omorishima. They were lighted by a slanting sun; and where the glow of the bright rock fell upon the ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... Pickwick, Mr. Tupman, and the ladies; which reached a pitch of positive enthusiasm, when old Wardle and Benjamin Allen, assisted by the aforesaid Bob Sawyer, performed some mystic evolutions, which they called a reel. ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... it was a delightful feeling to win the blue ribbon of England, especially as my opponent in the final, Miss Jackson, had led 5-love in both sets! By some good fortune I was able to win seven games off the reel ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers
... done towards producing our own silk. The mulberry is being distributed in large numbers, eggs are being imported and distributed, improved reels were imported from Europe last year, and two expert reelers were brought to Washington to reel the crop of cocoons and teach the art ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... about 'em whenever he got a chance. Of course, discipline being what it is on board ship, he couldn't talk as free with me as I s'pose he did with his mates. But once in a while he'd reel off a yarn, an' then he'd hint kind of mysterious like that he knew where some of the old Pirates' doubloons were buried an' that some day, if luck was with him, he'd be a ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... hand of Moraig, while Lord Andrew called a pretty lass from amongst the rustics, and joined the group. The happy earl, with many a hearty laugh, enjoyed the jollity of his people; and while the steward stood at his lord's back describing whose sons and daughters passed before him in the reel, Mar remembered their parents-their fathers, once his companions in the chase or on the wave; and their mothers, the pretty maidens he used to pursue over the hills in the ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... by. I would have given something if my tackle had been rigged so that I could have tried on the instant the temper of the trout that had just broken the surface within easy reach of the shore. But I had anticipated this moment coming along, and had surreptitiously undone my rod-case and got my reel out of my bag, and was therefore a few moments ahead of my companion in making the first cast. The trout rose readily, and almost too soon we had more than enough for dinner, though no "rod-smashers" had been seen or felt. Our experience the next morning, and during the day ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... stubborn soil and made it yield its yearly toll of harvest; they took tribute of wool and mutton from the moorland and the hillside, and of hide and beef from the fallow lea; they levied on loch and sea to support their fisher-folk; and kept the rock and the reel and the flying shuttle busy to clothe themselves with homespun, so that the old Arbroath toast became a very epitome of the vocations of that primitive time: "The life o' man, the death o' fish, the shuttle, and the plough; corn, horn, linen, yarn, lint, and tarry 'oo." Nay more, defying the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... voices around her almost made her brain reel. Grace Alden and Miss Raynor were singing a duet at the piano. The song they were singing fell like a death-knell upon her ears; it was "'He Cometh ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... us that the vintage is a fair average, though the vine disease, the oïdion, has penetrated even into these mountains. Evoe Bacche! The fumes of the reeking cave mount to our heads, the floor is slippery with the lees and trodden vine-leaves. We reel to the door, glad to breathe ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... "Wall, that's everybody's feelin' about him: and there ain't no great thing to show for 't nuther. But they did say a while back that he hadn't no reel right to the land. He turned up all of a sudden, and paid up all there was owin' on the taxes, an' he's paid 'em regular ever sence. But he hain't never showed how the notes come to be signed by some other name. Yes, sir, the hull lot—it's nigh on ter three ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... roman pittoresque mais prosaique de Walter Scott il lestera un autre roman a creer, plus beau et plus complet encore selon nous. C'est le roman, a la fois drame et epopee, pittoresque mais poetique, reel mais ideal, vrai mais grand, qui enchassera Walter Scott dans Homere. - Victor Hugo ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... drawing-room of the Manor, the address was read to her, and this appeal rang upon her ears, she felt herself turn dizzy and faint: her whole life seemed to reel backwards to all she had lost, and the tyranny of the present bore down upon her with a cruel weight. It needed all her courage and all her innate strength to rule herself to composure. For an instant the people in the room were a confused mass, floating ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... my pleasures through thy lips, To sail with thee o'er foaming waves and feel Our spirits rise together with the reel Of waters and the wavering land's eclipse; To see thy fair hair damp with salt sea-spray And in thine eyes the ...
— A Woman's Love Letters • Sophie M. Almon-Hensley
... it would have been truer to say a wild joy, only that it held a pang of remorse for itself. So she had lain at the Hotel du Chalet when he had left her for that long walk over the crisp mountain snow. And when he had returned, she—what She? No, his brain did not reel on the verge of madness; it merely accepted under the compulsion of knowledge a truth of those truths that are too profound to admit of mere external proof. For our reason plays at the edge of the universe as a little child plays at the edge of the sea, gathering ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... could whistle, on his fingers, an invigorating reel, And could imitate a piper on the handles of the wheel; He could play in double octaves, too, all up and down the rail, Or rattle off a rondo on the ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl
... Why do you take such long stitches? I take three stitches where you take one. Cannot you sew closer?— Ken'apa jahit ini jarang sahaja, tiga penyuchuk kita satu penyuchuk dia, ta tahu-kah buat k[)e]rap-k[)e]rap? Needles, Berlin wool, scissors, thimble, and a reel of white cotton— Jerum, benang bulu kambing, gunting, sarong-jari dan ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... it goin' to make the home less full of discomfort to have him reel home at midnight and dash the hungry cryin' baby aginst the wall and put out its feeble life, and mebby kill ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... She had completely got the upper hand of her morning governess, Miss Hume—who walked all the way from Church Dykely and back again—and of nearly everyone else; and Captain Monk gave forth his decision one day when all was turbulence—a resident governess. Mrs. Carradyne could have danced a reel for joy, and wrote to a governess agency ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... lent 'em to the Police Sergeant. Please have the goodness to look after the business while I'm gone.' With that he leaves me in the company of close on L100,000, and never a soul'd have bin the wiser if I'd helped myself to a thousand or two. But the reel digger don't act so—it's the loafers on the diggings gets us a bad name. I've dreamed of it, I've had reg'lar nightmares about it when I've bin stone-broke and without a ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... was clanging the fire alarm. It was an unusual sound in the quiet little village. Noisy shouts in the next street proclaimed that the volunteer fire brigade was dragging out the hand-power engine and hose reel. From all directions came the sound of hurrying feet and ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... that of the Quien Sabe, to Osterman's, and to Broderson's. During a flurry in the Chicago wheat pits in the August of that year, which had affected even the San Francisco market, Harran and Magnus had sat up nearly half of one night watching the strip of white tape jerking unsteadily from the reel. At such moments they no longer felt their individuality. The ranch became merely the part of an enormous whole, a unit in the vast agglomeration of wheat land the whole world round, feeling the effects of causes thousands of miles distant—a drought on the prairies of Dakota, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... reel. Then, in a moment, she saw that both men were down on hands and knees, and, almost at the instant, she, herself, was hurled flat upon the ground beside the body ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... affairs I have said what I saw, and every day confirms me in that notion of the result formed on the spot; and I rather think honest John Bull is beginning to come round again to that sobriety which Massena's retreat had begun to reel from its centre—the usual consequence of unusual success. So you perceive I cannot alter the sentiments; but if there are any alterations in the structure of the versification you would wish to be made, I will tag rhymes and turn stanzas ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... boasting and quibbling; the wrestling schools are deserted and the young fellows have submitted their arses to outrage,[496] in order that they might learn to reel off idle chatter, and the sailors have dared to bandy words with their officers.[497] In my day they only knew how to ask for their ship's-biscuit and to shout ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... reely begins down at Marquette Breakwater. It was on the seventeenth day of November, an', let me see, it must have been in 'eighty-six, the same year my youngest was born. The winter had broke in early that year, not with any reel stormy weather, but jest a bunch o' pesky squalls. An' cold! We was in the boat mighty near every day, an' I used ter forget what bein' warm felt like. There was allers somethin' hittin' a shoal or tryin' to make a hole ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... the reel, and "scene fifty-one" did indeed show that section of space in which our solar system is. Seaton stopped the chart when star six four seven three was at its closest range, and there was our sun; with its nine planets and their many satellites ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... from the receivers was fed into a regular tape-recording circuit. The tapes themselves were on huge reels good for about four hours of recording. It would only be necessary to watch the volume control and to see that all was running smoothly. Changing tapes was only a matter of slapping a new reel into place, dropping the tape into the recording head, and threading it ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... control the creative faculty. Some stolid German will discover these cells somewhere in the occipital lobes, another German will agree with him, a third will disagree, and a Russian will glance through the article about the cells and reel off an essay about it to the Syeverny Vyestnik. The Vyestnik Evropi will criticize the essay, and for three years there will be in Russia an epidemic of nonsense which will give money and popularity to blockheads and do ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... hear the Parcae reel The threads of man at their humming wheel, The threads of life and power and pain, So sweet and mournful falls the ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... excellent etching of my dear friend, the late Henry Stevens. One of the portraits is a unique, for I had it painted myself, and I have never permitted any copy to be made of it; it is of my bookseller, and it represents him in the garb of a fisherman, holding his rod and reel in one hand and the copy of the "Compleat Angler" in ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... sound of banjo and fiddle, as one by one the dusky musicians from the cabins ranged themselves along the wall of the big room, which had been cleared of its furnishings, and young feet came hurrying in when the old Virginia reel sounded through, the low rooms, calling ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... machine, unless it be the calendering machine which furnished its type. At the printing end it looks like a collection of small cylinders or rollers. The first thing to be observed is the continuous roll of paper four miles long, tightly mounted on a reel, which, when the machine is going, flies round with immense rapidity. The web of paper taken up by the first roller is led into a series of small hollow cylinders filled with water and steam, perforated with thousands of minute holes. By this means the paper is properly damped before ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... of the feeble hand! Strength of the strong! to whom the nations kneel! Stay and destroyer, at whose just command Earth's kingdoms tremble and her empires reel! Who dost the low uplift, the small make great, And dost abase the ignorantly proud, Of our scant people mould a mighty state, To the strong, stern,—to Thee in meekness bowed! Father of unity, make this people one! Weld, interfuse them in the patriot's flame,— Whose forging ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... on the parapet, but they were soon hurled from thence. The fire of the redoubt and the batteries being aided by a well-posted armed brig flanking the right of the British lines, made the whole column stagger and reel like drunken men; and Colonel Maitland, seizing the critical moment, issued forth with a mixed corps of grenadiers and marines, and charged them at the point of the bayonet. This charge decided the contest. The French and Americans were driven far beyond the ditch, leaving behind them about nine ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... not account for the ten thousand frantic freaks of these people by the peculiar influence of French air and sun? The philosophers are from night to morning drunk, the politicians are drunk, the literary men reel and stagger from one absurdity to another, and how shall we understand their vagaries? Let us suppose, charitably, that Madame Sand had inhaled a more than ordinary quantity of this laughing gas when she wrote for us this precious manuscript of Spiridion. That great destinies are in prospect ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for a living?" Scotty asked. "Wish we had Chahda along. He could reel off the straight dope from his Worrold Alm-in-ack." Their Indian friend, Chahda, was at home in Bombay and they hadn't heard from him in some time. His ability to quote from The World Almanac, which he had memorized, had caused ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin |
