"Thread" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... asserted itself, and she pushed back the stool on which she was sitting with such violence that it fell with a crash on the floor, and, as it fell, knocked against the spindle at which another of the maidens was sitting, and the thread snapped ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... powerfully to affect the imagination of the believer. The joys of paradise, promised to all who fall in the cause of religion, are those most captivating to an Arabian fancy. When Al Sirat, or the Bridge of Judgment, which is as slender as the thread of a famished spider, and as sharp as the edge of a sword, shall be passed by the believer, he will be welcomed into the gardens of delight by black-eyed Houris, beautiful nymphs, not made of common clay, but of pure essence and odors, free from all blemish, and subject ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... the sound, and looking upon a little bay, a cluster of monastic cells marked the northern limits of the Christian church. From this outpost it had for the time receded, and all save two of the rude stone dwellings looked deserted and forlorn. A thin thread of smoke rose straight heavenward in the still air, and before the entrance of the cell whence it issued stood an old and venerable man. Despite a slight stoop, he was still much beyond the common height of men. His brows were shaggy, and his grey ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... was wiped, the powder measured, the ball patched with six hundred thread linen, and a charge sent home with a hickory rod. We moved not a step from the place, for the squirrels were so thick, that it was unnecessary to go after them. Boone pointed to one of these animals, which had observed us and was crouched on a tree, about fifty paces distant, and ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... severely wounded in the head, and suffering from a brain fever. For a time he uttered fearful shrieks, but on the third day he sank into a state of drowsiness, and his life seemed to hang upon a thread: that it might snap, the physician said, was the best that could ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... Sister, they are thine If thou but take myself — nay — don't refuse.' 'Nay — nay — my child!' I said; 'the only wealth We wish for is the wealth of soul — of grace. Not all your gold could unlock yonder gate, Or buy a single thread of Virgin's veil. Not all the coins in coffers of a king Could bribe an entrance here for any one. God's voice alone can claim a cell — a veil, For any one He sends. Who sent you here, My child? Thyself? Or did some holy one Direct thy steps? Or else some sudden ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... death of the two native messengers, and would simply have to take the stand of, "Here is this message from His Excellency and as to how I came by it is of as little importance as an order from the War Office regulating the colour of thread that attaches ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... A golden thread of glories yet to be, twines through the woof of this our mortal life, and by tracing its wavy lines of glittering brilliancy, shining even through the dim symbolism of matter, many secrets of the life to come may be divined. The arts may be regarded as ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... his bidding; then he took up the thread of the discourse, and talked long and earnestly upon the beauty and necessity of worship—a necessity consequent upon the nature of man, upon his own weakness, and his consciousness of the Divine Spirit within him. His whole heart was stirred, ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... ayah with something of his own devotion, for, though it was proffered almost silently, she was aware of it at every turn. At any other time her sympathy for the woman would have fired her interest and led her to attempt to draw her confidence. But the slender thread of life they guarded, though it bound them with a tie that was almost friendship, seemed so to fill their minds that they never spoke of anything else. Stella knew that Hanani loved her and considered her in every way, but she gave Peter most of the ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... eat (secretly). Their skins and hoofs are sold to the wandering Christian pedlars, and in the towns of Syria. Of the hoofs rings are made, which the Fellahs of eastern Syria wear on the thumb, or tied with a thread round the arm-pit, to prevent, or to heal rheumatic complaints. I may here make a general remark that there is an infinity of names of places in the desert. Every Tel, every declivity, or, elevation in a Wady, every extent of plain ground, where a particular herb grows, has its name, well known ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... killed first, and then drowned i' the well by one o' the men for concubinage, as the parson says; and so for the wrong done, her ghost ne'er having been laid, you see she claims every seventh year an offering which must be summat wick—and"——While he hesitated another took up the thread of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... the skins of three black bears they had slain, and with big needles and pack thread they had turned them into crude overcoats with the hair inside. Now when they put them on they found them serviceable but heavy. At any rate, wrapped in furs they ceased to shiver, though the wind of the ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... day of our journey, we had a very heavy rain, and in a few hours after it commenced, we had not a dry thread upon our bodies. This made our journey still more unpleasant. On the tenth day, we found ourselves entirely destitute of provisions, and how to obtain any we could not tell. We finally resolved to stop at some farmhouse, ...
— The Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave • William Wells Brown
... Bible, but what in any other Christian country than our own would have been instantly recognized as a deed of the highest heroism. And if we are not careful to do justly, all the new ropes wherewith we have bound this accursed Samson of Slavery will be broken like a thread, and our last state be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... being free and equal, every man should be fitted for freedom and an independence by his own resources wherever the changeful wave of our mighty stream may take him. But the star of Europe brought a different horoscope, and to mix destinies breaks the thread of both. The Arabian horse will not plough well, nor can the plough-horse be rode to play the jereed. Yet a man is a man wherever he goes, and something precious cannot fail to be gained by one who knows how to abide by a resolution ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... tree (Astocarpus incisa). People cut pieces from this tree for charms against disease and misfortune, until Father Salazar ordered that the trunk should be its pedestal. In an early rebellion the Chinese insurgents threw the statue into the fire. Flames were all about it, yet not a hair, not a thread of lace was singed, and the body of brass was unmarked by smoke. Angered at this defiance of their power, a Chinaman stabbed it in the face, and, curiously, the wound remains to this day in protest against the savagery ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... stare at him, then, as at a serf's corpse; for he who had scared Europe during thirty years lay before us that day as a poor lump of chilled brain and withered muscle. And we stood by, when, amid chanting and flare of torches and roll of cannon, his sons wrapped him in his shroud of gold thread, and lowered him into ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... come: peacefully and painlessly: in the morning she was found without life, nearly cold, but all calm and undisturbed. Her previous excitement of spirits and change of mood had been the prelude of a fit; one stroke sufficed to sever the thread of an existence so long ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... my lord, I have been searching for a privy knave; One, my lord, that feeds upon the poor commons, And makes poor Piers Plowman wear a thread-bare coat. It is a farmer, my lord, which buys up all the corn in the market, And sends it away beyond seas, and ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... thin, leathery, semi-transparent shell you could have seen, if you had examined it closely, a pair of bright, beady eyes, and a dark little thread of a backbone that was always curled up like a horseshoe because there wasn't room for it to lie straight. But along the outside of the curve of each spinal column a set of the tiniest and daintiest muscles was getting ready for a long pull, and a strong ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... and seighin' every handel-a-while, as though she were miserable. It was past my comprehension, and her mother could assign nae particular reason for it. As for Andrew, he did naething but yammer, yammer, frae morn till night, about the sea; or sail boats, rigged wi' thread and paper sails, in the burn. When he was at the bathing he had been doun aboot Leith, and had seen the ships, and naething wad serve him but he would be a sailor. Night and day did he torment my life out ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... we call the life force; if it were merely a tireless reiteration and recasting of characters, Mr. Cabell's work would have an unbearable monotony. But at bottom this apparent continuity has no more material existence than has the thread of lineal descent. To insist upon its importance is to obscure, as has been obscured, the epic range of Mr. Cabell's creative genius. It is to fail to observe that he has treated in his many books every mainspring of human action and that his themes have been the cardinal ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... may as well commence With quiet cruising o'er the ocean woman; While those who are not beginners should have sense Enough to make for port, ere time shall summon With his grey signal-flag; and the past tense, The dreary 'Fuimus' of all things human, Must be declined, while life's thin thread 's spun out Between the gaping heir and ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... is seen again, with a meal mill on the Tochty left nestling in among the trees, and one would call it the veriest burn, but it was there that Posty lost his life to save a little child. And then it dwindles into the thinnest thread of silver, and at last is seen no more from the beeches. From the Tochty the eye makes its raids on north and south. The dark, massy pine-woods on the left side of the glen are broken at intervals by fields as they threaten to come down upon the river, ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... cable using a thread of optical glass fibers as a transmission medium in which the signal (voice, video, etc.) is in the form of a ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... thread And flowery tapestrie: There's living roses on the bush, And blossoms on the tree; Stoop where thou wilt, thy careless hand Some random bud will meet; Thou canst not tread, but thou wilt find ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... not the glacier's grey today for you Rose-garlanded? The brooklet seeks you, wind, cloud, with longing thread And thrust themselves yet higher to the blue, To spy for you from ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... in his felt hat, proceeded carefully to cleanse parts of the torn flesh as well as he could. Then he unbuckled a big belt that he wore, and opening a pouch on it drew out two or three needles and some strong white thread. Having threaded one of the needles he began now, in as matter-of-course a manner as though he were mending a shirt, to stitch up the whole great wound so as to draw its sides together. During the whole lengthy operation ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... is charmed with the story of love which forms the thread of the tale, and then impressed with the wealth of detail concerning those times. The picture of the manifold sufferings of the people, is never overdrawn, but painted faithfully and honestly by one who spared neither time nor labor in his efforts to present ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... is called the thread, and the distance between two successive threads is called the pitch. It is easy to see that the closer the threads and the smaller the pitch, the greater the advantage of the screw, and hence the less force ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... the thread after sewing in a fresh ruche, nodded. "Got to keep the blues away, or perish trying to," she said. "And Hannah has to be home before Monday. And Frieda needs a day or two to get settled. Hilda said she'd come back to-day, and they could get their room in order before Sunday. I'm so glad you're ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... other. From the canoe he could see nothing above the banks. Landing to take a survey, Stonor beheld a vast treeless bottom, covered with rank grass, and stretching to low piny ridges several miles back on either hand. No tell-tale thread of smoke on the still air betrayed the camp of the man ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... my religion depends on any thread so slight, Bourdon. A man may be mistaken in interpreting prophecy, and still be a devout Christian. There are more reasons than you may at first suppose, for believing in this theory of the gradual change of the goat into the deer, ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... accommodation ladder went down with a rattle, and the canoe with her twenty spear-shaped paddles swung alongside like a naval pinnace, and a fat old chap, dressed in a vast white flannel nightgown with a sort of dress-shirt front pleated on it in blue thread, came slowly up the ladder. Came up and walked past with a heavy, flat-footed tread, and disappeared into the saloon with the Old Man. I was too astonished to speak for some time. That old fellow's face behind its broad benevolence and its confusing ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... scored-off wreck. I drew the line at that. I valued my self-respect at more than sixpence. If it had been a shilling now—. So I set my teeth and turned once more to my Thucydides. Bradshaw, having picked up the thread of his story again, emitted hoarse chuckles like minute guns, until I very nearly rose and fell upon him. It is maddening to listen to a person laughing and ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... possession of public power and the public funds holds only by a slender thread. Let the evicted and outraged majority dare, as subsequently at Lyons, Marseilles, and Toulon, to Return to the section assemblies and revoke the false mandate which they have arrogated to themselves through fraud and force, and, on the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... both of which were in progress at the same time, will be considered separately. Before entering upon either, the leading features of the twenty-sixth of the series of Washington conventions, which have run like a thread through Miss Anthony's life for more than a quarter of a century, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... barring a flaw, and I congratulate you on its recovery, but I see no human eye in it. I see some indistinct lines, fine as the thread of a spider's web, that is all. There is the breakfast bell, duke. We will go into the drawing room and find Cora. She must be down by ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... half-caught theme. But no. It was not that theme for which I was waiting and watching with baited breath. I realized my delusion when, on rounding the point of the Giudecca, the murmur of a voice arose from the midst of the waters, a thread of sound slender as a moonbeam, scarce audible, but exquisite, which expanded slowly, insensibly, taking volume and body, taking flesh almost and fire, an ineffable quality, full, passionate, but veiled, as it were, in a subtle, downy wrapper. ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... her hands, I came in a simple toilette of white mull, with my much-loved violets fastened at my throat and nestling among my black hair. Not a jewel save the ring that Louis had given me in the days before, and the chain, which was just one shining thread about my throat. I must have looked happy, but more than this I could not see, even though I hazarded a long, full look in ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... minds of all people, through the apertures of time, with new threads of knowledge like a garland of flowers, be pleased to accept this my thread of Eastern thought, offered, though it be ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... am the last person in the world to need that assurance," she said slowly. "It is only another thread in all the hideous tissue of injustice and iniquity which has been wrapped about us like a pall. What a shame, is it not, that such a man as he should be powerless to do the work I think God intended for him? And what a shame that Alleghenia, ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... first licking her hand to make her sensible of his presence, and then putting himself to a slow trot, so as best to accommodate himself to the light pace of her whom he convoyed, whom Joceline had not extolled for her activity without due reason. While Phoebe and her guardian thread the forest glades, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... seem to change. The examination becomes cold, the thread of our ideas is broken; we are forced to look with trouble, for what was found so easily, and we are often forced to postpone study to ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... move a big birch log, and lighting his pipe, stopped and looked about. A shallow creek flowed through a ravine at the edge of the tall wheat, and below the spot where he stood its channel was spanned by the stringers of an unfinished bridge. The creek had shrunk to a thread of water, but Festing, who had been wading about its bed, was wet and splashed with mire. Moreover he had torn his threadbare overalls and his hot face was smeared where he had rubbed off the mosquitoes with ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... given the doom of death, For pix of little price. Therefore, go speak, the duke will hear thy voice; And let not Bardolph's vital thread be cut With edge of penny cord and vile reproach: Speak, captain, for his life, and I ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... of his train, they drove together to their hotel, to take up the thread of their abandoned ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... men, whom greatness does so please, Ye feast, I fear, like Damocles. If you your eyes could upwards move, (But you, I fear, think nothing is above) You would perceive by what a little thread The sword still hangs over your head. No tide of wine would drown your cares, No mirth or music over-noise your fears; The fear of death would you so watchful keep, As not to admit the image ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... some cases a sheet of the apparent paper spreading out at either side of the head and having another roll placed across it; in other cases a ridged roof seems to rest upon the hair, a roof with the sides rolling upward and fastened at the top with a frail thread; while a third type of head-dress is of the skull-cap order, from which is suspended two ties quite twenty inches long and eight inches wide, which are doubled back midway and fastened again to the top of the skull-cap. The unmarried woman who adopts this coiffe must wear the ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... to time, informed of his motions. A war broke out between the Company and some of the native powers. He was present at a great battle in which the English were defeated. She could trace him by his letters and by other circumstances thus far, but here the thread was discontinued, and no means which she employed could procure any tidings of him. Whether he was captive, or dead, continued, for several years, to be ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... termed self-educated. So will it be in the future; but it is far from visionary to believe that university extension will open paths whereby the solitary student need no longer employ an expensive tutor nor waste his time, groping in the labyrinth paths of knowledge, without a thread, at least, to direct his wanderings to pleasanter fields of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... by small, imperceptible scales, and their organs of vegetation are reduced to a stem and filiform branches that have obtained for them the names of Cheveux de Venus (Venus' Hair) and Cheveux du Diable (devil's hair) in French, and gold thread in English. Because of their destructive nature they have likewise been called by the unpoetic name of hellweed; and, for the reason that they embrace their host plants so closely, they have been called love weed and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... had not bought that statuette!" picking up the thread. If she had laughed, nothing might have happened. But her voice was low and sweet ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... "Oh, how kind you are to wait upon me so; the Lord will reward you!" At another time, he said, "I had not thought to have been taken at this time of my life, but I am in such a critical state, that life hangs on a thread;—the pains of the body are what ...
— The Annual Monitor for 1851 • Anonymous
... Mr. Direck tried to indicate the feeling in New England towards the Irish Question and the many difficult propositions an American politician has to face in that respect. And when Mr. Britling took up the thread of speech again it had little or no relation to ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... elevated, and their wings in such rapid motion that they are almost as indistinct as the spokes of a wheel, in swift rotation on its axis. A brisk current of air may be felt proceeding from the hive, and if a small piece of down be suspended by a thread, it will be blown out from one part of the entrance, and drawn in at another. What are these bees expecting to accomplish, that they appear so deeply absorbed in their fanning occupation, while busy numbers are constantly crowding in and ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... Battle-axe various origins have been ascribed; truly is it observed, that "there is little wisdom in attempting to thread the mazes of fanciful and traditionary genealogies."[70] Like other families of importance, in feudal times, the Macleans had their seneachie, or historian; and, by the last of these, Dr. John Beaton, ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... been carried forward, however, a little too far by this general discussion of Amiel's debts to Germany. Let us take up the biographical thread again. In 1848 his Berlin apprenticeship came to an end, and he returned to Geneva. "How many places, how many impressions, observations, thoughts—how many forms of men and things—have passed before me and in me since April, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... them again; a little shiny white weasel is visible for a moment, lifting its clever little head and forepaws in the air, peering and sniffing; and the single sunbeam that enters through some hidden chink is so perfectly like a gold thread that one would like to wind it around one's ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... overboard with him. But his convulsive fingers seized only the leathern strap of the haversack. Balder—his Berserker fury at white heat—flung the man with such terrible strength as drove him headlong over the taffrail like a billet of wood, the stout strap snapping like thread! ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... been further ascertained that this wool can be spun and woven. The finest gives a thread similar to that of hemp, and quite as strong. When spun, woven, and combed, a cloth is produced which has been used for carpets, horse-cloths, &c.; while, mixed with a canvas warp, it will serve for quilts, instead of being employed ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... clouds and colours in a sunset sky, which escape our grasp in the very effort to study them. Hence, for the majority even of imaginative people, who possess at the utmost "double vision," they are difficult and often wearisome to read. They are so, because the inner, living, vibrating ray or thread of connection which evokes these forms and beings in Blake's imagination, is to the ordinary man invisible and unfelt; so that the quick leap of the seer's mind from figure to figure, and from picture to ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... some quiet hour when he may ponder over the capabilities its possession unfolds. She was like one who discovers the silken clue which guides to some bower of bliss, and secure of the power within his grasp, has to wait for a time before he may thread the labyrinth. ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... they wielded over the fate of man was significantly indicated under the figure of a thread, which they spun out for the life of each human being from his birth to the grave. This occupation they divided between them. Clotho wound the flax round the distaff, {140} ready for her sister Lachesis, who span out the thread of life, which Atropos, with her scissors, relentlessly snapt ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... for the last year or two; and, on her account, they passed their summers in travelling, and a winter in the West-Indies. At length, however, the party met again on the old ground; and we shall take up the thread of our narrative, during the summer in which the circle was re-united. It is to be hoped that this break in the movement of our tale will be forgiven, when we declare, that the plot is about to thicken; perplexities, troubles, and ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... speaking. Lingard shifted his feet a little, uncrossed his arms, and shook his head slowly. The narrative of the events in Sambir, related from the point of view of the astute statesman, the sense of which had been caught here and there by his inattentive ears, had been yet like a thread to guide him out of the sombre labyrinth of his thoughts; and now he had come to the end of it, out of the tangled past into the pressing necessities of the present. With the palms of his hands on his knees, his elbows squared out, he looked down on Babalatchi ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... be heard of. The first time it happened, Dona Rosita was piqued by his rudeness, Don Andreas was alarmed, for it was on an evening like the present, and Dona Rosita was teaching him a little song on the guitar when the fit came on him. And he snapped the guitar strings like thread and threw it down, and got up like a bear and walked away without ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... neatly and properly arranged, needless repetitions and tautological verbiage have disappeared; there is no sign of hesitation; hums and haws, and other inexpressible ejaculations, grunts, and interpolations find no place; the thread of an argument is shown where none was visible before, and all is fluent, concise, and more or less to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... carelessly by the slightest incident; it is his nature to approfondir all his surroundings: if the hero breaks his stirrup and stops at the blacksmith's to have it mended, the blacksmith will appear at the end of the story united to the rider, from the third and fourth generation, by a subtle thread of connection. But all these details, while they encumber the tale, contribute to a harmonious whole; for he has in a peculiar degree an instinct for the judicious introduction of telling human characters that are as much a part of the detail of the scene as the trees and stones. Upon these characters ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... of the women is less uniform than that of the men. The Sea Dayak woman (Pls. 29 and 30) wears a short skirt of cotton thread woven in curious patterns of several colours, reaching from the waist almost to the knee; a long-sleeved jacket of the same material, and a corset consisting of many rings of rattan built up one above another to enclose the body from breast to thigh. Each rattan ring ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... because I think you politicians are none the worse for a few inconvenient ideals; but more because you will recognise the many arguments we have had, those arguments which the most wonderful ladies in the world can never endure for very long. And, perhaps, you will agree with me that the thread of comradeship and conversation must be protected because it is so frivolous. It must be held sacred, it must not be snapped, because it is not worth tying together again. It is exactly because argument is idle that men (I mean males) must take it seriously; for when (we feel), until ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... lighthouse-island, and from that point totally closed the narrow and rocky mouth of the east harbour for larger ships; so that Caesar's fleet was compelled to take its station in the open roads before the east harbour, and his communication with the sea hung only on a weak thread. Caesar's fleet, attacked in that roadstead repeatedly by the superior naval force of the enemy, could neither shun the unequal strife, since the loss of the lighthouse-island closed the inner harbour against it, nor yet withdraw, for the loss of the roadstead would have debarred Caesar wholly ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... the skipping-rope is rather more sinful than dancing, for the music makes the latter easy; whereas, one has to force the spirit to enter into the other. Commodore, our hour has come, and we must make sail. May I ask the favour, Mrs. Abbott, of a bit of thread to fasten ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... also," continued Appleplex, catching up the thread, "Edith is the least detached of all persons, since to be detached is to be detached from one's self, to stand by and criticise coldly one's own passions and vicissitudes. But in Edith the critic ...
— Eeldrop and Appleplex • T.S. Eliot
... preface. Indeed he seldom brings any of them to a conclusion; for if his company have patience to hear him out, he breaks in upon himself by so many parenthetical intrusions, as one may call them, and has so many incidents springing in upon him, that he frequently drops his own thread, and sometimes sits down satisfied half way; or, if at other times he would resume it, he applies to his company to help him in again, with a Devil fetch him if he remembers what he was driving at—but enough, and too ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... excellent qualities, and as to the physical part of the business, though it is sad enough that a young man should be impeded in this way, I think you should be hopeful. Delicate young people often turn out strong old people—I was a thread paper of a boy myself, and now I am an extremely tough ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... of the stream, and around the cotton mills, the thread mills, and the munition factories, were built many little homes of the factory and mill hands. It had been pointed out by the local papers that these homes were in double peril ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... old, Gilbert." Mrs. Blythe laughed a trifle ruefully. "People are beginning to tell me I look so young. They never tell you that when you are young. But I shall not worry over my silver thread. I never liked red hair. Gilbert, did I ever tell you of that time, years ago at Green Gables, when I dyed my hair? Nobody but Marilla ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... collected the peel, and, wrapping it carefully in her piece of sandwich-paper, put it in the very bottom of her basket, under a layer of catkins. The girls had brought bobbins of thread with them, and were making their snowdrops into little bunches, with ivy leaves and lambs'-tails from the hazel. A few lucky explorers had even found some palm opening on the sallows. Several had nature notes to contribute. Nellie Barlow and Gladys Broughton had seen a real weasel, ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... murder, Burr now disappears from politics, but only to emerge in a new role. During all the early history of our Union the parts beyond the Alleghanies were attached to it by but a slender thread, which Spanish intrigue incessantly sought to cut. At this very time Spain was pensioning men in high station there, including General Wilkinson, commanding our force at New Orleans. Could not Burr detach this district or a part of it from our Government and make here an empire of his own? Or might ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... "Now." And as he looked into that calm, awful Face and read that word, Mr. Hardy felt his soul crumble within him. When the Face spoke it was the speech of a thousand oceans heaved by a million tempests, yet through the terror of it ran a thread of music—a still, sweet sound like everlasting love—as if angels sang somewhere a divine ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... striking, from the vivid colours and the variety of dyes they contrive to give to this simple material, the porcupine quills. The sinew of the deer, and some other animals, furnish the Indian women with thread, of any degree of fineness or strength. The wants of these simple folk are few, and those easily supplied by the adaptation of such materials as they can command with ease, ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... generous man. I can't tell you how much I thank you for the course you've taken to-day. You're going to succeed and—some woman—is going to be proud of you." She had avoided by a thread naming the woman. "I shall be glad I knew you, and I shall be your friend as long as ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... everywhere dotted with white farmhouses and brown villages. The colours of the wall are the grey of basalt, the purple of volcanic conglomerates, and the bright reds and yellows of tufas. Here and there, however, a thread of water pouring from the summit, or bursting from the flank, fills a cavity which it has worn and turned for itself; and from this reservoir the industrious peasant has diverted sufficient to irrigate his dwarf terraced plots of cane, bananas, ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... we shall be justified in wrenching from capitalism all the industries, why, when it is a question of life or death for us to win or to lose a strike, is it not just to remove a screw, derange a wheel, break a thread, or commit, in any way whatever, an act of sabotage on a machine which otherwise would become the very beginning of our defeat in the hands of ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... suit since Christmas," she said, "and I'll swear it is made by the King's tailor. Regardez done, madame! What exquisite embroidery, silver and gold thread intermixed with little sparks of garnets sewn in the pattern! It is better than anything of his lordship's. I wish I had a father who dressed well. I'm sure mine must be the shabbiest lord at Whitehall. You have no ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... with a black velvet stripe through it. I showed her a shawl which John had given me,—a pale-yellow gauzy fabric with a gold-thread border,—and told her to make me up. She produced quite a marvellous effect; for this baby understood the art of dress to perfection. She made my hair into a loose mass, rolling it away from my face; yet it was firmly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... instantaneous act like his marriage.' This remark, and the manner of it, gave me the notion that he was a dull fellow, for it came out in a way which bordered on the ridiculous, so as to excite something like a sneer. I was a little surprised to hear him continue the thread of conversation (from Scaliger's wound) and talk of Loyola having been wounded at Pampeluna. I wondered how he happened to know anything about Loyola's wound. Having thus settled my opinion, I went on eating my dinner, when Auckland, who was sitting opposite ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... not alien to their disposition that they should spend their earlier manhood, as Dalton had done, amongst men who take life too easily and lightly; but they generally settle down before the whole of their manhood is wasted, and then a woman can lead them with a thread ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... their reclaimed father. The intervention of Victorin, and the deaths of the Comte de Forzheim, of Lisbeth Fischer and of M. and Mme. Crevel, induced comfort and security that was often menaced. But the conduct of Hector with Agathe Piquetard broke the thread of Mme. Hulot d'Ervy's life; for some time she had had a nervous trouble. She died aged about ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... if quietness is what you need, there is a mare down there, a child might ride her with a thread of wool. But as for price,—and she has a colt, too, running ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... sound of hurried rising from the other end of the room; a work-basket swayed to and fro on a rickety gipsy-table, and the vicar's wife walked towards him, rolling half a dozen reels of thread in her wake with an air of ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... his ideals shattered and his heart crushed; yet, though he could not forbear from judging Selma, and was unconscious of having failed in his obligations to her as a husband and a man, he saw what she called her side, and he took up the thread of life again under the spur of an intention to give ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... too, and I must feed sometimes As other folks accustomed are to do; I'm not of those who fatten on their rhymes, My reader kind, between myself and you; So this abruptly-ended interview With circumstances such you will forgive, The thread of my narration I'll renew To-morrow or the next day if I live, That is of course if your ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... received with the utmost kindness by Cortes, and every possible care was bestowed for his and their recovery; but he and several of his soldiers soon died. By reason of their swollen bodies and discoloured countenances, we used to call these men the green paunches. That I may not interrupt the thread of my narrative, I shall mention in this place, that all the rest of this armament which was destined for Panuco, arrived at our port of Villa Rica at different and irregular periods, Garray continually sending us reinforcements, which he meant for Panuco, as he believed ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... deaf ear to; leave out of one's calculation; not attend to &c. 457, not mind; not trouble oneself about, not trouble one's head about, not trouble oneself with; forget &c. 506; be caught napping &c. (not expect) 508; leave a loose thread; let the grass grow under one's feet. render neglectful &c. adj.; put off one's guard, throw off one's guard; distract, divert. Adj. neglecting &c. v.; unmindful, negligent, neglectful; heedless, careless, thoughtless; perfunctory, remiss; feebleness &c. 575. inconsiderate; uncircumspect[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... thought, at least, that evening. Next morning when the sun was shining brightly, and the clear church bells were ringing, and sedate people in their best clothes enlivened the pathway near at hand and dotted the distant thread of road, there was a pleasant Sabbath peacefulness on everything, which it was good to feel. It would have been the better for an old church; better still for some old graves; but as it was, a wholesome repose ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... faintly within it; but this was not enough to direct him on his way, rather did it make his way more dark. Then at last he bethought him of the golden vial. Few were there of those near him but had lost theirs altogether, and his hung only by a single thread. But it was not gone; and when he had striven long, he just drew from it a single drop of oil, and he trimmed his lamp, and it yielded forth a little trembling light, just enough to shew that it was not altogether dead. With the help ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce
... stood staring out at the rain; Lady Tressilvain, a cigarette between her thin lips, wandered through the work-shop and loading-room where, from hooks in the ceiling, a thicket of split-cane rod-joints hung, each suspended by a single strong thread. ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... in the direction of the palace, and the jostling crowd respectfully made way for them to pass. The gleams of festal splendor seemed interwoven with the laborious bustle on the quay like scraps of gold thread in a dull ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the marriage price," and Dolonagan said, "No, there is more still to pay." "All right, if we still owe, tell us and we will pay." So Dalonagan called her big pet spider and said, "You, my pet spider, go around the town of Kalaskigan and spin a thread as you go, on which Aponibolinayen must string ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole
... like that of MacDonald's student of Shakespeare, who "missed a plain point from his eyes being so sharp that they looked through it without seeing it, having focussed themselves beyond it." Assuredly there is much to learn before one can hope to understand the winding of the thread of thought which must be traced if one would follow the working of the Hindu mind. Let no one with a facility for untying mental knots think that his gift ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... hour of the day for a good trout; had learnt to watch the clouds and cloud-shadows with an angler's keen interest; and had amused herself with the manufacture of an artificial minnow, upon Walton's recipe, devoting careful labour and all the resources of her embroidery basket—silks and silver thread—to perfecting the delicate model, which, when completed, she presented smilingly to Denzil, who was strangely moved by so childish a toy, and had some difficulty in suppressing his emotion as he held the glistening silken fish in his hands, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... refused to speak to that good woman for near an hour. Yet I pointed out to her that she could be of very great use in dressing such wounds as had been received, and so she came back to her usual brightness, and brought out bandages, and lint, and ointment, and thread, and was ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... when Jerrard napped he dreamed that the ends of his nerves were nailed to his desk back in the P. K. & R. general offices, and that as he proceeded he was unreeling them as a spider spins its thread. ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... she snipped a thread and began to cross-stitch the mammoth cavern, never dreaming of the momentous resolve she was interrupting in my heart, "it is not so bad this year, because Lovey has got so nice and steady on his feet and doesn't put ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... "I'd better get the thing over before I buy the thread. I should never be able to stand Miss Dayson's finicking! I should scream out!" But the next instant, with her passion for proving to herself how strong she could be, she added: "Well, I just will buy the thread first!" ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... than to remove evils from a man, and to lead him to heaven. That this is their joy, see Luke, XV, 7. Scarcely any man believes that the Lord has such a care for man, and this continually, from the first thread of his life to the ...
— The Gist of Swedenborg • Emanuel Swedenborg
... The thread of narrative being thus purposely broken, no one of these short and simple analyses can have any connection with another—a point on which I congratulate the judicious reader and the no less judicious writer; for the former is thereby tacitly warned against any expectation ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... the dress that she will wear," he went on nervously, since neither of his auditors seemed delighted with this news, "it is to be splendid, quite splendid, all of the purest white silk with little discs of silver sewn about it, and a representation of the Gate Nicanor worked in gold thread upon the breast ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... in the pits of despondency, even as one that yieldeth without further struggle to the waves of tempest at midnight, when he was ware of one standing over him,—a woman, old, wrinkled, a very crone, with but room for the drawing of a thread between her nose and her chin; she was, as is cited of them who betray the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... singing of the Blessed Mother or of Joan," he said with sorrow. "But when they pull so well I cannot deny them a thread of that old pagan warp. Those devils whom they once worshipped wait about incessantly for a word of praise. They hate the idea that we are hurrying to the mission, and they would like ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... fain to content himself with looking around at the gay throng, before sinking into a chair where he could think about his mission, his searching eyes always busy looking about, especially at the jewels that were flashing on every side, as he hungrily sought for some thread which might form a clue to lead him ultimately to the object of ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... teaspoon of fine sugar and one tablespoon common rennet or thirty drops of Hauser's extract of rennet. Let it remain in a warm place until curd sets. Rush and straw mats are easily made by cutting the straw into lengths and stringing them with a needle and thread. The mats or baskets should not be used a ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... called my mother's attention to the fact that the thread with which she had sewed my collar together to keep me from going in swimming, had changed color. My mother would not have discovered it but for that, and she was manifestly piqued when she recognized that that ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... those days, and two little embroidered caps and a blue cashmere sack and a set of crocheted socks and—and the major sent brandy, he always does. I have the letter she wrote me about it all. And to think she had to leave—" Mrs. Matilda's eyes misted as she paused to thread her needle. ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... sure that a great part in the drama of creation has been given to the free spirit of man: that bit by bit, through and by him, the scattered worlds of love and thought and action shall be realised again as one. It is for those who have found the thread on which those worlds are strung, to bring this knowledge out of the hiddenness; to use it, as the old alchemists declared that they could use their tincture, to transmute all baser; metals ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... me, O auspicious King that quoth the slave-girl, "Bring us meat and drink for three dinars, furthermore a piece of silk, the size of a curtain, and bring golden and silvern thread and sewing silk of seven colours." Thus he did, and she furnished the house and they sat down to eat and drink; after which they went to bed and took their pleasure one of the other. And they lay the night embraced behind the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... in a young, romantic, almost fantastic way. He gave her a little ring. They put it in Rhine wine, in their glass, and she drank, then he drank. They drank till the ring lay exposed at the bottom of the glass. Then she took the simple jewel, and tied it on a thread round her neck, where she ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence |
