"Spindle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rising. I saw Bellincione Berti walk abroad In leathern girdle and a clasp of bone; And, with no artful colouring on her cheeks, His lady leave the glass. The sons I saw Of Nerli and of Vecchio well content With unrob'd jerkin; and their good dames handling The spindle and the flax; O happy they! Each sure of burial in her native land, And none left desolate a-bed for France! One wak'd to tend the cradle, hushing it With sounds that lull'd the parent's infancy: Another, with her maidens, drawing ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... she said, "if anybody does. Look, here's the place where I pricked my finger with the spindle." She showed a ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... exhibited in 1850 by M. Jullien, a clockmaker of Paris, and flew successfully against a slight breeze. The first successful man-carrying airship was built in 1852 by Henry Giffard, the French engineer, and was flown at Paris on the 24th of September in that year. It was spindle-shaped, with a capacity of 87,000 cubic feet, and a length of 144 feet. The airscrew, ten feet in diameter, was driven by a steam-engine of three horse-power, and the speed attained was about six miles an hour. It would take long to record ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... of these toys is not quite so disparaging as it seems. The sceptre is indeed the symbol of rule; but the tile too has an honourable signification, a tile being used in ancient China as a weight for the spindle,—and consequently as a symbol of woman's work ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... day early I was put forth from the house and garth, and forbidden to go back thither till dusk. While the days were long and the grass was growing, I had to lead our goats to pasture in the wood-lawns, and must take with me rock and spindle, and spin so much of flax or hair as the woman gave me, or be beaten. But when the winter came and the snow was on the ground, then that watching and snaring of wild things was ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... and slender limbs, which served for its support. And yet, as if all this wretched deformity were not enough, one leg was shorter than the other, and the foot was a club one. To assist him in walking, he carried a pair of crutches, apparently much too long for him, which raised his spindle arms in their loose sockets, and rendered the hump more horrible. When he moved, his crutches spread out on either side of him, as he swung along between them, taking up a vast deal of room without any apparent necessity. ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... "With a spindle-shanked husband capering in a Court suit before he goes to bed every night, that he may n't forget what a fine fellow he was one day bygone! You're growing lean on it, Mart, like a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... infinite zest the pastime of shooting-practice with little bows and arrows. No wonder that these Indians become expert bowmen. There were urchins there, scarce two feet high, with round bullets of bodies and short spindle-shanks, who could knock blackbirds off the trees at every shot, and cut the heads off the taller flowers with perfect certainty! There was much need, too, for the utmost proficiency they could attain, for the very existence of the Indian tribes of the prairies depends ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... should speak so explicitly that the import of what is said should never by excessive circumscription afford matter for disputation; which is much more in place among students in the schools, than among us, whose powers are scarce adequate to the management of the distaff and the spindle. Wherefore I, that had in mind a matter of, perchance, some nicety, now that I see you all at variance touching the matters last mooted, am minded to lay it aside, and tell you somewhat else, which concerns a man by no means of ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the east of the Ural Mountains and on the shores of the Joswa, hammers, hatchets, pestles, nuclei the shape of polygonal prisms, and round or long pieces of flint, all pierced with a central hole, which are supposed to have been spindle whorls. Lastly, Klementz tells us that the lofty valleys of the Yenesei and its tributaries were inhabited in the most remote times by races who ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... of these, seated apart somewhat from the others, were the stately and still beautiful Hortensia, and her lovely daughter, both of them employed in twirling the soft threads from the merrily revolving spindle, into large osier baskets; and the elder lady, glancing at times toward the knot of slave girls, as if to see that they performed their light tasks; and at times, if their mirth waxed too loud, checking it by a gesture ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... room," said Fernand, eager to get the fighter out of view of the rest of the little crowd. He drew Ronicky and Jerry Smith into a little apartment which opened off the hall. It was furnished with an almost feminine delicacy of style, with wide-seated, spindle-legged Louis XV. chairs and a couch covered with rich brocade. The desk was a work of Boulle. A small tapestry of the Gobelins made a ragged glow of color on the wall. Frederic Fernand had recreated an atmosphere ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... desperately, it seemed to me. 'Another picture, Smiles. Can you see a spindle-legged, mischievous boy of ten, who loved his little sister dearly; but teased her from morning until ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... picture, these two children, one just over twenty, the other under nineteen; and as they sat in that lofty room hung with French tapestries and furnished with the spindle-legged gilt chairs and tables of Louis XIV, they might have been playing, with all the gravity and imitative genius of little girls in a nursery, at being ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... progress, our instrument-maker had his hands full; the clockwork mechanism of the thermograph had gone wrong: the spindle was broken, I believe. This was particularly annoying, because this thermograph had been working so well in low temperatures. The other thermograph had evidently been constructed with a view to the tropics; at any rate, it would not go in the cold. Our instrument-maker ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... trap-door, which was at the front, was made of plank and slid up and down in a groove. When it was raised, it was held in place by a cord which passed over the top of the pen-trap and down on the back side, finally attaching to a trigger connecting with a spindle inside the pen, at the farther end. The bait was to be placed on this spindle and a tug upon it would let go the trap-door. As this was weighted with stones, it came down with a bang and anything unfortunate enough to be inside was caught in a ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... Iron Rocks that guard the double main, On Bosporus' lone strand, Where stretcheth Salmydessus' plain In the wild Thracian land, There on his borders Ares witnessed The vengeance by a jealous step-dame ta'en The gore that trickled from a spindle red, The sightless orbits of her ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... large enough, however, to contain him, as he lay curled up, sucking his thumb, and hugging to his breast the soft fragment of a sea-bird's downy breast. If he stirred, his mother's foot was on the rocker, as she sat spinning, but her spindle danced languidly on the floor, as if "feeble was her hand, and silly her thread;" while she listened anxiously, for every sound in the street below. She wore a dark blue dress, with a small lace ruff opening in front, deep cuffs to match, and a white apron likewise edged ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... approached the house, we saw the whole garrison assembled before the door. It consisted of a dozen dwarfish, spindle-shanked Mexican soldiers, none of them so big or half so strong as American boys of fifteen, and whom I would have backed a single Kentucky woodsman, armed with a riding-whip, to have driven to the four winds of heaven. These heroes all sported tremendous beards, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... And boys of molten gold stood each on a polished altar, and held torches in their hands, to give light all night to the guests. And round the house sat fifty maid servants, some grinding the meal in the mill, some turning the spindle, some weaving at the loom, while their hands twinkled as they passed the shuttle, like ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... twining growths, with distinct glossy foliage in summer and brilliant scarlet fruit in autumn. The flowers are inconspicuous, the chief beauty of the shrub being the show of fruit, which resembles somewhat those of the Spindle Tree (Euonymus), and to which it is nearly allied. A native of North America, it grows from 12 feet to 15 feet high, and is useful in this country for covering arches or tree stems, or for allowing to run about at will on a mound of earth or ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... by a huge wooden cylinder, a sort of overgrown drum, painted in bright colours, with ornamental designs and Tibetan letters. It was much taller than a man, some nine feet high, I should say, and it revolved above and below on an iron spindle. Looking closer, I saw it had a crank attached to it, with a string tied to the crank. A solitary monk, absorbed in his devotions, was pulling this string as we entered, and making the cylinder revolve with a jerk as he pulled it. At each ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... carding, the cotton is spun by placing it in a hollow cylinder of palm bark attached to a bamboo stick (tibtibean). A bit of thread is twisted from the cotton at the bottom of the cylinder, and is attached to a spindle, which is rubbed rapidly against the naked thigh, and is then allowed to turn in shallow basket, or on a piece of hide. As it spins it twists out new thread and the arm of the operator rises higher and higher, until at last the ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... instant the madman swayed slowly back and forth, like a blood-stained marionette on a wire. Then he moved forward with a terrible, shambling gait, his head lowered, a dark, misshapen shadow seeming to lengthen before him on the sand like a spindle of flame. ...
— The Man the Martians Made • Frank Belknap Long
... dirt should be removed from the works by blowing with bellows, or a fan, or dusting with a dry brush; in the latter case great care should be exercised not to injure any of the parts. Dip the brush in the benzine and clean the spindles and spindle holes, and the teeth of the escapement wheel. After washing a part, wipe the brush on the rag and rinse in the benzine; this should be repeated frequently, until no more dirt ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... hours! As we drove home the bazaars were still busy. One street struck me as peculiarly quiet. There were Japs at balconies of low two-storied doll-houses, silhouetted against lamplight which shone through their red fans and pink kimonos, and other shabby houses with spindle-shanked darker natives, in white draperies, also some larger people dimly seen, on long chairs, who my friend said, were probably French—European at least. One or two groups of rather orderly sailors, and a soldier or two, were all the ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... celestial nourishment enjoy; "And night, as 'custom'd, governs in her turn; "The god the close apartments of his nymph "Beloved, enters;—form'd to outward view, "Eurynome her mother. Her he saw "The slender threads from spindle twirling fine, "Illumin'd by the lamp; and circled round "By twice six female helpers. Warm he gave "As a lov'd daughter, his maternal kiss, "And said;—our converse secrecy demands.— "Th' attendant maids depart,—nor hinderance give, "Loitering, a mother's secret words ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... an armchair, and Doris sat near at her spindle, but without drawing any threads from her distaff. When she heard her husband sigh and saw him bury his face in his hands, she limped nearer to him, difficult as it was for her to move, and stroked his head, now nearly ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 'she has been sorely used, and has suffered much. It is a piteous thing when our little imperial fiefs go to the spindle side!' ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the cord of a man's existence, you will generally find the blackest hank in it twined by a woman's hand, but it is not less common to trace the golden thread to the same spindle. ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... into a friendly and hopeful rivalry, in the development of their great resources, when they have doubled or trebled their production of cotton, when they are producing the greater part of their food, when they are developing their manufactures of iron and steel, and introducing the spindle and loom into the cities and villages, it seems to me that men of the south surely will appreciate, if they do not approve, what I said in the Senate early ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... another, Sigurd, Snake in the Eye; another, White Sark, or White Shirt—I wonder they did not call him Dirty Shirt; and Ivarr, another, who was king of Northumberland, they called Bienlausi, or the Legless, because he was spindle-shanked, had no sap in his bones, and consequently no children. He was a great king, it is true, and very wise, nevertheless his blackguard countrymen, always averse, as their descendants are, to give credit to anybody, for ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... with frost. Half the joy, for instance, of shooting, in which I frankly confess I take a childish delight, is the quiet tramping over the clean-cut stubble, the distant view of field and wood, the long, quiet wait at the covert-end, where the spindle-wood hangs out her quaint rosy berries, and the rabbits come scampering up the copse, as the far-off tapping of the beaters draws near in the frosty air. The delights of the country-side grow upon me every month ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weathercock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... third, she is tall and slender, a fragile spindle, a slim, sylph-like creature, suggesting a taper with the lower portion patterned, embossed, brocaded in the wax itself; she stands magnificently arrayed in a stiff-pleated robe channelled lengthwise, like a stick of celery. The bodice is richly trimmed and ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... thine, Wayland," he said, "has a fair neck to have been born in a smithy, and a pretty taper hand to have been used for twirling a spindle—faith, I'll believe in your relationship when the crow's egg is hatched ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... (Janiphi (or Jatropha,) Loeflingii, Kunth; Manihot Aipi, of Pohl).—This species has a spindle-shaped root brown externally, about six or seven ounces or more in weight, which contains amylaceous matter, without any bitterness, and is used as food, after being rasped and washed, so as to cleanse it from the fibrous ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... flocks. First the wool had to be spun into yarn. They did not even have spinning wheels in those days, so a spinner took a handful of wool on the end of a stick called a distaff, which she held in her left hand. With her right hand she hooked into the wool a spindle. This was a round, pointed piece of wood about ten inches long with a hook at the pointed end, and with a small piece of stone fastened to the other to give momentum in the spinning. With deft fingers the spinner kept this spindle whirling and at the ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... stoves In any house I visited, the Russian peitcha or brick stove being universal. Very often we found the women and girls engaged in spinning. No wheel is used for this purpose, the entire apparatus being a hand spindle and a piece of board. The flax is fastened on an upright board, and the fingers of the left hand gather the fibres and begin the formation of a thread. The right hand twirls the spindle, and by skillful manipulation a good thread is ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... 'the truly noble manufacture' of cloth-making, and set an indelible mark upon the village where they dwelt. Coggeshall lies in the great cloth-making district of Essex, of which Fuller wrote: 'This county is charactered like Bethsheba, "She layeth her hand to the spindle and her hands hold the distaffe."... It will not be amiss to pray that the plough may go along and the wheel around, that so (being fed by the one and clothed by the other) there may be, by God's blessing, no danger of starving in our nation[2] ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... into it. The threaded part is turned by a small hand wheel attached to the upper end. When this hand wheel is turned to the left, or up, as far as it will go, opening the valve, a rubber disc is compressed inside of the valve body and this disc serves to prevent leakage of the gas around the spindle. ...
— Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting • Harold P. Manly
... was a small terrace bordered on the right and left by spindle-trees planted in boxes, which were connected by a paling. Behind the shrubs, sitting on a bank but stooping forward so that they could see Dalbreque through the branches, were ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... that spell were laid on them which hushed the enchanted palace. There was just sea enough to roll the bell-buoy gently, and now and then was rung an idle note of warning. Three fishing-boats lay anchored off the Spindle, rising and falling, and every now and then a sea broke on the rock. On the white sand beach, waves were rolling in, dying softly away along the shore, or heavily breaking, with a ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... power's too great to be withstood By feeble human flesh and blood. 'Twas he that brought upon his knees The hect'ring kil-cow Hercules; Transform'd his leaguer-lion's skin T' a petticoat, and made him spin; Seiz'd on his club, and made it dwindle T' a feeble distaff and a spindle. ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... the turn of the aged fairy. Shaking her head, in token of spite rather than of infirmity, she declared that the princess should prick her hand with a spindle, and die of it. A shudder ran through the company at this terrible gift. All eyes were ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... purpose, for, even had an alias been beyond the invention of the knaves of that generation, it is known that servants were often called by their masters' names, as slaves are now. On what the heralds call the spindle side, some, at least, of the oldest Virginian families are descended from matrons who were exported and sold for so many hogsheads of tobacco the head. So notorious was this, that it became one of the jokes of contemporary playwrights, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... see it for yourselves," he kept repeating in great excitement. "Summerlee, will you step across and satisfy yourself upon the point? Malone, will you kindly verify what I say? The little spindle-shaped things in the centre are diatoms and may be disregarded since they are probably vegetable rather than animal. But the right-hand side you will see an undoubted amoeba, moving sluggishly across the field. The upper screw is the fine adjustment. ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... around the altar hand in hand, received the congratulations of their friends, and the bride, taken with apparent force from the arms of her mother, as the Sabine women were taken in the days of Romulus, was conducted to her new home carrying a distaff and a spindle, emblems of the industry that was thought necessary in the household work that she was to perform or direct. Strong men lifted her over the threshold, lest her foot should trip upon it, and her husband saluted her with fire and water, symbolic of welcome, after which ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... to the maidens their wish to fulfil— They swore to the foe they would work by his will, A spindle and distaff to each hath he given, 'Now hearken my spell,' said the Outcast ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... the art of kings, take the next head of human arts—Weaving; the art of queens, honoured of all noble Heathen women, in the person of their virgin goddess—honoured of all Hebrew women, by the word of their wisest king—"She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff; she stretcheth out her hand to the poor. She is not afraid of the snow for her household, for all her household are clothed with scarlet. She maketh herself covering of tapestry; her clothing is silk and ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... his burden. In the series of the Life of the Virgin there is a 'Repose in Egypt,' which has a naive homeliness in its grace and serenity. The woodcut represents a courtyard with a dwelling built in the ruins of an ancient palace. The Virgin sits spinning with a distaff and spindle beside the Holy Child's cradle, by which beautiful angels worship. Joseph is busy at his carpenter's work, and a number of little angels, in merry sport, assist him with ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... education in spite of her boudoir experience. Her brain was prompted by her senses, her kindness was the impulsive warm-heartedness of girls of her class. But who could trouble over Coralie's psychology when his eyes were dazzled by those smooth, round arms of hers, the spindle-shaped fingers, the fair white shoulders, and breast celebrated in the Song of Songs, the flexible curving lines of throat, the graciously moulded outlines beneath the scarlet silk stockings? And this beauty, worthy of an Eastern poet, was brought into relief by the conventional Spanish costume ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... steel Pivot steel Gin saw steel Plane bit steel Granite wedge steel Quarry steel Gun barrel steel Razor steel Hack saw steel Roll turning steel High-speed tool steel Saw steel Hot-rolled sheet steel Scythe steel Lathe spindle steel Shear knife steel Lawn mower knife steel Silico-manganese steel Machine knife steel Spindle steel Magnet steel Spring steel Mining drill steel Tool holder steel Nail die shapes Vanadium tool steel Nickel-chrome ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... the summit. The second order of these two pavilions is Corinthian. The two piles of building, which come next, as well as the two pavilions of the wings, are of a Composite order with fluted pillars. From a tall iron spindle, placed on the pinnacle of each of the three principal pavilions is now seen floating a horizontal tri-coloured streamer. Till the improvements made by Lewis XIV, the large centre pavilion had been decorated with the Ionic and Corinthian orders ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... of round worlds and spindle-shaped worlds, and worlds shaped like a wheel; worlds like titanic pruning hooks; worlds linked together by streaming filaments; solitary worlds, and worlds in hordes: tremendous worlds and tiny worlds: some of them made of material like the material ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... of costly stuff, Earrings, chains, and veils; A house with many windows; Mortars, lounges, sieves, Baskets, kettles, pots, Glasses, settles, brooms, Beakers, closets, flasks, Shovels, basins, bowls, Spindle, distaff, blankets, Buckets, ewers, barrels, Skillets, forks, and knives; Vinaigrettes and mirrors; Kerchiefs, turbans, reticules, Crescents, amulets, Rings and jewelled clasps; Girdles, buckles, bodices, Kirtles, caps, and waists; Garments finely spun, Rare byssus from the East. This ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... young Isis of Gaul, Queen of Heaven, the Virgin who was to bear a child, held the spindle of the Fates, filled with wool half white and half black; because she presides over all forms and all symbols, and weaves the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... there are three areas of the throwing-stick: Australia, where it is simply an elongated spindle with a hook at the end; the country of the Conibos and the Purus, on the Upper Amazon, where the implement resembles that of the Australians, and the hyperborean regions ...
— Throwing-sticks in the National Museum • Otis T. Mason
... steam-engine weighing, with fuel and water for one hour, 154 lb. per horse-power, and was bold enough to employ it in proximity to a balloon inflated with coal gas. He was not able to stem a medium wind, but attained some deviation. He repeated the experiment in 1855 with a more elongated spindle, which proved unstable and dangerous. During the siege of Paris the French Government decided to build a navigable balloon, and entrusted the work to the chief naval constructor, Dupuy de Lome. He went into the subject very carefully, made estimates of all the strains, resistances ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... into the drawing-room in good time; she could look about her, and learn how to feel at home in her new quarters. The room was forty-feet long or so, fitted up with yellow satin at some distant period; high spindle-legged chairs and pembroke- tables abounded. The carpet was of the same date as the curtains, and was threadbare in many places; and in others was covered with drugget. Stands of plants, great jars ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... box, C, which can be raised or lowered by means of a screw, D. The bottom of the hopper is fitted with holes corresponding with the cooling tubes, e, and closed by plugs c, attached to a frame b, which terminates above in a screw spindle a, by means of which the frame and plugs can be raised and lowered so as to permit or stop the outflow of soap into the cooling tubes. The tubes are closed at the bottom by slides d, and the box B, in which they are mounted, is carried on a truck running on rails. The charging ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons
... broad Tuscan hat with its old-fashioned black velvet—for she would never give in to the modern innovations of flowers and ostrich feathers—held her distaff in her hand, and as she twisted the spindle and drew out the thread evenly, she thought with satisfaction of the improved ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... the Evening we had much rain, with some very heavy Claps of Thunder, one of which carried away a Dutch Indiaman's Main Mast by the Deck, and split it, the Maintopmast and Topgallantmast all to shivers. She had had an Iron Spindle at the Maintopgallant Mast head which had first attracted the Lightning. The ship lay about 2 Cable lengths from us, and we were struck with the Thunder at the same time, and in all probability we should have shared the ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... a plant whose seed is much more beautiful than its flower. By the way, I have two, for the Spindle Tree is in seed, which has a quite insignificant blossom. But the plant I mean is a wild peony, which I dug up in a brake on the slopes of Helikon. It is a single white whose flower lasts, perhaps, three days. It makes a large seed-pod, which burst a short time ago, and revealed ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... is recited, the "heaven-startling" Kami, having girdled herself with moss, crowned her head with a wreath of spindle-tree leaves and gathered a bouquet of bamboo grass, mounts upon a hollow wooden vessel and dances, stamping so that the wood resounds and reciting the ten numerals repeatedly. Then the "eight-hundred myriad" Kami laugh in unison, so that the "plain of high heaven" shakes with the sound, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... their woodwork painted white, were covered with tapestry. A paltry clock, between two copper-gilt candlesticks, decorated the mantel-shelf. Beside Madame de la Chanterie was an ancient table with spindle legs, on which lay her balls of worsted in a wicker basket. A hydrostatic lamp lighted the scene. The four men, who were seated there, silent, immovable, like bronze statues, had evidently stopped their conversation with Madame de la Chanterie when they heard the stranger returning. They ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... furniture belonging to many a different age. Carpets and chair-cushions worked in tent stitch and cross stitch and old-fashioned harpsichord; gaudy white and gold furniture of the Louis Quatorze time, mixed with the spindle-legged tables of ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... a quick measure and Dorothy trod lightly back and forth, the wheel-pin in one hand, the other holding the tense, lengthening thread, which the spindle ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... owre his trash, As feckless as a wither'd rash, His spindle shank a guid whip-lash, His nieve a nit; Thro' bloody flood or field to dash, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... surface. As he twisted it he wound it on a stick. It was slow, hard work. Of all his work, the making of yarn of thread gave him the most trouble. He learned to twist it by knotting the thread around the spindle or bobbin on which he wound it and twirling this in the air. He remembered sadly the old spinning wheel he had seen at his ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison
... books and manuscripts scattered on the floor of the study, and conducted me to a cool shady drawing-room, very shabbily furnished with the spindle-legged chairs and tables of the last century. Here he begged me to be seated, and here we were ever and anon interrupted by intruding juveniles, the banging of doors, and the shrill clamour of young voices in the hall ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... sometimes done on the old high wheel, which was whirled around by hand and then allowed to come to rest while another section of the cotton, wool, or flax was drawn from the carded mass by hand, then whirled again, twisting this thread and winding it up on the spindle, and so on. Or it was done by the low wheel, which was kept whirling continuously by the use of a treadle worked by the foot, while the material was being drawn out all the time by the two hands, and twisted and wound continuously by the horseshoe-shaped device known as the "flyer." ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... window furnished with a low cushioned seat, wide enough for any one to curl up with a book. Mr. Linton and the boys selected rooms principally remarkable for bareness. Jim had a lively hatred for furniture; they left him discussing with Allenby the question of removing a spindle-legged writing table. Mr. Linton and Norah went downstairs, with sinking hearts, to encounter ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... axel-tre, from O. Norweg. oxull-tre, cognate with the O. Eng. aexe or eaxe, and connected with Sansk. aksha, Gr. [Greek: axon], and Lat. axis), the pin or spindle on which a wheel turns. In carriages the axle-tree is the bar on which the wheels are mounted, the axles being strictly its thinner rounded prolongations on which they actually turn. The pins which pass through the ends ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... out, the crone who had first spoken, said: 'We have nothing more to do but to mix a drop of our blood into his blood.' And she scratched her arm with the sharp point of a spindle, which she had made the nurse bring to her, and let a drop of blood, grey as the mist, fall upon the lips of the child; and passed out into the darkness. Then the others passed out in silence one ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats
... With a bustling command, And a diligent hand Employed she employs; Gives order to store, And the much makes the more; Locks the chest and the wardrobe, with lavender smelling, And the hum of the spindle goes quick through the dwelling, And she hoards in the presses, well polished and full, The snow of the linen, the shine of the wool; Blends the sweet with the good, and from care and endeavor Rests never! Blithe ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... the Supreme Being of a civilised American people. There are few more interesting accounts of religion than Garcilasso de la Vega's description of faith in Peru. Garcilasso was of Inca parentage on the spindle side; he was born in 1540, and his book, taken from the traditions of an uncle, and aided by the fragmentary collections of Father Blas Valera, was published in 1609. In Garcilasso's theory the original people of Peru, Totemists and worshippers of hills ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... three spindles. Now you must first place all the shields on one of the spindles, the largest, number five, on the bottom, and the smallest, number one, on the top. Next you must transfer all five shields to the second spindle, moving but one shield at a time, and placing it either on a vacant spindle or on top of a larger shield. You may use all three spindles in the task, which I assure you will test your bright wits to ...
— Bright-Wits, Prince of Mogadore • Burren Laughlin and L. L. Flood
... Stand, girt as they toward hunting, and my shafts Drawn; wherefore all ye stand up on my side, If I be pure and all ye righteous gods, Lest one revile me, a woman, yet no wife, That bear a spear for spindle, and this bow strung For a web woven; and with pure lips salute Heaven, and the face of all the gods, and dawn Filling with maiden flames and maiden flowers The starless fold o' the stars, and making sweet The ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... tells us of Margaret's favourite occupations, mentioning that when she was alone in her room she more often held a book in her hand than a distaff, a pen than a spindle, and the ivory of her tablets than a needle. He then adds: "And if she applied herself to tapestry or other needlework, such as was to her a pleasant occupation, she had beside her some one who read to her, either from a historian or a poet, or some other notable and useful author; or ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... seen lazily stretched under the shade of a tree, the Tokroori will be spinning cotton, or working at something that will earn a few piastres. Even during the march, I have frequently seen my men gather the cotton from some deserted bush, and immediately improvise a spindle, by sticking a reed through a piece of camel-dung, with which they would spin the wool into thread, as they walked with the caravan. My Tokrooris had never been idle during the time they had been in my service, ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... sense of labour, by the usual rude song: {50} one man imitating the profession of a shoemaker; another, that of a tanner. Now you may see a girl with a distaff, drawing out the thread, and winding it again on the spindle; another walking, and arranging the threads for the web; another, as it were, throwing the shuttle, and seeming to weave. On being brought into the church, and led up to the altar with their oblations, you will be astonished to see them suddenly ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... tasteless or unprofitable. Chemical changes are made in the plant by the soil in which it grows, because it is from the soil that it gets its food. The large and juicy carrot found at home is nothing but the woody spindle of the wild carrot, and I have found several species of it here. Cabbages, cauliflowers, Brussels sprouts and a host of other like vegetables were, in their natural state, poor, woody, bitter stems, and had useless ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... modifications in the arrangement of their fibres, as relates to their tendinous structure. Sometimes they are completely longitudinal, and terminate, at each extremity, in a tendon, the entire muscle being spindle-shaped. In other situations, they are disposed like the rays of a fan, converging to a tendinous point, and constituting a ra'di-ate muscle. Again they are pen'ni-form, converging, like the plumes of a pen, to one side of a tendon, ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... library, Plank was awkward and silent, finding nothing to say, and nowhere to dispose of his hands, until Siward gave him a cigar to occupy his fingers. Even then he continued to sit uncomfortably, his bulk balanced on a rickety, spindle-legged chair, which he stubbornly refused to exchange for another, at Siward's suggestion, out of sheer embarrassment, and with a confused idea that his refusal would somehow ultimately put him at his ease ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... suddenly out of the darkness, might well start fears and forebodings in the dark and guilty mind of untutored man, which would not be dispelled by a nearer view of the strange object from which they proceeded. White, ghostly, upright, spindle-shaped and biggest at the top, where two great orbs flare, like fiery bull's-eyes, from the centres of two round white targets, it stands solemn and speechless; you approach nearer and it falls into fearsome pantomimic attitudes and grimaces, like a clown trying to frighten a child. ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... foremost numbers' unity, That odd and even are; which are two and three; For one no number is; but thence doth flow The powerful race of number. Next, did go 340 A noble matron, that did spinning bear A huswife's rock and spindle, and did wear A wether's skin, with all the snowy fleece, To intimate that even the daintiest piece And noblest-born dame should industrious be: That which does good disgraceth no degree. And now to Juno's ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... be better if he spoke no language at all; he wouldn't tell lies then. But of course, here he is, in the very nick of time," continued Marfa Timofeevna, looking down the street. "Here comes your agreeable man, striding along. How spindle-shanked he is, to be sure—just like ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... kind, vile rabble," said Don Quixote, burning with rage, "nothing of the kind, I say, only ambergris and civet in cotton; nor is she one-eyed or humpbacked, but straighter than a Guadarrama spindle: but ye must pay for the blasphemy ye have uttered against beauty like that ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Eurykleia; Sigurd is slain by a thorn, and Balder by a sharp sprig of mistletoe; and in the myth of the Sleeping Beauty, the earth-goddess sinks into her long winter sleep when pricked by the point of the spindle. In her cosmic palace, all is locked in icy repose, naught thriving save the ivy which defies the cold, until the kiss of the golden-haired ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... to his taste, a cheerful and well-lighted establishment occupying a corner, with entrances from both streets. A hedge of forlorn fir-trees knee-deep in wooden tubs guarded its terrasse of round metal tables and spindle-shanked chairs; of which few were occupied. Inside, visible through the wide plate-glass windows, perhaps a dozen patrons sat round half as many tables—no more—idling over dominoes and gossip: steady-paced burghers with their wives, ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... high oak chimney-piece, with blue tiles inserted into it in every direction, and decorated with old Nankin china bowls and jars; a wide grate below, where logs of wood are blazing between brass bars; quantities of spindle-legged Chippendale furniture all over the room, and a profusion of rich gold embroidery and "textile fabrics" of all descriptions lighting up the carved oak "dado" and the sombre sage green of the walls. There are pictures, too, quite of ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... mischief this cavalier might have done, if I had not been so watchful? Now let him come prying and spying about, she will have a husband to defend her. A smith's hammer is better than an old woman's spindle, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... thin, spindle shaped, like those of very young girls, were encircled with a kind of metal ornament, and bracelets of glass beads; her hair was twisted into little cords; on her breast hung a green paste idol, identified by her whip of seven lashes ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... and out, in and out, she was a twentieth century version of any one of the Fates, with the Klinger darner and mender substituted for distaff and spindle. There was something almost humanly intelligent in the workings of Martha's machine. Under its glittering needle she would shove a sock whose heel bore a great, jagged, gaping wound. Your home darner, equipped only with mending egg, needle, and ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... were guarded the Holy Virgin's vestments, her spindle, drops of her milk, the cradle in which the Saviour had lain, a tooth from his adolescent jaw, a hair of his beard, a particle of the bread used in the Last Supper, and a portion of the royal purple worn by him before Pilate. Naturally ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... rebelled against her stepmother now 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 ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... wife, and weel mat she be, That busks her fause rock wi' the lint o' the lee (lie), Whirling her spindle and twisting the twine, Wynds aye the richt pirn ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... the position of women seems to have been, upon the whole, a more dignified one. Still, even then, their duties were essentially limited to the house, as is proved, for instance, by the words in which Telemachus bids his mother mind her spindle and loom, instead of interfering with the debates of men. As the state became more developed, it took up the whole attention of the man, and still more separated him from his wife. Happy marriages, of course, were by ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... speaketh not anything." During this pause, the "conveyor" is told "to get the fig-leaves ready." Then Lucifer is ordered to "come out of the serpent and creep on his belly to hell;" Adam and Eve receive the curse, and depart out of Paradise, "showing a spindle and distaff"—no badly-conceived emblem of the labour to which they are henceforth doomed. And ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... all wide, As she were sight denied, Sits blindly feeling at her distaff old; One, as distraught with woe, Letting the spindle go, Her star y-sprinkled gown doth shivering fold; And one right mournful hangs her head, Complaining, "Woe is me! I may not cut ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... disappears, only to reappear under a new form in some new use-value. By virtue of its general character, as being expenditure of human labour-power in the abstract, spinning adds a new value to the values of cotton and spindle. On the other hand, by virtue of its special character, as being a concrete, useful process, the same labour of spinning both transfers the values of the means of production to the product and preserves ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... the cab. They told the driver to stop a little way before he came to the house and on the other side of the avenue, in front of a small cafe. They sat down outside it, among tubs of laurels and spindle-trees. The ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... better game than that," he said, his articulation very thick; "but it takes nerve—if you've got it, you spindle-legged ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... 'tis both a shame and a sin; And the Dean, my master, is an honester man than you and all your kin: He has more goodness in his little finger than you have in your whole body: My master is a personable man, and not a spindle-shank hoddy doddy. And now, whereby I find you would fain make an excuse, Because my master, one day, in anger, call'd you a goose: Which, and I am sure I have been his servant four years since October, And he never call'd me worse than ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... distance below the water-line, were also armored, but less heavily. In the turret two guns were mounted, of a size varying with the size of the vessel. They could be moved in and out, but the aim from side to side was changed by turning the whole turret, which revolved on a central spindle. After firing, the ports were turned away from the enemy and the unbroken iron toward him, until the guns were reloaded. Above and concentric with the turret was another circular structure, of much less diameter and similarly armored. This, called the pilot-house, ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... Orchomena, the Saphria of the Patraeans, Aphia of AEgina, Bendis of Thrace, and Stymphalia with the leg of a bird. Triopas, in place of three eyeballs, has nothing more than three orbits. Erichthonius, with spindle-shanks, crawls like a ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... And, doubtless, from that circle of accomplished women, of whom she formed the brilliant centre, a flood of poetic light was poured forth on every side. Among them may be mentioned the names of Damophila and Erinna, whose poem, "The Spindle," was highly esteemed ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... walking through thickets of spindle-wood, resplendent under the snow, and the indifference of these living things to the monstrous misery round them makes the impotent soul that is strangling me seem odious and even ridiculous to me. In spite of all protestations of sympathy, the ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... hunt frogs in the cowslip swale in our meadow, sailed so slow and so low, that you could see their sharp bills stuck out in front, their uneven, ragged looking feathers, and their long legs trailing out behind. I bet if Polly Martin wore a blue calico dress so short her spindle-shanks showed, and flew across our farm, you couldn't tell her ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... bark. The South Sea Islanders made short gowns of plaited rushes, and the New Zealanders wore rude garments from strings made of native flax. These early products were made by the process of working the fibres by hand into a string or thread. The use of a simple spindle, composed of a stone like a large button, with a stick run through a hole in the centre, facilitated the making of thread and the construction of rude looms. It was but a step from these to the spinning-wheels and looms of the Middle Ages. When the Spaniards discovered the Pueblo Indians, ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... had turned to the west in its majestic course and Tharon, the noon work over, drew up the spindle-legged stool and sat down to play to herself and Anita. The old woman, half Mexic, half Indian, drowsed in a low chair by the eastern window, her toil-hard hands clasped in her lap, a black reboso over her head, though the day was warm as summer. ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... like the little blue milkwort, which spreads like a film over the higher slopes of the ridge in summer. If the roadside is scented with flowers, so are the hedges. Guelder rose and dog rose and privet blossom side by side with elder and spindle wood; above holly and hazel and buckthorn stand up gnarled and wind-driven yews, bent over the road from the south-west. To the south, it is often only through the gate-gaps in the hedge that you can see out over the flank ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... that translates fibre to yarn. In a moment it changed from stuff a baby's finger could break to thread capable of supporting fifteen pounds of pressure. For now came the twist—that word of mighty significance—and the tiny thread of new-born yarn descended to the spindle, vanished in the whirl of the flier and reappeared, an accomplished miracle, winding on the ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... and for ages has twisted, a pound of cotton into a thread two hundred and fifty miles long, beating Manchester by ninety miles, has no wheel, unless you so call a ball of clay, of the size of a pea, stuck fast on one end of her spindle, by means of which she twists it between her thumb and finger. But this wonderful mechanical feat costs her many months of labor, to say nothing of previous training; while the Manchester factory-girl, aided by the multiplying power of the wheel, easily ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... partially submerged or hidden body; thus the beating of the heart and the pulse is tipilac. Ca yumtah banderas ob, when the banners waved; yumtah is to swing to and fro as a hamack or a flag. Piixtahob, from pixitah, to unreel or reel off yarn, etc., from a spindle. I suppose it refers to letting go ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various
... particular reason for the employment of more than one grid, provided the size of the carbide decomposed is suited to the generator, and provided the mesh of the grid is suited to the size of the carbide. A great improvement, however, is made if the grid is carried on a horizontal spindle in such a way that it can be rocked periodically in order to assist in freeing the lumps of carbide from the adhering particles of lime. As an alternative to the movable grid, or even as an adjunct thereto, an agitator scraping the conical sides of the generator ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... o'clock. On starlight nights I used to pace up and down those long, cold streets, scowling at the little, sleeping houses on either side, with their storm-windows and covered back porches. They were flimsy shelters, most of them poorly built of light wood, with spindle porch-posts horribly mutilated by the turning-lathe. Yet for all their frailness, how much jealousy and envy and unhappiness some of them managed to contain! The life that went on in them seemed to me made up of evasions and negations; shifts to save ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... a coil, the spool, after being properly prepared, is placed upon a spindle which may be made to revolve rapidly. Ordinarily the wire is guided on by hand; sometimes, however, machinery is used, the wire being run over a tool which moves to and fro along the length of the spool, just fast enough to lay the wire on ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... find a pleasing care In soft, warm wool their snowy flocks have bred; The distaff, skein and spindle they prepare, And reel, with firm-set thumb, the ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... out. She moved swiftly across the floor, and in a moment more was bending over the escritoire. And now, with her body hiding the flashlight's rays from the front windows, she examined the desk. It was an old-fashioned, spindle-legged affair, with a nest of pigeonholes and multifarious little drawers. One of the drawers, wider than any of the others, and in the center, was obviously the one to which Gypsy Nan referred. She pulled out the drawer, ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... upset in the town, y' mun know," he said, "and every wench in the 'Rising Sun' 'as been a devil unknobbed all day. This red-faced hussy here, when 'er was wanted to set the table, was off to see if that spindle-shanked Sim across at the Mayor's was safe and sound. And besides, my lady and y'r 'onours, the famous steak-and-kidney puddin' o' the 'Rising Sun' must be boiled to a bubble or it's dummacked. If one got spiled, the news 'ud run down ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... of the sheep's flesh. We ran them down with dogs. They'd often run up trees, and we'd shoot them. Then there were rabbits that we caught, mostly in snares. For musk-rats, we'd put a parsnip or an apple on the spindle of a box trap. When we snared a rabbit, I always wanted to find it caught around the neck and strangled to death. If they got half through the snare and were caught around the body, or by the hind legs, ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... "Black spindle-legs curled up to meet red-gimleted black faces, donkeys headless and legless, or sieves of shrapnel; camels with necks writhed back on to their humps, rotting already in pools of blood and bile-yellow water, heads without faces, and faces without ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... for various purposes, but the greater part is manufactured into spun-yarn. For this purpose, every vessel is furnished with a "spun-yarn winch''; which is very simple, consisting of a wheel and spindle. This may be heard constantly going on deck in pleasant weather; and we had employment, during a great part of the time, for three hands, in drawing and ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... the bat, and the toad, And so is the cat-a-mountain, The ant and the mole sit both in a hole, And the frog peeps out o' the fountain; The dogs they do bay, and the timbrels play, The spindle is now a turning; The moon it is red, and the stars are fled, But all the sky is a burning: The ditch is made, and our nails the spade, With pictures full, of wax and of wool; Their livers I stick, with needles quick; There lacks ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... beauty, her conscience had long ago been pricked by her mother-in-law's spindle, and her whole moral sense infected with the belief that to keep house wisely was the end and aim of wifely duty. She reverenced Simeon for his learning and dignity, and felt proud that so simple a person as herself should have been chosen in marriage ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... I heard so—but you must tell him to keep up his Spirits—everybody almost is in the same way—Lord Spindle, Sir Thomas Splint, Captain Quinze, and Mr. Nickit—all up, I hear, within this week; so, if Charles is undone, He'll find half his Acquaintance ruin'd too, and that, you ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... the antiquated finery of the Iron Duke, with which the old soldier sought to please his young mistress. It provoked a smile or two from the more frivolous as the grey, gaunt, spindle-shanked old man stalked by, yet it was not without its pathetic side. The Duke wore a scarlet coat, a tight fit, laced with gold, with splendid gold buttons and frogs, the brilliant star of the Order of ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... boy there, who, I could tell without hardly looking, was Dragonfly, on account of he is spindle-legged and has large eyes like a dragonfly's eyes are. Dragonfly had on a brand new cap with ear-muffs on it. As you maybe know, Dragonfly was always getting the gang into trouble, on account of he always was doing such crazy ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens
... into the asteroid at a good rate. Every few moments he pushed another circle or spindle of thorium out of the hole. Rip directed some of the men to carry them away, to the other side of the asteroid. He didn't want chunks of thorium flying around ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... one of which is shown in plate LXV, 6, are tecpatl figures; of this, however, there is considerable doubt. Seler's opinion is based on those of this type. There can be no doubt that here this spindle-shape figure represents the shooting plant, the central stock or stem, or, what is far more likely, the seed which gives birth to the plant. Although they occupy the position of the stock or stem, yet from the form, the fact that some of them ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... goddess, train'd the maid To twirl the spindle by the twisting thread, To fix the loom, instruct the reeds to part, Cross the long weft, and close the web with art: An useful gift; but what profuse expense, What world of fashions, took its ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... spinsters; and this difficulty became yet greater when the invention of the fly-shuttle enabled one weaver to do in a single day what had hitherto been the work of two. The difficulty was solved by a Blackburn weaver, John Hargreaves, who noticed that his wife's spindle, which had been accidentally upset, continued to revolve in an upright position on the floor, while the thread was still spinning in her hand. The hint led him to connect a number of spindles with a single wheel, and thus to enable one spinster to do the work of eight. Hargreaves's ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... Four stamens inserted on corolla tube; 1 pistil with 2 stigmas. Stem: 1 to 3 ft. high, usually branched, leafy. Leaves: Opposite, upper ones acute at tip, broadening to heart-shaped base, seated on stem. Fruit: A spindle-shaped, 2-valved capsule, containing ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... prize? By their estimate, this amazing vehicle was going at least one hundred and thirty miles an hour. Fast as was their speed, it shot by them at such a rate that they could hardly make out even the shape of the machine, a sort of lengthened spindle, probably not over thirty feet long. Its wheels spun with such velocity that they could scarce be seen. For the rest, the machine left behind it neither ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... mountains of granite comb the fleecy clouds and the forest monarch measures strength with the thunderstorm; they flee naked and ashamed from the face of their fellow-men while fabrics molder in the market-place and the song of the spindle is silent: they freeze while beneath their feet are countless tons of coal—incarnate kisses of the sun-god's fiery youth; they have never a spot of earth on which to plant a vine and watch their children play—where they may rear with loving hands lowly roof and rule, lords ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... do as I have said; and for those maidens from the Hyperboreans, who died in Delos, both the girls and the boys of the Delians cut off their hair: the former before marriage cut off a lock and having wound it round a spindle lay it upon the tomb (now the tomb is on the left hand as one goes into the temple of Artemis, and over it grows an olive-tree), and all the boys of the Delians wind some of their hair about a green shoot of some tree, and they also place it ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... he was not, whereupon Mr. Harum hitched himself up onto a high office stool, with his heels on the spindle, and leaned sideways upon the desk, while John stood facing him with his ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... Clutterbuck, in a sharp, overstretched, querulous falsetto, suited to the occasion: "but this is always the case—I am sure, my poor temper is tried to the utmost—and Lord help thee, idiot! you have thrust those spindle legs of yours into your coat-sleeves instead ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... inclined to play the part of the young enthusiast in "Excelsior," as I looked up at the weathercock which surmounts the spire. But the man who oils the weathercock-spindle has to get up to it in some way, and that way is by ladders which reach to within thirty feet of the top, where there is a small door, through which he emerges, to crawl up the remaining distance on the outside. "The ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... can antedate my doom, Till fate condemns me to the silent tomb. Fixed is the term to all the race of earth, And such the hard condition of our birth. No force can then resist, no flight can save: All sink alike, the fearful and the brave. No more—but hasten to thy tasks at home, There guide the spindle, and direct the loom; Me glory summons to the martial scene, The field of combat is the sphere for men. Where heroes war, the foremost place I claim, The first in danger as ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... classes which have least been altered by education, which have shared least in progress. But the student of folklore soon finds that these unprogressive classes retain many of the beliefs and ways of savages, just as the Hebridean people use spindle-whorls of stone, and bake clay pots without the aid of the wheel, like modern South Sea Islanders, or like their own prehistoric ancestors. {11a} The student of folklore is thus led to examine the ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang |
