"Stitch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pine wood; And Polly's was only a corn-cob, With a calico slip and hood. My doll was a lovely rag-baby, With badly-inked eyes and nose; Her cheeks were painted with cherry-juice; And I made every stitch of her clothes. ...
— The Nursery, Number 164 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... nation. In the Harvard Psychological Laboratory we are at present engaged in the investigation of such an apparently trivial function as sewing by hand. The finger which guides the needle is attached to a system of levers which write an exact graphic record of every stitch on a revolving drum. And the deeper we enter into this study the more we discover that such a movement, of which every seamstress and every girl who makes her clothes feels that she knows everything, contains an abundance of important features ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... its usual hissing sound, and struck ten, while a woman's face peered in at the door, but at once withdrew, for the reason that, with the object of sleeping as well as possible, Chichikov had removed every stitch of his clothing. Somehow the face seemed to him familiar, and he set himself to recall whose it could be. At length he recollected that it was the face of his hostess. His clothes he found lying, clean and ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... with the arrangements of an ordinary lock stitch machine, and an able paper by Mr. Edwin P. Alexander, embracing not only a good account of its history, but most of the elements of the earlier machines, has already (April 5, 1863), been read before ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... much the same way as mending paper, excepting that a little greater overlap must be left. It is well to put a stitch of silk at each end of a vellum patch, as you cannot depend on paste alone holding vellum securely. The overlapping edges must be well roughed up with a knife to make sure that the paste will stick. A cut in a ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell
... has been said of the stitch in the side; but it is nothing to the stitch to which we now refer, which the pleasures of the matrimonial second crop are everlastingly reviving, like the hammer of a note in the piano. This constitutes an irritant, ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... been an inch further back, it would have severed the temporal artery. You have had a narrow escape of it. As it is, you will get off with a scar, which may last for some time; but as it is an honourable one, perhaps you won't so much care. However, I will bring it together as well as I can, and stitch it up, and it may not ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... in the fire-trenches by seven o'clock. My men, with every stitch of equipment on their backs, stood on the firing-step and kept up a dilatory ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... women and girls filled up spare moments with "gloving"; the large kid-glove manufacturers in Worcester supplied the material, cut into shape, and a stand, with a kind of vice divided into spaces the exact size of each stitch, which held the work firmly while the stitching was done by hand; they grew very quick at this work, and turned out the gloves with beautifully even stitches, but I don't think they could earn much at it in a day, and it must have ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... there. How different was the behaviour of his landlord's grandfather. 'Many a time would his worship send for me to go a-hunting or shooting with him; often would he take me with him on his visits and would introduce me as his friend. The country gentlewoman and the parson's wife, that used to stitch for themselves, are now so hurried with dressings and visits and other attractions that they hire an ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... we should call them nowadays. A school-bag—they didn't call them satchels then—was made of a piece of blue and white bed-ticking, folded at the bottom. Every white stripe you worked with zephyr worsted in briar stitch or herring-bone or feather stitch. You could use one color or several. And now the old work and the bed-ticking has come back again and ladies make the old-fashioned bags with ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... study BOTTICELLI When we feel the gnawing craving to be smart; If we want to be de rigueur We must educate the figure To show the downward trend of "plastic art." The outline should be slack, Slippy-sloppy, front and back, Till bodice, skirt and tunic—every stitch— Seems to call for the support Of the handy-man's resort— That naval gesture termed the "double hitch." The shoulders must be drooping. The knees a trifle stooping, And the widest waist, remember, takes the prize; When motoring or shopping The coatee ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... alone taken her to the Rogron's house, where she had suffered much at the harsh treatment of the pretty little creature, who would often press up against her as if divining her secret thoughts, sometimes asking the poor lady to show her a stitch in knitting or to teach her a bit of embroidery. The child proved in return that if she were treated gently she would understand what was taught her, and succeed in what she tried to do quite marvellously. ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... cut out from peach-coloured satin—tambour stitch and rose-buds in beautiful floss silk. Was I wise to entrust my last fourpence to Simpkin? ...
— The Tailor of Gloucester • Beatrix Potter
... the needle into her fingers at every stitch, cried for the fresh air and sunshine, and finally, becoming pale and sickly, was taken back to the Bonheur home. The anxious painter would try his child once more in school; so he arranged that she should attend, with compensation met in the same way as for his boys. Rosa soon became ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... of wild and indescribable emotion passed through every heart. Every eye was turned upon the point to which attention was now directed. The graceful vessel, with every stitch of canvass set, was shooting rapidly past the low bushes skirting the sands that still concealed her hull; and in a moment or two she loomed largely and proudly on the bosom of the Detroit, the surface of which was slightly curled ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... fifty or sixty miles a day. When night overtook us, we camped on the shore. Sometimes it was very pleasant and romantic. At other times, when storms raged and we were drenched with the rain so thoroughly that for days we had not a dry stitch upon us, it was not quite ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... customers, and was soon the most famous tailor for miles around. He cut out the garments, and took the first stitch therein with the needle, and immediately the latter worked away, without cessation, until the whole was completed. Master Labakan soon had the whole city for customers, for his work was beautiful, and his charges low; and only one thing troubled ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... to show you on this. But see the sweat-band? It has a lot of needle holes in it, and the trimmer has to stitch through those holes and then sew the band on to the hat, and all the odds and ends. It kills eyes. What do you think?" she went on. "The girls used to drink beer—bosses let 'em do it to keep them stimulated—and it's ruined lots. I ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... to be employed. The accepted costume plate in color becomes now the working basis for the actual process of manufacturing the garments. The cost of these color plates for each design is at least five dollars, but usually more, as high as $25.00 sometimes, before a garment is cut or a stitch taken, the price for a costume plate or design depending a good deal upon the standing or ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... to the pins and matches, knowing that the less often such things are bought, the more is saved. She will not think it above her care to mend the clothes or darn the stockings, remembering that "a stitch in time ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... out of the room, descended the stairs, and "beat up" through the living-room and store, as Betty Gallup said "with ev'ry stitch of canvas drawin' and a bone in her teeth." Louise agreed about the "bone"—she had given her Aunt Euphemia a ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... Fontanges, M. De Fontanges, and the crew, were hurried on board of the Windsor Castle (the pirate had taken care that they should not be delayed in packing up their baggage), and Newton, as soon as he returned on board, and hoisted up his boat, crowded every stitch of canvas in pursuit of the pirate, who was now more than four miles distant. But, although the wind gradually increased, and was thus far in their favour, as they first benefited by it, yet, as the sun went down, so did their hopes descend. At nightfall the ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... ladies were watching with great attention the Sewing-machine—sewing away with the greatest exactness, and much stronger than by the ordinary mode with a needle, as each stitch is a knot. The inventor was shewing it; and he said he had nearly completed a machine for the button-holes. The next was a machine called 'The Man'—and truly named, for a more marvellous production can scarcely be conceived—for making implements ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... but set off running again for his life, and I must stagger to my feet and run after him. I had been weary before, but now I was sick and bruised, and partly drunken with the brandy; I kept stumbling as I ran, I had a stitch that came near to overmaster me; and when at last Alan paused under a great rock that stood there among a number of others, it was none too ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... went down the leak took up. When it came to bending a fresh set of sails the crew demanded to put back—and really there was nothing else to do. Boats gone, decks swept clean, cabin gutted, men without a stitch but what they stood in, stores spoiled, ship strained. We put her head for home, and—would you believe it? The wind came east right in our teeth. It blew fresh, it blew continuously. We had to beat up every inch of the way, but she did not leak so badly, ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... meet with one who thinks as I do," she said complacently, and plucking a half-blown rose that hung near her, she turned its petals sharply down as if they were plaits of a hem that she was about to stitch. ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... Mrs. Katy Scudder. That his best broadcloth coat was not illustrated with shreds and patches, fluff and dust, and hanging in ungainly folds, was owing to the same. That his long silk stockings never had a treacherous stitch allowed to break out into a long running ladder was due to her watchfulness; and that he wore spotless ruffles on his wrists or at his bosom was her doing also. The Doctor little thought, while he, in common with good ministers generally, gently traduced the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... around but I couldn't find anything to wrap him in. And the baby didn't have a stitch on him except a sort of spongy paper diaper, wet as sin. So I finally lifted up the lady, who had a long cape thing around her, and I took the cape off her real gentle. I knew she was dead and she wouldn't be needin' it, and that boy baby would catch ...
— Year of the Big Thaw • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... Mothers who love and want their babies don't buy little rough, ready-made things, and they don't run up what they make on an old sewing machine. They make fine seams, and tucks, and put on lace and trimming by hand. They sit and stitch, and stitch—little, even stitches, every one just as careful. Their eyes shine and their faces glow. When they have to quit to do something else, they look sorry, and fold up their work so particularly. There isn't much worth knowing about your ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Hackit, stooping towards the candle to pick up a stitch, 'and turned as red as a turkey-cock. I often say, when he preaches about meekness, he gives himself a slap in the face. He's like me—he's got a temper of ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... took off near Laeken. But the sun was already down; the air was chill; and we had scarcely a dry stitch between the pair of us. Nay, now we found ourselves near the end of the Allee Verte, and on the very threshold of Brussels, we were confronted by a serious difficulty. The shores were closely lined by canal boats ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... marriages among Upton people, was drawn across the outer door, which opened into a little garden at the back of the house. There was a miniature parlor behind the kitchen, filled with furniture worked in tent stitch by Ann Holland's mother, and carefully covered with white dimity; but it was only entered on most important occasions. Even Mr. Chantrey had never yet been invited into it; for any event short of a solemn crisis the ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... as accurately as she could, read it through again, and then pushed it aside. With set lips she resumed her work, and by midnight she had put in the last stitch and fastened the last thread. That she should do so was essential to the plan she had in her mind. For she had already determined what to do. Within forty-eight hours she would be in London. If he had really ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... deep, a-breathing hard your name; But never do I hear and never do I see, I with my head low, working out my shame, Eyes burning dry and my heart like a flame; For I hate you then—I hate you, Jim of Tellico, And grip my needle tighter, every stitch a sin, The hate growing bigger till the thing I sew Seems a shroud I'm glad a-making just ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... call them? Don't let's degenerate into scarecrows because we are obliged to live this Robinson Crusoe-like life. It's many years since I read that book, Chris, but if I recollect right he used not only to mend his own clothes, but make new ones out of goat-skins. 'A stitch in time saves nine,' boys, so mend your ways—I mean the open ways where the wind and rain get in. See ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... of the horses from their hocks to their silk noses, and every stitch of our riding gear, to be sure that no deviltry had been done. But we found nothing. Evidently Marks was merely spying out the land. Then we led the horses out for the journey. El Mahdi had to duck ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... him in his natural costume, such as I have seen Webster have on while making a speech in the open air at a mass meeting in Concord,—dress-coat buttoned pretty closely across the breast, pantaloons and boots,—everything finished even to a seam and a stitch. Not an inch of the statue but is Webster; even his coat-tails are imbued with the man, and this true artist has succeeded in showing him through the broadcloth as nature showed him. He has felt that a man's actual clothes are as ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... irritation. An activity possessed her: it broke out in many feminine ways. Among the rest she was seized with what we men call a cacoethes of the needle: "a raging desire" for work. Her fingers itched for work. She was at it all day. As devotees retire to pray, so she to stitch. On a wet day she would often slip into the kitchen, and ply the needle beside Jacintha: on a dry day she would hide in the old oak-tree, and sit like a mouse, and ply the tools of her craft, and make things of no mortal use to man or woman; and ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... whether the lubrication is perfect, the character and heat of the spark, the condition of almost every screw, nut, and bolt, and he runs his machine accordingly; at the first indication of anything wrong he stops and takes the stitch in time that saves ninety and nine later. The sham chauffeur sits at the wheel, and in the security of ignorance runs gayly along until his machine is a wreck; he may have hours, days, or even weeks of blind enjoyment, but ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... close at home with her father. And you must take your seam with you, Katie, my lassie," added the old lady, as no dissenting frown from the grandfather followed her first words. "And maybe Miss Elizabeth has a new stitch, or some other new thing to teach you. These things are easy carried about with a person, and they ay have a chance to come in use sometime. Oh, ay, you can take a while with a book, too, now and then when Miss Elizabeth is occupied with her father. ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... storms here, Captain; but if it were in the Levant I should get every stitch of canvas off her excepting closely- reefed topsails, a storm jib, and fore stay-sail. The first burst over, one can always shake out more canvas. However, you know these seas, and ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... More description, or better, of the later Gothic cannot be put into four syllables. 'Steek,' melodious for stitch, has a combined sense of closing or fastening. And note that the later Gothic, being precisely what Scott knew best (in Melrose) and liked best, it is, here as elsewhere, quite as much himself[172] as Frank, that he is laughing at, when he laughs with Andrew, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... studding-sails; but as the water is still smooth, the single-reefed topsails and top-gallant-sails may be carried, though it is evident the ship is rather over-pressed, or, at all events, not another stitch ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... next host was one Mr. Mnason, a Cyprusian by nation, and an old disciple. "How far have you come to-day?" he asked. "From the house of Gaius our friend," they said. "I promise you," said he, "you have gone a good stitch; you may well be weary; sit down." So they sat down. "Our great want a while since," said Old Honest, "was harbour and good company, and now I hope we have both." "For harbour," said the host, "you see what it is, but for good company that will appear in the trial." After they were a little rested ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... Understand? 'Pawned the Family Jewells.' Git me? 'Reduced to Poverty.' Where's my frock coat? Where's my silk hat? 'Wardrobe of a Celebrity Sold For A Song.' Where's them two pair of trousers? 'A Tragic Disappearance.' All up the spout. Everything gone. 'Not a Stitch to His Name.' Really, Richard, it wouldn't be proper to get well. A natural phenomenon of my standing couldn't—simply couldn't, Richard—go back to the profession with a wardrobe consistin' of two pink night-shirts, both the worse ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... another thirty minutes focusing his full strength on the opposite end. The rock, however, refused to move an inch, and, because a few crackers are not much for a hungry man to work on after an all-night march, Thurston became conscious that he had a headache and a distressful stitch in his side. Still, being obstinate and filled with an unreasoning desire to prove his trustworthiness to his fair employer, he continued doggedly, and after another hour's digging found the stone still immovable. Then it happened that while, with the perspiration dripping ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... halyards rove, sail after sail packed upon her, until every available inch of canvas was spread, that we might not lose a breath of the fair wind. We could now see how much she was cramped and deadened by her cargo; for with a good breeze on her quarter, and every stitch of canvas spread, we could not get more than six knots out of her. She had no more life in her than if she were water-logged. The log was hove several times; but she was doing her best. We had hardly patience ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... Jem Miller was originally a tailor; but having dropt a stitch or two in early life, listed into a sporting regiment of Cads some years since; and being a better shot at hares and partridges than he was considered at the heavy goose, has been promoted to the rank of captain of the ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... thirty-five heads," repeated Madame Simon, shaking her head; "I have just been counting on my stocking, and I find only thirty-five seam-stitches, for every seam-stitch means a head. For such a little affair we have had to sit six hours in the wet and cold on the platform. The machine works too slowly, I say— altogether too slowly. The judges are easy, and there is no more pleasure to be derived ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... sustained, none but He whose name is Wonderful knows how: I say, put your hook, I mean the arming-wire, through his mouth, and out at his gills; and then with a fine needle and silk sew the upper part of his leg, with only one stitch, to the arming-wire of your hook; or tie the frog's leg, above the upper joint, to the armed-wire; and, in so doing, use him as though you loved him, that is, harm him as little as you may possibly, that he may live ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... knew not what to say or think. He looked at the work. There was not one false stitch in the whole job. All was ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... premiums would be due and the firm of Starratt & Co. on its feet, with over two thousand dollars in commissions actually in hand. On the strength of these prospects Helen began to order a new outfit. Fred Starratt did not have the heart to complain. Helen had earned every stitch of clothing that she was buying—there was no doubt about that; still, he would have liked to be less hasty in her expenditures. He had been too long in business to count much on prospects. He disliked borrowing more money from Brauer, but there ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... telepathic spy be? It was like looking for a needle in a rolling stone, he thought. Or something. He did remember clearly that a stitch in time saved nine, but he didn't know nine what, and suspected it had nothing to do with his ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... of self is quite knocked out by the fifth and last step—the admission that doing and bearing what we have in the way of meekness and humility, we have not done one stitch more than it was our duty to do. God made man in the first place simply that he might be God's bond-servant. Man's sin has simply consisted in his refusal to be God's bond-servant. His restoration can only be, then, a restoration to the position of a bond-servant. A ...
— The Calvary Road • Roy Hession
... having, as I thought, finished my work, or rather the first Part (something like three or four volumes, 8vo), but I find so much original matter here, and so many emendations to make, that I am ready to despair. However, there is nothing for it but to penelopize, pull to pieces, and stitch away again. Whatever may be the result of my labor, nobody can say that I have not worked like a brute beast,—but I don't care for the result. The labor is in itself its own reward and all I want. I go day after day to the archives here (as I went all summer at the Hague), studying ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... might find you weren't well enough to travel," she answered thoughtfully, with her face still bent over the work which she was spoiling with every clumsy, feverish stitch. ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... then, wearily, but forbore to seem curious, and she coaxed him into the kitchen, to bathe the dust and tears from his countenance, and stitch up some rents in the big shirt, where Big Tom had torn it. All the while she talked to him comfortingly. "Ach, mine heart it bleets over you!" she declared. "But nefer mind. Because, ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... asked in church," replied Dorothea, somewhat inconsequently. "Ah! more than once, we had. And I'd ha' been as true to him, and was, as ever a needle to a stitch. Well, sir, when he slights of me, and leaves of me, why it's natural as I should run up and down the streets a-lookin' for him like wild. So one day, after I'd done my work, and put things straight, ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... to the island after this same B. 300. We had stood well off from shore for day after day, and Hardenberg had shaped our course so far from the track of navigation that since the Benevento had hulled down and vanished over the horizon no stitch of canvas nor smudge of smoke had we seen. We had passed the equator long since, and would fetch a long circuit to the southard, and bear up against the island by a circuitous route. This to avoid being spoken. It was ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... worsted leading from the ball, around the post to the right, across the center of the hole in the knitter and around the post to the left; then back across the center to the post at the right, thus making two stitches on this post. Lift the lower or first stitch with a large pin or knitting needle, carry it over the second stitch and drop it over the post; then across the center to the post at the left and repeat. So continue until ...
— Spool Knitting • Mary A. McCormack
... fears alternately rose and fell as I watched the chase. Sometimes the boats seemed to be gaining on her. At other times she appeared to be obtaining the advantage. She continued to increase her canvas till every stitch she could carry was set on her, studding sails on either side, royals, and even still lighter sails above them, which we used to call skyscrapers. I now observed that although there were several large boats engaged in the chase, they were but ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... seemed to be nothing to cause anxiety. Donna Isabel wished to return to the island for more gold, but Hartog would not permit of any further expedition being made that day. He ordered the boats to be hoisted, and the treasure carried below. Every stitch of canvas had already been taken off the ship by the captain's orders, and we now rode upon a glassy sea under bare poles. Then the moaning increased, and presently there appeared upon the horizon ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... castle, and all the Princes and Princesses who were in cages in the menagerie, for the instant the Green Giant was dead they had resumed their natural forms. As you may imagine, they were all very grateful, and Princess Placida entreated them never, never to do another stitch of work so long as they lived, and they promptly made a great bonfire in the courtyard, and solemnly burnt all the embroidery frames and spinning wheels. Then the Princess gave them splendid presents, or rather sat ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... her knitting, but she did not lift a stitch. Where there is no positive compulsion the hand is only handmaid to the heart, and it does the work only which the heart wishes. At this hour Denas hated her knitting, and there being no necessity on her to perform ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... summer idea invented for the purpose of making a girl's shirtwaist something like a barb-wire fence with a full view of the scenery. It is constructed by making one stitch and forgetting seven. The Peekaboo is the only friend the ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott
... Ordinary soft stovepipe wire will do. Care must be taken to have the spreaders meet the corner sticks squarely or at right angles. Now take one of the cloth strips and sew its ends together to form a band. The end should be lapped about an inch and fastened with the sailor stitch (see Fig. 223). The same should be done to the other cross strip, and then each band should be marked off with pencil lines at four points, all equidistant from each other. The two bands may now be tacked to the two ends of the frame with opposite pencil lines over the edges of the corner ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... I should, sir," I replied. "I am a pretty good hand with a sail-needle. The Oulton fishermen used to teach me the stitches. I can do herring-bone stitch. I can even put a cringle ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... three miles away. At three o'clock that afternoon, 25 days out from Honolulu, both ships entered the Golden Gate of San Francisco side by side, and 300 yards apart. There was a gale blowing, and both vessels clapped on every stitch of canvas and swept up through the channel and past the fortresses ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... nothing else, but a few had loosely hanging from this string in front a scanty tuft of dried grass, or a small piece of cloth, which, however, was of purely symbolic use so far as either protection or modesty was concerned. The women did not wear a stitch of any kind anywhere on their bodies. They did not have on so much as a string, or a bead, or even an ornament in their hair. They were all, men and women, boys and well-grown young girls, as entirely at ease and unconscious as so many ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... sufficient to say that we found the proposition of clothing one of unusual interest. Any one who was not a practised needleman and machinist was handicapped for a time, until he fell into the ways of the through-and-through and blanket-stitch, thimbles, shuttles, spools and many other things he had once affected to despise as belonging to the sphere of women's work. It was not long before he was an enthusiast in many arts attaining to a stage of independence, in which he patented new ideas and ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... off to bed at once and take the whisky or brandy bottle with you, and don't be afraid of it, for alcohol is the best medicine you can take as it kills the germs in the blood. Do not wait until you are half dead—remember that a stitch in time ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... ring o' rosy, groanin' an' takin' on an' openin' an' shuttin' his eyes like he thought he could make me feel pleased at bein' woke up. But I was n't goin' to feel pleased. I tell you, Mrs. Lathrop, a stitch in time saves nine, an' I hadn't no idea of encouragin' Elijah to wake me like that, not while there's maybe a chance of me havin' him to board more 'n the three months I promised. I saw as I was gettin' into the duster as ...
— Susan Clegg and a Man in the House • Anne Warner
... stupid, bungling fellows, who can not do anything for themselves. It is as disgraceful for a lad not to be able to drive a nail straight without pounding his fingers or thumb as it is for a girl not to know how to stitch on a button. But I am letting my hobby run away with me, and no doubt you are anxious to be off. You will find the lumber piled in the storeroom of the barn. Take what you need. Perhaps Leo will lend you his pony to draw ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... Tell me, because there are two Kerdons, one is that blue-eyed fellow, the neighbor of Myrtaline the daughter of Kylaithis; but he couldn't even stitch a plectron to a lyre—the other one, who lives near the house of Hermodorus, after you have left the street, was pretty good once, but he's too old, now; the late lamented Kylaithis—may her kinsfolk never forget her—used ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... Roldham came to spend the afternoon and insisted on doing some of her work. I knew that Lucy was up very early this morning and I wanted to see what she was doing; I found her busy unpicking what Miss Betty had done. She would not have a single stitch in her present done by any ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... finally led to experiments. Of the many disappointments, the long months of patient labor, the intense thought, the repeated failures, there is not room to tell here; but at last he hit upon the solution of the problem—the use of two threads, making the stitch by means of a shuttle and a needle with the eye near the point. In October, 1844, he produced a rude machine which would actually sew. Another year was spent in perfecting it, while he kept his family from starvation by doing such odd ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... third on each side, it still leaves enough cloth to hold firmly in the weaving, but I have known one industrious soul who raveled the strips until only a narrow third was left down the middle of the strip, and this she found it necessary to stitch with the sewing machine to prevent further raveling. I have also known of the experiment of cutting the strips on the bias, stitching along the centre and pulling the two edges until they were completely ruffled. Although this is a painstaking process, it has very tangible ...
— How to make rugs • Candace Wheeler
... fond of work; the leaves of muddy-shaded greens grew but slowly under her fingers, and, truth to say, the occupation bored her. It was artistic, certainly, and it was fashionable; but Lady Kynaston would have been happier over a pair of cross-stitch slippers for her son, or a knitted woollen petticoat for the old woman at her lodge gate. All the same, she took out her crewels and put in a few stitches; but the afternoon was warm, there was a humming of insects in the summer air, ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... old enough to doff his ragged frock for the "pantalones" which his mother was still working upon, after weeks of listless endeavor. The senora's thread was long enough to reach half-way across the yard, and it took time and patience to set a stitch. For very weariness the senora nodded over her labor, and made many little appeals to the saints that they might guide aright the tortuous ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... swarm With clumsy hands to deck the female form— With brawny limbs to fit fine ladies' shapes, Or measure out their ribbons, lace and tapes; Or their rude eye the bosom's swell surveys, To cut out corsets or to stitch their stays; Or making essences and soft perfume, Or paint, to give the pallid cheek fresh bloom; Or with hot irons, combs, and frizzling skill, On ladies' heads their daily task fulfil; Or, deeply versed in culinary arts, Are kneading pasty, making pies and tarts; ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... always with a steady cheerfulness; nobody dreamed that this preparing others for the happiness which she herself had lost was any trial to her. Nobody dreamed that every stitch which she set in wedding-garments took painfully in a piece of her own heart, and that not from envy. Her faithful needle, as she sewed, seemed to keep her old wounds open like a harrow, but she never shrank. She saw the sweet, foolish ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... evident to those undertaking sericulture in the beginning, it would soon become so, as it has, in fact, in several parts of the country. I have therefore deemed it proper to call attention to this matter, on the principle that a "stitch in time saves nine." I am informed that there exist already in the United States several associations devoted to acquiring and disseminating knowledge of the art of sericulture. This is a very great step in the right ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... Liberal stewards, with lovely rosettes in their buttonholes, came round me and started cutting my coat with their penknives. They cut it all to pieces. You see that was the best argument they could think of in the excitement of the moment. I believe they'd have cut up every stitch I had, only perhaps it began to dawn on them that it might be awkward for them. Then two of them lifted me up, one by the feet and the other by the shoulders, and carried me off. They wouldn't let me walk. I told them they'd hurt my leg, but they were too busy to listen. As soon as they ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... day, so 't is useless to fill my breast with discontent when I have so good a gown as this to wear to-night. The skirt is a little frayed—oh! how vexing!" and Betty flew to her reticule for needle and thread to set a timely stitch; "now that will not show when the muslin slip goes over." Another anxious moment, and with a sigh of relief Betty slipped on the short waist with its puffed sleeves and essayed to pin the fichu daintily around her neck. Then she dived ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... regardless of the sudden silence which had fallen on his companion, "how you watched my wife making a cap one day—she had nice fingers in such work, Virginie—and how you saved your money to buy lace and ribbon for her to make your mother a cap; and how anxiously you sat watching every stitch as it went in, and carried it off triumphantly when it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... the needle out of the loop, put it into the stitch to be joined, and bring the loop through this stitch, always joining to the centre of ...
— Golden Stars in Tatting and Crochet • Eleonore Riego de la Branchardiere
... this little hand—you may pull it away if you choose—but it is mine, and the pretty little maid, and all that belongs to it. And I will take you and both your hands, bewitched fingers and all, home with me. There they may weave and stitch as much as you like; but as man and wife no one shall part us, and we will lead a life such a life! The joys of Paradise shall be no better than a rap on the skull with an ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... thing ever seen in Ballybun; it was Venus rising from the sea without a stitch. There she stood with one hand raised toward the sky and the other pointing at the backs of all the pious people in Ballybun as they hurried indignantly home. Some of them blamed McAroon, while others said that Murphy knew all the time what a Tombola ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... Society, and it is a great pity we have not the simple remedy of the savages, who eat theirs. These few words of admonition would be incomplete if I did not impress upon you that policy is the only honesty. Art is short and life is long, and a stitch in time debars one from having a new coat. You can take a drink to the horse, but you can't make him well; and nothing succeeds like failure. Vice is the only perfect form of virtue, and virtue—— Easy there! ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... canvas, began to show us how she could go through the water on a bowline; for, the sea having gone down a bit, besides running the same way we were going, she did not take in so much wet nor heel over half so much as she did an hour before, when beating to windward, while every stitch she had on drew, sending her along a good eight knots or more, with a wake behind ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... in the world did you do it, when you want every stitch of it out to catch what wind there is? However, I am in no hurry," said Reyburn laughing. "Do as you please, skipper: you're sailing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... cambric. I do all our underlinen, and it is quite as nice as that in the shops in the Rue de la Paix. Grandmamma says a lady, however poor, should wear fine linen, even if she has only one new dress a year—she calls the stuff worn by people here "sail-cloth"! So I stitch and ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... Mary. She had missed a stitch somewhere, and it irritated her greatly. That was evident by the way she picked at it. She remedied the trouble somehow, recovered her ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... She had conscience enough to confess, whenever she could not get away from it, that for weeks and months she had been slipping far and further from the true and honest course. Sometimes, with a pain like a stitch in the side, the truth would spring upon her; and perhaps for a moment she would wonder at herself, and hate the man misleading her. But this happened chiefly when he was present, and said or did something to vex her; and ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... for the last time, perhaps. This winter has killed me. Will you sit there?" she said to Wilfrid. "And you, Minna, here?" pointing to a chair beside her. "I see you have brought your embroidery. Did you invent that stitch? the design is very pretty. For whom is it,—your father, or monsieur?" she added, turning to Wilfrid. "Surely we ought to give him, before we part, a remembrance of the daughters ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... ye had to do! A musty ould tomb like that, wid nothin but broken stones around it. Wouldn't the brand-new graveyard below there do ye? Musha! but 'tis quare the ginthry is! Och! me dear, 'tis wet y'are; there isn't a dhry stitch on ye." ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... crash through layers of chalk. And huge blocks went over and splitting asunder Broke o'er the Weald like the crashing of thunder. St Cuthman wished the first hour would pass, When St Ursula, praying, reversed the glass. 'Ye legions of hell!' the Old Gentleman cried, 'I have such a terrible stitch in the side!' 'Don't work so hard,' said the Saint, 'only see, The sides of your dyke a heap smoother might be.' 'Just so,' said the Devil, 'I've had a sharp fit, So, resting, I'll trim up my crevice a bit.' St Cuthman ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... which should be interdicted by law, or of a dialogue that ought to land the speakers in jail, or of Hope Booth, posing in imitation nudity as Venus Aphrodite, or some beefy actor, also an imitation nude, as Ajax defying the lightning, or Antinous, facing the audience full front without a stitch of clothing on him. This is pleasant for the wife and daughter, but how about you? You do not look anything like Ajax and your daughter's brothers ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the old man, "that in their private and domestic life, as well as in their labouring career, the lower classes of this country are improvident, thriftless, and extravagant. A stitch in time——" ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... could not bear to tell the child, that though indeed they cannot hurt him, it may not be in her sense! Look here! These are her slippers. She has worked on all day to finish them, that they might be done and out of sight when he came home this evening. The last stitch was done as Richard came in; and now I thought I could only take them out of every ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... only for a few moments. The book, the sewing, and work generally, should be held as far from the eyes as is compatible with good vision. The natural tendency is to reverse this rule. We should never read, write, sew, stitch, or otherwise use the eyes when they smart or tingle, or when the sight is dim or blurred. The eyes are then tired and need a rest. Much injury may be done by reading in twilight, or by artificial light in the early morning, and by reading and working in badly ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... am taken with such a stitch when I laugh. You are too witty, Captain Bertram. Sophy, you must hear what the captain has said. Oh, you killing, funny man—you must repeat that lovely ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... has one of its sides double. The easiest way to make such a bag is to take a piece of cloth six inches broad and 24 inches long. Fold six inches of one end over and then turn the other end to where the cloth has been folded. Stitch up either ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson
... Louis some neckties. The silk-sweater-stitch would do. Married in a traveling-suit. One of those smart dark-blue twills like Mrs. Gronauer Junior's. Top-coat—sable. Louis' hair thinning. Tonic. Oh God, let me sleep. Please, God. The wheeze ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... wretchedness of parsimony. If a man is killed in a duel, he is killed as many a one has been killed; but it is a sad thing for a man to lie down and die; to bleed to death, because he has not fortitude enough to sear the wound, or even to stitch it up.' I cannot but pause a moment to admire the fecundity of fancy, and choice of language, which in this instance, and, indeed, on almost all occasions, he displayed. It was well observed by Dr. Percy, now Bishop ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... allowing themselves to be discomposed by the vicinity of spies, the Moslems had played out their parts, and the Caliph now rose from his ottoman with all the dignity of an eastern despot, repeating, as he did so, to his attendants, what great things he would do, and how he would stitch with his own hands a twelfth under petticoat for the mother of the Prophet. The procession had nearly reached the door by which it had entered, when one of the young Mexicans, recovering apparently from the state of inaction in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... tiny waiting-room with a fire burning. A couple of men sat idly by smoking and talking, scarcely noticing when the boy came in. Austin was thoroughly tired out, more hungry than he had ever been in his life, and chilled to the bone. His feet had been wet all day, and he had not a dry stitch of clothing on him. Setting the suitcase down, he sank upon the rude bench at the side of the room and hardly moved for a long time. The early twilight of the gloomy evening came on, and still he sat, with a thoughtful, far-away look in his eyes. He did ...
— The Hero of Hill House • Mable Hale
... mind in the least. He looked at the strip of white linen that your men's tailors always stitch into that pocket with your name and address and date, and age and weight, ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... Thlus wood, And though in dark and desperate places Stubborned with wire and brown with blood Undaunted April crept and sewed Her violets in dead men's faces, And in a soft and snowy shroud Drew the scarred fields with gentle stitch; Though in the valley where the ditch Was hoarse with nettles, blind with mud, She stroked the golden-headed bud, And loosed the fern, she dared not here To touch nor tend this murdered thing; The wind went wide of it, the year Upon ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... very Wearinesse, I looked alle over my Linen and Mr. Milton's, to see could I finde anie Thing to mend; but there was not a Stitch amiss. I woulde have played on the Spinnette, but was afrayd he should hear my indifferent Musick. Then, as a last Resource, I tooke a Book—Paul Perrin's Historie of the Waldenses;—and was, I believe, dozing a little, when I was aware of a continuall Whispering ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... so with Jones—for, though as prayerful, To grease his wheels he e'er was careful, And healed, with ready stitch, each rent That ruthless time or tempest sent; And thus, by works, his faith expressed, Good neighbor Jones by ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... exist on a collection of gems in a vile binding. Shirts and shoes wear out, and trousers must be replaced when they're too far gone to stand another stitch. Peter was too small to do any responsible work, and he was getting too big to be paid in pennies and dimes. People didn't exactly know what to do with him. One can't be supercilious to a boy who is a Champneys born, but can one invite a boy who runs errands, is on very familiar footing with all ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... mend, On the waist that's weary and worn. Stitch, stitch, stitch, Each tatter so jagged and torn. Collar and cuffs and sleeves, Cobble and darn and baste, Before they gape in a ghastly row, And shriek the dirge of ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... absurd little tweed cap was lying on the seat, and I picked it up almost sentimentally. The lining was frayed and torn. From my suit case in the van I got out a small sewing kit, and hanging the reins on a hook I began to stitch up the rents as Peg jogged along. I thought with amusement of the quaint life Mr. Mifflin had led in his "caravan of culture." I imagined him addressing the audience of Whitman disciples in Camden, and wondered how the fuss ended. I imagined him in his beloved Brooklyn, strolling ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... only the girls would refrain from useless needlework and empty laughter. They talked incessantly and called every mortal—and immortal—thing carina. Queen Margherita was carina, and so was the new cross-stitch, and so was this blue-eyed Olive. Yes, they admitted her alien charm. She was strana, too, but they did not use that word when she was there or she would have rejoiced over such an enlargement ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... we could get along without her—she had a little hacking cough every spring, and he knew she needed the change. It was decided that she should go and stay a month, if she could keep away from home so long. Aunt Hildy said: "Why, Mis' Minot, go right along. Don't you take one stitch of work with you neither. Go, and let your lungs get full of different air, and see what that'll do for you. Take along some everlasting flowers I've got, and make a tea and drink it while you're there, and let the tea and the ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell |
