"Yarn" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I do hope not! It would be such a pity to make a mistake right at the outset in telling a story. For truth to tell, I am not a bit proud, but just a good-natured chap that has decided to spin a sea-yarn for the amusement, and I hope the instruction, it may be, of young Folks, being perfectly willing the older Folks should hear it, too, if they like. And I don't believe the smaller Folks will object to the title, even if they don't have "lords" in this country. ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... preventer when it is thought likely to break from age or extra strain.—To back water. To impel a boat astern, so as to recede in a direction opposite to the former course.—Backing the worming. The act of passing small yarn in the holidays, or crevices left between the worming and edges of the rope, to prevent the admission of wet, or to render all parts of equal diameter, so that the service may be smooth.—Wind backing. The wind is said to back when it changes contrary to its usual circuit. In the northern ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... the sort of thing frequent happens. But Lorson got the scare of his life. He woke up next morning with his pet 'tough'—a big breed—lying across his home doorstep. He guessed he was dead. But he wasn't. He woke up about midday and started guessing where he was. Later on he handed out a fancy yarn what the neches had done to him. An', happening to dove a hand into a pocket, he hauled out a letter addressed to Lorson himself. It just said four words, an' Lorson spoke them. I don't guess they'd mean a thing to the likes ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... again, father, now I have got my mind clear of anxiety. But I have had a trying time of it, I can tell you; but it's too long a story to go into now, I will tell you all the whole yarn this evening. I want you to go in with me now to the girls and make them at home. All this must be just as trying for them at present as the ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... petroleum and petroleum products, chemicals, transport equipment, iron and steel, machinery, textile yarn and fabrics, ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... came tearing along and put its chilly, icy, clammy clamps on the nose of Henry Hagglyhoagly, fastening the clamps like a nipping, gripping clothes pin on his nose. He put his wool yarn mittens up on his nose and rubbed till the wind took off the chilly, icy, clammy clamps. His nose was warm again; he said, "Thank you, mittens, ...
— Rootabaga Stories • Carl Sandburg
... into trouble by monkeying with the accentuations of a buzz saw," he said, "I could see only one way out, and that was to put you into a position where even the disembodied spirit of Calumny itself could not pretend to believe old Napper Tandy's yarn. You know Tandy is fond of playing tricks, especially upon me, and as the president and controlling spirit of a rather strong bank, he has been able to give me a good deal of trouble now and then. A year ago Stafford and I decided that it ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... ended his yarn with this declaration, and you could never make him believe that he had had only a touch of ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... smiled. Do you know him, Pater? He is about thirty years old, and has a pale, calm face. He smiled and said so gratefully, so-so joyously, as if Ulrich were his own son: 'Thank God, he will be spared to us!' The little girl ran to her dumb mother, who was sitting by the stove, winding yarn, exclaiming: 'Mother, he'll get well again. I have prayed for him every day.' The Jew bent over my child and pressed his lips upon the boy's brow—and I, I—I no longer clenched my fist, and was so ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Agency, sir. I found out before my wedding that one of their men had been hanging about here, so I chummed up to him. I spun him a yarn how I'd been with Hawke's once, and they gave me the bag, and I wasn't satisfied, and he'd got a lot of grievances against Hawke's, too, he had. We got very friendly. Pity I had to leave the thing for my wedding. But I came back after ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... Missus and the Heiress do the European Thing," said Ambition. "You stick around. Wait for Black Friday. Then get busy at the Bargain Counter. By and by the new Crop will begin to move, and Money will creep out of the Yarn Stockings and a few Wise Gazabes will cop all the Plush. In every Palm Room there are more Millionaires than Palms. But the Big Round Table over by the Fountain is always reserved by Oscar for the Lad who can ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... Holiday's haggard face and tense voice Eldridge admitted the importance and spun his yarn. No, he did not know where Ruth Annersley was nor if the Greuze girl was Ruth Annersley at all. He did know the person he meant was in the possession of the famous Farringdon pearls, a fact immensely interesting ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... shaft is lowered, then the 3d, then the 2d, and then 4th. The result, in this case, is still the same, viz., that each weft thread passes under six warp ends and over two warp ends. Although a cotton warp is spoken of in some cases, worsted or other yarn can be added to the cotton warp to obtain a variation in the pattern or ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... it up, and Hank had to spend a barrel of money to come clear. That, and a range war that grew out of the killing, and some kind of a business deal just about broke them. That's the way this fellow had it; said a trail-boss told him at Ogalalla that spring. I didn't take much stock in the yarn at the time, but I'm beginning to think he had it straight. You ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... foliage and flowing streams of my own land; but, next to them, after our pleasant chamber in the Schopper-house, with its warm, green-tiled stove, with the figures of the Apostles, and the corner window where I had spun so many a hank of fine yarn, and which was so especially mine own—although I was ever ready and glad to yield my right to it, when Herdegen required it to sit in and make love ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... look out f'r th' little wans, th' big wans 'll not harm ye.' 'Teddy, lad, always wear ye'er Agnus Day.' An', whin th' time come f'r th' thrain to lave, th' girls was up to th' lines; an' 'twas, 'Mike, love, ye'll come back alive, won't ye?' an' 'Pat, there does be a pair iv yarn socks in th' hoomp on ye'er back. Wear thim, lad. They'll be good f'r ye'er poor, dear feet.' An' ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... 'There's t' yarn for thy stockings as is yet to spin; but she can go, for I'll do a bit at 't mysel', ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... force open the locker, in the hope of finding them something that might be serviceable to us; but its entire contents consisted of a coil of fine rope, some pieces of rope-yarn, an empty quart-bottle, and ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... the fruit of labour.' This is indeed so!" As he spoke, they had come into another house; and at the sight of a spinning wheel on a stove-bed, they thought it still more strange and wonderful, but the servant boys again told them that it was used for spinning the yarn to weave cloth with, and Pao-y speedily jumping on to the stove-bed, set to work turning the wheel for the sake of fun, when a village lass of about seventeen or eighteen years of age came forward, and asked them not to meddle with it ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... distress about," answered the boatswain. "Sit down, sir, please, and let's get on with our tea; and while we're gettin' of it I'll spin ye the yarn. That's why me and Chips is havin' tea down here, aft, this afternoon. At other times we messes with the rest of the men in the fo'c'sle; but as soon as you comed aboard we all reckernised that ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... to the coffee-houses of the Latin Quarter where the rich students read their reviews. He says sweet things to her. He weeps, she weeps. They drink; and when they are drunk, they fight. He loves her. He calls her his chaste one, his cross and his salvation. She was barefooted; he gave her yarn and knitting-needles that she might make stockings. And he made shoes for this unfortunate girl himself, with enormous nails. He teaches her verses that are easy to understand. He is afraid of altering her moral beauty ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... earthen bowls, with bright pewter spoons by the dozen,—a delicious cheese, whole, and the table is ready. When Dinah appears, with her bright Madras turban, and says she is ready to dish the "bean-porridge, nine days old," Dorcas tells her she is going down beyond the cider-mill, to bring up the yarn, and, throwing a handkerchief over her head, is out of sight before Dinah has finished blowing the tin horn that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... hold yer horses, and let Jack Honna tell this yarn. Mr. McAlnwick, I said I'd show ye honesty as practised in the Mercantile Marine. Now listen. The Super—that's Mr. Fallon, as ye know—came down into my berth. 'Mornin', Honna'—ye know his way; but he seemed anxious an' fidgety. ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... 'Waverley," clears up a point doubtful in Scott's memory, by saying that Geimells really was a Blue-Gown. He rode a horse of his own, and at races was a bookmaker. He once dropped at Rutherford, in Teviotdale, a clue of yarn containing twenty guineas. Like Edie Ochiltree, he had served at Fontenoy. He died at Roxburgh Newton in 1793, at the age of one hundred and five, according to his own reckoning. "His wealth was the means ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... knitting. Beware of a woman who knits. The keenest lawyer in our county is not so clever a cross-examiner as his sister when she sits with her needles and yarn. Questions directed at one can be parried. You expect them and dodge. The woman knits and knits, and lulls you half to sleep, and then in a far-away voice asks questions. They come as a boon, a gracious acknowledgment that you exist, and though ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... cabin before we uncork the entire yarn," suggested Frank. "To tell you the truth, boys, I didn't have half enough breakfast, and ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... particular as to material, so that it be of the nature of strings or threads. A lady friend once told me that, while working by an open window, one of these birds approached during her momentary absence, and, seizing a skein of some kind of thread or yarn, made off with it to its half-finished nest. But the perverse yarn caught fast in the branches, and, in the bird's effort to extricate it, got hopelessly tangled. She tugged away at it all day, but was finally ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... in her motionless fingers; and Pinky, the kitten, was 'spinning a yarn' on her own account from the ball ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... to produce a work of art is to take a drummer's story and tell it in dusty English, we might try our luck with the modern smoking-car yarn about the traveling-man who came to the country hotel late at night, and see how far we can get with it in the manner of James Branch Cabell imitating ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... Bilker genially, fumbling in his coat pocket, and producing a large flask of rum, "I've brought you a drink, Bandy; and I want to have a yarn ...
— The Tapu Of Banderah - 1901 • Louis Becke
... were speedily made. Each man had a revolver and knife in his belt, and carried in his hands matches, a bundle of pob (or tarred yarn), and a small cask of petroleum oil. They issued from the side of the camp farthest from the wood, and, crawling on their faces, took advantage of every tussock of grass, waving thistle, or hemlock bush in their way. Meanwhile a persistent ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... Like tangled yellow yarn wound spirally about the herbage and shrubbery in moist thickets, the dodder grows, its beautiful bright threads plentifully studded with small flowers tightly bunched. Try to loosen its hold on the support it is climbing ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... that you can take my meaning almost afore I start to speak. An' that's a great comfort to a man o' my age. It'll be terrible hard, when I wants to talk, to begin at the beginning every time. There's that old yarn o' mine about Hambly's cow an' the lawn-mowing machine—I doubt that anybody 'll enjoy it so much as you always do; an' I've so got out o' the way o' telling the beginning—which bain't extra funny, though needful to a stranger's understanding ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... cabin with an extra suit of clothes of his own, made of the roughest kind of gray jeans, home knit yarn socks and a pair of heavy brogan shoes. A second trip brought underclothing of the same rough quality, but Harry changed into them gladly. Jarvis meanwhile produced a bottle filled ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... "Drag up a chair. Listening to a terrific yarn about a guy stranded on an asteroid and then he finds—" The redheaded cadet's voice trailed off when he noticed that Tom ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... Minna, bent and lowly, Eyes with weeping nearly blind; Pessyeh-Tsvaitel, slowly, slowly, With the yarn ...
— Songs of Labor and Other Poems • Morris Rosenfeld
... sitting room, and Bertha flushed a little. She seemed to see all its shabbiness at a glance—the worn spot of carpet by her father's desk, and another in front of the sofa, the old-fashioned furniture, and grandmother sitting there in her corner, knitting a blue yarn stocking. ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... more than forty times, and if my watch wasn't almost out I could spin you a yarn as long as our main-top bowline about the ...
— Blackbeard - Or, The Pirate of Roanoke. • B. Barker
... she had discovered, carefully folded up, the greater portion of a stocking, knitting needles still sticking in it, the ball of gray yarn attached. But she could not endure to sit there; she must have more space to watch for what she knew was coming. Her hair she twisted up as best she might, set the pink sunbonnet on her head, smoothed ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... retired merchants, a venerable logician, a doddering banker, and a half-blind college professor. Of course, I had to make some excuse for Mrs. Fermnore's absence. For the life of me I cannot now remember what yarn I told them; but they were too anxious to be presented to the gay, young women not to swallow it—whole. The old boys fairly swamped the girls with their senile attentions. It was a lively supper party—my ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... martins and squirrels,' &c. Hemp and flax grew more naturally there than elsewhere, which, being well regarded, would give provision for canvas, cables, cording, besides thread, linen cloth, and all stuffs made of linen yarn, 'which are more fine and plentiful there than in all the rest of the kingdom.' Then there were the best materials of all sorts for building, with 'the goodliest and largest timber, that might compare with any in his majesty's ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... There's nobody but themselves to blame. It's easy enough to keep from having the plague," Miss Penelope added confidently. "Anybody can keep from having it, if they will only take the trouble to blow real hard three times on a blue yarn string before breakfast." ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... three flasks three similar portions of cotton lamp-wick, woollen yarn, and silk are placed, after previously moistening them in water and wringing them out. To each is now added similar quantities of concentrated sulphuric acid. The cotton is quickly broken up and dissolved, especially if assisted by gentle warming, and at last a brown, probably a black-brown, ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... had moved themselves to the next horizon whitherto my fancies had flown. Disillusions increased with my height. A yardstick no longer measured to the top of my head; the score is now marked upon the jambs of the cellar door, and sometimes I cheat with yarn balls in the heels of my boots. I cannot grow fast enough to keep pace with my ambition. When I am larger, when I am a man, then I shall—could one but recover the predicate of those phrases! There is a cell in my brain as yet filled with nothing; but there is commotion, ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... and give the geese, which are sure to come with this wind, a certain amount of feeding-grounds which are not likely to be frozen up this winter. Come," continued he, turning away; "the geese will be getting cold, and we want to have time to hear a good yarn before we go ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... of the tale you're free to believe, sir, or not, as you please. It stands upon my father's words, and he always declared he was ready to kiss the Book upon it, before judge and jury. He said, too, that he never had the wit to make up such a yarn; and he defied any one to explain about the lock, in particular, by any other tale. But you shall judge ...
— The Roll-Call Of The Reef • A. T. Quiller-Couch (AKA "Q.")
... like a beast of burden, with an enormous bag of hanked yarn on her back. She entered her hut, dropped the burden on the floor, ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... do you want to stuff me with the yarn that you've travelled forty-five miles in less'n thirty-six hours, an' count on doin' the same thing right over agin, which is ninety miles in less'n ...
— Dick in the Desert • James Otis
... "locker;" Mother Carey's chickens is the well-known appellation, in tarrish tongue, of Stormy Petrels, not superstitiously supposed to forebode tempests, since they seem their very element; but it is probable that to Mother Carey herself (we crave her pardon—Mistress) some astounding "yarn" is attached. The Stork, the Crane, and the Pelican, are each the subject of idle stories; the latter has been asserted to feed her young with her own bosom's blood, and to fill her pouch with water in order to supply them in the desert. A notion is entertained by the ignorant that the Bittern ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 542, Saturday, April 14, 1832 • Various
... poor hand at yarn-spinning, doctor," said Weymouth, turning his blue, twinkling eyes in my direction. "Two people have died at The Gables within ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... after his return from California, the tangled web of my yarn began to unravel. Mat Bailey had reported that nothing had been heard of the highwaymen "from that day to this." But John Keeler's work had not been done in vain. O'Leary of You Bet, the Nevada City jail-bird, had been duly impressed with ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... attempt was made to strike deep-sea soundings, but failed from the drawing of a splice used to connect two portions of the spun-yarn employed. On the following day the attempt was repeated by Captain Stanley, unsuccessfully, however, no bottom having been obtained at a depth of 2400 fathoms. Still a record of the experiment may be considered interesting. At three P.M., when nearly becalmed ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... not only deeply interested her hearers, but momentarily exalted Prosper in their minds as the son of that hero. "Now you speak o' that, ma'am," said the ingenuous Wynbrook, "there's a good deal o' Prossy in that yarn o' his father's; same kind o' keerless grit! You remember, boys, that day the dam broke and he stood thar, the water up to his neck, heavin' logs in the break till he stopped it." Briefly, the evening, in ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Logroller's pious yarn," interrupted the colonel; "but ez it's Old Black that's drivin' to-day instid of Slim Mike, an' ez Old Black ollers makes his time, hedn't ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... splint rocker in the other,—with queer, antique-looking soft footstools of dark cloth, tamboured in bright colors before each,—white quilted covers on table and bureau, and positively, a striped, knitted foot-spread in scarlet and white yarn, folded across the lower ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... a daughter of Mr. Aaron Haynes of this town, a young miss in the tenth year of her age, spun 50 knots of good linen yarn, from sun-rise to sunset. An example of industry, highly honorable to herself ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... neither," declared Lute. "What did you tell such a whopper as that for? You're always sailin' into me if I stretch a yarn the least mite. Why, last April Fool Day you give me Hail Columby for jokin' you about a mouse under the kitchen table. Called me all kinds of names, you did—after you got ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... heavily, each wiled it how he might: one fiddled, another wrote to his Polly, another fished for sharks, another whistled for a wind, scores fell into the form of meditation without the reality, and one got a piece of yarn and amused himself killing flies on the bulwark. Now this shocked poor Billy: he put out his long arm and intercepted a stroke. "What is the row?" ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... has sent me a copy of your paper containing an article of which you do me the honor to make me the subject. What can have put such an extravagant yarn into the head of so amiable and good-natured a fellow? I never said the thing which you attribute to me in any interview, caucus or anywhere else. I never inherited any wealth or had any. My father was a lawyer in very large practice for his day, but he was a very generous and liberal man ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... the ocean in a calm, of a summer's afternoon. Then it was that those who had been in such extreme jeopardy could breathe freely and look about them. On board the Swash all was well—not a rope-yarn had parted, or an eyebolt drawn. The timely precautions of Spike had saved his brig, and great ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... repeated from time to time; if the thread stretches and reaches its due length again, the danger is removed. The wise woman must never ask money for her trouble, but take what is given." In another part of Germany, "a woman is stript naked and measured with a piece of red yarn spun on a Sunday." Sembrzycki tells us that in the Elbing district, and elsewhere in that portion of Prussia, the country people are firmly possessed by the idea that a decrease in the measure of the body is the source of all sorts of maladies. With an increase of sickness ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... reader, that, as it is with this ship and her crew that you will chiefly have to do in the following yarn, they should be severally and particularly ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... cut it as short as you can, Mr. Jellicoe," said Badger. "It has been a long yarn ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... Higgins on the job," chuckled the driver, in high good humor now that he was getting off his favorite yarn. They were nearing the house and the ...
— Billie Bradley and Her Inheritance - The Queer Homestead at Cherry Corners • Janet D. Wheeler
... (f.o.b., 1994 est.) commodities: sugar, edible concentrates, wood pulp, cotton yarn, asbestos partners: South Africa ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... silk stockings. Being very proud of this addition to her dress, she wore them frequently until they became quite worn out; as often, however, as a hole appeared in these choice articles, she very carefully darned it up; but for this purpose, having no silk, she was obliged to use white yarn. She usually appropriated Saturday evenings to this exercise. Finally, she had darned them so much that not a single particle of the original material or color remained. Yet such was the force of habit ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... dollar, man,' said Mr. Saunders; 'now, or never, Peter, do me a good turn. Yonder's your namesake, Peter Peebles, will drive the swine through our bonny hanks of yarn; get him over to John's Coffeehouse, man—gie him his meridian—keep him there, drunk or sober, till the hearing is ower.' [The simile is obvious, from the old manufacture of Scotland, when the gudewife's thrift, as the yarn wrought in ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... river above the lower end of the Grand Canyon, is apparent to one who is familiar with the ground, and the many discrepancies brand the whole story as a fabrication. In the language of the frontier, he "pitched a yarn," and it took beautifully. Hardy, whom I met in Arizona a good many years ago, told me he believed the man told the truth, but his belief was apparently based only on the condition White was in when rescued. That he was nearly dead is true, but that is about all of his yarn ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... right," says I. "Anyway, he shouldn't miss hearin' this lovely yarn of yours. You come back with me and I'll see if I can't fix it durin' the afternoon. Let's see, what did you say the name of ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... there," explained the journalist, "—the jam and the break, and all this magnificent struggle afterwards. It makes a great yarn. I feel tempted sometimes to help it out a little—artistically, you know—but of course that wouldn't do. She'd make a ripping yarn, though, if I could get up some motive outside mere trade rivalry for the blowing up of those dams. That would ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... operators at least three times the results and compensations for the same expenditure of time and toil. It thus affords them means of earning a more comfortable living, and at the same time gives the people a supply of cheap cotton cloth which they require, and utilizes defective yarn which the steam power mills cannot use. The government inspectors publicly commend Mr. Churchill for declining to patent his invention and for leaving it free to be used by everybody without ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... Furthermore her work was now scrupulously honest, and she was sensitively alert to the slightest imputation of untruthfulness. She offered no specious explanations for her withdrawal from the debate, and when Mary Brooks innocently inquired "what little yarn" she told the registrar, that she could get away so often, Eleanor fixed her with an unpleasantly penetrative stare and answered with all her old-time hauteur that ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... much if he would give me the history of his life. "That I will, my honey," replied he, "all that I can remember of it, though I have no doubt but that I've forgotten the best part of it. It's now within five minutes of two bells, so we'll heave the log and mark the board, and then I'll spin you a yarn, which will keep us both from going to sleep." O'Brien reported the rate of sailing to the master, marked it down on ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... wash the yarn to separate the grease and filth; do the same with all bad citizens, sort them out and drive them forth with rods—'tis the refuse of the city. Then for all such as come crowding up in search of employments and offices, we must card them thoroughly; ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... safe. You think it over, and come and talk to me any time you feel like it. Be sure I'll be delighted to give any help I can. Look here! there's a friend of mine staying at the White Hart in Lewes: Captain Arnutt, of the Royal North-west Mounted Police. Go and look him up and have a yarn with him about how he made his start. He nearly broke his heart trying to pass into Sandhurst without getting the necessary stuff into his hard head. But, begad! there isn't a finer man in the North-west to-day than Will Arnutt. I'll write him a ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... Mrs. McMurtrie, flinging her gesture upward with a cluck of the fingers. "I wouldn't give that for your yarn! You're a hussy, from the looks of the whole business, and I've a mind to be suing the railroad station for the sending of you to me. You mentioned the husband of your own free will. Your husband! ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... Columbia," I told him. "She is slick as a whistle. Lindstrom fell for her yarn that it was sleight of hand—but it was HC. I'd ...
— Modus Vivendi • Gordon Randall Garrett
... (c.i.f., 1997) commodities: mechanical appliances, electrical machinery, mineral fuels, plastics, iron and steel, fabrics, cotton and yarn (1997) partners: Japan, Taiwan, US, South Korea, Hong ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... take him!" he thought. "A duel does not matter, he won't kill me, but the trouble is the other fellows will hear of it, and they know perfectly well it was a yarn. It's abominable! I shall be disgraced all ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... are moored near by, alongside each other. On the upper deck of one the boatman is fast asleep, rolled up in a sheet from head to foot. On another, the boatman—also basking in the sun—leisurely twists some yarn into rope. On the lower deck in a third, an oldish-looking, bare-bodied fellow is leaning over an oar, staring ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... sad. I've come to the conclusion that there is nothing easier than to act a part. No one dreamed of suspecting me. There was one thing, however, that I had not thought of. You must be prepared with some sort of yarn beforehand, or else when any one asks you where you've come from and why you've come, you don't know what to say. But, however, even that is not so important. You've only to stand a drink and lie as much ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... saying, he retreated from the table, and presently brought forth a curious oak box from a mysterious corner of the hutch, and after some difficulty in drawing out the sliding cover, produced a roll of tawny newspapers, tied up with rope yarn, a colored wood engraving in a black frame—a portrait, with the inscription, "James Wolfe, Esq'r, Commander in Chief of His Majesty's Forces in the Expedition to Quebec," and on the reverse the following scrap from the London ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... Tom Bigg's yarn. It was much longer, and not perhaps in the same language exactly in which I have given it. When Captain Armstrong heard the particulars he promised to go to the spot described by the seaman, and to form some plan by which ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... could not say one word. Friend Barbara took up her knitting, and I saw that she was rounding the heel of a stocking; and I trust I am truthful, if volatile, when I remember me that I wished I were her knitting-needle. She was very quiet: her ball of yarn slipped away, lacking proper gravitation. "My!" said she, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... preached during the festival had much the same value. You are aware that these friars never fail to go begging for their Easter eggs, and receive not only eggs, but many other things, such as linen, yarn, chitterlings, hams, chines, and similar trifles. So when Easter Tuesday came, and the friar was making those exhortations to charity of which such folks as he are no niggards, ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... hundred stripes; but abuse from him is not a punishable offense. Instruction, at home as well as at school, is confined to boys. The birth of a boy is indicated by hanging a bow and arrow over the door; that of a girl, by a spindle and yarn. In naming the number of his children, the father counts only the boys. Boys are clothed in the finest material the family can afford; girls, in rags. Parents may destroy their children, but only girls are ever sacrificed. The mother can seldom read and write, her ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... yarns I keep spinning her, as old as Adam, and as stale as bilge-water? You that are so keen, how comes it you don't notice her eyes at these times? I feel them shine on me like a couple of suns. They would make a statue pay the yarn out. Who ever fancied my chat as ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... wonder roundly At any astounding yarn, By darning their dear eyes roundly ('T was all they had to darn). They "hoisted their slacks," adjusting Garments of plantain-leaves With nautical twitches (as if they wore breeches, Instead of a ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... transformation (Verwandlungsstoffe): either the principal material which constitutes the essential substance of a new product, the yarn of the weaver for instance, the raw wool, silk or cotton of the spinner; or the secondary material which, indeed, enters into the work, but only for purposes of ornamentation, as ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... could be made to suffer acute pain, but not in any way injured. Lollius has introduced a torture which never injures anyone subjected to it, but which causes extreme agony while in use. Only stretch a hard-yarn Spanish blanket over a thigh, draw it tight and hold the thigh at just the right distance from just the right size of brazier with its coals properly tended, and the subject can be made to tell the truth; but not broiled alive, for the blanket will singe before the flesh ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... who had just told us of his tragical encounter with Apollyon, a yarn which quite put Bunyan's narrative in the shade! It was useless talking; my irritation gave place to mirth, and, stretching myself out on the grass, I roared with laughter. The more I thought of Lechuza's stern rebuke the louder I laughed, until I yelled with ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... his yarn," cried Randall, "he left out the blackmail. He bragged in his beastly way that Colonel Boyce was worth a thousand a year to him. All he had to live upon now that the blood-suckers had ruined his business. Then ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... not propose to enter into details respecting the progress of the trades of Belfast. The most important is the spinning of fine linen yarn, which is for the most part concentrated in that town, over 25,000,000 of pounds weight being exported annually. Towards the end of the seventeenth century the linen manufacture had made but little progress. In 1680 all Ireland did not export ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... didn't like it, but I made it up to her in other ways. I gin her some lamb's wool yarn for a pair of stockin's most immegictly afterwerds, and a half bushel of but'nuts. She is ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... through a tunnel two thousand feet under the ground. Man is like an audience and he has walked out on mystery and adventure. The show kind of tired him. And got his goat. It would have been a good yarn otherwise, the motor vagabonds. I'd have ended with ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... "Monty is all you ever said of him and then some; but we're able to handle this ourselves all right without him. Tell 'em a bull yarn, I say!" ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... once, and told her a wonderful tale—told first after this fashion by Bob of the Angels, at a winter-night gathering of the women, as they carded and spun their wool, and reeled their yarn together. It was one well-known in the country, but Rob had filled it after his fancy with imaginative turns and spiritual hints, unappreciable by the tall child of seventeen walking by Ian's side. There was not among the maidens ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... Danny, coming down and raging in his blue yarn socks to the janitor, 'should I be turned out of me comfortable apartments to lay in the dirty grass like a rabbit? 'Tis like Jerome to stir up trouble wid small matters ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... warmest stuffs; tippets and mittens; a full suit for a little boy, boots and all; a jackknife and whistle; two dolls dressed in brave finery, with flaxen hair and blue eyes; a little hatchet; a huge ball of yarn, and a hundred and one things needed in the household; and underneath all a Bible; and under that a silver star on a blue field, and pinned to the silk a scrap of paper, ...
— Holiday Tales - Christmas in the Adirondacks • W. H. H. Murray
... a visit in Lancashire I was once kindly permitted to visit a cotton mill, and I learned that the cotton yarn there produced in a single day would be long enough to wind round this earth twenty-seven times at the equator. It appears that the total production of cotton yarn each day in all the mills together would be on the average about one hundred and fifty-five million miles. In fact, ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... Thornton. "I have my doubts about his ever being at Oxford, and I take no stock at all in the rest of that guff. It is barely possible that he may have been over to England, but the yarn about his having traveled in South America, Africa and Europe, is ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... separated from the impure, the clean from the filth, and the fine from the course; which otherwise could not be done at all, or brought to pass without the preceding preparation; this done, they spin Yarn of it, which they boil in water over the Fire, or else with Ashes set in a warm place, whereby it is purified afresh, whereby the filth and superfluities are fully separated from it, and after a due washing the Yarn is dried again, delivered to the Workmen, ...
— Of Natural and Supernatural Things • Basilius Valentinus
... wandering, or what? 'There she is!' Who is she—and where? We don't want to hear your old fish yarn anyway." ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... into electricity by spectrum is an interesting possibility. The idea of using foreign proteins on the human system to repel enemies, is also interesting. Do you get it? We didn't either until we read the story. Read the yarn and you'll get ...
— The Sword and the Atopen • Taylor H. Greenfield
... to be described the crew's quarters. The crew consisted of two hands, both strong and sturdy, and both belonging to the same coloured man. Though our trusty tar, Henry, had doubtless never heard "The Yarn of the 'Nancy Bell'" and had never eaten a shipmate in his life, yet he had a whole crew within himself as truly as the "elderly naval man" who had eaten one. There was therefore no occasion for extensive quarters. Fortunately, an available space at ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... too that she could tell stories of her own; and now and then we used to persuade her to "spin a yarn," as Bella Dornton, whose father had been a naval officer, ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... by this that he said: "The old pauper woman whom I saw to-day in the poorhouse, in her hunger saving her apple to give to the little orphan just brought in, and unraveling her stocking and bending her twisted old fingers to knit its yarn into socks for the blue feet of the child will, I verily believe, begin her life at death with more intellectual genius—mark the words, intellectual genius—than will begin that second life any statesman or prime minister or man famed in our ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... remainder who had been cast upon their shores." Thus all ends as happily as a comedy; everybody and everything are saved; men and ships return: meanwhile Bracciolini has entertained his reader with a pretty, exciting episode, (what British sailors call "a yarn"), without making himself absolutely ridiculous by placing on record that the Romans in the days of Tiberius lost "a thousand ships"; though he certainly gives credit to his reader for considerable credulity by inviting him to believe that the Romans at any time ever had a fleet amounting ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... is for sale, both pure and mixed with clay in briquettes, and salt in blocks almost as black as coal, and three times as heavy, and piles of drugs—a medley of bones, horns, roots, leaves, and minerals—and raw cotton and cotton yarn from Wuchang and Bombay, and finished goods from Manchester. At one of the villages there was a chair for hire, and, knowing how difficult was the country, I was willing to pay the amount asked—namely, 7d. for nearly ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... midnight forest is more sublime, or a fitter reply from earth to the thunder. The railway carriages of this mechanical age are the conductors of the fire of intellect and passion—and its steamboats may be loaded with thunderbolts, as well as with bullocks or yarn. The great American ship is but a machine; and yet how poetical it becomes, as it walks the waters of the summer sea, or wrestles, like a demon of kindred power, with the angry billows. Mechanism, indeed, may be called the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... tell me of it?"—"None, whatever; and perhaps, by the time I have done, the doctor may have found his way back again, or Jack may bring us some news of him. So here goes for a short, but a true yarn." ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... tongue, and I packed her up, and put her into her nursery. She'll mind me when she sees I will be minded; and as for little Owen, nothing would satisfy him but his promising not to go away. I saw that chap asleep before I came down, so there's no fear of the yarn beginning again; but you see what chance there is of his mending while those children are at him day ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... while this may be only a sailor's yarn, it is at the same time well known that these creatures do attain a ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 16, February 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... Portage when the Canadian Pacific Railway was a-building; a man who, in addition to his unparalleled knowledge of wood-craft and bush-lore, could also sing the old voyageur songs and tell a capital hunting yarn into the bargain. He was deeply susceptible, moreover, to that singular spell which the wilderness lays upon certain lonely natures, and he loved the wild solitudes with a kind of romantic passion that amounted almost to an obsession. The life ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... gone," said Ruth, pointing, as she spoke, to a little twinkle of light so far astern that it seemed to rest on the very waters. Half an hour later the captain said, "Now let's go below, where it is warmer; and if you care to hear it, I will spin you a yarn of Hatteras Light." ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... kind to be interested, and I am unfortunate in never seeing you save under circumstances unfavourable for yarn-spinning." ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... she accept that wildly fanciful yarn of his? For moments that, brief though they must have been, seemed intolerably protracted, he awaited her verdict in the extremest anxiety—not, however, neglecting to employ the respite thus afforded him to make another ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... "It's a dull yarn," said Jimmy, apologetically. "I've been boring you. By the way, Dreever asked me to square up with you for that game, in case he shouldn't be back. ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse |
