"Thread" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sisters down below Were bunglers when compared with these. No care did this old woman know But giving tasks as she might please. No sooner did the god of day His glorious locks enkindle, Than both the wheels began to play, And from each whirling spindle Forth danced the thread right merrily, And back was coil'd unceasingly. Soon as the dawn, I say, its tresses show'd, A graceless cock most punctual crow'd. The beldam roused, more graceless yet, In greasy petticoat bedight, Struck up her farthing light, And then forthwith the bed beset, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... ending in a rather unsatisfactory manner. With even less violence to the inner logic of the piece than was necessary in the case of 'Fiesco', 'Cabal and Love' might have been given a happy ending. The whole tragedy hangs by a thread in the fifth act. Lady Milford has fled and is no longer a factor in the entanglement. The wicked president has relented and is ready to yield. Old Miller, released from prison, returns to his house and finds Louise brooding over her ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... it was shaped till within these three or four hundred years. Underneath that, and behind the hanging Pallium, appears the Dalmatic, edged with gold lace; and under that, extending the whole breadth of the figure, and finishing with rich and deep thread lace, is the Alb, made of fine linen. The Tunic is quite hidden by the dalmatic. The Sandals appear to be of gold tissue, and to rest on ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... a moment," replied the Scotchman, half closing his eyes. "Well, Rhode Island never furnished much aid along the line of clockmaking; her talents seemed to lie in the direction of spinning yarn, making thread, and weaving textiles. What clocks she needed were imported or made by hand by local silversmiths. Pennsylvania, however, contributed her part. David Rittenhouse of Philadelphia was an exceedingly skillful clockmaker who not ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... She remembered with what interest she had always read of this little thread of the world. She had almost forgotten that it was here within touch and sight. For a moment something of the vision of Cotton was mirrored in her mind. The glimmering sea of delicate leaves whispered and murmured ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... are you going, mother mine? I'm going to sit by the old grapevine, And watch the gliding swallow bring Clay for her nest from the meadow spring— Clay and straw and a bit of thread To weave it into ...
— The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes • Leroy F. Jackson
... old boat, creaking in every joint as if she had the dengue, grunted her way over flashing combers with a speed that seemed almost indecent. Then, just as we were getting near enough to catch the heated glitter of the Bacolod church-dome, to see the golden thread of beach at the foot of the waving cocoanuts, the wind fell, slap-bang, as suddenly as if God had said hush—and we stuck there, ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... open conditions of the trees. When of adult size, the grubs proceed to spin themselves in, forming a thick cocoon composed of threads of a material which, though as soft as paste when emitted from the body, hardens so as to form a strong and even thread. If the insect be allowed to remain for a sufficient time in the cradle which it has spun for its second birth, the body within the chrysalis case will proceed in a manner to dissolve; and in the milky fluid thus produced, where only faint traces of its ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... a dove-colored silk with a black velvet stripe through it. I showed her a shawl which John had given me,—a pale-yellow gauzy fabric with a gold-thread border,—and told her to make me up. She produced quite a marvellous effect; for this baby understood the art of dress to perfection. She made my hair into a loose mass, rolling it away from my face; yet it was firmly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... nearly four thousand feet. Below him the country lay spread like a relief map—valley, lesser ranges, foothills, far-off plain, the green of trees, the brown of grass and harvest, the blue of glimpsed water, the haze of heat and great distance, the thread-like gossamer of roads, the half-guessed shimmer of towns and cities in the mirage of summer, all the opulence of earth and the business of human activity. Millions dwelt in that haze, and beyond them, ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... phenomenal good luck. By chance it turned out well; there were ten thousand chances of ignominious failure. Had we failed would we have been guests of honor? No! We would have been stoned from Graustark. You don't know how thin the thread was that held your fate. It makes me shudder to think of the crime our act might have been. Ah, had I but known you were the Princess, no chances should have been taken," he ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... such-like. My grandfather, David Graham, kent the taste of Poosie Nancie's whisky too well to look after his ain, and it slipped through his fingers like a knotless thread.' ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... boats in the creek, but the rebels had sprung out of them and a left them to drift about with their sails up, so that it was no easy work for the Hyson to thread her way amongst them. Still the little boat steamed slowly and steadily on towards Soochow. Along the banks of the canal the rebels, in clusters, were marching towards safety. On them the Hyson opened fire, ...
— The Story of General Gordon • Jeanie Lang
... in fancy, half in fact, the thread of an occult idea runs through this weird theme. You cannot, even at the end, be quite sure whether the author has been making fun of you or not. Perhaps, if the truth were told, he could not quite tell you himself. The tale all hangs about one of a group of friends ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... as hitherto has been thy journeying—wilt thou be our guide out into the green valleys and the blue heaven, and the sight once more of the bright sunshine and the fair fleecy clouds? No other clue to the labyrinth do we seek but that small, thin, pure, transparent thread of silver, which neither bush nor brier will break, and which will wind without entanglement round the roots of the old trees, and the bases of the shaggy rocks. As if glad to escape from its savage birthplace, the small rivulet now gives utterance ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... of Boston and New York. It represents the great and genial writer as some few years younger than he was when he last visited this country. The expression of the face is one of thought—rather as he might have appeared when meditating over some new turn to be given to the thread of a narrative, than as he used to look when reading to an audience. This picture is printed in two or three simple tints, of which the flesh tint is the most predominant. It is set in an oval passe-partout, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 27, October 1, 1870 • Various
... and the saccharatus, were the most abundant. We observed also a few patches of buck-wheat, and different sorts of kidney-beans; but neither common wheat, barley, nor oats. A species of nettle, the urtica nivea was also sown in square patches, for the purpose of converting its fibres into thread, of which they manufacture a kind of cloth. We saw no gardens nor pleasure-grounds, but considerable tracts of pasture or meadow-land intervened between the villages, on which however were few cattle, ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... to plan her season's campaign, to carry it out, to audit her accounts, to study agricultural directions, to preserve the peace, to keep her fences in order, to attend to the sick, to rule her household and her spirit, to dispose of her harvest, and to bring either end of the thread out of the tangled skein of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... a song which he loved to be sung; and he said, "My good Cesario, when I heard that song last night, methought it did relieve my passion much. Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain. The spinsters and the knitters when they sit in the sun, and the young maids that weave their thread with bone, chant this song. It is silly, yet I love it, for it tells of the innocence of ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... then; it begins to look as if I had." It was apparent to Hillard that Sandford was not in his wife's confidence in all things. He also saw the wisdom of dropping the subject while at the table. To take up the thread of that romance again! He needed no ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... penumbra of things half real, of travellers' tales, lay Madrid, where the king lived and where politicians wrote in the newspapers,—and Francia—and all that was not Almorox.... In him I seemed to see the generations wax and wane, like the years, strung on the thread of labor, of unending sweat and strain of muscles against the earth. It was all so mellow, so strangely aloof from the modern world of feverish change, this life of the peasants of Almorox. Everywhere roots striking into the infinite past. For before the Revolution, before the Moors, ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... switched voice network of the Defense Communications System (US Department of Defense). Eutelsat - European Telecommunications Satellite Organization (Paris). fiber-optic cable - a multichannel communications cable using a thread of optical glass fibers as a transmission medium in which the signal (voice, video, etc.) is in the form of a coded pulse of light. GSM - a global system for mobile (cellular) communications devised by the Groupe Special Mobile of the pan-European ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... destruction. The seeds of alfalfa sometimes become so impregnated with the seeds of dodder that the latter will grow where the seed is sown, thus introducing it to new centers. The dodder starts in the soil and soon throws up its golden-colored thread-like stems, which reach out and fasten on the alfalfa plants that grow sufficiently near. The dodder then loses its hold upon the soil and gets its food entirely from the alfalfa plants, which it ultimately destroys. But since the seeds of the dodder remain at least for a time in the soil, and the ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... fire of London, said, "Cannon Street roared, Bread Street was burnt to a crust, Crooked Lane was burnt straight, Addle Hill staggered, Creed Lane would not believe it till it came, Distaff Lane had sprung a fine thread, Ironmonger Lane was redhot, Seacoal Lane was burnt to a cinder, Soper Lane was in the suds, the Poultry was too much singed, Thames Street was dried up, Wood Street was burnt to ashes, Shoe Lane was burnt to boot, Snow Hill was melted down, Pudding Lane and Pye Corner ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... lava. Percival Was older than his consort, twenty years; Yet were they fitly mated; though, with her, Time had dealt very gently, leaving face And rounded form still youthful, and unmarred By one uncomely outline; hardly mingling A thread of silver in her chestnut hair That affluent needed no deceiving braid. Framed for maternity the matron seemed: Thrice had she been a mother; but the children, The first six winters of her union brought, A boy and girl, were lost to her at once By a wall's falling on them, as they went, Heedless ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... in the side window, and crocheted thread edging,—of which she had already yards rolled up and pinned together in a white ball upon her ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... rough encounter with the boat had considerably mutilated the jelly-fish, and torn away portions of the long thread-like processes or tentacles that hang from the central mass; yet these, when the creature was laid along the sand of the ocean beach, measured over two hundred feet in length, and it is conjectured that, uninjured and stretched to their utmost length, they could not have been less than ...
— Harper's Young People, November 18, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... to the definition!" said Mrs. Merryweather. "In case of a false definition, the falsifier takes up the thread. Go on, Jerry." ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... upper surface continues at the normal rate, or may be even somewhat increased. He has further shown by attaching a thread, running over a pulley, to a horizontal radicle of large size, namely that of the common bean, that it was able to pull up a weight of only one gramme, or 15.4 grains. We may therefore conclude ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... mind, one day, to entertain me with one of the country shows, wherein they exceed all nations I have known, both for dexterity and magnificence. I was diverted with none so much as that of the rope-dancers, performed upon a slender white thread, extended about two feet, and twelve inches from the ground. Upon which I shall desire liberty, with the reader's patience, ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... they saw the little birds flying back and forth, back and forth, with bits of hair and straw in their bills, and then they said to one another, "The Bobolinks are building a nest," and they hung pieces of cotton and bunches of thread on the lower limbs of the tree, and watched to see Robert carry them off to weave into the outside of the nest, while Linny made a soft lining of hair inside. And at last the little home was finished, and three pretty ...
— Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... been engaged to work in one of the Parisian play-houses; and young Watteau, of whom he had some slight knowledge, has departed in his company. He doesn't know it was I who persuaded the scene-painter to take him; that he would find the lad useful. We offered him our little presents—fine thread-lace of our own making for his ruffles, and the like; for one must make a figure in Paris, and he is slim and well-formed. For myself, I presented him with a silken purse I had long ago embroidered for another. Well! we shall ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... particles. The body-substance cannot be said in itself to possess any definite form, except in so far as it may be bounded by a shell; but it has the power, wherever it may be exposed, of emitting long thread-like filaments ("pseudopodia"), which interlace with one another to form a network (fig. 25, b). These filaments can be thrown out at will, and to considerable distances, and can be again retracted into the soft mass of the general body-substance, and they are the agents ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... pretty, made with the "fuseau", very fine—a mixture of Valenciennes and Mechlin. It is very strong, though it looks delicate. The dentellieres still do a very good business. The little girls begin to work as soon as they can thread their needle, ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... did not resume her arm-work, for after all these years her acting might be supposed to be good enough for Riseholme without further practice, and nothing more was heard of the borrowing of the axe from the Ambermere Arms. But having begun to thread her pearl-beads, she finished them; Georgie, however, cared no longer whether the gold border of King Cophetua's mantle went quite round the back or not, and having tacked on the piece he was working at, rolled it up. It was just going to be an ordinary party, after ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... of newcomers here in America, whose children learn, read, write only English, the tradition of Anglo- American literature is all that holds us by a thread above chaos. If we could all be made to speak German, or Italian, or Spanish, there would be cause, but no excuse, for an attempted revolution. But English is dominant here and will remain so. Could we hope to make an American literary language without dependence on English literature, a protective ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... in the corners, flickering, dancing, threatening to come out and play, then shrinking back as the blaze leaped and the room widened. The rough brown walls took the shine and broidered themselves with a thread of golden tracery. In such an illumination the eyes shone with added luster, flying locks were all hyacinthine, the frocks might have been ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... the wall, I have given Philotimus orders not to put any difficulty in the way of your doing whatever you please. I think, however, you had better call in Vettius.[192] In these bad times, when the life of all the best men hangs on a thread, I value one summer's enjoyment of my Palatine palaestra rather highly; but, of course, the last thing I should wish would be that Pomponia and her boy should live in ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... for the first time. It seemed to take his breath away, as he stood for a moment on the stairs, listening. It was only Euphra singing The Flowers of the Forest. The drawing-room door was still open, and her voice rang through the wide lofty hall. He entered almost on tip-toe, that he might lose no thread of the fine tones.—Had she chosen the song of Scotland out of compliment to him?—She saw him enter, but went on without hesitating even. In the high notes, her voice had that peculiar vibratory ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... might reap some advantage from the affair, like the good merchant that he was, young and active, he put his books and clerks at his disposition. His boast was, in effect, that his buttons, thanks to a brass bonnet around which the thread was rolled instead of passing through the holes, never cut the thread and could not be broken. When they came off it was with a piece of the cloth. What better justification of his pretensions, what better advertisement than his button torn off with a piece of the trousers of the ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... he lived and had his being. But triviality is frequently paradoxical and always relative. If Dundee had not raised an arm to urge his troopers on at Killiekrankie the world would know a different England. A single thread it was that solved for Theseus the ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... o'clock. My messenger, it appeared, had arrived safe about five in the evening, and had proceeded on his route. I was very cold on my arrival, and sick also. There seemed to be a chilliness all over me, both within and without. Indeed I had not a dry thread about me. I took some hot brandy and water, and went to bed; but desired, as soon as my clothes were thoroughly dried, to be called up, that I might go forward. This happened at about two in the morning, when I got up. I took my breakfast by the fire-side. I then desired the post-boy, ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... CUT THE MOST AGREEABLE ACQUAINTANCE.—Do this when you are convinced that he lacks principle; a friend should bear with a friend's infirmities, but not with his vices. He that does a base thing in zeal for his friend, burns the golden thread ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... tender cares of a mother began to fill her thoughts and move in her breast: for at the head of a troup of Modern bowmen she cast her eyes upon her son Wotton, to whom the fates had assigned a very short thread. Wotton, a young hero, whom an unknown father of mortal race begot by stolen embraces with this goddess. He was the darling of his mother above all her children, and she resolved to go and comfort him. But first, according to the good ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... not now in actual warfare with the government; but, that their time would come to be attacked, there was every reason to apprehend. Hence, when the Duke of Alva, in the memorable summer of 1567, set out from Piedmont at the head of ten thousand veterans, to thread his way over the Alps and along the eastern frontiers of France, through Burgundy and Lorraine, to the fated scene of his bloody task in the Netherlands, the Protestants of France saw in this neighboring demonstration a new peril to themselves. In the first moments of trepidation, their leaders ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... office; on the whole a strange-looking young man to be a doctor; no stereotyped thoughts, it may be, pounding through the head he held so fast between his hands. Strange entanglements were here, too, with the brilliant life over the Gulf: a life whose visible thread, it is easily surmised, will hardly lead us by ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... that is the reality and the mystery. Life is vastly different from mere chemic matter fluxing in high modes of notion. Life persists. Life is the thread of fire that persists through all the modes of matter. I know. I am life. I have lived ten thousand generations. I have lived millions of years. I have possessed many bodies. I, the possessor of these many bodies, have persisted. I am life. I am the ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... "the common Nettle has long been known as affording a large proportion of fibre, which has not only been made into ropes and cordage, but also into sewing-thread, and beautiful, white, linen-like cloth of very superior quality. It does not, however, appear that its cultivation for this purpose has ever been fairly attempted. The fibre is easily separated from ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... its hippopotami, was reached in a short time, and we began to thread the jungle along its right bank until we were halted point-blank by a narrow sluice having an immeasurable depth of black mud. The difficulty presented by this was very grave, though its breadth was barely eight feet; the donkeys, and least of all the horses, could not be made to traverse ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... in pity, let me go: I have spun the flaxen thread, until my aching fingers drop; And my weary feet will falter, though the whizzing wheel should stop. I can see the sunny meadow where the gayest flowers grow; And I long to weave a garland;—dearest mother, let ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and other trifling articles of apparel which he had worn, were treasured up as precious relics by those who had fought under him at Sedgemoor. Old men who long survived him desired, when they were dying, that these trinkets might be buried with them. One button of gold thread which narrowly escaped this fate may still be seen at a house which overlooks the field of battle. Nay, such was the devotion of the people to their unhappy favourite that, in the face of the strongest evidence by which the fact of a death was ever verified, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... some spools or hanks of No. 6 linen shoe thread, metal sockets, a supply of strong piano wire, a quantity of closely-woven silk or cotton cloth, ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... a moment the thread of her discourse, which gave Flora an opportunity of bending over Fanny and whispering in her ear, in ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... production of tunics for postmen. For each of these he received two shillings, or half a dollar a coat, which he considered a very good price. He paid his presser 4s. 6d. ($1.12) per day; his machinist 5s. ($1.25); his button-holer 2s. 6d. (60c.), from which she must find twist and thread; and the feller 1s. 3d. (30c.), a total of thirteen shillings threepence. For twelve coats he received twenty-four shillings, his own profit thus being ten shillings and ninepence ($2.68) for his own labor as baster and ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... may congratulate ourselves on having brought this strange adventure to a good end. But I have left my hat down yonder on the river bank; albeit it has lost pretty near all its lace and is thread-bare with long service, it was still good to guard my old head, sorely tried by years and labours, against sun and rain. Go see, my son, if it may still be found where I dropped it. And if you discover it, bring it me, I beg,—likewise one of my shoe buckles, which I see I have lost. For my ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... was as thin as a five shilling piece, the chain was a mere thread of gold. It was an evening affair, to be worn with dress clothes, and this fact presented to the mind of Jones a confirmation of the idea that, not only was he literally in Rochester's shoes, but that Rochester's ordinary watch and chain had ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... thousand insults from the conspirators, who deprived them of their horses and arms, and even stripped them of their clothes. Ninno was dressed in an old doublet and breeches, without stockings, having only a pair of miserable pack-thread sandals, and had walked all the way with a stick in his hand. The viceroy received him very graciously, praising his loyalty, and told him that he appeared more nobly in his rags than if clothed in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... spoken grows a many-branched feathery palm, but it does not shelter it from the piercing rays of the sun of those latitudes; it seems only to protect the roots of the tree itself; still the feathered boughs are strong enough to support a small thread-bare blue cloth, which projects like a penthouse, screening the face of a girl who lies dreaming, stretched at full-length on the glowing stones, while a few yellowish mountain-goats spring from stone to stone in search of pasture as gaily as ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... was learning a new crochet pattern; one did it in thread of a Sevres blue shade; when several long strips were made, one sewed them together with pieces of black satin between each two, and there was an antimacassar of severe but rich beauty. Denah explained all this as she set Mevrouw to work on the pattern; it was very intricate, quite exciting, because ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... happy and contented, now and then visiting the back building, in order to get a glimpse of his Sarah. It was not much that he was able to see of her; for there, also, every one was busy with needles and thread and with marking-ink, and she sat bending over ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... and was free from desire of worldly enjoyment. And he became daily emaciated and grew lean-fleshed. And one day he saw the spirits of his ancestors, heads down, in a hole, by a cord of virana roots having only one thread entire. And that even single thread was being gradually eaten away by a large rat dwelling in that hole. And the Pitris in that hole were without food, emaciated, pitiable, and eagerly desirous of salvation. And Jaratkaru, approaching the pitiable one, himself in humble guise, asked ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... he said, as though picking up a conversational thread, "that there are two of you who would be willing to make the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... other teacher Jesus Christ emphasized the actuality and awfulness of sin; more than any other has He intensified the world's consciousness of sin. He never attempted to relieve us of the sackcloth by asserting our comparative innocence; He never attempted to work into that melancholy robe one thread of color, to relieve it with one solitary spangle of rhetoric. Sin was the burden of the life of Christ because it is the burden of our life. Christ has done more than insisted on the reality, the odiousness, the ominousness, of sin—He has laid bare its principle ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... that," said Will, pointing to a little crack through which a thread of water made its way running over a few inches of rock, and then disappearing ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... spake, and ended; but fain would Aphrodite have given him back to life. Nay, spun was all the thread that the Fates assigned, and Daphnis went down the stream. The whirling wave closed over the man the Muses loved, the man not hated of ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... of Christiana seemed to affect her terribly. Enid watched her in terror. More than once she was fearful that the frail thread would snap—the last faint glimmer of reason go out for ever. And yet it would be madness to tell Margaret Henson the truth. In the first place she would not have understood, and on the other hand she might have comprehended enough to ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... ground, and piled high on the evergreen hedge at the side of the house. In the cold, still air, the stars glittered like little, pricking points of steel, throwing a faint light over the town below; while, far down in the quiet western sky, lay the tiny silver thread of the baby moon, as if anxious to linger above the horizon for a peep into the happy Christmas world, when the midnight bells should ring in the glad news, centuries old, yet ever coming to us with all the fresh joy of that ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... should not attempt stitching a wound, providing the patient is willing, and a surgeon cannot be obtained within twenty-four hours. In this case a rather stout, common sewing needle or needles are threaded with black or white thread, preferably of silk, and, together with a pair of scissors and a clean towel, are boiled in the same utensil with the cotton and the nail brush. After the operator has scrubbed his hands and cleansed the wound, he places the boiled towel ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... do our best to creep round and avoid, but at some moment or other we must tread upon them, and then there passes a flash and a shock through our souls, suddenly altering the forms of everything within them. Upon this thread Traugott must surely have trod in the moment that he was unconsciously sketching the two persons who stood in living shape behind him, for the singular appearance of the strangers had struck him with all the violence of a lightning-flash; and he now felt as if he had very clear ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... went wrong with Dinah. Her gran'mam was plum mis'able over her shif'less ways, an' she set her to sew a seam befo' she could step outside the do'. The needle was dull, the thread fell in knots. Dinah's brow was mo' knotted up than the thread. Her ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... goin' to break in two in the middle, and fall into the river," cheerfully responded Lucinda. "They say it's just hanging' on by a thread. Well, that's what they 've ben sayin' about me these ten years, 'n' here I be still hanging! It don't make no odds, I guess, whether it's a thread or a rope you 're hangin' by, so long ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... received, where transmitted; or whether the first may fairly be held to have been, during the short time of their complete union, the master-hand, the second the poet-soul, the third the conscience of the group? A similar puzzle would await him who should strive to unravel the delicate thread which winds itself round the artistic relation between Frederick Walker and the noted landscapist Mr. J.W. North. Though we at once recognise Walker as the dominant spirit, and see his influence even to-day, more than twenty years after his death, affirmed rather than weakened, there are certain ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... to a Jew was always sure of finding support from the whole race; and Wilhelmine's quick brain and vivid imagination wove a romantic web, herself the centre thereof, holding in one hand the power of Wirtemberg's court, and in the other the secret thread commanding the commercial enterprises undertaken by freed and grateful Israelites. Romantic certainly, but very lucrative to the heroine of this ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... lodgers; do not fluster me. I have so many things to tell you that I shall lose myself if you break my thread." ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... pipe, sat down, and was soon deep in the lore of the East. I must confess that I did not make much of it. In that maze of superstition, the most I could do was to pick up a thread here and there. The yogi had referred to the White Night of Siva, and I soon found out that Siva is one of the gods of Hinduism—one of a great trilogy: Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver, and Siva the ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... reredos of the principal altar, and gave several other alms and support for the purpose of changing that seminary to a monastery of nuns; but he was unable to attain his purpose, for God cut short the thread of his life. They have their own chaplain, their rectoress, and their portress; and they live safely retired and with holy mode ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... to have heard. There is not a hair's-breadth space between any two of his words, nor is there a single expression either ill-chosen or out of its place. He speaks without stopping to take breath, with ease, with point, with elegance, and without "spinning the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument." He may be said to weave words into any shapes he pleases for use or ornament, as the glass-blower moulds the vitreous fluid with his breath; and his sentences shine like glass from their polished smoothness, and are equally transparent. ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... figures he had ever seen. In a flash he saw the huge form of an Indian, a terrible face, the gleam of an uplifted knife. In such a crisis one's actions are involuntary, machine-like, as if life itself, hovering by a thread, protects itself in its own manner without thought or reasoning on the part of the human creature it animates. Rod neither thought nor reasoned; without any motive on his own part, he flung himself face downward upon the cabin floor. And the move saved him. ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... in affliction seems always doubly beautiful to me," says the poor Captain, who indeed was but too often in a state to see double, and so checked he resumed the interrupted thread of his story. "As I spoke my business," Mr. Steele said, "and narrated to your mistress what all the world knows, and the other side hath been eager to acknowledge—that you had tried to put yourself ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... years had flowed away. Time seemed to have stood still there in those twenty years. Many of the men that he remembered seemed still to be there, contentedly pursuing the customary round, circulating from their rooms to Hall, from Hall to Combination-room, and back again. Thus Hugh, picking up the thread where he had laid it down, appeared to himself to be youthful, inexperienced, insignificant; while to those who made his acquaintance he seemed to be a grave and serious man of affairs, with a standing in the world and a definite line ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... yet the men made their home utensils, bows and arrows, the several instruments used in making baskets, and also constructed nets, spinning the thread from yucca fibres, which they beat and prepared for that purpose. They ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... caste might be offered: as having his food prepared by pariah hands in the hotel kitchens, foul hands to make his bed. He was thoroughly religious; the gods of his fathers were his in all their ramifications; he wore the Brahmin thread ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... believe in Karma have to believe in destiny, which, from birth to death, every man is weaving, thread by thread, around himself, as a spider his web; and this destiny is guided either by the heavenly voice of the invisible prototype outside of us, or by our more intimate astral or inner man, who is but too often ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... himself. During the feast Damocles raised his eyes and perceived a sword suspended to the ceiling held only by a horse hair, and hanging directly over his head. The comparison was a striking one—the tyrant's life hung only by a thread. The rich, his enemies, watched for an opportunity to cut it, for it was regarded as praiseworthy to assassinate a tyrant. This danger irritated him and made him suspicious and cruel. He dared not ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... position of the melting glass is shifted until the broad wheel is filled, when it is stopped and the glass is cut and taken off, made into the desired lengths and taken to the loom. The weaving is done by girls on hand looms. Two hundred threads of glass are woven alternately with one thread of silk. The thread is made up into napkins, neckties, lamp shades, ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... of the twigs, and tied with red thread were sewn by Highlandmen into their clothes. Dame Sludge fastened a piece of the wood into Flibbertigibbet's collar as a protection against Wayland Smith's sorceries.—(Kenilworth). Other folk-names of the tree are Quicken tree, Quick Beam, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... the Treasury said with an air of apprehension and a thread-like feeling across his throat: "It boils down to—no ...
— The Adventurer • Cyril M. Kornbluth
... sitting in the pink drawing-room, arrayed in her queenly robes, for she was quite recovered and expected to walk out in the evening. Everything in the room, except a vase of green and golden colored sponge-plant, and a plume of glass-thread, was of a pink color. Then there was a pretty rockery made of a pyramid of pumice, full of embossed rosettes of living sea-anemones of scarlet, orange, grey and black colors, which were trained to fold themselves ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... emprise, And meteors seen in Northern skies, And Heimdal's horn, and day of doom But the Sicilian laughed again; "This is the time to laugh," he said, For the whole story he well knew Was an invention of the Jew, Spun from the cobwebs in his brain, And of the same bright scarlet thread As was ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... their charms. The lady of this mansion was seated at table covered with works of a different description: it exhibited the various arts of woman, in regular gradation, from the painted card-rack and gilded firescreen, to the humble thread-paper and shirt-button. Mrs. Fox was a fine, fashionable-looking woman, with a smooth skin, and still smoother address. She received her visitors with that overstrained complaisance which, to Mary's nicer tact, at once discovered that all ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... conventions to vote for the Constitution. He wrote: "I wish the Constitution which is offered had been more perfect; but it is the best that could be obtained at this time, and a door is open for amendments hereafter. The political concerns of this country are suspended by a thread. The convention has been looked up to by the reflecting part of the community with a solicitude which is hardly to be conceived, and if nothing had been agreed upon by that body, anarchy would soon have ensued, the seeds being ...
— Our Government: Local, State, and National: Idaho Edition • J.A. James
... the thick of the willows she had left her pony, blinking lazily and switching his long tail to rid his flanks of humming insects, but never mustering energy enough to stamp a hoof or strain a thread of his horsehair riata. Both the long, lean, sprawling hounds lolled their red, dripping tongues and panted in the sullen heat. Even the girl herself, nervous at first and switching with her dainty whip ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... illusion—a leap beyond the original datum for which we have no authority. Of a real substance or substratum called Mind, of a real substance or substratum called Matter, underlying the series of feelings—"the thread of consciousness"—we do know and can know nothing; and in affirming the existence of such substrata we are making a supposition we can not possibly verify. The ultimate datum of speculative philosophy is not "I think," but simply "Thoughts or feelings are." The belief in a ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... arbor by the side of Mrs. Vincent, now grown gray, and the mother of a goodly brood, well grown up. As they thus sat talking of days agone, his thoughts wandered off upon quadratic equations, and to aid his mind in following the thread, he absent-mindedly lighted his pipe, and smoked in silence. As the tobacco died low, he gazed about for a convenient utensil to use in pushing the ashes down in the bowl of his pipe. Looking down he saw the lady's hand resting upon his knee, and he straightway utilized the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... these words in the light of all that has gone after, and to us they are familiar and almost thread-bare. But if we would appreciate their sublimity, we must think away nineteen centuries, and all Christendom, and recall these eleven poor men and their peasant Leader in the upper room. They were not very wise, nor very strong, and outside these four walls there was scarcely a creature ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... gun, and, turning his head, glanced at the coloured lithograph of Garibaldi in a black frame on the white wall; a thread of strong sunshine cut it perpendicularly. His eyes, accustomed to the luminous twilight, made out the high colouring of the face, the red of the shirt, the outlines of the square shoulders, the black patch of the Bersagliere ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... hands met, their eyes met, and whenever one raised the glass, the other was on the alert, and their glasses met and jingled—a more practical specimen of hob and nob was never witnessed. There was but one thing wanting to complete their happiness, which, unlike other people's, did not hang upon a thread, but something much stronger, it hung upon a cord; the cord which was ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... there came an end to the popularity of Haendel. A most shabby pasticcio called the "Beggar's Opera," was the immediate cause of his downfall. This queer compilation was made up of old ballad tunes, with hastily improvised words, and the merest thread of a story, and included some tunes of Haendel's own. This being produced at an opposition house, took the town. The result was that Haendel was bankrupted for the second ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... and he had ventured, he had passed the gates, he was here. Here, with his eyes open to the peril, and open to the necessity of immediate action if the slender thread by which all hung ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... priestly digression, the thread of the story is resumed. During the absence of Moses upon the mount, the people imperilled their covenant relationship with their God by worshipping Him in the form of a calf; but, on the very earnest intercession of Moses they were forgiven, and there was given ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... the open cars, and on landing we had our photographs done twice with views of the Falls as a background. They were very well and rapidly done. We then drove William towards the Cave of the Winds, which is a passage behind what looks from these windows a mere thread of a waterfall, but is really a very considerable one. Ladies, however, perform this feat as well as gentlemen, but they have entirely to change their dress—it is like walking through a great shower-bath to a cul de sac in the rock. Circular ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... question, much more vital than emancipation in its relation to British home politics, that ran like a constant thread through the whole pattern of British public attitude toward America. It had always been so since the days of the American revolution and now was accentuated by the American war. This was the question of the future of democracy. Was its fate bound up with the result of that ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... distorted mass. But these extraordinary differences between the two sexes are no doubt related to their widely different habits of life, and consequently do not concern us. In various crustaceans, belonging to distinct families, the anterior antennae are furnished with peculiar thread-like bodies, which are believed to act as smelling-organs, and these are much more numerous in the males than in the females. As the males, without any unusual development of their olfactory organs, would almost certainly be able sooner or later to ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... unparalleled spider. It was bigger than any spider I have ever seen; it was bright orange with a clearly marked cross on its back, and it had eight long, red-and-white striped legs, all equally well marked. You ought to have seen it spin! Every thread was drawn out with the greatest precision from the first ones that were only for supports to the last fine connecting thread. And you should have seen it balance its way along the slender threads to seize a fly or to take its place in the middle of ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... afire, which burned seven days and seven nights, and was in a high tower and enjoyed him to see so great a flame of fire, and sang merrily. He slew the senators of Rome to see what sorrow and lamentation their wives would make. He fished with nets of gold thread, and the garment that he had worn one day he would never wear it ne see it after. Then the Romans seeing his woodness [madness], assailed him and pursued him unto without the city, and when he saw he might not escape them, he took a stake and sharped it with his teeth, and therewith stuck ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... is marked by the appearance of what are termed the Negritos. These are Indians, with their faces concealed by hideous negro masks. Their dress consists of a loose red robe, richly wrought with gold and silver thread, white pantaloons, and their hats are adorned with waving black feathers. In their hands they carry gourd bottles, painted in various gay colors, and containing dried seeds. Whilst they sing, the Negritos shake these gourds, and mark the time by the rattling of the dried ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... till now there has reigned astonishing confusion, brought about through the fault of the scribes and dabblers in learning. Yet this was the sole guiding light of history! Without this Pole star our navigation on the ocean of history is completely blind: and without this thread to help him, the reader becomes involved in an inextricable maze, learned though he be, in these labyrinths of events. If you consider your letter well repaid by this gift, it will now be your turn to write me a ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... in a letter to her daughter, of the 23d of July, 1753, says, "The death of Lady Carolina naturally raises the mortifying reflection, on how slender a thread hangs all worldly prosperity! I cannot say I am otherwise much touched with it. It is true she was my sister, as it were, and in some sense; but her behaviour to me never gave me any love, nor ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... and the brewer his ale, and the milkman puts water into his milk, and the butterman sells butter made of Thames mud, and the calico is dressed with chalk, and the ready-made clothes come to pieces because the thread's ends are not fastened, and the farm work is half done, and the whole trade and commerce of the country is one great system of adulteration ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... researches which new facts may not alter, and a single date may not dissolve. Truth! thou fascinating, but severe mistress, thy adorers are often broken down in thy servitude, performing a thousand unregarded task-works! Now winding thee through thy labyrinth with a single thread, often unravelling—now feeling their way in darkness, doubtful if it be thyself they are touching. How much of the real labour of genius and erudition must remain concealed from the world, and never ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... ye sure the news is true? And are ye sure he's weel? Is this a time to talk o' wark? Ye jauds, fling by your wheel! Is this a time to spin a thread, When Colin's at the door? Rax down my cloak—I'll to the quay, And see him come ashore. For there's nae luck aboot the house, There's nae luck ava', There's little pleasure in the house, When ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... Cheap I 'gan me drawn,[106] Where much people I saw for to stand; One offered me velvet, silk, and lawn; Another he taketh me by the hand, "Here is Paris thread, the finest in the land"; I never was used to such things indeed; And, wanting ...
— English Satires • Various
... do!" announced Bess, as she cut off the silk thread. "I wonder if we shall ever get to the point where we can go without stockings, as the ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... thread around my body, I could not have moved at that moment. I felt cold and rigid as marble. A thousand agonising thoughts crowded upon me at once—my doubts, my fears on her account, drowning all ideas of personal danger. I could have died at that ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... the first time catching sight of this, "you can't work with such a long thread. Let me cut off some ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... of mind, on account of various annoyances of which they had been the victims during the past two days. Bacon had been tripped up twice by a piece of string, Hughes had found his coat-sleeves tightly sewn up with packing-thread, and Simmons's pockets had been crammed with ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe
... The wings are of a fine white colour, particularly the upper. These have their summit black, and a minute black point, near the middle. The under wings are without any spots, but are bordered behind by a cinereous thread. The underside of the upper wings have the costa and summit covered with spots and minute incontinuous lines of a yellowish colour. The underside of the lower wings are sulphureous, with very fine undulating or rather incontinuous lines of ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... bandages Syd drew the edges of the wound together, and gave the ends of the bands to two men to hold, while first in one place he cleverly thrust a pin through the skin of one side of the wound and out at the other, then holding the lips of the gash together he quickly twisted a fine thread of silk over the pin-head on one side, over the point on the other, and so on, to and fro, till the ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... scheme a little. "If Miss Axtell had only been the sexton, I could have found a thread; there must be one. Where shall I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... the song we had last night:— Mark it, Cesario; it is old and plain: The spinsters and the knitters in the sun, And the free maids, that weave their thread with bones, Do use to chant it: it is silly sooth, And dallies with the innocence of love Like ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... a good kind brother, for, though he has his own lessons to learn, he is holding the thread for his sister Kate, whom he is very fond of, and tries to please as much as ...
— Child-Land - Picture-Pages for the Little Ones • Oscar Pletsch
... mourned, lives that were more precious than any earthly treasures—the ghostly harvester claimed them all with impartial cruelty. And he—desolate and lonely—with no one greatly to care if he came back or no—with not a single golden thread of hope to which he might cling, without a dream to brighten the coming days of dreariness—with a life in the future that could hold nothing but vain regrets, Bobby had sought Death twenty times to-day and Death ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... opportunity to several humors to break out, which the late change had bred, but which the amazement likewise produced by that violent change, and the presence of their conqueror, wise, vigilant, and severe, had hitherto repressed. The ancient line of their kings displaced, the only thread on which it hung carried out of the kingdom and ready to be cut off by the jealousy of a merciless usurper, their liberties none by being precarious, and the daily insolencies and rapine of the Normans intolerable,—these discontents were increased by the tyranny and rapaciousness of the regent, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... spirit of their founders. "A thousand years of the world's history had rolled by," says Froude, "and these lonely islands of prayer had remained still anchored in the stream; the strands of the ropes which held them, wearing now to a thread, and very near their last parting, but still unbroken." In view of the undisputed purity and fearlessness of these noble monks, a recital of their woes will place the case for the monastic institution ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... against the German-Magyar opposition would not have been feasible. Therefore, when Wilson came forward with his Fourteen Points, and in spite of the scepticism with which the message from Washington was received by the German public and here too, I at once resolved to take up the thread. ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... Resuming the thread of our narrative, we find that Mr N. M. Rothschild promised to see the Duke of Wellington. On the 7th of February this interview with the Duke took place. Mr N. M. Rothschild, having addressed him ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... your mistake. I liked 'Grimaldi' the best; it is true painting, of abstract Clownery, and that precious concrete of a Clown: and the rich succession of images, and words almost such, in the first half of the Mag. Ignotum. Your picture of the Camel, that would not or could not thread your nice needle-eye of Subtilisms, was confirm'd by Elton, who perfectly appreciated his abrupt departure. Elton borrowed the "Aids" from Hessey (by the way what is your Enigma about Cupid? I am Cytherea's son, if I understand a tittle of it), and returnd it next day saying that 20 years ago, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Louise, discouragement would prove me a dub. I'm puzzled, though, just now, and feeling around blindly in the dark to grab a thread that may lead me to success. If I have luck, presently ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... the ideas of modern kinematics of mechanisms were well developed. Linkages are discussed, to the virtual exclusion of gears and cams, because much of the scholarly work in kinematic synthesis is presently directed toward the design of linkages and because linkages provide a convenient thread for a narrative that would have become unnecessarily complex if detailed treatment of gears and cams had been included. I have brought the narrative down to the present by tracing kinematics as taught in American engineering schools, closing with brief mention ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... arrival of his train, they drove together to their hotel, to take up the thread of their abandoned ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... relationship. [relationiship] nach Erfindung der Buchdrukerkunst [unchanged] "Ueber die roten und schwarzen Rcke," ["Rke" without close quote] the twelve irregularly printed lines [twleve] conventional thread of introduction [inroduction] an appropriate proof of incapacity [incaapcity] [Footnote 23 ... Litteratur-geschichte [hyphen in original] Footnote 35 ... p.28. [final . missing] [Footnote 38 ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... grey man" o' the moor,' replied Si unconcernedly; 'there's no harm in him; he will whiles even help up a "cassen" yowe (ewe). Not but what there's the "Bargeist"—he's mestitched, yet red thread i' your mutch and a branch o' the rowan tree will keep him awa nicelies. And Dand kens fine how to fettle him whether ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... to be lost or won? Bring me my Cayuse pony, then, And I will thread old ways again, Beneath the gray skies' crystal sun. 'Twas on those altars of the air I raised the flag, and saw below The measureless Columbia flow; The Bible oped, and bowed in prayer, And gave myself to ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... formidable vigor of genius such a luxuriant poetic vein; that his poems, unrivalled for depth of thought, conciseness, and magic beauty of style, were composed with all the ease of ordinary prose; that he could write them while conversing, interrupt his thread of ideas, and take it up again without difficulty, carry on his theme without previous preparation, not stay his pen except to turn the leaf, not change a single word in whole pages, generally only correcting when the proof-sheets came. When we know that a poem ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... satisfactory.—No more, thank you, Sir Richard," the lady replied, not without a touch of acerbity. Ludovic was very clever no doubt; but his comments often struck her as being in equivocal taste. He gave a turn to your words you did not expect and so broke the thread of your conversation in a rather exasperating fashion. "Very satisfactory," she repeated. "And, of course, the constituency is fully informed of the attitude of the Government towards Mr. Barking, so that serious opposition is out of ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... noise of dripping water came to his ears from somewhere in the mine below him. It reminded him of a tiny waterfall he had once seen under the shadow of a great rock on the bank of Roaring Brook. It was where a little stream, like a silver thread, ran down across the mossy covering of the edge and went drip, dripping into the stone-walled basin far below. He wondered if the stream was running there this day, if the tall rock-oak was bending yet above it, if the birds sang there as ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... oil-flasks, sewed together with strong thread, and lined and bound neatly, makes ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... the answer," said Miss Montaubyn, with entire simplicity as she bit off her thread, "that's wot ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... lamps, vessels and ornaments of gold and silver. The glass is especially chaming, - small vessels of the most delicate shape and substance, many of them perfectly preserved. These diminutive, intimate things bring one near to the old Roman life; they seem like pearls strung upon the slender thread that swings across the gulf of time. A little glass cup that Roman lips have touched says more to us than the great vessel of an arena. There are two small silver casseroles, with chi- selled handles, in the museum of Avignon, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... for Mrs. Gardner to take up the thread of the delicious argument where she had dropped it; but something had reminded Mrs. Gardner that she must write a note to Mrs. Majendie. She sat down and wrote it at once while she remembered. She could think of nothing to say but, "When will ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... beef, set in a very flower bed, so to speak, of carrots, turnips, and suet dumplings; the servant followed with a brown basin, almost as big as a ewer, filled with mealy potatoes, whose jackets hung by a thread. Around this feast the whole party soon collected, and none of them sighed for Russian soups or French ragouts; for the fact is that under the title of boiled beef there exist two things, one of which, without any great impropriety, might be called junk; but this ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... species of swallow, which builds them in the caves on the coast. They adhere in numbers to the rocks, very like watch-pockets to the head of a bed. They are either white, or red, or black, and are formed chiefly of agal-agal a marine cellular plant. The Chinese lanterns are made of netted thread, smeared over with the gum produced by boiling down this same plant, which, when dry, forms a firm pellucid and elastic ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... think fit, but if it be once blurred and blotted with improper characters, it becomes much harder to impress proper sentiments thereon, because those which were first there must be totally erased. This seems to have been too much the case with the unhappy person of whom the thread of these narrations requires that I should speak, ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... killed the President La Place this morning! And they are searching! They are still searching! The river is not yet full, nor the gibbet glutted! I have but to open that window and denounce you, and your life would hang by no stronger thread than the life of a mad dog which they ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... the cold thread of insulated wire over his throat thrilled his every nerve. It seemed some magic bond, mysterious, wonderful, and dreadful. This cool man of science was an angel of awful and incomprehensible power. His lamp of such mystic brilliance ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... music?" he inquired of Heine, who was sitting up and begging, but Virginia put down her foot. "No, Charley," she said with a forbidding frown, "you go ask mother for a needle and thread." ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... accurate journal of all I saw. He used to lecture us on being independent, even in little matters, and not ask servants to do for us what we might easily do for ourselves. He carried in his pocket a small book containing needles, thread, and buttons, and on an emergency was always ready to put in a stitch. A curious habit he had of mending his stockings, which I suppose he acquired when a working mason. He would not permit his housekeeper to touch them, but after his work at ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... They are exceedingly active, and move with surprising rapidity. Indeed, some fancy they have the power to spring from the ground. Certain it is that they possess the powers of contraction and extension to a very great degree. When fully extended they appear as thin as a thread, and the next moment they can clue themselves up like a pea. This power enables them to pass rapidly from point to point, and also to penetrate into the smallest aperture. They are said to possess an acute sense of smell, and guided by this they ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... the mother to connect this whole subject closely with the religious thought of the child; and where this is done simply and without theology, but as an expression of the great divine love and foresight that passes like a golden thread through every form of living creature, it may be exceedingly ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... the few tailors and cobblers who, with suspended thread, now looked after us, seemed dazed—as if they could not believe in the reality of two early tourists. A woman's head, here and there, leaned over to us from a high window; even these feminine eyes, however, appeared to be glued with the ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... boy with a Roman nose and a weak chin, the mother, in crape, simple, serious and provincial, the little sister ditto, and Alain, the young brother—just the age the brutes have been carrying off to German prisons—an over-grown thread-paper boy with too much forehead and eyes, and not a muscle in his body. A charming-looking family, distinguished and amiable; but all, except the grandmother, rather usual. The kind of people who ...
— Coming Home - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... daughter's hand waked the sleeper with a start. "I was dreaming so nicely," said she. "But I'm cold. Oh dear—what is it?... I thought I was in Sapps Court, with my little Dave and Dolly...." She seemed slow to catch again the thread of the life she had fallen asleep on. Vitality was very low, evidently, and she met an admonition that she must eat something with:—"Nothing but milk, please!" It refreshed her, for though she fell back on the pillow with her eyes closed, she spoke ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... some sugar finely beaten into your glasses. If your first water be too strong, put some of the second to it as you use it. If you please you may tye some Musk and Ambergreese, in a rag, and hang it by a thread in your glass. ...
— A Queens Delight • Anonymous
... in the writings of all the great American historians, and wrought a very large history out of a small subject—which nowadays, is considered one of the great triumphs of historic skill. To proceed, then, with the thread of my story. ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... writer has endeavored to relate a story of stirring adventure and at the same time eliminate all sensationalism and improbable elements. The thread of the story was given him by a man who was familiar with the life and experiences of prospectors. Indeed, there is warrant for almost every ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... of the country there are great numbers of a large, beautiful yellow-spotted spider, the webs of which are about a yard in diameter. The lines on which these webs are spun are suspended from one tree to another, and are as thick as coarse thread. The fibres radiate from a central point, where the insect waits for its prey. The webs are placed perpendicularly, and a common occurrence in walking is to get the face enveloped in them as a lady is in ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... leap over an obstacle, and showed itself as a simple hesitation rather than as a repetition. He used, after a slight pause, to bring out a word with a deliberate emphasis, but it never appeared to suspend the thread of his talk. I remember an occasion, as a young man, when he took sherry, contrary to his wont, through some dinner-party; and when asked why he had done this, he said that it happened to be the only liquid the name of which ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson |
