"Ell" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the red-hot dottel of his pipe on the back of the hairy fist. 'They say 'Ell's 'otter than that,' said he, as Mulvaney swore aloud. 'You be warned so. Look yonder!'—he pointed across the river to a ruined temple—'Me an' you an' 'im'—he indicated me by a jerk of his head—'was there one day when Hi made a bloomin' show o' myself. You an' 'im stopped me doin' such—an' ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... I had heard Pa blame Ma about her cold feet, so I got a piece of ice about as big as a raisin box, just zactly like one of Ma's feet, and laid it right against the small of Pa's back. I couldn't help laffing, but pretty soon Pa began to squirm and he said, 'Why'n 'ell don't you warm them feet before you come to bed,' and then he hauled back his leg and kicked me clear out in the middle of the floor, and said if he married again he would marry a woman who had ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... cursed shame," she said. "Go, now, like a dear an' buy me a can, an' if yer mudder raises 'ell all night yehs ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... Rest" and Young's "Night Thoughts." The fireplace flue so seldom held a fire that the swallows utilized the chimney for their nests. Back of this was the dining-room, in which we lived. It had a large brick oven and a serviceable fireplace. The kitchen was an ell, from which stretched woodshed, carriage-house, pigpen, smoking-house, etc. Currant and quince bushes, rhubarb, mulberry, maple, and butternut trees were scattered about. An apple orchard helped to ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... composed of four large rooms, with plastered adobe walls, and a two-room wooden ell. A twenty-feet-wide "gallery" circumvented the structure. It was set in a grove of immense live-oaks and water-elms near a lake—a long, not very wide, and tremendously deep lake in which at nightfall, great gars leaped ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... Ibn Batuta, in the 14th, states it at 11 spans, or more than the modern report. [Ibn Khordadhbeh at 70 cubits.—H.C.] Marignolli, on the other hand, says that he measured it and found it to be 2-1/2 palms, or about half a Prague ell, which corresponds in a general way with Hardy's tradition. Valentyn calls it 1-1/2 ell in length; Knox says 2 feet; Herman Bree (De Bry ?), quoted by Fabricius, 8-1/2 spans; a Chinese account, quoted below, 8 feet. These discrepancies remind ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... a very shy little maiden, whom the usher immediately announced as "An Ell of a dumb girl!" And so on, he went, making the most absurd as well as the most awful blunders with ladies' and gentlemen's names, as announcing the "Grand Turk" as Miss Ann Burke; for which last mistake the poor old man ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... a long parlor, and then a music-room; in a sort of an ell, a dining-room and kitchen; upstairs, two beautiful sleeping chambers and a small sewing-room with ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... I thought 'im jist a stiff-necked fool Before the war; but, as I sez to Poole, This war 'as tested more than fightin' men. But, say, 'e is an 'oly terror when Friends try to 'elp 'im earn a bite an' sup. Oh, there'll be 'Ell to pay when ...
— Digger Smith • C. J. Dennis
... darts and bowes, and when they came to vs, euery man sticked downe his dart vpon the shoare, and the Captaines had stooles brought them, and they sate downe, and sent a young man aboord of vs, which brought a measure with him of an ell, and one fourth part, and one sixteenth part, and he would haue that foure times for a waight of one Angell and twelue graines: I offered him two elles, as I had done before for two Angels weight, which he esteemed nothing, but still stucke ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... of thing may suit you," said Haimet rather in an irritated tone. "I could never get along, if I had to be always measuring my thoughts with an ell-wand in that fashion." ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... "They sold the silver plate for a few pence, taking it for pewter," says M. de Barante. Those magnificent silks and velvets, that cloth of gold and damask, that Flanders lace, and those carpets from Arras which were found heaped up in chests, were cut in pieces and distributed by the ell, like common canvas in a village shop. The duke's large diamond which he wore round his neck, and which had once upon a time glittered in the crown of the Great Mogul, was found on the road, inside a little box set with fine ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... that he would do so, and never again be summoned for a similar offence. He left the Court and returned to his cure, and as soon as he came there, he called the draper and the tailor, and he had a gown made which trailed three quarters of an ell on the ground; for he told the tailor how he had been reproved for wearing a short gown, and ordered to wear ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... "We-ell, I s'pose then you might stay out just this once," Mrs. Hunt said, slowly, being fully alive to the advantages to Jimmy of such a friendly feeling on Theo's part. She recognized Theodore's business ability, and would ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... Glossary, at the word Poulainia) and prohibited by royal ordinances (see letter of Charles V., 17 October, 1367, regarding the garments of the women of Montpellier). Great lords and ladies continued, however, to wear poulaines." In Louis XL's court they were still worn of a quarter of an ell in length. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... acquiesce in being kissed by her friend at this point; but she curls up a little as one who protests against being patronised. "We-e-e-ell!" she says, lengthening out the word, "why not? I don't see ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... Not so thought the monks. They knew well enough what the thin end of the wedge meant, and, being in a far better position than we are to judge of the significance and importance of many a casus belli which now seems but trivial, they never dreamed of giving an inch for the other side to take an ell. So they went to law, and enjoyed it amazingly! Sometimes however, there were disputes which were not to be settled peaceably; and then came what University men in the old days used to know as a "Town and ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... very long adobe house one story in height and one room deep, except in an ell where a number of rooms were bunched together. The Senora had it whitewashed every year, and the red tiles on the roof renewed when necessary; therefore it had none of the pathetic look of old age peculiar to the adobe mansions of the ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... "Ve-ell, lemme see. Vot time iss it?" A silence while B. Cohn evidently looked at his watch. "It iss now a quarter of seven, Mr. Eckstein, und der nexd drain from Mill Valley don't leaf until eight o'clock. Dot vill get me to San Francisco at ...
— The Go-Getter • Peter B. Kyne
... hornet's nest when they come here this time, though, they sure did!" Tom stood in the door, looking into the darkening room and at the figure sprawled across the bed. "He-ell's a-goin' to pop now!" he said again, in slow words ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... "I can't travel another ell over the atrocities they call roads here," Mrs. Winscombe declared. "I expect to die returning to England as it is, and I won't put up with any more preliminary torment. ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... "Um—we-ell, that's accordin' to what you call comf'table. I was aboard the Hog's Back lightship, that's where ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... where Irene seems hard and cruel, as in the Bois de Boulogne, or the Goupenor Gallery, she is but wisely realistic—knowing that the least concession is the inch which precedes the impossible, the repulsive ell. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... wonder," she returned, still at her task. Then she rose, holding a bulb in her hands, and said: "It's a funny kind of relation. Her father and mother egging her on—and you know that kind of a man; give him an inch and he'll take an ell. I wonder how far he has got." She took the bulb to a pile near the rear of the house. "Those are the nice big yellow ones I'm saving for Mrs. Barclay. But I'm sure of one thing, Molly has no notion of marrying Brownwell." She continued: ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... calls I am sitting here breakfasting and smoking all alone in a very spacious apartment—four rooms, all thickly vaulted, two something like our dining-room in size, thick walls as at Schoenhausen, gigantic nut-wood closets, blue silk furnishings, a profusion of large spots on the floor, an ell in size, which a more excited fancy than mine might take for blood, but which I decidedly declare to be ink; an unconscionably awkward scribe must have lodged here, or another Luther repeatedly hurled big inkstands at his opponents. * * * Exceedingly ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... the women as having "handsome limbs, slender arms, pretty hands, and when they sing they have a pleasant tange in their voices. The men shaved their hair on the right side, the women acting as barbers, and left the hair full length on the left side, with a lock an ell long." A Puritan divine—"New England's Plantation, 1630"—says of the Indians about him, "their hair is generally black, and cut before like our gentlewomen, and one lock longer than the rest, much like to our gentlemen, which fashion I think came ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... argued. But the fact is, I stayed because I couldn't go away. Of course, it was an abominable position, but I assure you it felt like heaven when it didn't feel like 'ell." ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... "W—ell. That is hardly possible, Mrs. Barnard. Cadets are admitted only in June or September, and only then when there's a vacancy in their congressional district. But, pardon me. ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... dog to be destroyed, and, in fact, gave Gavrila such a rating that he could do nothing all day but shake his head and murmur, "Well!" until Uncle Tail checked him at last, sympathetically echoing "We-ell!" At last the news came from the country of Gerasim's being there. The old lady was somewhat pacified; at first she issued a mandate for him to be brought back without delay to Moscow; afterwards, however, she declared that ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... to, and circling round and round, one fold upon another, which gradually increased to the size of my wrist in the middle, and then as gradually decreased till it terminated in a point again at the contrary extreme; all which spiral, if it were fairly extended in length, might be a yard or an ell long. I surveyed this strange vegetable very attentively; it had a rind, or crust, which I could not break with my hand, but taking my knife and making an opening therewith in the shell, there issued out a sort ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... in action to a pepperbox. Marked "Ell's Patent." The cataloguer has never before seen a pistol of this type. Good condition. .31 Cal. Purchased in a Philadelphia pawn-shop, and said to be a favorite arm of the Negroes in that city at ...
— A Catalogue of Early Pennsylvania and Other Firearms and Edged Weapons at "Restless Oaks" • Henry W. Shoemaker
... can I, Mistress?" urged the terrified urchin. "Master Adam saith he hath never a nail thereof, never name an ell." ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... "We-ell," said the dog and rubbed himself. "They're that sort of chaps, you know, that one really never has time ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... this blanky 'ell for a week,' he said slowly, 'if so be I 'ad them strikers 'ere alongside me ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... already decided, from small signs of assurance, that this Western child was bold. "Give her an inch, and she'll take an ell," she had said to ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... commonly on Sunday morning, on their playground. Each of the riders is furnished with one or two djerids, straight white sticks, a little thinner than an umbrella-stick, less at one end than at the other and about an ell in length, together with a thin cane crooked at the head. The horsemen, perhaps a hundred in number, gallop about in as narrow a space as possible, throwing the djerids at each other and shouting. Each man then selects an opponent who has darted his ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... our late practitioners (who thinke themselues not cunning if they be not curious) dislike that way, and will onely haue a gathering apron, into which hauing gathered their fruit, they doe empty it into larger vessells: this gathering apron is a strong peece of Canuas at least an ell euery way, which hauing the vpper end made fast about a mans necke, & the neather end with three loopes, that is, one at each corner, & one in the midst, through which you shall put a string, and binde it about your waste, in so much that both the sides of your apron being open ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham
... is the month when the new-rich depart to sun themselves in their new-found sun, and the new-poor, and others who are quite used to poverty, swear at them in secret. Oh, yes, indeed! If the Clerk of the Weather has a left ear it must surely at this moment be as 'ot as 'ell! Nobody likes February—it is the ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... bloomin' well looted 'em—go to 'ell!" said Henry Withers of the Sick Horse Depot, and left the lower deck of the Osiris in a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... it is more likely to be something else. Three minutes later the second bus in trouble turns tail. Its engine has been missing on one cylinder since the start, and is not in a fit state for a trip over enemy country. Again I call to the leader, and again hear a word ending in "ell." The two remaining machines close up, and we continue. Very suddenly one of them drops out, with a rocker-arm gone. Its nose goes down, and it glides into the clouds. Yet again I call the flight-commander's attention to our dwindling numbers, and this time I cannot mistake ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... "Why, damn it t'ell, Gord!" exclaimed an individual, with a long, drooping nose, a jaw which hung loosely on a corded, bare throat; "it ain't three weeks ago but you got a suit, and it ain't the one you have ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... wh at th at sh ell ch ild wh en th is sh y ch air wh y th ese sh ore ch ill wh ere th ose sh ine ch erry wh ich th ere sh ow ch ildren th en th eir sh e ch urch th ey th ey sh all ch ase sh ould ...
— How to Teach Phonics • Lida M. Williams
... of the house, or ell, which formed the kitchen, was a story less in height than the main building, and its flat roof was often utilized by both families as a drying-ground for small articles of clothing, and Dexie had stepped out of the window ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... not pleased that my rules should be broken. Karen has many privileges. She must learn not to take, always, the extra inch when the ell ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... 'ark an' 'eed, you rookies, which is always grumblin' sore, There's worser things than marchin' from Umballa to Cawnpore; An' if your 'eels are blistered an' they feels to 'urt like 'ell, You drop some tallow in your socks an' that will make 'em well. For it's best foot ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... against Gelfrat. I know not who held their horses. Hagen and Gelfrat were both on the ground. They ran at each other, and their attendants helped them and fought by them. For all Hagen's fierce onset, the noble Margrave hewed an ell's length from his shield, that the sparks flew bright. Gunther's man was well-nigh slain. Then he cried aloud to Dankwart, "Help! dear brother. I perish by the hand of ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown
... after the manner of those of the lower tribunes, and forming two galleries, one over the other, placed on a richly decorated cornice, the upper gallery being covered. The rain-water shall be carried off the cupola by means of a marble channel, one third of an ell broad, the water being discharged at an outlet to be constructed of hard stone (pietra forte), beneath the channel. Eight ribs of marble shall be formed on the angles of the external surface of the cupola, of such thickness as may be requisite; these shall rise to the height of one braccia ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... wasting your savings on a dress suit?" Cappy exploded. "Whadja mean by courting my Florry, eh? Tell me that! Give you an inch and you'll take an ell! ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... to the linendraper's feelings of hospitality; whereupon the linendraper, utterly forgetful of all party rancour, nobly responded to the appeal, and telling his wife to conduct his lordship upstairs, jumped over the counter, with his ell in his hand, and placing himself with half a dozen of his assistants at the door of his boutique, manfully confronted the mob, telling them that he would allow himself to be torn to a thousand pieces, ere ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... our sails nor "prove" our chance; "vaward" and "bilboes" are old words; "ding" in the sense used here has long been forgotten; of "archery" except as a sport we know nothing; "Spanish yew" is no longer valuable for bows, and few can tell how long a "clothyard" (the English ell, 45 inches long) is, or whether it differs from any other "yard" as a ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... "T' 'ell wit' these limon sauces!" exploded Michael Phelan, hurling the book across the room and bounding from his chair. "Sure 'n I'll niver be able to look a limon in the face agin. Limon, limon, limon—these blame books are filled wit' 'em. ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... length, longitude, span; mileage; distance &c 196. line, bar, rule, stripe, streak, spoke, radius. lengthening &c v.; prolongation, production, protraction; tension, tensure^; extension. [Measures of length] line, nail, inch, hand, palm, foot, cubit, yard, ell, fathom, rood, pole, furlong, mile, league; chain, link; arpent^, handbreadth^, jornada [U.S.], kos^, vara^. [astronomical units of distance] astronomical unit, AU, light- year, parsec. [metric units of length] nanometer, nm, micron, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... vehicle a no less decisive barytone said what sounded like "Give an ell," but probably was not, as there was no corresponding movement ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... letter with his ground-sheet under him in the mud. The sissified one blurted out: "Holy gee! but I'm perspiring profusely." The kid writing the letter looked up and sarcastically answered, "Wouldn't sweatin' like 'ell be more to the point." Later in my military career I had a chat with the commander of the company to which the "sissy" belonged, and he incidentally remarked that the lad had turned out to be one of the most reliable and plucky fellows in the battalion. ...
— Through St. Dunstan's to Light • James H. Rawlinson
... such dealing thyself by God's ell-wand of the Fifth Commandment, and judge if it were honouring thine elders as He ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... "We-e-e-ell," says Vee, lockin' her fingers and restin' her chin on 'em thoughtful, "not precisely that type, either. My mind may not be particularly advanced, but the modified harem existence for women doesn't appeal to me. And I must confess that, with kitchenette breakfasts, dinners out, and one maid, ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... Crispins, now grown somewhat stale, Twin Doric minstrels, drunk with Doric ale! Hark to those notes, narcotically soft! The Cobbler-Laureats [69] sing to Capel Lofft! [70] Till, lo! that modern Midas, as he hears, [xciv] Adds an ell growth to his egregious ears! [xcv] There lives one Druid, who prepares in time [71] 'Gainst future feuds his poor revenge of rhyme; Racks his dull Memory, and his duller Muse, To publish faults which Friendship should ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... was square, with two north windows that looked down the lane he had climbed to the house. An open door led into the kitchen in an ell, and a closed door opposite probably gave access to a parlor or a ground- floor chamber. The windows were darkened down to the lower sash by green paper shades; the walls were papered in a pattern of brown roses; over the chimney hung a large picture, a life-size pencil-drawing ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... but a finger lang, And thick and nimble was his knee; Between his brows there was a span, Between his shoulders ell-es three. ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... long, with a piazza, and a long corridor ran through the whole building. All this announced an inn. The windows in the part of the house assigned to guests were dark. In the others, situated opposite the piazza, and not higher than half-an-ell from the ground, which was covered with straw and hay and all kinds of rubbish, the lights of Sabbath shone forth from behind ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... ever since!" old Jasper would croak triumphantly. "Oh! 'e were a gen'us were my bye Jarge. 'Ell come a-marchin' back to 'is old feyther, some day, wi' 'is pockets stuffed full o' money an' bank-notes—I knaw—I knaw, old Jasper ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... be altered," cried Will Scarlett; "we will call a feast, and henceforth, because he is full seven feet tall and round the waist at least an ell, he shall be called Little John." And thus it was done; but at the feast Little John, who always liked to know exactly what work he had to do, put some questions to Robin Hood. "Before I join hands with you, tell me first ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... of her publicity she had, through Mrs. Tommy Kidder and other agencies, brushed here and there at the rim of the magic inner circle of metropolitan society, for every inch of which she now encroached an ell. Shelby gained his first knowledge of the astonishing extent of his wife's acquaintance when he scanned the invitation list of a thousand names, and was told by the military secretary that New York's quota was coming by ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... "We—ell, Petrick, I'll tell ee my plan. I ain't got it straightened out yet, but I hope to hev it all right by the time we're on t'other side the mountings—leastwise before we reaches ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... to be nine feete or rather more, in length, and shaped almost in the forme of an axle-tree of a cart, a quantitie of thickness in the middest, and somewhat smaller at both ends. The former part which he shootes forth as a necke, is supposed to be about an ell long, with a white ring as it were of scales about it. The scales along his backe, seeme to be blackish, and so much as is discovered under his bellie, appeareth to be red: for I speak but of no nearer description than a reasonable ...
— The History and Antiquities of Horsham • Howard Dudley
... your money. A delicate ballad o' the ferret and the coney. A preservative again' the punk's evil. Another goose-green starch, and the devil. A dozen of divine points, and the godly garter The fairing of good counsel, of an ell and three-quarters. What is't you buy? The windmill blown down by the witche's fart, Or Saint George, that, O! ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... young Bassett back instead of him. Sey-mour's. Buck up, Seymour's. We-ell played! There, did you ever see anything like it?" ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... placid emptiness of the water. I must have looked like a trapped ape—the kind of ape that is most like a man. I shook the iron bars so violently that the whole of my floating prison jumped about, and the b ell began to ring loudly. He only lounged and smiled. No doubt he had looked forward extremely to the moment. His amused impassivity was the thing best calculated to restore my self-control, and I try to salve my vanity by thinking that I should never ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West
... stars that Andrew's risk was o'er That she had thus the dire return received, And saved the man for whom her bosom grieved. So much emotion William seemed to feel, No grace he gave, but all performed with zeal; Retaliated ev'ry way so well, He measure gave for measure:—ell for ell. How true the adage, that revenge is sweet! The plan he followed clearly was discrete; For since he wished his honour to repair:— Of any better way I'm ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... and the house goes back in a surprising brick ell that is not seen from the street. The exterior presents the appearance of a story-and-a-half cottage. Two windows, with their uncommon blinds, break the wood-shingled roof. The blinds' slats are wide and ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... "We-e-e-ell," began Mrs. Milo, appraising the gown at more length; "isn't it rather simple, my dear,—for a girl whose father is as wealthy as yours? Somehow I expected at least a little ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... about the size of a hare, their head resembling the head of a civet-cat; the forepaws are very short, about the length of a finger, on which the animal has five small nails or fingers, resembling those of a monkey's forepaw. Its two hind-legs, on the contrary, are upwards of half an ell in length, and it walks on these only, on the flat of the heavy part of the leg, so that it does not run fast. Its tail is very long, like that of a long-tailed monkey; if it eats, it sits on its hind-legs, and clutches its food with its forepaws, just like a squirrel ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... don't exactly sy it, but she sulks an' won't speak, an' then when I says anythin' she rounds on me an' calls me all the nimes she can think of. I'd give 'er a good 'idin', but some'ow I don't like ter! She mikes the plice a 'ell ter me, an' I'm not goin' ter stand ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... "We-ell," said the school chaplain slowly, "I don't know what Corkran's appreciation of your style may be, but young McTurk reads ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... grave-visaged headman, who always contrives to pick up the last gossip astir, and has a deep eye into millstones. Why, ho, there! Alwyn—I say, Nicholas Alwyn!—who would have thought to see thee with that bow, a good half-ell taller than thyself? Methought thou wert too sober and studious for such man-at-arms sort ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... good fish indeed; if I had had the luck to have taken up that Rod, 'tis twenty to one he should not have broke my line by running to the Rods end, as you suffered him; I would have held him, unless he had been fellow to the great Trout that is neer an ell long, which had his picture drawne, and now to be seen at mine Hoste Rickabies at the George in Ware; and it may be, by giving that Trout the Rod, that is, by casting it to him into the water, I might have caught him at the long run, for ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... yet it had nothing imposing about it except its site. It was a simple, glaringly white cottage. There was a center front door with two windows on each side; there was a low slant of roof, pierced by unpicturesque dormers. On the left of the house was an ell, which had formerly been used as a shoemaker's shop, but now served as a kitchen. In the low attic of the ell was stored the shoemaker's bench, whereon David Wise's grandfather had sat for nearly eighty years of working days; after him his eldest son, Daniel's father, ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... to the effect that the Neapolitan eats his spaghetti by a deft process of wrapping thirty or forty inches round the tines of his fork and then lifting it inboard, an ell at a time. This is not correct. The true Neapolitan does not eat his spaghetti at all—he inhales it. He gathers up a loose strand and starts it down his throat. He then respires from the diaphragm, and like a troupe of trained ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... quid in his cheek, and slyly drawled out, "W-ell, if ye must, ye must! I a'n't a-goin' ter stand in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... of length are the nela or palm, the duche or foot, namun the pace, the can the ell, and tupu the league, which answers to the marine league or the pharasang of the Persians: But they estimate long distances by mornings, corresponding to our days journeys. The liquid measures are the guampar, about a quart; can about a pint; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... stocking-maker, and a perfumer. I spent thirty sequins in what I considered necessary, but then I noticed that there was no English point on her mask, and burst out again. The father brought in a milliner, who adorned the mask with an ell of lace for which I paid twelve sequins. Irene was in great delight, but her father and mother would have preferred to have the money in their pockets, and at ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... thou art. Set wigs of million curls upon thy head, to raise thee, Wear shoes an ell in height,—the truth betrays thee, ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... me, yesterday, at a merchant's in Cheapside, three new shifts, that cost fourteen pence an ell, and I am to have a pair of new stuff shoes, for my Lord of Norfolk's ball, which will be ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... coming on, and that soon we must sleep without a roof, in the snow. We might well be silent, as we were, save the quartermaster Poitevin. He was a veteran,—sallow, wrinkled, with hollow cheeks, mustaches an ell long, and a red nose, like all brandy drinkers. He had a lofty way of speaking, which he interspersed with barrack slang. When the rain came down faster than ever, he cried, with a strange burst of laughter: "Ay, ay, Poitevin, this will teach you to hiss!" The old ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... were in their frugal life in the Desert, known by the name of Eremites. They go naked, having no other Covering but what conceals their Pudends from publick sight. An hairy Plad, or loose Coat, about an Ell, or a coarse woven Cloth at most Two Ells long serves them for the warmest Winter Garment. They lye on a coarse Rug or Matt, and those that have the most plentiful Estate or Fortunes, the better sort, use Net-work, knotted ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... insinuating tone. Miss Kavanagh feels she has made a false move. To give Dicky an inch is, indeed, to give him an ell. ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... which are still existing for the purchase and transportation of the brick. A later form of many houses was two stories or two stories and a half in front, with a peaked roof that sloped down nearly to the ground in the back over an ell covering the kitchen, added in the shape known as a lean-to, or, as it was called by country folk, the linter. This sloping roof gave the one element of unconscious picturesqueness which redeemed the prosaic ugliness of these bare-walled houses. ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... piece of Genoa velvet Dame Margery looked out yesterday for her mistress's wedding-suit? I do bethink me it is a good ell too ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... old as the merchants of the town that are all too much on the hunt for the bawbees and the world to sit down and commune with themselves, or if you were so old as my brothers there and so hardened, I would be the last to say my thoughts ever stirred an ell-length out of the customary track of breakfast, beds, dinner and supper. Do not think I do not love and reverence my brothers, mind you!" she added almost fiercely, rubbing with her lustre apron the table there was nothing to rub from save its polish. "Oh! they are big men and far-travelled men, ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... to God!" he cried, loudly. "Free mon you, Master h'Auntony. Glory, glory! My soul was in 'ell, sar. On my knees I h'implored that fa-ast wretch to ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... moderate drinking and smoking with drunkenness as sins of equal magnitude, and against overlooking grave social and industrial evils that threaten children far earlier and more frequently than do tobacco and alcohol. Instead of adding an ell to the truth, text-book writers are now adding only an inch or two at a time. No longer do we favor highly colored charts that picture in purple, green, and black the effect of stimulants and narcotics upon the heart and brain, the stomach, ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... old landlady who is now dead. How my heart aches to remember her, for she was a good woman, and never overcharged for her rooms. Her whole time was spent in making patchwork quilts with knitting-needles that were an arshin [An ell.] long. Oftentimes we shared the same candle and board. Also she had a granddaughter, Masha—a girl who was then a mere baby, but must now be a girl of thirteen. This little piece of mischief, how she used to make us laugh the ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of brick soon after 1642, to which additions were made at different times; recent excavations show that it was ninety-seven feet, five inches in length by twenty-four feet, nine inches in width. The rooms on the ground floor, overhung by a colonnade, were in single file with an ell on the north front at the west end. Only the foundations of the structure remain. The ever-flowing spring, from which the plantation took its name, is maintained within a ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... for a month—if I go out I get more wet. All day long I 'ave to splash about in the blinkin' mud and rine. At night I cawnt go to sleep. Me clothes are wet; me blankets are soaked. I 'ears the bl—— rine coming down on the bl—— tent which leaks all over; it makes a 'ell of a noise on the tent and I cawnt sleep. I gets up in the morning and 'ave to do me work and do me dooty. But Doc, it's gettin' me goat. I feel like cutting me bl—— throat. I 'ave 'ad thirteen years in the awmy and 'ave me good conduc stripes. ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... but they furnished also the standard measures required in later times. One instance occurs in our own history. To remedy the irregularities then prevailing, Henry I. commanded that the ulna, or ancient ell, which answers to the modern yard, should be made of the exact length ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... her name and three quarters, that's an ell and three quarters, will not measure her ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... "We-ell," Sammy admitted slowly, "she was busy cutting out something on the dining-room table and her mouth was full of pins. I had to ask her two or three times before ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... lower than the floor of the wood-house; and, in the side of the wood-house, the boards are rotted away down to the floor for half an ell together in several places. Hannah can step into the lane, and make a mark with chalk where a letter or parcel may be pushed in, under some sticks; which may be so managed as to be an unsuspected cover for the ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... and I recall it well, When my whole frame was but an ell in height; Oh! when I think of that, my warm tears swell, And therefore ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... then pushed Duke Lane back. "Don't like that—sounds like a crack on the head. Hey, Jim! Say something!" he called softly. The three knocks were repeated, but Boggs was suspicious and he shook his head decisively. "To 'ell ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... reached the head of the little cross street on which the Atkinses lived, she turned into it with relief. The Atkins house was a tiny cottage, with a little kitchen ell, and a sagging piazza across the front. On this piazza were shadowy figures, and the dull, red gleam of pipes, and one fiery tip of a cigar. Joe Atkins, and Sargent, and two other men were sitting out there in the cool of ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... room was badly needed, and he began building without delay. The result was not a mansion, by any means, being still of the one-story pattern, but it was more commodious than the tiny two-room affair. The rooms were larger, and there was at least one ell, or extension, for kitchen and dining-room uses. This house, completed in 1836, occupied by the Clemens family during the remainder of the years spent in Florida, was often in later days pointed out as Mark Twain's birthplace. It missed that distinction by a few months, though its honor was sufficient ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... "Mebbe so. What th' 'ell, annyhow. Mebbe 'tis as bad to take champagne out iv wan man's mouth as round steak out iv another's. Lent is near over. I seen Doherty out shinin' up his pipe that's been behind th' clock since Ash Winsdah. Th' girls 'll be layin' ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... He weens the mob expects to see him known. So that it now behoves his valour flame More clear than light, or they, to censure prone, — Errs he a finger's breadth — an inch — will swell His fault, and of that inch will make an ell. ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... the blacksmith's shop to have that wheel fixed. He would not feel safe to start for home with it as it was. He drove off, and Miss Dawes, knowing from lifelong experience that front doors are merely for show, passed around the main body of the house and rapped on the door in the ell. The rap was not answered, though she could hear some one moving about within, and a shrill voice singing "The Sweet By and By." So she rapped again and again, but still no one came to the door. At last ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the white farmhouse, nestling among the apple trees, the front to the west and facing on the lane that led up to a farm above. The house had a one-story ell on the end toward him, containing the kitchen and pantry—this ell projected back almost to the smokehouse. On the opposite side, but hidden from his view, there was a wide porch running the full length of house and ell, and in the angle formed by the porch, stood ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... s'en allant au moulin, Pour y faire moudre son grain, Ell monta sur son ane, Ma p'tite mam'sell' Marianne! Ell' monta sur son ane Martin Pour aller ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... thinking for some time we could make good use of another room. We couldn't give up the parlor to her all the time. If we built another room on the ell and put the piano in there, she could give lessons all day long and it wouldn't bother us. We could build a clothes-press in it, and put in a bed-lounge and a dresser and let Anna have it for her sleeping-room. She needs a place of her own, now that ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... won't present us with a racing stud," lisps the gunner, "but, by G——, they'll shy chaff enough at us to keep all the bloomin' horses between 'ere and 'ell, and the girls will send us a kid's feedin' bottle, as a mark of feelin' and esteem, every Valentine's Day for ten years to come, because of the glorious name we made for Australia on the bloody fields ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... froze me to hear such talk. He wouldn't ever dared to talk such talk in his life before. Just see what a difference it made in him the minute he judged he was about free. It was according to the old saying, "Give a nigger an inch and he'll take an ell." Thinks I, this is what comes of my not thinking. Here was this nigger, which I had as good as helped to run away, coming right out flat-footed and saying he would steal his children—children that belonged to a man I didn't even know; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Temple, and there spent my time in a Bookseller's shop, reading in a book of some Embassages into Moscovia, &c., where was very good reading, and then to Mrs. Turner's, and thither came Smith to me, with whom I did agree for L4 to make a handsome one, ell square within the frame. After he was gone I sat an houre talking of the suddennesse of his death within 7 days, and how by little and little death came upon him, neither he nor they thinking it would come to that. He died after ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... of your fan, Trust it not to youth or man; Love has filled a pirate's sail Often with its perfumed gale. Mind your kerchief most of all, Fingers touch when kerchiefs fall; Shorter ell than mercers clip Is the space ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Some few, of musical turn, have a whole chime of bells (Glockenspiel) fastened there; which, especially in sudden whirls, and the other accidents of walking, has a grateful effect. Observe too how fond they are of peaks, and Gothic-arch intersections. The male world wears peaked caps, an ell long, which hang bobbing over the side (schief): their shoes are peaked in front, also to the length of an ell, and laced on the side with tags; even the wooden shoes have their ell-long noses: some also clap bells on the peak. Further, according to my authority, the men have breeches without seat ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... ell-women—how the names thrill one! What was your Hans Andersen like? Mine was light blue and gold with wonderful coloured pictures, but it was the frontispiece I studied, and which held me frightened yet fascinated. It was a picture of a pine-wood, with a small girl in a blue frock ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... is possessed with prejudicate opinions against the truth, when convincing light is holden forth to him, looketh asquint, and therefore goeth awry; the pragmatical adiaphorist, with his span-broad faith and ell-broad conscience, doth no small harm—the poor pandect of his plagiary profession in matters of faith reckoneth little for all, and in matters of practice all for little. Shortly, if an expurgatory index were compiled of those, and all other ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie |
