"Thimble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... because you are good. Let me come and help you to-morrow," continued she, looking at Susan's work, "if you have any more mending work to do—I never liked work till I worked with you. I won't forget my thimble or my scissors," added she, laughing—"though I used to forget them when I was a giddy girl. I assure you I am a great hand at ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... shot I ever knew, was a tailor at Albany. He used to be very fond of brousin' in the forest sometimes, and the young fellows was apt to have a shy at Thimble. They talked of the skirts of the forest, the capes of the Hudson, laughing in their sleeve, giving a fellow a bastin, having a stitch in the side, cuffing a fellow's ears, taking a tuck-in at lunch, or calling mint-julip an inside lining, and so on; and every time any o' these words came ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... I take it. What do you say? Has he got any employment? Not he! Dabbles in chemistry (experiments, and that sort of thing) by way of amusing himself; and tells the most infernal lies about it. The other day he showed me a bottle about as big as a thimble, with what looked like water in it, and said it was enough to poison everybody in the hotel. What rot! Isn't that the clock striking again? Near about bedtime, I should say. Wish you ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... week—who looks upon me as a child—who has never—never thought—" But her dignity, flying to the rescue, assumed control. Her upper lip curled, her body stiffened for a moment, and she went on with her stitching. "You deserve I should rap your silly little skull with my thimble. You are no better than Ignacio and Fernando. Such scenes as I have had with them! They wanted to fight the Russian! How he would laugh at them! I have threatened they shall both be sent to San Diego if there is any more nonsense." Then curiosity overcame her. "You ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... propriety be indicated as a series telephone. The subscriber's station is shown connected with the central office by the two limbs of a metallic-circuit line. One limb of the line terminates in the spring 1 of the jack, and the other limb in the sleeve or thimble 2 of the jack. The spring 1 normally rests on the third contact or anvil 3 in the jack, its construction being such that when a plug is inserted this spring will be raised by the plug so as to break contact with the anvil 3. It is understood, ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... game, which, when found, he chased, fought, and overcame in a struggle perhaps desperate, while we shoot it at a distance with little risk or effort. In warfare he fought hand to hand and eye to eye, while we kill "with as much black powder as can be put in a woman's thimble." He caught and domesticated scores of species of wild animals and taught them to serve him; fished with patience and skill that compensated his crude tools, weapons, implements, and tackle; danced to exhaustion in the service of his gods or in memory ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... Company are playing "Hide the Thimble;" i.e., someone has planted that article in a place so conspicuous that few would expect to find it there. As each person catches sight of it, he or she sits down. Uncle JOSEPH is still, to the general merriment, wandering about ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 27, 1890 • Various
... no smoke coming out of the chimney, and that the hens were gathered about the kitchen door clamoring for their breakfast, she thought it best to stop and knock. No response followed the repeated blows from her hard knuckles. She then tapped smartly on Mrs. Butterfield's bedroom window with her thimble finger. This proving of no avail, she was obliged to pry open the kitchen shutter, split open a mosquito netting with her shears, and crawl into the house over the sink. This was a considerable feat for a somewhat rheumatic elderly lady, but this one never grudged trouble when ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... board. The table was plenteously laid with a soup-plate in front of each beaming child, a bucket of hot water before the radiant mother, and at the head of the board the Christmas dinner of the happy home, warmly covered by a thimble and resting on a poker chip. The expectant whispers of the little ones were hushed as the father, rising from his chair, lifted the thimble and disclosed a small pill of concentrated nourishment on the chip before him. Christmas turkey, cranberry sauce, ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... Albano. He did not see the charmers as they crept down the rough road close to the garden wall, and went sadly home, along the blooming path, to the 'Tomb of the Four Thimbles,' as Livy irreverently called the ruin which has an ornament at each of its corners like a gigantic thimble of stone. ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... in my wife's thimble! As I had the honor to tell you just now, you can have no bed but the chair on which you are sitting, and no other chamber ...
— The Red Inn • Honore de Balzac
... green, so soft, so foolishly the victim of the sorriest sharper as this man? Weigh out all his past, and what has it been? Weigh out his future—if you can—and think what it must be. Poor, dull Faustus! What! thou hast lost everything among the thimble-riggers? ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... his pockets, one after another. A few small coins, a thimble, and some thread and big needles, a piece of pigtail tobacco bitten away at the end, his gully with the crooked handle, a pocket compass, and a tinder-box, were all that they contained, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... said Louisa, opening her work-bag. "Oh! dear, no, I have used up all my thread. I quite forgot that. And where can my thimble be? I am sure I thought I had put it into my bag. Emily, have you seen my thimble? I dare say you have got it, you are so ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... and occasionally made great havoc in the children's fingers and in Mrs. Leslie's gown; in fact it was the liveliest piece of furniture in the house, thanks to the petulant brasswork, and could not have been more mischievous if it had been a monkey. Upon the work-table lay a housewife and thimble, and scissors, and skeins of worsted and thread, and little scraps of linen and cloth for patches. But Mrs. Leslie was not actually working,—she was preparing to work; she had been preparing to work for the last hour and a half. Upon her lap she supported a novel, by a lady who wrote much for ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... possessed the dwelling; he did not venture to tread with natural step. He entered the drawing-room, and there, from amid a heap of household linen which required the needle, rose the penitent wife. Ostentatiously she drew from her finger a thimble, then advanced ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... had to live and dress on, and so do you. That child will like as not come here with a passel o' things borrowed from the rest o' the family. She'll have Hannah's shoes and John's undershirts and Mark's socks most likely. I suppose she never had a thimble on her finger in her life, but she'll know the feelin' o' one before she's ben here many days. I've bought a piece of unbleached muslin and a piece o' brown gingham for her to make up; that'll keep her busy. Of course she won't pick ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of all the young ladies; mislaid her handkerchief, her shawl, her gloves, her work, her music, her drawing, her scissors, her keys; would ask for a book when she held it in her hand, and set a whole class hunting for her thimble, whilst the said thimble was quietly perched upon her finger. Oh! with what a pitying scorn our exact and recollective Frenchwoman used to look down on such an incorrigible scatterbrain! But she was a poetess, as Madame said, and what could ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... "Hunt the slipper," at which Torps, with his long arms, greatly distinguished himself, and "Hide the thimble," at which Double-O Gerrard, blinking through his glasses straight at the quarry without seeing it, was hopelessly disgraced. "General Post" and "Kiss in the Ring" followed, and quite suddenly the mother of Georgina, Jane, ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... ask you another question," said the doctor. "Where is the harm in a man's being a fine performer with a needle as well as a woman? And yet, answer me honestly; would you greatly chuse to marry a man with a thimble upon his finger? Would you in earnest think a needle became the hand of your husband as ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... the world besides. Some of them were languidly strolling about, and looking the sworn foes of time, while others crowded the doors of the different coffee-houses; the fat jolly-looking friars cooling themselves with lemonade, and the lean mustard-pot-faced ones sipping coffee out of thimble-sized cups, with as much caution as if it ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... middle of the room was a square table, on which lay a mass of thick black silk and rich trimmings, which even Emma Rowles's country eyes could see were being put together to form a very handsome mantle suitable for some rich lady. A steel thimble, a pair of large scissors, a reel of cotton and another of silk lay beside the materials. In strong contrast to this beautiful and expensive stuff was the sight which saddened the further corner of the small room. Close ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... she poured into a receptacle for the purpose enough seed, no doubt, to make, mixed with other things, several admirable thimble-loaves of bread substitute, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 25, 1917 • Various
... plainly still. I am sitting on a low chair before the nursery fire, one knee supported in my locked hands, meanwhile Mrs. Fursey's needle grated with monotonous regularity against her thimble. At that moment knocked at my small soul for the first time ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... left. The miner examined the remainder and then gave it more water and more swirling around in the pan. This process he repeated several times. Presently he held the pan where Davy and Jim could see a fifth of a thimble full of tiny flakes and two small dots not much larger than pinheads. "That's the object of the meeting, gentlemen," Welborn said grimly. "That's gold.... Tomorrow," he added, "we will get the old rocker going, but ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... think, though the mornings were sweet, 'twas the eve that was sweeter still. All the valley would be lying soundless and sedate, the hills of Salachary and the forest of Creag Dubh purpling in the setting sun, a rich gold tipping Dunchuach like a thimble. Then the eastern woods filled with dark caverns of shade, wherein the tall trunks of the statelier firs stood grey as ghosts. What was it, in that precious time, gave me, in the very heart of my happiness, a foretaste of the melancholy of coming years? My heart would swell, the tune ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... these days by going just one little bit too far, and there'll be an election of Railroad Commissioners of, by, and for the people, that'll get a twist of you, my bunco-steering friend—you and your backers and cappers and swindlers and thimble-riggers, and smash you, lock, stock, and barrel. That's my tip to you and be damned to you, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... acting upon the theory that one bottle would fill all our glasses. Seeing the glasses empty he would call for another bottle, and say to us, "Gentlemen, I have ordered another bottle." The General evidently drinks, when he imbibes at all, simply to be social, and a thimble-full would answer his purpose as well as ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... thimble-berry with its big, light yellow, sprawling leaves, and its attractively red, thimble-shaped, but rather tasteless berries. The Indians, however, are very fond of them, and so are some of the birds and animals, likewise ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... milkweeds in a purple glory, black-eyed Susans basking in the sun, cone-flowers with brown disks and purple petals, like gypsy maidens with gaudy summer shawls. Closer to the fence are lemon-yellow coreopsis with quaint, three-cleft leaves; thimble weeds with fruit columns half a finger's length; orange-flowered milkweed, like the color of an oriole's back, made doubly gay by brilliant butterflies and beetles. On the sandy bank which makes the background for this scene ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... sleep." "I could," cried Mrs. Mary Clerk, "wipe your shoes with pleasure, and think it my honour to do so, when I reflect that you had the Prince for your handmaid!" Perhaps not the worst gift sent to Flora, during her stay at Leith, was a thimble and needles, with white thread of different sorts, from Lady Bruce. This act of friendship Flora felt as much as any that she received, for she had suffered as much from the state of idleness during her being in custody, as from any ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... also to have been known to them, at least thimble-rig, or the game of cups, under which a ball was put, while the opposite party guessed under which of four ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... her work in deft fashion, putting thimble and thread away in a bag which, in time, became something of a marvel to Gus, who declared a man never wanted anything but she'd find it in that bag; then went about preparing breakfast, and soon Gus was sipping what seemed like nectar ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... liberty I tuck," says he, "of bringing a small taste," says he, "of the real stuff," says he, hauling out an imperi'l quart bottle out ov his coat-pocket; "that never seen the face ov a guager," says he, setting it down on the table fornenst the Pope; "and if you'll jist thry the full ov a thimble ov it, and it doesn't rise the cockles ov your Holiness's heart, why then, my name," says he, "isn't Tom Maguire!" and with that ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... her basket? It was then she thought of her locket and ear-rings, and seeing her pocket lie near, she reached it and spread the contents on the bed before her. There were the locket and ear-rings in the little velvet-lined boxes, and with them there was a beautiful silver thimble which Adam had bought her, the words "Remember me" making the ornament of the border; a steel purse, with her one shilling in it; and a small red-leather case, fastening with a strap. Those beautiful little ear-rings, ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... years, I left the house, and, at all adventures, took the road to London. How my loss was resented I do not know, for till this instant I have not heard a syllable about them. My whole stock was two broad pieces of my godmother's, a few shillings, silver shoe-buckles and a silver thimble. Thus equipped, with no more clothes than the ordinary ones I had on my back, and frightened at every foot or noise I heard behind me, I hurried on; and I dare sweare, walked a dozen miles before I stopped, through mere weariness and fatigue. At length I sat down ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... combustion of gas for heating purposes," continued the chemist, "seek the burner with free, rapid delivery through small holes. For light you want something different. Suppose you send a current of gas up into this sewing-thimble: it can find an exit only by turning backward. Then suppose it escapes from the thimble only to enter a larger cavity above it, whence it must issue through a burner-tip with an orifice of the usual size. The current, you perceive, is twice ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... window in front. Between the entrance door and stove, are in each room a small pantry or closet for dishes, or otherwise, as may be required. The chimney stands in the center of the house, with a separate flue for each front room, into which a thimble is inserted to receive the stovepipes by which they are warmed; and from the inner side of these rooms each has a door passing to the kitchen, or chief living room. This last apartment is 22x15 feet, with a broad fireplace containing a crane, hooks, and trammel, ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... Tom, "for she fears nothing!" and he sealed the letter with a dab of black wax flattened by the impression of the woman's thimble, who ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... work, Ayen-bite of In-wit, "Again-bite of In-wit," was translated into "Remorse of Conscience." Grund-weall and word-hora were displaced by "foundation" and "vocabulary." The German language still retains this power and calls a glove a "hand-shoe," a thimble a "finger-hat," and rolls up such clumsy ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... of Cousin Tabitha Twitchit)—died of a thimble in a Christmas plum-pudding. I never put any article of metal in MY puddings ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... my silver thimble, a gift from my mother when I was a young girl. I prized it very highly. I looked everywhere, long and faithfully. The tears would come, at the best, it had been so long a constant companion. I gave up the search after a while, thinking some one had taken it, or a child ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... and then they WERE chickens, not old hens,—little specks of darlings, just giving one hop from the egg-shell to the gridiron, and each time the waiter only brought you one bisegment of the speck, all of whose edible possibilities could easily be salted down in a thimble. I don't say this by way of complaint. A thimbleful of delicacy is better than a "mountain of mummy"; and here let me put in a word in favor of that much-abused institution, hotels. I cannot see why people should go about complaining of them as they do, both in literature and ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... once tested them, could withstand Mrs. Markham's waffles and gingerbread. Mrs. Jones certainly could not; and when Eunice went up for Ethelyn, that worthy woman was rocking back and forth in a low rocking-chair, her brass thimble on her finger and Tim's shirt-sleeve in progress of making; while Melinda, in her pretty brown merino and white collar, with her black hair shining like satin, sat in another rocking-chair, working at the bit of tatting she chanced to have in her pocket. Ethelyn did not care to go down; it was like ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... issue. Their cause is so palpably just, its underlying principle so transparently simple and elementary, its practical application so direct, feasible and efficient that no mere wizardry of words, no thimble-riggery or language, can by any possibility obscure the principle—or confuse the advocates. Of course there are among Single Taxers, as among other enthusiasts, men who indiscreetly use abuse for argument, and of these you may have some reason to complain; but should not your great ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... walked, and to make her cane useful in getting about. If she had had a stiff starched ruff about her neck and a lace thing on her head pointed in front, she would have done very well for Queen Elizabeth, the one you see the picture of in that history-book. There was a thimble on the second finger of her right hand, and a pair of scissors hung by a tape at her waist; and around her neck she wore a measuring tape. On the floor at her feet lay a pile of goods, and some of it was ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... are," agreed Jarvis placidly, sitting down on the edge of the porch and poking about in Janet Ferry's work-bag until he found a thimble, which he placed on the only finger it would fit, the smallest one on his right hand. He had washed the hands before he came to the porch, but they were so brown that the little gold thimble looked most absurd ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... with needle, thimble and thread. She offered to mend the tear for me, but I had a horror of being made ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... single strand from {62} the size of rope your cringle is required to be, whip both ends, reeve the strand through the left hand eyelet hole in the sail, having one end longer than the other—nearly a third—keeping the roping of the sail towards you. If a thimble is to be put in the cringle, lay up the parts of the strand together, counting three lays; commence with the short end of the strand towards you, then reeve the long strand from you through the right hand eyelet hole, ...
— Knots, Bends, Splices - With tables of strengths of ropes, etc. and wire rigging • J. Netherclift Jutsum
... [thou thimble] The taylor's trade having an appearance of effeminacy, has always been, among the rugged English, liable ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... said, I have neither heard nor seen him, but I'm positive he's there. I am unable to give the precise date on which he first led the conversation to the good old English game of "rigging the thimble"—that also was before I came. All I can state with certainty is that he interested his host in it so effectually that now the infatuated old fool is playing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... all busy movement. Some hurried eagerly to catch a glimpse of the winning horse; others darted to and fro, searching, no less eagerly, for the carriages they had left in quest of better stations. Here, a little knot gathered round a pea and thimble table to watch the plucking of some unhappy greenhorn; and there, another proprietor with his confederates in various disguises—one man in spectacles; another, with an eyeglass and a stylish hat; a third, dressed as a farmer well to do in the world, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... had, beside her map and her mother's certificate, a few little things tied up in a rag. There was a piece of soap, a small comb, a thimble, and a spool of thread, in which she had stuck two needles. She undid her packet; then taking off her vest, her shoes, and her stockings, she leaned over the ditch, in which the water flowed clear, and soaped her face, shoulders and ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... had to buy—a thimble, and that she bought for a penny, of brass so bright it was quite ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... foot of water in the cellar and a sick mother in the next room. She had forgotten about Ephraim and his idols; she picked up Shep's trousers from the rug, where she had dropped them, and, looking intently at her thimble finger, told him she was very glad ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... blue head—of the fox; glass beads, blue beads, such as John Smith told Powhatan were worn by great kings, thus obtaining a hundred bushels of corn for a handful of the beads; a pewter spoon, a bent thimble, and a whole blue dog—no, his miserable ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... lying on a couch in the living room and there was a low chair drawn up near by with a book open at the place, and a bit of fluffy sewing on the low table beside it. Mark looked hungrily about for the owner of the gold thimble, but there was no sign of either Mrs. Severn or ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... describing this allowance as a coefficient we can give our statement a false air of mathematical certainty and so muddle up the essential question that the truth is lost from sight like a pea under a thimble. Now you see it and now you don't. The thing is, in fact, a mere piece of intellectual conjuring. The conjurer has slipped the phrase, "quantity of labor," up his sleeve, and when it reappears it has turned into ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... had new occupation which kept him so busy that he had no more time for coasting. Grandma Orde gave him a spool of stout linen thread, a thimble, and a long needle with a big eye. Bobby, a pan of cranberries between his knees, threaded the pretty red spheres in long strings. He liked to pierce their flesh with the needle, and then to draw them down the long thread, like ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... turned to Hedwig, who was bringing in a bowl of raspberries. "Will you please get me some tea from the pantry, Hedwig? Your mistress is very stingy with tea. Bring it in a pitcher, will you? I have only a glass thimble to put it in, and it's more convenient to have the pitcher by my own side. What were we talking about? Was I going to sit at the table with some one I knew was untruthful? If I didn't I'd eat alone pretty often. ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... Have the car ready, and leave the brain-work to me. You can drive a car with anybody in Europe, Ewart, but when it comes to a tight corner you haven't got enough brains to fill a doll's thimble," he laughed. "Permit me to speak frankly, for we know each other well enough ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... with the older form of element was the tendency for the German-silver wires to slip out of the slots in which they had been vigorously crowded in the hard maple spool. In thus slipping out of the slots they came in contact with the metal thimble in the zinc wall and thus produced a ground. In constructing the new elements four pairs of iron-German-silver thermal junctions were made on essentially the same plan as that previously described,[6] the ...
— Respiration Calorimeters for Studying the Respiratory Exchange and Energy Transformations of Man • Francis Gano Benedict
... ecclesiastical ornament, lantern, letter-clip, mathematical instrument, brass and metallic bedstead, military ornament, brass nail, saddlers' ironmonger, (chiefly brass), scale, beam, and weighing machines, stair rod, moulding and astrigal, brass thimble makers, tube, brass and copper-wire drawers, wire workers and weavers, and many other trades less ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... it any size I please, from a thimble to a sentry-box," said the Goblin. "And, speaking of sentry-boxes"—here he stopped and looked more stupid ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... apartments in his own abode. It is only necessary to reflect upon the unbounded reverence felt by all good Mussulmen for these exalted dignitaries, to comprehend the height of distinction thus attained by the Palermo thimble-rigger. But, among the many obscure records that exist in the Italian, French, and German languages, touching this arch impostor, there is a hint of a night adventure in the harem of a high and mighty personage, at Mecca, ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... pleased at this permission to set out on her travels; so she kissed her mother, and bade good-by to her nurse, who gave her a little ball of spiders' threads to sew with, and a beautiful little box, made of the egg-shell of a wren, to keep her best thimble in, and took leave of her, wishing her safe ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow
... felt. 1 comb and brush. 2 tooth-brushes. 1 pound Castile soap. 3 pounds bar soap for washing clothes. 1 belt-knife and small whetstone. Stout linen thread, large needles, a bit of beeswax, a few buttons, paper of pins, and a thimble, all contained in a small buckskin or stout ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... and sold axe heads, brass thimbles, licorice ball, fancy handkerchiefs, and every thing else you can think of. Here, too, was the general post office, where you might see letters marvellously folded, directed wrong side upward, stamped with a thimble, and superscribed to some of the Dollys, or Pollys, or Peters, or Moseses aforenamed or ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... don't I know it? Ain't I clean druv out my wits a-thinkin' ever'thing over, and where in the name of natur' am I goin' to do it all, with them horrid gasoline stoves no bigger'n an old maid's thimble, and Pasqually gone off s'archin' with the rest, and no'count the heft of the time ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... Faithful!" answered Hum, "In preference to these, I'll merely taste A thimble-full of old Jamaica rum." "A simple boon," said Elfinan; "thou mayst Have Nantz, with which ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... climate, issues the button, which shines on the breast, and the bayonet, intended to pierce it; the lancet, which bleeds the man, and the rowel, the horse; the lock, which preserves the beloved bottle, and the screw, to uncork it; the needle, equally obedient to the thimble and the pole. ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... I'm glad of it," said Carol stoutly. "Such apples you never saw, Prudence. They're about as big as a thimble, and two-thirds core. They're good, they're fine, I'll say that,—but there's nothing to them. I could have eaten as many again if Jim hadn't been counting out loud, and I got kind of ashamed because every one was ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... growing—six hundred years ago. She declined Edward's company rather peremptorily. "Stay and comfort your sister," said she. But that was a blind; the truth was, she could not bear her children to mingle in what she was doing. No, her ambition was to ply the scissors and thimble vigorously, and so enable them to be ladies and gentlemen at large. She being gone, Julia made a parcel of water-colour drawings, and sallied forth all on fire to sell them. But, while she was dressing, Edward started on a cruise in search of employment. He failed ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... the discussion through her ear-trumpet, said that losing a thimble was quite sufficient to justify ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... pound of fine sugar, being finely beat, and the yolks of four new laid eggs, and a grain of musk, a thimble full of caraway seed searsed, a little gum dragon steeped in rose-water, and six spoonfuls of fine flour beat all these in a thin paste a little stiffer then butter, then run it through a butter-squirt of two or three ells long bigger then a wheat straw, and let them dry upon sheets of ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... day she sent to the store and had a thimble bought for me, and that afternoon after school I began my quilt under her eye. I must have a regular "stint," she said, and it was to be—at first—one of those dreadful blocks, at least four inches of over-and-over stitches! This was to ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller
... cry so much about the pain, madam,' said the poor woman, 'as because you see it is her thimble finger;' and she held the ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... I know," murmured Mrs. Carr, dropping her thimble as she nervously tried to hasten her sewing. "But don't you think it would be a comfort, dear, to have the advice of a man about Charley? Won't you let me send Marthy ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... on this point: with them, a wife always knew enough when the extent of her genius enabled her to distinguish a doublet from a pair of breeches. She did not read, but she lived honestly; her family was the subject of all her learned conversation, and for hooks she had needles, thread, and a thimble, with which she worked at her daughter's trousseau. Women, in our days, are far from behaving thus: they must write and become authors. No science is too deep for them. It is worse in my house than anywhere else; the deepest secrets are understood, and everything is known except ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... his improvised slab, and in imagination smelt herself frying them. Then a great shock as of a sudden icy douche traversed her frame, her heart seemed to stand still. For when she put her hand to her pocket to get her purse, she found but a thimble and a slate-pencil and a cotton handkerchief. It was some minutes before she could or would realize the truth that the four and sevenpence halfpenny on which so much depended was gone. Groceries and unleavened cakes Charity had given, raisin wine had been preparing for days, ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Becky was, as perhaps you may have guessed, head of the millinery business, next door to which was housed the firm of Ray, St. Cloud & Stiggany, leather- dressers, the three partners in which all presently become suitors for the hand of Becky. This in effect is the story—under which thimble will the heart of the heroine be eventually found?—a problem that, in view of the obviously superior claims of young St. Cloud over his two elderly rivals, will not leave you long guessing. An element of novel complication is however furnished by the device ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... direction from which the words proceeded, I saw six or seven people, apparently all countrymen, gathered round a person standing behind a tall white table of very small compass. "What!" said I, "the thimble-engro of . . . Fair here at Horncastle." Advancing nearer, however, I perceived that though the present person was a thimble- engro, he was a very different one from my old acquaintance of . . . Fair. The present one was a fellow about half-a-foot taller than the other. ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... would sign't, that we have a pint. For all your colloguing,[3] I'd be glad for a knoggin:[4] But I doubt 'tis a sham; you won't give us a dram. 'Tis of shine a mouth moon-ful, you won't part with a spoonful, And I must be nimble, if I can fill my thimble, You see I won't stop, till I come to a drop; But I doubt the oraculum, is a poor supernaculum; Though perhaps you may tell it, for a grace ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... this same red-labeled bread-crate in front of the bakery, this same thimble-shaped crack in the sidewalk a quarter of a block beyond Stowbody's ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... than lost. He was therefore obliged to excuse his conduct, being caught in the act of poring after something, to tell, if not a lie, at least the very smallest part of the truth, and say that he had lost his thimble. The money was not found, and to make bad worse, he was in danger of losing a good job, and all the Ritter's work forever, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... the fair sex were sufferers from the same cause, while the "thimble-player" plied his trade and secured the attention of some countryman with "cash in his fob and forward with ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... would be very appropriate to employ prussic acid in killing Prussians, and explained to us that this might be effected by means of little indiarubber thimbles which the women would place on their fingers, each thimble being tipped with a small pointed tube containing some of the acid in question. If an amorous Prussian should venture too close to a fair Parisienne, the latter would merely have to hold out her hand and prick him. In another instant he would fall dead! "No matter how many of the enemy ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... synonym for jugglery; "Sorcery," an equivalent for crass ignorance; and "Occultism," the sorry relic of crack-brained, medieval Fire-philosophers, of the Jacob Boehmes and the St. Martins, are expressions believed more than amply sufficient to cover the whole field of "thimble-rigging." They are terms of contempt, and used generally only in reference to the dross and residues of the Dark Ages and its preceding aeons of paganism. Therefore have we no terms in the English tongue to define and shade the difference between such abnormal ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky
... shivering at the door in tatters, the very oddity of his appeal, touched a soft spot in the spinster's heart. "I always had a fancy for the old lady," Nares said, "even when she used to stampede me out of the orchard, and shake her thimble and her old curls at me out of the window as I was going by; I always thought she was a kind of pleasant old girl. Well, when she came to the door that morning, I told her so, and that I was stone-broke; ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... from miles around to borrow his head. He always charged everybody just the same no matter what it was that they'd lost. One dollar was what he charged. It was just as much trouble to him he said to think about a thimble that was lost as it was to think about an elephant that was lost.—I never knew anybody who ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... rapid scribe. It had taken her a considerable while to write this, and the household was astir. She folded it up in the smallest possible dimensions, and wedged it into her thimble. ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... list of the principal ones in my district. We will now look into some other Bees who arrange their cocoons in single files: the Megachiles (Cf. Chapter 8 of the present volume.—Translator's Note.), who cut disks out of leaves and fashion the disks into thimble-shaped receptacles; the Anthidia (Cf. Chapters 9 and 10 of the present volume.—Translator's Note.), who weave their honey-wallets out of cotton-wool and arrange their cells one after the other in some cylindrical gallery. In most cases, the home is the ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... not only is the process lucid in itself, but it is luciferous, illuminating all the obscure hiding-places of Nature. It is the magic-lantern of creation; it is the key to all mysticism, to the three-card trick, and to the basket-trick; it sheds a glory upon thimble-rigging, a halo upon legerdemain; it even radiates vagabond beams of splendour upon pocket-picking and the cognate arts. It explains how the apples get into the dumpling; how the milk comes out of the cocoanut; how the deficit issues from the surplus; how matter evolves itself from nothing. It ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... the idea of anything being successfully hidden. Hide-and-seek is a popular pastime; but it assumes the truth of the text, "Seek and ye shall find." Ordinary mankind (gigantic and unconquerable in its power of joy) can get a great deal of pleasure out of a game called "hide the thimble," but that is only because it is really a game of "see the thimble." Suppose that at the end of such a game the thimble had not been found at all; suppose its place was unknown for ever: the result on the players ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... compare the racer with the trotter for a moment. The racer is incidentally useful, but essentially something to bet upon, as much as the thimble-rigger's "little joker." The trotter is essentially and daily useful, and only incidentally a tool ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... box, with a gold top ornamented only by a monogram; no, it was not a monogram either, but interlaced initials trailing diagonally across it; the mirror, a carelessly crumpled handkerchief, and a gold thimble—he picked up each article with ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... rose and bowed quite gravely. She deliberately put down thimble, scissors, work; descended with precaution from her perch, and curtsying with unspeakable seriousness, said, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... thimble in your dreams, you will have many others to please besides yourself. If a woman, you will have ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... Archie, after tea, "you will be put on rations. One cobnut and a thimbleful of sherry wine per diem. I hope somebody's brought a thimble." ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... with many ascending arms or rear their tall leafless trunks like ships' masts to a height of 60 ft. or 70 ft. From this we descend through a multitude of various shapes and sizes to the tiny tufted Mamillarias, no larger than a lady's thimble, or the creeping Rhipsalis, which lies along the hard ground on which it grows, and looks like hairy caterpillars. In form, the variety is very remarkable. We have the Mistletoe Cactus, with the appearance of a bunch of Mistletoe, berries and all; the ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... The equally amusing work of cutting up the bride-cake revealed Richard de Clare in possession of the ring, supposed to indicate approaching matrimony, Marie of the silver penny which denoted riches, and Doucebelle of the thimble which doomed ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... door close after her, she quilted her needle carefully into her square, then she folded the patchwork up neatly, rose, and laid it together with her thimble, scissors, and cotton, in her little rocking-chair. Then she went and stood still before uncle Jack, with her arms folded. It was a way she had when she wanted information. People rather smiled to see Letitia sometimes, ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... usual alloys, was also used in the manufacture of other articles, such as bells, beads, disks, balls, rings, whistles, thimble shaped objects, and amulets of varied shapes. Bells are more generally made of bronze, because, perhaps, of its greater degree of resonance. Thin plates, or rather circular sheets, of gold leaf are numerous. One mentioned ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... sixty pounds a year to do his work for him, that had never been his principle. Indeed, his reputation as a horsey man rested mainly on the fact that once, on Derby Day, he had been welshed by some thimble-riggers. But someone at the Club, after seeing him drive his greys up to the door—he always drove grey horses, you got more style for the money, some thought—had called him 'Four-in-hand Forsyte.' The name ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Raggedy Ann, "but there are no needles or thread in the nursery, and I have to have a thimble so the needle can be ...
— Raggedy Andy Stories • Johnny Gruelle
... showing him far, far below, on a verdant plateau emerging from the mists of the valley, the Hotel Bellevue about the size of a thimble. ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... the New Thought writers: 'Tens of thousands of women in this country believe that if two people look in a mirror at the same time, or if one thanks the other for a pin, or if one gives a knife or a sharp instrument to a friend, it will break up friendship. If a young lady is presented with a thimble, she will be an old maid. Some people think that after leaving a house it is unlucky to go back after any article which has been forgotten, and, if one is obliged to do so, one should sit down in a chair before going ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... alike upon the great questions that have called the American party into existence. Little do we regard the slanders of the pensioners of party. Let their speeches and publications teem with wholesale slanders of our creed: the political jockeyism of these thimble-riggers, as in your own ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... winter, in summer with his one old coat carefully hung on that peg; I can see him before me now. On certain days he would wash his few poor clothes, and hang them out on the bushes to dry; then he would patiently mend them with his great brass thimble and coarse thread. Poor old garments! they ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... wife of Balder, the sun-god; distinguished for her conjugal fidelity, threw herself on the funeral pyre of her husband, and descended to the shades along with him; when the pair were entreated to return, he sent his ring to Odin and she her thimble ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... valuation, and the actual payment of income-tax. He is dishonest, because he deliberately suppresses the explanation of the difference between the first and second row of figures. When I saw the curiously-selected years, I said, why 1861, 1877, and 1891? I knew there was some thimble-rigging. I looked at the twenty-eighth annual report of her Majesty's Commissioners, that for 1885, the latest I have, and behold, the year 1877 had an asterisk! It was the only starred number on the ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... dainty room still full of tokens of her presence. The piano stood open with a song he liked upon the rack; a bit of embroidery, whose progress he had often watched, lay in her basket with the little thimble near it; there was a strew of papers on the writing table, torn notes, scraps of drawing, and ball cards; a pearl-colored glove lay on the floor; and in the grate the faded flowers he had brought two days before. As his ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott
... Kentucky volunteers went across the prairie immediately, and scalped him, dividing his scalp into four pieces, each one cutting a hole in each piece, putting the ramrod through the hole, and placing his part of the scalp just behind the first thimble of his gun, near its muzzle. Such was the fate of nearly all of the Indians found on the battle ground, and such was the ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... in a voluminous pocket, and the production of several articles irrelevant to the occasion—a thimble, a bit of ginger, and part of a tract—Mrs Gray brought to light a piece of paper, on which was ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... through which she reached her pockets. The strangest jingling of keys and money then echoed among her garments. She always wore, dangling from one side, the bunch of keys of a good housekeeper, and from the other her silver snuff-box, thimble, knitting-needles, and other implements that were also resonant. Instead of Mademoiselle Zephirine's wadded hood, she wore a green bonnet, in which she may have visited her melons, for it had passed, like them, from green to yellowish; ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... are helpless and unpractical beyond all belief. Jane Norton has absolutely no sense of order, the household drifts along as best it can. "I hate it so," she groans; "I have a horror of it all." That very afternoon I tore my dress and wanted to mend it. A brass thimble was soon produced from the kitchen clock, where Jane keeps it "to have it handy," but never were needle and thread more difficult to procure. After much hunting, a dirty reel of white cotton was discovered in the soup-tureen, the needle-case had entirely ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... her a blessed minute to sit down and hatch 'em out. Pet her, dress her, amuse her, and whenever she begins to talk about a principle, step out and buy her a present to take her mind off it. Anything no bigger than a thimble will turn a woman's mind in the right direction if you spring it on her like a surprise. Ah, that's the way her Aunt Matoaca ought to have been treated. Poor Miss Matoaca, she went wrong for the want of a little simple ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... time to find her thimble and needles and spools, for Polly wasn't a very neat little girl; but she got settled at last, and stitched away as if bent on beating ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... friends of the Marquis of Kildare be ever blessed with the tailor's thimble,' declaimed the portentous toast master. 'May the needle of distress be ever pointed at all mock patriots; and a hot needle and a burning thread to all sewers of sedition!' and then came ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... wish he didn't live here," said Carrie, gathering up her spools, thimble and scissors, while Mrs. Livingstone, feeling that his absence had taken a load from her shoulders, settled herself upon her silken lounge and tried ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... with as little parade and ceremony as possible. If it is a small matter, a gold pencil-case, a thimble to a lady, or an affair of that sort, it should not be offered formally, but in an ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells |
