"Coil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Union"—'twas, "Be cheery, Boys! the toast we have to drink is—Erie." The boys laughed loudly, being the right, sort, And said, "Why, Admiral! you're hard a port." One time, when GOULD and I were on the cars, I thought th' officials of the train were tars; Told them to "Coil that rope and clean the scuppers, And then go down below and get your suppers." This must be changed, or my good name will suffer, And folks will say, JIM FISK is but a duffer. To feel myself a fool and lose my head, Too, takes the gilding off the gingerbread; And makes me ask myself ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... cocking of rifles. For there, in the middle of the plain, some strange object was moving about. It might have been taken for some enormous animal running about, which unfolded itself like a serpent, or came together into a coil, suddenly went quickly to the right or left, stopped, and then went on again. But presently that wandering shape came near, and I saw a dozen lancers, one behind the other, who were trying to find their way, which ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... of fresh soil touched the edge of the neglected garden. Gray clouds drifted across the gloomy sky, a cold wind tossed the reeds, and the dabbin looked strangely forlorn in the fading light. Carrie shivered as she entered with Jim, who carried a coil of fuse and a tin box. The clay walls were stained by damp and the broken window was grimed by dirt. A few peats occupied a corner, and a pile of ashes, on which tea-leaves and scraps of food had been thrown, stretched across the floor ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... taken up again. Cary was fed with choice titbits until he was fairly satisfied and had to beg for quarter. Then, taking up a large roll of the tire, Zulma twisted it into a series of elegant and intricate plaits. The long coil flashed like a beautiful brazen serpent, as she held it up to the light, and set it beside her own ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... resolved to enter it and rest myself for a while. I called out, telling you not to let out more rope until I bade you, but you cannot have heard me. I then gathered in the rope you were sending me, and making a coil or pile of it I seated myself upon it, ruminating and considering what I was to do to lower myself to the bottom, having no one to hold me up; and as I was thus deep in thought and perplexity, suddenly and without provocation a profound ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... days of ship's time in Hyper when Dane walked into the mess cabin, tired after his work with old records, to discover no Mura busy in the galley beyond, no brew steaming on the heat coil. Rip sat at the table, his long legs stuck out, his usually ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... I didn't insist on exploring it. How could electricity work with such power? Where did this nearly unlimited energy originate? Was it in the extraordinary voltage obtained from some new kind of induction coil? Could its transmission have been immeasurably increased by some unknown system of levers?** This was ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... now, and now a bear, And now a coil of hissing snakes; At last a Dragon she became, And furious ...
— The Nightingale, the Valkyrie and Raven - and other ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... it. But there may be another at any moment. We've got to go on; if he wakes up he'll probably be able to identify you." He felt in his pocket, and produced a coil of strong cord. "Come along, Linton—get off and help me to ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... one-half pounds of water from the freezing point to the boiling point. This is equivalent to boiling about seven gallons of ice-water every twenty-four hours. Differently expressed, the body gives off each hour the same amount of heat as a foot and a half of two-inch steam coil. This is the same amount of heat which would be produced by burning about two-thirds ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... shouldst thou laden bow, And climb, and slip, and toil, And blanch thy cheek to keep thy soul as white, Inviolate as now? O, we have dreams we shall not put away Till earth be fair as they; When all this work-night coil Shall be unwound by wizard fingers bright That send our own to play; And wisdom, wiser than we know, shall find The birth trail to the mind; Nor spirit waver, panting here and yon Seeking sun-vantage, for all heights are won. Shall not we then be as the flowers, Drinking dew dowers As now thou dost? ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... us, I was about to lie down on a sofa prepared as my bed, when I saw a snake fully four feet long glide in at the door of the room, and coil itself away under my pillow. I had no fancy for such a companion, and not knowing whether or not it was venomous, I shouted to Dango, whom I saw in the court, to come and help me to kill it. Nowell, who had left the room, heard me call, and came at the same time. Dango ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... back to the creek, where Hugon had a boat. They crossed the creek, and fastened the boat on this side. I could follow them no farther; the woods hid them; but they have gone downstream to that bend in the road. Hugon had his hunting-knife and pistols; the schoolmaster carried a coil of rope." She flung back her head, and her hands went to her throat as though she were stifling. "The turn in the road is very sharp. Just past the bend they will stretch the rope from side to side, fastening it to two trees. He will be hurrying home before the bursting of the ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... was in form somewhat like the tip end of my thumb. I have often since seen rattlesnakes, though seldom one so large. Generally I have found them coiled up among the dry herbage, with the tip of the tail raised in the centre of the coil. On seeing me approach the creatures have instantly produced a quivering movement of their tails, which made the joints of the rattle shake against each other. I cannot find expressions to describe the sound, but having once heard it I never failed to approach ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... from her chair, Gabriella drew the pins from the smooth, close coil of her hair. "But I see things so differently since I had that talk with Mr. O'Hara. I am glad to have him for a friend," she added generously, "but of course I still feel the same about Fanny. I hope he won't begin ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... me challenge him that first election day," said Fairfax Cary gloomily. "If we had met and I had put a bullet through him, then all this coil would have been spared. What do you ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... moment when his weapon was wrenched from him, two long grey arms come out of the darkness and coil about the largely-looming form of Slabberts. Enveloped in the neutral-tinted tentacles of this mysterious embrace, the big Boer struggled impotently, and a quick, imperative voice said, between the thick pants ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Through the pores of the sea,— Whatever they utter I'll interpret to thee. King Neptune now craves Of his turbulent vassals Their workings to quell; And the billows are quiet, Though thinking on riot. On the left and the right In ranks they are coil'd up, {72} Like snakes on the plain; And each one has roll'd up A bright flashing streak Of the white moonlight On his glassy green neck: On every one's forehead There glitters a star, With a hairy train Of light floating from afar, And pale or fiery red. Now old Eolus goes To each muttering blast, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various
... isn't the truth." Edna reached for her hat on the piano. She adjusted it, sticking the hat pin through the heavy coil of hair with ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... King's Order for 'em, and Master Collins casts them in his foundry. If he chooses to bring them up from Nether Forge and lay 'em out in the church tower, why they are e'en so much the nearer to the main road and you are saved a day's hauling. What a coil to make of a mere act of neighbourly ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... remarkably lustrous and expressive, her black hair waved back from her brown face into a great braided coil, her features were not pretty so much as noble. Her figure, with its limber curves, was pliant and graceful in any position or emergency—the result of years in the saddle. Her feet and hands were small, the latter being firm but infinitely gentle ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... that combat—many a check, And many a change, a dark and wild turmoil; Sometimes the Snake around his enemy's neck Locked in stiff rings his adamantine coil, Until the Eagle, faint with pain and toil, 230 Remitted his strong flight, and near the sea Languidly fluttered, hopeless so to foil His adversary, who then reared on high His red and burning crest, radiant ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... a little pang of conscience, and seemed suddenly to become conscious of a new coil, tightening about her, in this wretched complication. Unable to see her way, ignorant of her sister's motives, urged on by the idea that Sybil's happiness was involved, she was now charged with want of feeling, and called upon for ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... the old man, 'if you're not coming with a strait-waistcoat, or a coil of rope to hold me down, I'd say it's better to ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... that!" Haggles with the once grateful Duke of Zweibruck: "Can't part with my Burghausen." "Suppose you had had to part with your Bavaria altogether?" In short, Friedrich, who had gained nothing for himself, but such infinity of outlay in all kinds, never saw such a coil of human follies and cupidities before; and had to exhaust his utmost patience, submit to new losses of his own, and try all his dexterities in pig-driving: overjoyed, at last, to get out of it on any terms. Outlay of Friedrich is about Two Millions sterling, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... whistled up my shorts—but I preferred the icy wind to the stinking cattle-stalls and insect-infested straw below. We were packed in like sardines. Men were retching and groaning, cussing and growling. At last I found a coil of rope. It was a huge coil with a hole in the centre—something like a large bird's nest. I got into this hole and curled up like a dormouse. Here I did not feel the cold so much, and lying down I didn't feel sick. The moon glittered on the great gray billows. The cattle-boat ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... ease of an air bubble, and the strong radiance of the large moon showed its woman's face, pale with the moonbeam pallor, and set in a wave of hair that swept back from the brows and fell in a loosely twisted coil like a shining snake stealthily losing itself in folds of misty drapery. He rose to meet ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... with his deep, clear Prussian blueness, and his rainbow-colored glitter. And rising from within the cold coil of the frozen dragon the North Pole shot up like a pillar made of one great diamond, and every now and then it cracked a little, from sheer cold. The sound of the cracking was the only thing that broke ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... all, in the end it's her face which impresses you even more than her figure—which is a real triumph, as the figure is so elaborate and successful. On top of her head is a quite little coil of hair that lifts itself, and spirals up, like a giant snail-shell. A dagger keeps it in place, and looks as if the point plunged into Mrs. Ess Kay's brain, though I suppose it doesn't. Over the forehead ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... name given to loadstone as first discovered in Magnesia, a town in Asia Minor; also to a piece of iron, nickel, or cobalt having similar properties, notably the power of setting itself in a definite direction; also a coil of wire carrying an electric current, because such a coil really possesses the properties characteristic of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... sent for again, and found Julia sitting on the couch by the side of her mother, and he at once acknowledged to himself that he had seldom seen a fairer woman. She was tall, and her figure was full and well proportioned. Her glossy hair was wound in a coil at the back of her head, her neck and arms were bare, and she wore a garment of light green silk, and embroidered with gold stripes along the bottom, reaching down to her knees, while beneath it a petticoat of Tyrian purple reached nearly to ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... made by a machine, in which a coil of wire is gradually advanced towards a pair of shears, which cut off short pieces. A metal finger then presses against the middle of each piece, first bending it and then pressing it into a vice, where it is compressed so as to form a loop; a hammer then strikes the two ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various
... was under lead. She had a thirst for Rhoda's praise in her desolation; it was sweet, though the price of it was her doing an abhorred thing. Abhorred? She did not realize the consequences of the act, or strength would have come to her to wrestle with the coil: a stir of her blood would have endued her with womanly counsel and womanly frenzy; nor could Rhoda have opposed any real vehemence of distaste to the union on Dahlia's part. But Dahlia's blood was frozen, her brain ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... proceeding with the conversion of 10-inch smoothbore guns into 8-inch rifles by lining the former with tubes of forged steel or of coil wrought iron. Fifty guns will be thus converted within the year. This, however, does not obviate the necessity of providing means for the construction of guns of the highest power both for the purposes of coast defense and for ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... out of her sleep, nor is it her wont to communicate directly with the upper world. In her slow and solemn sleep-weighted tones, she tells him that the Norns spin into their coil the visions of her illuminated sleep. Why does he not consult them? Or why, she asks, when that counsel is rejected, why does he not, still mote aptly, consult Bruennhilde, wise ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... heart, I realized that only one person could extricate Frances Holladay from the coil woven about her. If she persisted in silence, there was no hope for her. But that she should still refuse ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... it?" and Natasha stuck it in her coil of hair. "When I take little Masha into society? Perhaps they will be fashionable again by then. Well, let's ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... with a spur for a rattle, Fill up the biscuits with lead. Coil me a rope 'round th' ole weepin' willow, Curl my feet under ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Camp - or The Water Fight at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... the ladder that led to the deck. (Each room had one.) I followed a little later and had the satisfaction of seeing Madame Margaretto Gordon, commonly called "Maggie" by her husband and "Maw" by her son Patrick. She was seated on a coil of rope, her son on the boards at her feet. An enormous dog crouched beside them, with his head against Maggie's knee. The mother and son were surprisingly clean. Maggie had on a simple brown calico dress and an apron of blue ticking. A big red kerchief was crossed on her breast ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... reached him. He was dimly conscious of a dark object hurtling through the air. Into the cockpit, splashing, something dropped—a coil of rope. He fell forward upon it, into water eighteen inches deep; and for the first time realized that, but for that line, he had gone to his drowning in another minute. The cat ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... Dostoevski contrasts harshly with the luxurious ease and steady level seen in the outward existence of his two great contemporaries, Turgenev and Tolstoi. From beginning to end he lived in the very heart of storms, in the midst of mortal coil. He was often as poor as a rat; he suffered from a horrible disease; he was sick and in prison, and no one visited him; he knew the bitterness of death. Such a man's testimony as to the value of life is ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... tiger on the quarterdeck, and in one of his blander humours. Captain le Harnois was sitting on a coil of rope, his back reclining against a carronade, with a keg of brandy on the dexter hand and a keg of whisky on the sinister. An air of grim good humour was spread over his features; he had just awaked from slumber; ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... this violent spirit can thus creep; that, like a poisonous serpent, he can thus coil himself, and hide his head in his own narrow circlets; because this stooping, this abasement, gives me hope that no farther ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... thick strong dark-coloured belt (Plate 14, Fig. I) made of tree bark; made and worn by men only. The belt is about 3 or more inches wide and is often so long that it passes twice round the body, the outer end being fastened to the coil beneath it by two strings. This form of belt is sometimes ornamented with simple straight-lined geometric patterns carved into the belt, but it is never coloured. The process of manufacture is as ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... for a lynching. He had cut a long new piece of rope from a coil at a store of supplies and was trying to ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... but nodded his head slightly; he still looked white and sick. Villiers pulled out a drawer in the bamboo table, and showed Austin a long coil of cord, hard and new; and at one end ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... framed in the doorway. She wore a sort of soft, gauzy robe-like thing which clung to her magnificently strong, yet completely youthful figure, causing her more than ever to resemble a young Juno. The gleaming bronze hair was gathered in a great coil at the back of her head; her wonderfully modeled arms were bare; the right was clasped about with a heavy bracelet of ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... do not tolerate hair on the body and pull it out or shave it off. The men even remove the hair at the edge of the scalp all around the head, letting the remainder attain a growth of about sixty centimetres, and this is tucked up in a coil under the cap. The hair of eyebrows and eyelids is removed with great care. The women perform this operation, and tweezers made for the purpose are usually seen among the ornaments that hang from the tops of their ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... put out his hand to grasp the arm that held the hatchet his foot struck an unseen coil of rope, and he plunged head foremost into Monkey. The latter pitched forward three or four steps and Jack landed on his hands and knees, an accident that probably saved him serious injury, for at the moment the terror-stricken Monkey turned ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... the pastors of the most important Protestant church in France was, we can see, horrible to him; and he hoped the calamity might yet be averted.—For the time it seemed likely that it would be. There had been ample enough knowledge in Paris of the coil of scandals about the character of Morus; and copies of Milton's two Anti-Morus pamphlets had been in circulation there long before Oldenburg took with him into France his new bundle of them for distribution. Accordingly, though there was a strong party for Morus, disbelieving the scandals, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... to talk the matter over seriously—father and I—it was found to be too late in the season to procure me the Mount Washington appointment for the winter; besides, the effect of my attempt to "shuffle off this mortal coil" was to literally overrun our store with customers. People came from the country for fifteen miles around, in ox teams, on horse-back, in sleighs and cutters, and bob-sleds, and crockery-crates, to buy something, in hopes of getting a glimpse of the bashful ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... which the harmonics from the second to the sixth are available. The same department of the British Museum was enriched in 1904 with a terra-cotta model (fig. 2) of a late Roman bugle (c. 4th century A.D.), bent completely round upon itself to form a coil between the mouthpiece and the bell-end (the latter has been broken off). This precious relic was found at Ventoux in France and has been acquired from the collection of M. Morel. This is precisely the form of bugle now used ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... it. We are bound as his men to suffer in patience whatever may befall us. In another hour I shall try to make my escape. When it was your turn to wait this evening I stole away for a time, and went to the shed where they keep the war-engines and took thence a coil of rope, which I have hidden in the courtyard. You know that we noticed last night where the sentries were placed, and decided where I might best drop from the wall unobserved. Fortunately the moat is dry at present, though they can turn water into it from the stream ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... forth: as when you descry A ship, with all her sail contends to fly Out of the narrow Thames with winds unapt, Now crosseth here, then there, then this way rapt, And then hath one point reach'd, then alters all, And to another crooked reach doth fall Of half a bird-bolt's[120] shoot, keeping more coil Than if she danc'd upon the ocean's toil; 130 So serious is his trifling company, In all his swelling ship of vacantry And so short of himself in his high thought Was our Leander in his fortunes brought, And in his ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... if one were only a dachshund and inured to exposure. It is plenty wide enough for the average dachshund and plenty high enough, too, but not more than about two-thirds long enough. If one were a dachshund one would either have to coil up or else remain partly outdoors. Also, on board is a galley, which would be a success in every way if you could find a style of cook who could get used to sitting on one hole of the stove while he cooked on the other. One of those talented ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... such a current passing in a coil or conductor laid parallel with or in inductive relation to a second coil or conductor, will induce in the second conductor, if on open circuit, alternating electromotive forces, and that if its terminals be closed or joined, alternating ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... hour, in ceaseless toil, On Blackrock's sullen shore: Till cordage of the sand shall coil Where crested ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... Nor love, nor hate! How then? What will you do? What, will you keep a mean then betwixt either? Or will you love me, and yet hate me too? Yet serves not this! What next, what other shift? You will, and will not; what a coil is here! I see your craft, now I perceive your drift, And all this while I was mistaken there. Your love and hate is this, I now do prove you: You love in hate, by hate ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... circle. Then something like a light ring of smoke up-curved from the saddle before him, and, slowly uncoiling itself in mid air, dropped gently to the ground as he passed. Again, and once again, the shadowy coil sped upward and onward, slowly detaching its snaky rings with a weird deliberation that was in strange contrast to the impetuous onset of the rider, and yet seemed a part of his fury. And then turning, Pereo trotted gently to the centre ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... stuck a few of them in one of these here coffins one day for safe keeping," and he stepped over to a grim pine coffin keeping company with a pile of gay bandanas, and brought forth another bunch of bills. But his foot caught in a coil of barbed wire as he started over to the auditor with them and it was at that moment that Steve came to the station door to get something and Mr. Follet called out, "Here, Steve, hand these over ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... run to love in women of a certain—let us not say age, but youth," says the professor. "An electrical current passing through a coil of wire makes a magnet of a bar of iron lying within it, but not touching it. So a woman is turned into a love-magnet, by a tingling current of life running round her. I should like to see one of them balanced on a pivot properly adjusted, and watch if she did not turn so as to point north ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Hanson had suddenly turned on the current of an induction coil and I had been holding the handles I don't think the thrill I received could have been any more sudden. The Vandam case was the sensation of the moment, a triple puzzle, as both Kennedy and myself had agreed. Was it suicide, murder, or sudden death? Every theory, so far, ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... been my hap to go that way; but I have heard enough and to spare about it. I fear me that our inheritance is but a sorry one, Raymond, and that it will be scarce worth the coil that would be set afoot were we to try ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... talkative rather; liking best to live alone, but fond of tramping across the woods to gossip with neighbors; a very tall man withal and so thin that, as he went rapidly winding and turning among fallen logs, you looked to see him tangle up and tumble in a loose coil, like a wet rope, but he was better than he looked. He had a high reputation as trailer, guide, or trapper and was mentioned as a "bad man in a racket." I had met him several times, and as he was decidedly a character, had rather laid myself out ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... troops were put in position to go into camp all the men connected with this branch of service would proceed to put up their wires. A mule loaded with a coil of wire would be led to the rear of the nearest flank of the brigade he belonged to, and would be led in a line parallel thereto, while one man would hold an end of the wire and uncoil it as the mule was led off. When he had walked the length of the wire the whole of it would ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... pine-knots blazing under the bow covered flood and land with crimson light and inky shadows. The engines had stopped. The boat swept the shore. A single stage-plank lay thrust half out from her forward quarter. A sailor stood on its free end with a coil of small line. The crouching earthwork and its fierce guns glided toward them. Knots of idle cannoneers stood along its crest. A few came down to the water's edge, to whom Anna and Hilary, still paired alone, were a compelling sight. They lifted their smart red caps. Charlie ventured a ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... pair of soft jaws covering over the dark, hard ones? In the moths and butterflies these jaws are different. Each one is long, and has a deep groove on the inner side. These two grooves fit together, and make a slender tube called a proboscis. When flying this long tube is rolled up in a tight coil under the head; alighting, the proboscis is quickly uncoiled and dipped into the throat of the flower, and the sweet nectar sipped from it. See here, Jack, what have ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... and me first." Carson took the part coil of rope from Smoke's hand. "You'll have to cast off. I'll take the rope and the pick. Gimme your hand so I can ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... subdue that. The law of gravitation that brings one to the surface? There his very skill in swimming would help him. He would swim under water, along the river-bed, swim till he found weeds to cling to, weird strong weeds that he would coil ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... the coil of parties, was drowned, interrupted, by the tumultuous noise of the assembly: few of the deputies listened to it, or heard it: their minds, however, astonished by the blow aimed at Napoleon, appeared disquieted and irresolute. The Duke of Vicenza, and the Prince ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... and the Canon come in by their door on the north, and then I see my father, and old Palmer, and a couple of their best men, and Palmer stood a talking for a bit with the Dean in the middle of the choir. He had a coil of rope and the men had crows. All of 'em looked a bit nervous. So there they stood talking, and at last I heard the Dean say, 'Well, I've no time to waste, Palmer. If you think this'll satisfy Southminster people, I'll permit it to be done; ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... than the glittering serpent raised his head out of the cave and uttered a fearful hiss. The vessels fell from their hands, the blood left their cheeks, they trembled in every limb. The serpent, twisting his scaly body in a huge coil, raised his head so as to overtop the tallest trees, and while the Tyrians from terror could neither fight nor fly, slew some with his fangs, others in his folds, and others ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... have all dreamed on summer Sundays when the bells ring, or at night when we cannot sleep for the desire of living. They think it will sober and change them. Like those who join a brotherhood, they fancy it needs but an act to be out of the coil and clamour for ever. But this is a wile of the devil's. To the end, spring winds will sow disquietude, passing faces leave a regret behind them, and the whole world keep calling and calling in their ears. For marriage is like life in this—that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... form new stems, which in turn, when sufficiently grown, are cut away and replaced by a subsequent growth. Such is its tenacity of life, that when the Singhalese wish to grow the rasa-kindu, they twist several yards of the stem into a coil of six or eight inches in diameter, and simply hang it on the branch of a tree, where it speedily puts forth its large heart-shaped leaves, and sends down its rootlets to ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... down the decks they walked, or rather tried to walk, now battling against the wind, and now being swept along in front of it, until almost exhausted, Patty dropped down on a coil of rope in a comparatively sheltered corner. The boys sat down beside her, and they watched the angry ocean. At times the great waves seemed as if they would engulf the pitching ship, but after each wave the steamer righted herself proudly and prepared to careen again ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... throw the loop overboard, but he did it so carelessly that the lazy rope rolled over into the lock, and the loop caught on one of the valve-irons of the upper gate. The whole was the business of an instant, of course. But the poor skipper saw, what we did not, that the coil of the rope on deck was foul, and so entangled round his long tiller, that ten seconds would do one of three things,—they would snap his new rope in two, which was a trifle, or they would wrench his tiller-head off the rudder, which ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... a pilgrimage to the city for two or three months for purposes of art and literature and affection, for, as there seems in the minds of divines to be some doubt of personal identity when this mortal coil is shuffled off, I am fain to embrace my friends' coils while they are yet palpable. This idea of city visits implies a very free life; but there seems now to be no hinderance to it. When the band of Phalanxes, proceeding into desert ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... Butler Cavins, who had a good deal of influence (he owned about twenty slaves), left the grocery with five or six others and was absent about ten minutes. He returned with a coil of rope upon his arm, elbowing his way through the crowd, and exclaimed, "Gentlemen, I am in favor of hanging him. He is a nice, innocent young man. He is far safer for heaven now than when he learns to drink, swear, and be as hardened an old sinner as I am." I could not, ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... LEVEL COIL, a rough game...in which one hunted another from his seat. Hence used for any noisy ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... form, My fancy sees, by love refined, A warmer and a dearer charm By wedlock's mystic hands entwined, - A golden coil of wifely cares That years have forged, the loving joy That guards the curly-headed boy Asleep an ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... the 30th (Sunday) in New York, by which I secured a quiet day and an opportunity to attend Divine service. In my bedroom was a coil of stout Manilla rope screwed into the floor, near a window, so that an escape might be secured in the event of fire. The towels provided are a kind of compromise between a duster and a pocket handkerchief—rather disappointing to one accustomed to his "tub." New York is great ...
— A start in life • C. F. Dowsett
... various ramifications are never allowed to get into a "snarl:" the mystery all turns upon a single point which we will not spoil the reader's pleasure by mentioning, and, arrived at the last pages, the various threads of the story unwind themselves easily and naturally like a single coil. The same skill is displayed in the management of the characters. Though drawn with unequal power, many of them being seized with much vividness, whilst others must be accounted failures, they are well grouped. Numerous ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... Flint's cheeks to his eyes, and stayed there. Why, this hulking brute had hurt Kerry! His breath exhaled in a whistling sigh. He seemed to coil himself together; with a tiger-leap he launched himself at the great hulk before him. It ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... turn, and fond of a scene, even when he had no spectator, not even a looking-glass;) besides ejaculations of "It cannot be!" "If it were!" "I trust not!" "A fresh ghost to torment me!" "When will come the end of this accursed coil which I have wound round my life?" and so forth, he decided aloud that the suspense was intolerable; and enclosing himself in his poetical cloak and Mazzini wide-awake, strode down to the town, and into the shop. And as he entered it, "his heart sank to his midriff, and ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... the way down the corridor to his laboratory, and switched on the lights. On the main laboratory bench was set up a complicated apparatus of many tubes and heavy bus bar connectors. From the final tube two thin wires ran to a long tubular coil. To the left of this coil was a large relay switch, and a ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... hostile. In all the regular and prescribed conditions of mortal being, this magic realm seems as blank and tenantless as yon vacant air. But when a seeker of powers beyond the rude functions by which man plies the clockwork that measures his hours, and stops when its chain reaches the end of its coil, strives to pass over those boundaries at which philosophy says, 'Knowledge ends'—then, he is like all other travelers in regions unknown; he must propitiate or brave the tribes that are hostile—must depend for his life on the tribes that are friendly. Though your science discredits the ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the last year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step its shining archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in its last-found home, and ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... officio. Nevertheless, Scott Brenton, looking at him, was fully conscious that he would become yet more beautiful, once he had been bleached a little, to say nothing of having had some of the puckers straightened out. And, besides, he was so curiously invertebrate, had such a tendency to coil himself to the likeness of a shrimp. In time, beyond a doubt, he would come out all right. For the present moment, though, he was a trifle ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... should be dressed brightly with large, square, loose hanging sleeves, a broad sash tied on one side, her hair brushed flat, coiled in the back, with haircomb and pins thrust into the coil. She may have a Japanese parasol ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... curious that as a system worked out by many minds pointed architecture should thus begin. First come thorns and cusps and lanceolate forms without foliage. Then, not perfect leaves, but buds. In due time the bud opens, at first into the profile coil, and by-and-by into the full-spread leaf. Then comes the flower, and finally the fruit. After that, rottenness and decay. It is curious that this should actually take place through a course of centuries. That it should be reflected in book illumination is simply the usual order of things—the ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... past Elysium, past the long Slow smooth strong lapse of Lethe—past the toil Wherein all souls are taken as a spoil, The Stygian web of waters—if your song Be quenched not, O our brethren, but be strong As ere ye too shook off our temporal coil; ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... happy one. He lost his wife, quarreled with his elder sons, and involved himself in a series of lawsuits.[181] Litigation seems to have been an inveterate vice of his maturity, and he bequeathed to his descendants a coil of legal troubles. Having married one of his daughters, Anna, to Count Ercole Trotti, he had the misery of hearing in 1596 that she had fallen an innocent victim to her husband's jealousy, and that his third son, Girolamo connived at her assassination. In the midst of these annoyances and sorrows, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... years. Strange how all the ugliness and pain of hate had shrivelled away; how he could even shake hands, untroubled, with that 'imperialistic bureaucrat' the Commissioner of Delhi, whom he might have been told off, any day, to 'remove from this mortal coil.' Strange to sit there, over against him, while he puffed his cigar and talked, without fear, of increasing antagonism, increasing danger to himself and ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... like the river that accompanied their path. Nor was this all; for when Will was yet a child a disastrous war arose over a great part of the world. The newspapers were full of defeats and victories, the earth rang with cavalry hoofs, and often for days together and for miles around the coil of battle terrified good people from their labours in the field. Of all this, nothing was heard for a long time in the valley; but at last one of the commanders pushed an army over the pass by forced marches, and for three days horse and foot, cannon and tumbril, drum and standard, ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sick to death of this eternal ceremony, this endless coil of laws winding round us and cramping our lives at every turn; and now it has become too oppressive to be borne any longer. Why should we let it ruin our lives? And why, if we determine to break from it, shall we pretend ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... to be certain about what they seemed to whisper: in that pretty prattling sentence were they not getting a little beyond the honey-moon? Yes—yes, young Hymen is too full of new-found pleasure to heed those holier joys of calm old marriage; for wedded love is as a coil of line, lengthening with the lapse of years, fitted and intended, day after day, to be continually sounding a lower and a lower deep in the ocean ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... me that she had gone away in search of some plant, or plants, with which to compound the medicine she was making for me. She returned early in the forenoon, carrying a small basket in which I saw a coil of the long creeping vine called 'At 'At by the natives, and which grows only on the sandiest and ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... a coil of purple silk interwrought with gold thread, in which a running noose had been tied. Bertrand slipped it over Andreas's head, drew it taut, and held it so, despite the man's desperate, convulsive ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... (1775-1836), whose name (ampere) has been given to the practical unit of electric-current strength. Ampere was the first and is the most famous investigator in electrodynamics. He also invented a telegraphic arrangement in which he used the magnetic needle and coil and the galvanic battery. Others, in the latter part of the eighteenth century and the earlier years of the nineteenth, devised similar arrangements. But no strictly electromagnetic apparatus for telegraphic ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... which smarted with the tears she had shed. Looking at herself in the mirror she saw a pale plaintive little creature, without any freshness of beauty—all the vitality seemed gone out of her. Smoothing her ruffled hair, she twisted it up in a loose coil at the back of her head, and studied with melancholy dislike and pain the heavy effect of her dense black draperies ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... a crumpled dressing-gown, and her hair was loosened from its coil on her neck. Maurice saw so much, before she was close beside him, her eyes searching ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... be daunted. Bounding like a chamois o'er the rocks, to her house, she quickly returned with a long coil of rope, and instantly hurled it over the curling breakers with such a strong arm and true aim, that one end of it struck Mr. P. in the face with a crack like ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 19, August 6, 1870 • Various
... vivid blush. She rose and came behind Mary's chair again, gathering up the abandoned tresses. But before she began to comb and coil she said, "Thanks," leaning forward and, very lightly, ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... And flocks loud-bleating from the distant hills, And vacant shepherds piping in the dale; And now and then sweet Philomel would wail, Or stock doves 'plain amid the forest deep, That drowsy rustled to the sighing gale; And still a coil the grasshopper did keep: Yet all these sounds, yblent, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... law of the natural scheme of things. The direct proof of it was, by this night-time thing, revealed and made yet plainer. He stood convicted, a chronic violator of the immutable rule. And he knew, likewise, there was but one way out of the coil—and took it, there in his bedroom, vividly ringed about by the obscene and indecent circle of his lights which kept away the blessed, cursed darkness while ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... filthy rags of speech, this coil Of statement, comment, query and response, Tatters all too contaminate for use, Have no renewing: He, the Truth, ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... aristocrat—he has such gifts as this—and yet he must sell all this beauty to get a slice of melon for Leon Ramon!" she thought, while the silvery moon strayed in through a broken arch, and fell on an ivory coil of twisted leaves and ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... broiled without harm; for however the other parts of his body might be convulsed during the culinary operations, there could be no feeling of consciousness therein, the communication with the brain being cut off; but if the woman were immediately to stick a fork into his eye, skin him alive, coil him up in a skewer, head and all, so that in the extremest agony he could not move, and forthwith broil him to death: then were the same Almighty Power that formed man from the dust, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, to call the eel into ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb |
