"Needle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... made of the leaf of the "coucourite" palm, are feathered with cotton, and nine or ten inches long, with a point like a needle, and ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... a rod and the boy looked at it. It was nearly seven feet long, and the whole weight of it, except for the short butt which held the reel, was not more than sixteen ounces. The line was thin enough to be threaded through a big darning-needle, it was known as '21 thread' as it had that number of strands, each strand being tested to a breaking strain ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... virtues of an active piety, a modified chastity, and an unqualified obedience, at all events, to the categorical imperative. The obligation of poverty it omits, for the code arose at a time when the spiritual snobbery of the meek and lowly was not pressing the simile about the camel and the eye of the needle. It leads to charming manners and to delicate amenities. It is the opposite of the code of Gallantry, for while the code of Chivalry takes everything with a becoming seriousness, the code of Gallantry ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... 'em literature without words; and I believe if you were to try invisible illustration, it would enjoy a considerable vogue. So long as an artist is on his head, is painting with a flute, or writes with an etcher's needle, or conducts the orchestra with a meat-axe, all is well; and plaudits shower along with roses. But any plain man who tries to follow the obtrusive canons of his art, is but a commonplace figure. To hell with him is the motto, ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I saw by the vivacity with which she scratched the back of her head with a knitting-needle that she was writhing mentally with the torture of unsatisfied curiosity; and I took a malignant pleasure in her suffering. The white flannel that I was wearing was the most agreeable reason I could think of for being associated with ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... something, for she made and baked all the oatmeal cakes, which saved Alice a good deal of time and trouble in watching them. It was astonishing how much the children could do, now that there was no one to do it for them; and they had daily instruction from Jacob. In the evening Alice sat down with her needle and thread to mend the clothes; at first they were not very well done, but she improved every day. Edith and Humphrey learned to read while Alice worked, and then Alice learned; and thus passed ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... statue in a low musical voice, "far away in a little street there is a poor house. One of the windows is open, and through it I can see a woman seated at a table. Her face is thin and worn, and she has coarse, red hands, all pricked by the needle, for she is a seamstress. She is embroidering passion-flowers on a satin gown for the loveliest of the Queen's maids-of-honour to wear at the next Court-ball. In a bed in the corner of the room her little boy is lying ill. He has a fever, and is asking for oranges. His mother has ...
— The Happy Prince and Other Tales • Oscar Wilde
... by a stimulus has thus a concomitant electrical expression. As the excitatory state disappears with the return of the excitable tissue to its original condition, the current of action will gradually disappear.[3] The movement of the galvanometer needle during excitation of the tissue thus indicates a molecular upset by the stimulus; and the gradual creeping back of the galvanometer deflection ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose
... the Mongols were expelled. The Christian bishopric was swept away, and left no trace; but a book of the younger Polo, describing the wealth of China, gave rise to marvellous results. Together with the magnetic needle, which originated in China, it led to centuries of effort to open a way by sea to that far-off fairyland. It was from Marco Polo that Columbus derived his inspiration to seek a short road to the far East by steering to the West,—finding ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... tone of harshness, such as none had ever used to Nancy Stair, and which she was the last woman to stand patient under. She did the thing by instinct which would enrage him most, putting a thread to her needle, squinting up one eye as she did so, in a composed and usual manner, and letting a silence fall before she said, in a ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... period, the child's mind would be a mere tabula rasa. Suppose, on the other hand, we failed to wipe out each other's teaching, the unfortunate youth would be launched upon life with half his guns pointed inboard and his needle jerking from one pole to the other. Consider ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sleeping there, while I work away— My busy needle has plenty to do; And my thoughts turn idly to yesterday, And a world where ...
— Harry • Fanny Wheeler Hart
... industrious," said Mrs. Wilson grimly. "I should be glad to see you using your needle for once. It seems all tennis and croquet ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... he had swung them to victory. He remembered the ease, the perfect harmony with which his faculties had wrought through those few minutes of fierce struggle. Again he passed through the awful ordeal of the operation, now holding the light, now assisting with forceps or cord or needle, now sponging away that ghastly red flow that could not be stemmed. He wondered now at his self-mastery. He could see again his fingers, bloody, but unshaking, handing the old doctor a needle and silk cord. He remembered ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... did give her more than she asked for it. And as for making pretty things, why she's a positive genius. My pretty lace handkerchief that was so badly torn, she mended beautifully. And she is so skillful with the needle! Mother says she never need go out peddling lace again. There are any number of shops that would be glad to have her ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... opened, but no words came. The cold was digging its needle-knives into flesh, into bone, into nerve. Through the man's thick beard and mustache came the gleam of large teeth, the twisting of thick raw lips. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... without ceasing, strange birds flew across the sky in hurrying flocks, and in all the country houses and farmers' halls the old-fashioned barometers, with their dials almost as big as our eight-day clocks and pointers as long as a knitting-needle, began to fall, or rather to go backwards, further than was ever recorded. And whereas it is, and always has been, a fact well known to the owners of these barometers that if they are tapped violently ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... spared her still, At any cost of silence. What is such love To mine, that would outrival Roman heroes— Watch mine arm crisp and shrivel in quick flame, Or set a lynx to gnaw my heart away, To save her from a needle-prick of pain, Ay, or to please her? At their worth she rates Her wooers—light as all-embracing air Or universal sunshine. Luca, go And tell Fiametta—rather, bid the lass Hither herself. [Exit Luca.] He comes to pay me homage, As would ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... moment, but she knew she was due at her needle-work, and very unwillingly went into the drawing-room, where her mother and sisters were sitting round a lamp-lit table, stitching away very busily at a new set of ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... and none but the strongest natures pass through this ordeal of character unhurt. If the woman be unenduring and unthoughtful, if the doctor fail to command her faith, and be too sympathetic, at last she gets possession herself of the drug, or the drug and the hypodermatic needle. Then there is before her one of the saddest of the many downward paths which lead to destruction of ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... bulged over and beyond at all points. Her feet, shod in heelless black slippers, above which puffed white stockings, rested upon a low footstool, and her widespread knees provided a generous lap for the support of her supply of socks and her implements,—her needle-book' and darning-gourd and balls of cotton. She had that look of comfort that fat people seem to radiate even when it is evident that physical annoyance is their ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... globule, exceedingly brilliant and vivid; rested a moment on a bed in the corner, quivered, and vanished. We approached the bed and examined it—a half-tester, such as is commonly found in attics devoted to servants. On the drawers that stood near it we perceived an old faded silk kerchief, with the needle still left in a rent half repaired. The kerchief was covered with dust; probably it had belonged to the old woman who had last died in that house, and this might have been her sleeping room. I had ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... reef, but Thalassa knew the passage, and steered the ketch through a tortuous channel above sunken needle-pointed rocks to a little sheltered harbour inshore. Here they made the ketch fast, and landed on a beach of volcanic violet, where they sometimes sank knee deep into sulphuric water, and felt squirming sea things squelch beneath their ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... picture of Patrick in the word 'eager,' which pricked the scepticism of a practical man. He locked his mouth, looking at her with a twinkle she refused to notice. 'Determined to master details' he could have accepted. One may be determined to find a needle in a dust-heap; one does not with any stiffness of purpose go at a dust-heap eagerly. Hungry men have eaten husks; they have not betrayed eagerness for such dry stuff. Patrick's voracity after details exhibited a doubtfully genuine appetite, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... appeared only an ordinary sized brown gourd, with a long and singularly curved handle, as crooked as a ram's horn. Bending one of her knitting needles into a hook, Dyce deftly inserted it in the neck, where it joined the bowl, and after manoeuvring a few seconds, laid down the needle, and with the aid of her thumb and forefinger slowly drew out a long roll, tightly wrapped with thread. Unwinding it, she shook the roll, and a small, gray object, about two inches long, dropped ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... it, sir. You see my father has a tidy little barbers business down off Shoreditch; and I was brought up to be chatty and easy like with everybody. I tell you, when I drew the number in the conscription it gave my old mother the needle and it gev me the ump. I should take it very kind, sir, if youd let me off the drill and let me shave you instead. Youd appreciate my qualities then: you would indeed sir. I shant never do myself justice at soljering, sir: I cant bring myself to think of it as proper work for a man ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... Thebes, Faust of Mentz, and innumerable others whom thou knowest not. Had there been no Moesogothic Ulfila, there had been no English Shakspeare, or a different one. Simpleton! It was Tubal-cain that made thy very Tailor's needle, and sewed that ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... go, and it hung where he had left it. With two jointed claws he seized Weaver's hand and straightened it out to match the other, removing the pen. With a third claw he thrust a slender needle under the skin. Instantly the hand was as rigid as the rest of Weaver's body. Weaver felt as if the last door had been slammed, the telephone wires cut, the ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight
... strokes in a minute; a skilled comb-maker can make in a day from 60 to 70 combs of such fineness that there are from 40 to 48 teeth to the inch in them; eight Liege brick-makers, working together, produce 4,800 bricks per day; children employed in a needle manufactory, in making the eyes of needles, grow so skillful at it that they can make a small hole in the finest hair and draw another hair through it. Rau, Lehrbuch I, 115. The old proverb, "practice makes perfect," is followed even by thieves in their great division of labor. See ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... water. In the bottom of the mould arrange pitted olives or pim-olas an inch apart. Dip figures, cut from slices of royal custard, or from cooked carrot or turnip, into liquid aspic, and place them on the sides of the mould, to which they will adhere; dip large-sized capers (a larding-needle or skewer is of assistance in this work) in aspic and with them ornament the mould; then fill with aspic and set aside to become fixed. When ready to serve, dip the mould in hot water and invert on a serving-dish. Cut the meat from ...
— Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing-Dish Dainties - With Fifty Illustrations of Original Dishes • Janet McKenzie Hill
... ignominiously out down river. Several times we got on to partially submerged table rocks, and were unceremoniously bundled off them by the Ogowe, irritated at the hindrance we were occasioning; but we never met the rocks of M'bo's prophetic soul—that lurking, submerged needle, or knife-edge of a pinnacle rock which was to rip our canoe from stem to stern, neat and ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... while arch after arch tumbles into its gurgling whirlpools, so the Dhobie, dashing your cambric and fine linen against the stones, shattering a button, fraying a hem, or rending a seam at every stroke, feels a triumphant contempt for the miserable creature whose plodding needle and thread put the garment together. This feeling is the germ from which the Dhobie has grown. Day after day he has stood before that great black stone and wreaked his rage upon shirt and trowser and coat, and coat and trowser and shirt. Then ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... her, as she took the wool in its rude state and formed it into rolls, or separated it with her fingers and carded it till it looked as light and soft as a cloud, or twirled the spindle with skilful touch, or wove the web, or, after it was woven, adorned it with her needle, one would have said that Minerva herself had taught her. But this she denied, and could not bear to be thought a pupil even of a goddess. "Let Minerva try her skill with mine," said she; "if beaten I will pay the penalty." Minerva heard this and was displeased. She assumed the form of an old woman ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... pallid, but bland and urbane, strolled out to the porch, saluting us gracefully. He paused beside Dorothy, who slipped her needle through her work and held out her hand ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... furrowed in all directions by deep ravines, with almost vertical sides, at the bottom of which streams and torrents follow a headlong course. The landscape wears a certain air of savage grandeur; giant peaks rise in needle-like points perpendicularly to the sky; mountain paths wind upward, cut into the sides of the steep precipices; the chasms are spanned by single-arched bridges, so frail and narrow that they seem likely ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... when sewing, that the machine would get, as you say, bewitched. It wouldn't feed, the thread would break or the needle would snap, and the whole work go wrong. Put the machine away, take a rest, and the next day, without doing anything at all to the machine, you find that it runs perfectly. The trouble was with yourself. It is so with ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... these electrical waves, the points of dry twigs were tipped with a smoky blue flame, and sometimes bands of this bluish flame encircled green trees just below their lower limbs. I looked at the compass a few times, and though the needle occasionally swayed a little, it was not ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... should be shaken by a doubt of her own identity; and having reached her room she paused upon the threshold and looked around as if to satisfy herself by all those silent witnesses which made it truth. There was the chair in which she had so often sat plying her needle with such tardy grace while her impatient thoughts did battle with the humdrum, narrow life she led. How she had beat against the fate which seemed to promise naught but that dull round of commonplace events in which her early years ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... the government and commerce of a country. The will should be an undisputed monarch of the whole mental life. It is the one center where all lines of communication meet. London is not so perfect a center for the commerce and finance of England as is the conscious ego (smaller than a needle's point) for ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... coming, Or a lifting and carrying, working and doing for others. Well for her, if she finds no manner of life too offensive, And if to her the hours of night and of day all the same are, So that her work never seems too mean, her needle too pointed, So that herself she forgets, and liveth only for others! For as a mother in truth she needs the whole of the virtues, When the suckling awakens the sick one, and nourishment calls for From the exhausted parent, heaping cares ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... son." said the old Jew calmly, "and learn. Take this needle. Here is a scale of gold; take it up on the needle-point. You have done it. Why? Because gold is a soft metal. Now take up this scale ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... approached Cleopatra's Needle he saw a man leaning over the parapet, and as he came nearer the man looked up, the gas-light falling full ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... were almost deserted for the squalid opium dens. Even our soldier attendant, as soon as the wooden saddle was taken from his sore-backed government steed, would produce his portable lamp, and proceed to melt on his needle the wax-like contents of a small, black box. When of the proper consistency, the paste was rolled on a metal plate to point it for the aperture in the flute-shaped pipe. Half the night would be given to this process, and a considerable portion ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... the needle to the loadstone, obedience, irrespective of rank, generally flies to him who is best fitted to command. The truth of this seemed evinced in the case of Mad Jack, during the gale, and especially at that perilous ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... unimportant details sometimes linger long in the memory. And I remember noticing that a needle of sunlight, piercing a crack in the gaily-striped awning rested upon a ring which Madame wore, so that the diamonds glittered like sparks ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... things that were no pleasure to Letty. She, the big sister I mean, was still at school, and clever at her lessons, so she got a good deal of praise; and she had already begun to learn dressmaking, and was what people called 'handy with her needle,' so she was thought a great deal of at home and was neither timid nor shy. Letty was not clever in any way, and very timid—her pleasures were of a kind that her life made impossible for her. She liked beautiful ...
— The Boys and I • Mrs. Molesworth
... each for other's welfare kindly spiers; The social hours, swift-winged, unnotic'd fleet; Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears: The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years; Anticipation forward points the view; The mither, wi' her needle an' her shears, Gars auld claes look amaist as weel's the new; The father mixes a' ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... rise and meet Hyde. Rem sat idly fingering a pack of playing cards and talking to Cornelia. This situation George took in at a glance; though his sense of sight was quite satisfied when it rested on the lovely girl who dropped her needle as he entered, for he saw the bright flush which overspread her face and throat, and the light of pleasure which so filled her eyes that they seemed to make her whole ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... greatest good-nature. It is difficult to believe that the most sensitive and the most satirised could really be infuriated, so kindly and genial is the caricaturing. We are far here from Swift's bludgeon and from Voltaire's poisoned needle. The regeneration of the social order in England, as Disraeli dreamed it, involved the removal of some mediocrities, but he was neither angry nor impatient. The "brilliant personages who had just scampered up from Melton, thinking it probable that Sir Robert might want some moral Lords ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... the soldiers through the brush, trying to kill as many of them as possible, a big, ugly ranchman turned around, swearing, and made for me. He was either out of cartridges or afraid to take time to load his needle gun, for he swung it over his head by the barrel and rushed at me to strike with the butt end. I did the same. We both struck at once and each received a blow on the head. The volunteer's gun put a brand on my forehead that will be seen as long as I live. My blow on his head made him ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields
... occupation has been a rise in the price of agricultural labor, and in the city of Manila in all labor. But in the provinces the needle-woman, the weaver, and the house servant work still for inconceivably small prices, while there has been a decided rise in the price of local manufactures. Jusi, which cost three dollars gold a pattern in 1901, ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... feet, for a more complete splash had never been made by any descending mass, the "lights out" bells were ringing in all the corridors. Miss Woodhull had only to press a series of buttons arranged in the hall just outside her study door to produce the effect of the needle-prick in the fairy tale. Every inmate immediately dropped asleep. Every? Well, exceptions prove a rule, it ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... difficulty of accomplishing the manual tasks imposed upon me, especially that of sewing on my buttons—how every few seconds the needle would slip through my fingers, till the thread was tangled up in a veritable spider's web, while the button hung as loose as ever, to the derision of my companions and the disgust of the drill-sergeant, whose contemptuous—"You may be a great hand at rhyming, but when it comes to sewing on buttons ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... deemed greater than the gain. When Madame Merle was neither writing, nor painting, nor touching the piano, she was usually employed upon wonderful tasks of rich embroidery, cushions, curtains, decorations for the chimneypiece; an art in which her bold, free invention was as noted as the agility of her needle. She was never idle, for when engaged in none of the ways I have mentioned she was either reading (she appeared to Isabel to read "everything important"), or walking out, or playing patience with the cards, or talking with her fellow ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... very respectable-looking matron, who soon informed us she was from the city of New York. She appeared proud and delighted to entertain Mr. Hamilton, for whose family, she took occasion to tell us, she had, in former days, been in the habit of doing needle-work. ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... pretensions of some—that it had produced any thing of real value; and, at last, wearied with the philosophical twaddle, I resolved to make a new search for the criterion. I confess it, to my shame, this folly lasted for two years, and I am not yet entirely rid of it. It was like seeking a needle in a haystack. I might have learned Chinese or Arabic in the time that I have lost in considering and reconsidering syllogisms, in rising to the summit of an induction as to the top of a ladder, in inserting a proposition between the horns of a dilemma, in decomposing, distinguishing, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... angel, always was with him, seated at her embroidery frame; and each time she drew the needle out she gazed at Lambert with sad and tender feeling. Unable to endure this terrible sight—for I could not, like Mademoiselle de Villenoix, read all his secrets—I went out, and she came with me to walk for a few minutes and talk of herself and ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... I am ashamed to see you sit quilting among the Girls; a Sword becomes your Hands much better than a Needle. ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding
... rate, Betsy," complimented old Sam Dixon, as Tavia plied her needle in the little ticket office, "and do you know, I've taken quite a shine to you? You might be my niece if you liked. I have a penny or two, and there ain't ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... Mr. Bourne gave our newest acquaintance a shirt which pleased him very much. They relished some food he gave them and said "Thank you sir" upon Jackey making them understand it was proper to say so. The presents which pleased them most were a broad file, a needle and thread, a broken glass bottle, and clothes. The file they could make a better tomahawk of than their stone ones; the broken glass bottle they would use for knives or wood scrapers. We did not give them many clothes as cold weather had warned us we had none to spare. ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough
... a pair of old breeches are there is a man! I declare I could both laugh and cry. These poor good men, merciful, zealous, with many sympathies and thoughts, there do they vehemently appeal to me, Et tu, Brute? Brother, wilt thou too insist on the breeches being old,—not ply a needle among us here?—To the naked Caliban, gigantic, for whom such breeches would not be a glove, who is stalking and groping there in search of new breeches and accoutrements, sure to get them, and to tread into nonentity whoever ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... minute Mr Gamble had performed his errand. Mr Felton meanwhile had lifted the cover of the compass-box, into which he now inserted the small magnet, so that it pulled the needle a quarter of the circle round, and made it appear that our course ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... verb hookuiia means literally "cause to be pierced" as with a needle or other sharp instrument. Kui describes the act of piercing, hoo is the causative prefix, ia the passive particle, which was, in old Hawaiian, commonly attached to the verb as a suffix. The Hawaiian speech expresses much more exactly than ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... pulled his needle slowly through a heavy piece of sail cloth. It must have stuck, he was so long about it, and his big hands ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... the needle-work I was bending over either. But that was because senseless tears kept on rising to my eyes, do what I would. Aunt Emmy's eyes had ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... not one jot about, displaying his intimate acquaintance with the shadier side of the world's peoples with apologies; but in the latter he took an almost childish pride. They were not, he pointed out, the rude frescoings of the British mariner, who outlines a diagrammatic female with a sail needle, tints her with gunpowder, and labels her with the name of his current lady-love to prevent mistakes. Such crude efforts have their good points; for instance, they promote constancy. But they are hideously inartistic, and, moreover, to a man of ordinarily fickle ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... the Embassy. "You see, we are all living a sort of touchy life here, nowadays. We try to be civil to any of the German or Austrian lot when we meet, but of course they don't come to our functions. And every now and then some of those plaguey neutrals get the needle and they don't come, so we never know quite where we are, Guadopolis has been avoiding us lately, and I hear he was seen out at the Lakewood Country Club with Count Reszka, the Rumanian Minister, a few days ago. Gave the Chief quite a ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and packets of new darning needles. Each girl in turn went first to Miss Bishop and had her arm thoroughly sterilized with boiled water and boracic lotion, and was then passed on to the medical officer for vaccination. The scratch with the needle really did not hurt, and the little operations were soon over. Sixteen maidens walking about waiting for their arms to dry before re-donning their blouses made a rather comical sight. The giggles that ensued raised the spirits of even ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... through which broke tiny pale points of snowdrops. Away beyond the first terrace of lawn the roses bowed and tossed wild arms. A silvery gleam of sunlight fell on the turf, glistened, and was gone. Mrs. Weston sat with her hands in her lap and her needle at rest in a half-worked piece of linen. A veil of languor had fallen upon the wistfulness of her face. Her bosom hardly stirred. The sound of the opening door broke her dream, and she picked up her work and began to sew eagerly. ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... day was beautiful. In the morning they walked to church through the Abbey plantations, which run for nearly half a mile along the edge of the cliff. The rime lay thick upon the pines and firs—every little needle had its separate coat of white whereon the sun's rays glistened. The quiet sea, too, shone like some gigantic emerald, and in the sweet stillness the song of a robin perched upon the bending bough of a young poplar ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... to say which was the happiest. Owen carried his boy, and tossed and played with him, while Nest sought out some little article of work, and seated herself on the dresser beneath the window, where now busily plying the needle, and then again looking at her husband, she eagerly told him the little pieces of domestic intelligence, the winning ways of the child, the result of yesterday's fishing, and such of the gossip of Penmorfa as came ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell
... there's one of the pins running into my wrist now. It's a new shirt of mine come home, and they have forgotten the buttons. Miss Deb caught sight of it, when I went in to tell her I was coming here, and ran after me to the gate with a needle and thread, ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... modesty like hers had been put to a severe strain. But she dropped her eyes again, finished a row of stitches, rested the steel needle on her lip, and ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... violin hasn't quite as much dust on it as the rest of the things in this room, Kate. It's a pity you stopped playing just as I came in. I don't enjoy fiddling much but I'd prefer it to seeing anyone using a needle ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... who posed as a patient of Dr. Ross to learn her secrets as well as to secure the subtle poison of the cobra. That man, perhaps, merely brushed against Price Maitland in the crowd, enough to scratch his hand with the needle, shove the false note into his pocket— anything to win the woman who he knew loved him, and whom he could win. ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... that evening Bertha was the agitated one, her speech much affected, and her gestures restless, while Phoebe sat over her work, her needle going swiftly and evenly, and her eyes beaming with her quiet depth of ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was in the big room addressing the employes, Britz suddenly walked to the chair in which the murdered man still sat huddled. Bending down, he picked up something long and shiny, which the others had overlooked. It was a long darning needle, and the detective, after examining it an instant under the electric light, slipped it into a leather card case. He did not mention what he had found to the coroner, when the ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... dahlias,—a posy expressing autumn with a greater sense of gain than loss. Robin was reading with exemplary patience and considerable difficulty one of the old French poetry books belonging to the "Sieur Amadis de Jocelin," and Priscilla's small glittering needle flew in and out the open- work stitchery of a linen pillow-slip she was mending as deftly as any embroideress of Tudor times. Over the old, crabbed yet delicately fine writing of the "Sieur" whose influence ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... lifted her up in his lap and hugged her, scrubbing her face with his beard which gave her pink cheeks. They both laughed. She held her sewing out with one hand so that the needle should not scratch either ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... I said to him, 'Canst thou read?' 'No.' 'Is there a school for colored people on Henry Clay's plantation?' 'No.' 'How old art thou?' 'Don't know.' In the orchard I found a woman at work with her needle. I asked 'How old art thou?' 'A big fifty.' 'How old is that?' 'Near sixty.' 'How many children hast thou?' 'Fifteen or sixteen.' 'Where are they?' 'Colored folks don't know where their children is; they are sent all over the country.' 'Where wert thou raised?' 'Washington.' ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... button, button, who's got the button, Uncle Joe, blindfolded, pursuing the prettiest girl at the frolic, brought roars of laughter from everyone but Aunt Betsy. Lin, sitting on a crock endeavoring to pass a linen thread through the eye of a cambric needle; Uncle Jack, blindfolded trying to pin the tail on the proper place on the paper donkey stuck against the wall. When he stuck the pin in the keyhole of the parlor door the laughter shook the ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... cigarettes the women bring out their pyjamas and add stitch upon stitch. Pyjama legs are awkward things in a breeze, being apt to flap about, but they are resolutely tucked round arms or otherwise restrained, and the needle continues its deft work in spite of all difficulties. Pyjama jackets, too, are of course made in the proper number, but they are not so dramatic in their movements as the legs, and I have not noticed them ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 26th, 1914 • Various
... many a burgher's pate A text which says that heaven's gate Opens to the rich at as easy rate As the needle's eye takes the camel in! The mayor sent east, west, north, and south To offer the Piper by word of mouth, Wherever it was men's lot to find him, Silver and gold to his heart's content, If he'd only return the way he went, And ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... year for poor needle-women: it was the year I am writing about, and Sweetie's mother found it almost impossible to get even the necessaries of life. Her children's lips were bluer, their faces more pinched, and thin, threadbare clothes more patched than ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... pointed Triangles of the Soldier class are formidable, it may be readily inferred that far more formidable are our Women. For, if a Soldier is a wedge, a Woman is a needle; being, so to speak, ALL point, at least at the two extremities. Add to this the power of making herself practically invisible at will, and you will perceive that a Female, in Flatland, is a creature by no means to be ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... been no wars on any of the three inhabited worlds for many years. Silent, electronic conflict! Not a question of men in battle. A man at a switch on the brigand ship was the sole actor so far in this assault. And the results were visible only in the movement of the needle-dials on our instrument panels. A struggle, so far, not of man's bravery, or skill, or strategy, but ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... rises one per cent, above its original intensity. Such being the law on the side of sensation, suppose that we place upon the optic nerve of an animal the wires proceeding from a delicate galvanometer, we find that every time we stimulate the eye with light, the needle of the galvanometer moves, showing electrical changes going on in the nerve, caused by the molecular agitations. Now these electrical changes are found to vary in intensity with the intensity of the light used as a stimulus, and they do so very nearly in accordance ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... over disconsolately—the needle-book for Beatrice, not too tidily sewn; the blotter for Winnie, with its brown paper cover, hastily painted with a spray of roses, and its one sheet of blotting paper begged from Father's writing-table; the pincushion for Lesbia, trimmed with a piece of washed ribbon; and ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... twentieth century version of any one of the Fates, with the Klinger darner and mender substituted for distaff and spindle. There was something almost humanly intelligent in the workings of Martha's machine. Under its glittering needle she would shove a sock whose heel bore a great, jagged, gaping wound. Your home darner, equipped only with mending egg, needle, and cotton, would have pronounced it fatal. But Martha's modern methods of sock ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... clean and well kept, and a few clothes neatly brushed and folded on a chair bore witness to the servant's care. As Paul, however, glanced behind the sofa, he was concerned to see a coat, which had evidently been thrust hurriedly in a corner, with the sleeve lining inside out, and a needle and thread still sticking in the seam. It struck him instantly that this had been the negro's occupation, and that the ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... North Sea, in a country called Germany, lived a little boy named Gottlieb. His father had died when he was but a baby, and although from early morning till late at night his mother sat plying her needle, she found it difficult indeed to provide food and clothing and shelter for ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... bonny lady had learned her wondrous music in those forests, from the shine of the sun, and the sighing of the winds through the sycamores and pines? For Robert knew that the broad-leaved sycamore, and the sharp, needle-leaved pine, had each its share in the violin. Only as the wild innocence of human nature, uncorrupted by wrong, untaught by suffering, is to that nature struggling out of darkness into light, such and so different is the living ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... the matron had given her a little needle-book containing a spool of thread and thimble for a good-by present. These now came into good play. She used the lamp shears to ...
— The Potato Child and Others • Mrs. Charles J. Woodbury
... his sister left a child?" Mrs. Moon put down the needle she was trying to thread, and stuck it in her work. ...
— Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha" • Kate Langley Bosher
... Greek tragedy. The family were still in the Holborn lodgings,—the mother an invalid, the father sinking into a second childhood. Mary, in addition to the burden of ministering to her parents, was working for their support with her needle. ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... acted about the year 1560, certainly deserves the name of a comedy. However antiquated in language and versification, it possesses unequivocal merit in the low comic. The whole plot turns on a lost needle, the search for which is pursued with the utmost assiduity: the poverty of the persons of the drama, which this supposes, and the whole of their domestic condition, is very amusingly portrayed, and the part of a cunning beggar especially is drawn with much humour. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... was just a dream, a fancy. More real were the marigees and the kifs. They were the ones who persecuted him. There was the marigee who would shriek "All is lost!" He had shot at it a hundred times with his needle gun, but always it flew away unharmed. Sometimes it did not even ...
— Happy Ending • Fredric Brown
... in gratifying my wishes!" On this we had some farther talk, and I took nearly the whole of the lodgings at a hundred guineas a year, that (as I said) she might have a little leisure to sit at her needle of an evening, or to read if she chose, or to walk out when it was fine. She was not in good health, and it would do her good to be less confined. I would be the drudge and she should no longer be the slave. I asked ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... fewer than were usually possessed by girls of her age and station; and very glad was she to avail herself of the kind offer made by her cousin Hortense, soon after the arrival of the latter at Hollow's Mill, to teach her French and fine needle-work. Mdlle. Moore, for her part, delighted in the task, because it gave her importance; she liked to lord it a little over a docile yet quick pupil. She took Caroline precisely at her own estimate, as an irregularly-taught, even ignorant girl; and when she found ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... not disagreeable to them—the queen was in her chamber, at the castle of Amboise, against the window curtains. There, seated in her chair, she was working at a piece of tapestry to amuse herself, but was using her needle heedlessly, watching the rain fall into the Loire, and was lost in thought, where her ladies were following her example. The king was arguing with those of his court who had accompanied him from the chapel—for it was a question of returning to dominical vespers. ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... Bridge to Gravesend, seems a vast and uncharted wilderness of craft—a wilderness in which it would be perfectly easy to hide even a three-master successfully. To such people the idea of looking for a steam launch on the river would be about equivalent to the idea of looking for a needle in a bundle of hay. But the fact is, there are hundreds of men between St Katherine's Wharf and Blackwall who literally know the Thames as the suburban householder knows his back-garden—who can recognize thousands ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... required. From one district certain men were required to bring crayfish to the capital, charcoal from another, iron from another, and so on through all the series of wants. The jeweler must make such articles as the Queen would desire, the tailor use his needle and the writer his pen, as the government might need. The system had in it some show of rough-and-ready justice, and was based on the idea that each must contribute to the needs of the state according ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... reflex of "gagging." These insensitive areas, known as stigmata, played a very important role in the epidemic of witchcraft hunting of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the witch was so diagnosed if she felt no pain when a needle was thrust into her. Mankind has often enough worshiped the insane and mentally aberrant and has as often been diabolically ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... substances into forage; a second into wool; a third into thread; a fourth into cloth; and a fifth into garments. Who can pretend to say, that all these contributions to the work, from the first furrow of the plough, to the last stitch of the needle, are not labor? ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... power. He attributes the sound to the friction of the third and preceding abdominal segments, and I find that these surfaces are marked with very fine concentric ridges; but so is the projecting thoracic collar into which the head articulates, and this collar, when scratched with the point of a needle, emits the proper sound. It is rather surprising that both sexes should have the power of stridulating, as the male is winged and the female wingless. It is notorious that Bees express certain emotions, as of anger, by the tone of their humming; and according to H. Muller (p. 80), the males of some ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... man. I'm plain and outspoken, and I resent sneaking hints and false grins as quick as I do slaps. I'm tired o' you doing the way you are, anyhow. I want you to be like the rest of the girls. What do we care about owning this farm. Her daddy can't buy a knitting-needle on time, and yet they live as well as anybody else, and she thinks she is a grade higher ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... known to those familiar with the character of opium that its effects are greatly enhanced at first by any decided change in the method of its use; also that its most powerful and immediate influences can be produced solely by the hypodermic needle, since by means of it the stimulant is introduced at once into the system. When taken in powders, the glow, the serenity, and exaltation come on more slowly, and more gradually pass away, causing alternations of mood far less noticeable than those produced by immediate ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... of oxen, mules, and stately steeds, Vases and tripods (for the funeral games), Resplendent brass, and more resplendent dames. First stood the prizes to reward the force Of rapid racers in the dusty course: A woman for the first, in beauty's bloom, Skill'd in the needle, and the labouring loom; And a large vase, where two bright handles rise, Of twenty measures its capacious size. The second victor claims a mare unbroke, Big with a mule, unknowing of the yoke: The third, a charger yet untouch'd by flame; Four ample measures held the shining frame: Two ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... second gun into the air, with a certain velocity. If, now, the second gun, at the instant it leaves the muzzle of the first, is fired automatically, say by utilising the first discharge to press a spring which can react on a hammer or needle, the bullet will acquire a velocity due to both discharges, and equivalent to the velocity of the second gun at the time it was fired plus the velocity produced by the explosion of its own charge. In this way, ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... she was helpless as the water flowing to the sea. The primal quest must wait. Her being turned to this younger man as the needle to the pole, even though his words were false, ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... my mother, though she was hot-tempered, still loved me. I was a needle-woman, and earned from twenty to thirty sous a day. Whatever I earned I gave my mother. I had never had a lover, never thought of such a thing, and when my goodness was praised I felt inclined to laugh. I had been brought up ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... into danger from this mysterious persecutor of hers if the fact of her betrothal became known. "I shall not mind staying in the house at all now," she added. An expression came over her face which James did not understand, which no man would have understood. Clemency was wonderfully skilled at needle-work, and she had plenty of material in the house. She was reflecting innocently how she could begin at once upon some dainty little frills for her trousseau. A delight, purely feminine, filled her ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... cab pulled up to the main gate of the spaceport and the two men got out. Far across the field, a slender, needle-nosed ship stood poised on her stabilizer fins ready for flight. She was black except for a red band painted on the hull across the forward section and around the few viewports. It gave her the ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... whist or quadrille; And seek admiration by vauntingly telling Of drawing and painting, and musical skill; But give me the fair one, in country or city, Whose home and its duties are dear to her heart, Who cheerfully warbles some rustical ditty, While plying the needle with exquisite art: The bright little needle, the swift-flying needle, The needle ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... that, although I believed myself a match for him even at that work I would not descend so far below the dignity of a gentleman as to fight like a porter; but if he had anything to say to me, I was his man at blunderbuss, musket, pistol, sword, hatchet, spit, cleaver, fork, or needle; nay, I swore, that should he give his tongue any more saucy liberties at my expense, I would crop his ears without any ceremony. This rhodomontade, delivered with a stern countenance and resolute tone, had the desired effect ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... nation's emblem transfigured by the departing rays of a sun that was entirely palled from view; and on no other object did the glory fall, in all the broad panorama of mountain ranges and deserts. Not even upon the staff of the flag—for that, a needle in the distance at any time, was now untouched by the light and undistinguishable in the gloom. For a whole hour the weird visitor winked and burned in its lofty solitude, and still the thousands of uplifted eyes ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was old enough to learn a trade, his father not being able to put him out to any other, took him into his own shop, and taught him how to use his needle: but neither fair words nor the fear of chastisement were capable of fixing his lively genius. All his father's endeavours to keep him to his work were in vain; for no sooner was his back turned, than he was gone for that day. Mustapha chastised him, but Alla ad Deen was incorrigible, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... thick mist which swept over the German Ocean. We stood on for some hours in the hopes of sighting her again, but when the fog cleared she was nowhere to be seen. The commander of the cutter declared that he had done all he could, and that we might as well look for a needle in a bundle of hay as search longer for the lugger, so ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... the strength in the corn, the perfume in the rose—as unknowable as the awful force that reveals itself in the lightning flash or speaks in the rolling thunder—as unknowable as the mysterious hand that holds the compass needle to the north and swings the star worlds far beyond the farthest reach of the boasting eye of Science. Unknowable? Yes—as unknowable as that which lies safe hidden behind the most commonplace facts of life—as ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... knife is employed, the vessels are either slit in their length or cut transversely at several points. The method by electrolysis is the same as used in the removal of superfluous hair (q. v.).; the needle may, if the vessel is short, be inserted along its calibre, or if long, may be inserted at several points ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... 62885. A needle-like implement, made of a soft black stone that may be cannel coal. It is 3-1/2 inches in length, but is not entire. The shaft is a little more than one-fourth of an inch in diameter, is nearly round, and tapers to a symmetrical point. The surface is highly polished. It was ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of a Portion of the Collections Made During the Field Season of 1881 • William H. Holmes
... of air and water on iron sulphides, and this material is much more abundant than the iron. If it be true that the iron masses were thus imbedded, like plums in an astral pudding, the hypothetic buried star might have great size and yet only small power to attract the magnetic needle. Mr. Howell also proposes a qualification of the test by volumes, suggesting that some of the rocks beneath the buried star might have been condensed by the shock so as to occupy ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... deference as if she were an empress, anticipating her slightest wants and wishes, deprecating her gratitude, and seeming ashamed of her own goodness and industry. I knew that her plain sewing, assisted by my mother's elegant needle-work, furnished us the means of support; but I had always known it so, and it seemed all natural and right. Peggy was strong and robust. The burden of toil rested lightly on her sturdy shoulders. It seemed to me that she was born with us and ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... seems to me probable, because she has literally abandoned her house and her belongings. An innocent woman would scarcely leave all those modern and valuable furnishings unless for some very strong reason. But as to finding her—a needle in a haystack presents ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... day of her freedom in luxurious idleness. It was such an inexpressible relief not to hear the perpetual click of Mrs. Pallinson's needle travelling in and out of the canvas, as that irreproachable matron sat at her embroidery-frame, on which a group of spaniels, after Sir Edwin Landseer, were slowly growing into the fluffy life of Berlin wool; a still greater relief, ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... teaching can lead him. But tell us, if thou knowest, why just now the mountain gave such shocks, and why all seemed to cry together, even down to its moist feet." Thus asking he shot for me through the needle's eye of my desire, so that only with the hope my ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri
... but still held the embroidery, on which she had been engaged. The profile of Blanche was visible, leaning a little towards her sister, with an expression of tender and anxious solicitude, whilst her needle remained in the canvas, as if she had just ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... knee; Father curses deep, a-breathing hard your name; But never do I hear and never do I see, I with my head low, working out my shame, Eyes burning dry and my heart like a flame; For I hate you then—I hate you, Jim of Tellico, And grip my needle tighter, every stitch a sin, The hate growing bigger till the thing I sew Seems a shroud I'm glad a-making just ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... laughed so loud and suddenly that Therese, being already nervous, pricked her finger with her needle till the blood came; a mishap which decided her to ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... very wrong, there is no doubt about that," said Mademoiselle Noemie. "But rather than earn my living as some girls do—toiling with a needle, in little black holes, out of the world—I would throw myself ...
— The American • Henry James
... great many things. Of course I should buy Dearest all sorts of beautiful things, needle-books and fans and gold thimbles and rings, and an encyclopedia, and a carriage, so that she needn't have to wait for the street-cars. If she liked pink silk dresses, I should buy her some, but she likes black best. But I'd, take her to the big stores, and tell her to look 'round and choose ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... rich, Had we been through as many doors, and seen The dishes standing on the polished wood In the wax candle light, we'd be as hard, And there's the needle's eye at the end ...
— The Countess Cathleen • William Butler Yeats
... Its productions and features may be without example, as the phenomena of the heavenly bodies undoubtedly are in those undiscovered solitudes. What may not be expected in a country of eternal light? I may there discover the wondrous power which attracts the needle and may regulate a thousand celestial observations that require only this voyage to render their seeming eccentricities consistent forever. I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... passed him on the road the previous morning. Evidently then the missing man was keeping away from the towns, taking instead a trail that would inevitably lead him further into the bush. He was rather pleased at this. Abel Cumshaw in the city would be as hard to find as the proverbial needle in a bundle of hay, but in the bush it would be much easier to locate him, Bryce considered. So he drove the car along at a low speed, keeping all the time a watchful eye out for any signs of the truant. As he progressed he was surprised ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... you only would! But you have got too far out of the right rut, I fear. Too much over-civilization, and the deceitfulness of riches. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. More's the pity. I never came across but two of you who could value a man wholly and solely for what was in him—who thought themselves verily and indeed of the same flesh and blood as John Jones the attorney's clerk, and Bill Smith ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... "scale tree," was a gigantic club moss fifty and seventy-five feet high, spreading toward the top into stout branches, at whose ends were borne cone-shaped spore cases. The younger parts of the tree were clothed with stiff needle-shaped leaves, but elsewhere the trunk and branches were marked with scalelike scars, left by the fallen leaves, and ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... they learnt to handle the materials with which they worked. If the mallet hit the chisel so vigorously as to spoil a part of the pattern, its wielder was wiser next time; and the experimenters in pyrography soon learned that a red-hot needle used indiscreetly can dig holes in leather instead of ornamenting it. Such "dufferisms", as the girls called them, became rarer, and many quite creditable objects were turned out, and judged worthy of a temporary ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... in terror and he saw Fenwick's arm come up with the hypodermic. He saw the doctor try to bring the needle down in a jab, but the monster's arm swept the needle aside and then a claw-like hand ...
— The Monster • S. M. Tenneshaw
... to my instinct to decide for me, I find, strange and whimsical as it may seem, that I finally and inevitably settle southwest, toward some particular wood or meadow or deserted pasture or hill in that direction. My needle is slow to settle,—varies a few degrees, and does not always point due southwest, it is true, and it has good authority for this variation, but it always settles between west and south-southwest. The future lies that way to me, and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... of deep red syenite, clothed with verdure, and known as Primrose Hill. The summit is 1,320 feet above the level of the sea, and commands a prospect embracing a radius of seventy miles. Our engraving represents a severed cliff of greenstone at the top, called the Needle's Eye, and which tradition alleges to have been riven at the Crucifixion. Near it is a culminating boss of pinkish felspar known as the Bladder Stone, a name derived, it is supposed, from Scandinavian mythology; whilst at a short distance is the Ravens' Bowl, ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... principal reason I've got for thinkin' he an' Mendez are in cahoots, an' if they be, then the Mexican must have some kind o' a camp out there in the sand whar he hides between raids; though, damn if I know whar it can be." He paused reflectively. "It'll be like hunting a needle in the haystack, Jim, but I reckon you an' I'll have to get out that way, an' we might have luck enough to stumble onto ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... axiom; but he consoled himself with the idea, that as the girl was doubtless very poor, the guinea might be of some use to her. In the meantime, Mary was boiling the gruel for her father's breakfast, the only food she could afford him, till she got a few shillings that were owing to her for needle-work. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... quilt would be such a precious reminder of Johnny's boyhood some day, when he had put away childish things. Every stitch would be dear to her, because of the little stubby fingers that worked so patiently to set them, despite the needle ...
— The Quilt that Jack Built; How He Won the Bicycle • Annie Fellows Johnston
... on] —and it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye than for a rich man to get into heaven. That's the way it is, Miss Julia. Now I am going, however—-alone—- and as I pass by, I'll tell the stableman not to let out the horses if anybody should like to get away before the count comes ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... bride; There her soft vows unceasing love record, Queen of the bright seraglio of her Lord.— So sinks or rises with the changeful hour The liquid silver in its glassy tower. 315 So turns the needle to the pole it loves, With fine librations ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... supplemented and elaborated by later insight and ingenuity, may be said to underlie our modern civilization. A writer of the time of Henry II of England reports that sailors when caught in fog or darkness were wont to touch a needle to a bit of magnetic iron. The needle would then, it had been found, whirl around in a circle and come to rest pointing north. On this tiny index the vast extension of modern ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... are thoroughly well educated. They are musical and artistic, beautiful needle-women, manage their homes well, and they have read enough to join in any discussion in which they take an interest. They are, consequently, treated by their husbands as equals, and although until 1907 they had no political rights, women were much employed in government ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... that comes of assisting in a good action, she ascended to an apartment upstairs, and, for a couple of hours, employed herself with needle and thread in sartorial repairs on behalf of her husband and Sam. Then she was interrupted by the advent of ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... twilight, so that with my bow I may make you all a sad picture between the clefs or a gay one of flowers blooming from G to upper C. And there is heat and cold there too,—one gasps in the F flat down low and one shivers at the needle frost above high C. And there are all feelings too. I may sing you to sleep, I may thunder you awake, I may even steal your heart forever while you think to only listen ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... who had a valley-full of needles. And one day the mother of Jesus came to him and said: "Friend, my son's garment is torn and I must needs mend it before he goeth to the temple. Wouldst thou not give me a needle?" ...
— The Madman • Kahlil Gibran
... to probe life, to live it, to race the whole gamut of inquiry, experiences, follies, loves, and sacrifices, to squeeze the orange dry, and then to die while yet young, having gone the full compass, the needle pointing home. She was as broad as sumptuous in her nature; so what did a gaucherie matter? or a dash of the Oriental in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the Sieur de Vauban, at La Rochelle. Now he was back in Quebec from months on the frontier, he was summoned to the Major's house, and yet he stayed and laughed at the children. For the Major's wife was older, too, and the vivacity of her youth was thinning out and uncovering the needle-like tongue beneath. A slim little urchin was squirming between his boots, with a pursuing rabble close behind, and the Captain had to take hold of a young tree to keep his feet. He turned and started in pursuit of the children, but caught sight of two Ursuline sisters entering the ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... meekest man? Who was the strongest man? Who was the father of Zebedee's children? Who had the iron bedstead, and whose thumbs and great-toes were cut off?" To set a child to find these things in the Bible without a concordance seems to us as futile as setting him to hunt a needle in a haystack. But our fathers were not so foolish as we like to think them; they didn't care two pins if we never discovered who had the iron bedstead, but they knew that, leafing over the book, we should light upon treasure where we sought it not, kernels of the sweetest ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood |
