"Spin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the big, awkward clock-jacks imported from England, how costly they were, and all. So he took the matter in hand and invented a clock-jack that was much better than the imported one. Not only did it spin the meat around when wound up, but it was enclosed in a brass cover that kept in the heat and juices. It is probable that the invention furnished inspiration for somebody else for presently the covered tin baker made its appearance and Willard ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... environment which the novelist calls local color, often containing in the name alone a comprehensive suggestiveness as great as that of an Homeric epithet. Thus our familiar Cat and Mouse appears in modern Greece as Lamb and Wolf; and the French version of Spin the Platter is My Lady's Toilet, concerned with laces, jewels, and other ballroom accessories instead of our prosaic numbering of players. These changes that a game takes on in different environments are of the very essence of folklore, and some amusing examples are to be found in our own ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... will spin down for you every few days," Margaret said, falling readily in with the plan. "I'm glad you're not going to simply get into a rut the way some of the other girls have,—cooking and babies and nothing else!" ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... awful when the sheikh blew in an' tole us you had gone under. He heard the shootin', you see, an', accordin' to his account, you were as full of lead as Tagg'll be full of beer when he listens to the yarn I'll spin nex' time ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... lovely," said Nan, as they all started out for a little spin, to try it. "I've had so much trouble of late with taxicabs, that it's a genuine comfort to have my own car at my beck and call. It's a lovely car, Fred, and Patty and I shall just ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... which Smith returned was the London of Shakespeare. We should be thankful for one glimpse of him in this interesting town. Did he frequent the theatre? Did he perhaps see Shakespeare himself at the Globe? Did he loaf in the coffee-houses, and spin the fine thread of his adventures to the idlers and gallants who resorted to them? If he dropped in at any theatre of an afternoon he was quite likely to hear some allusion to Virginia, for the plays of the hour were full of chaff, not always of the choicest, about the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... indulged in then. Later in the day, after the dairy had been visited and the kitchen inspected, the spinning-wheels were brought out, and the maids, who had finished their household and dairy work, were set down to spin. ...
— Hayslope Grange - A Tale of the Civil War • Emma Leslie
... given orders for my four-in-hand to come round here and pick us up," said Franco. "Shall we all go for a spin, and get an appetite ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... chap," Frank said, at the conclusion of one of French's stories of the grandeur of the coming empire, "and I'd like to hear you spin yarns all night, but, if you don't ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... himself round with velocity in the opposite direction; continued to spin until his long cloak was all wound neatly about him; clapped his cap on his head, very much on one side (for it could not stand upright without going through the ceiling), gave an additional twist to his corkscrew moustaches, and replied ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... are like the spiders, they spin all out of their own bowels. But give me a philosopher who, like the bee, hath a middle faculty, gathering from abroad, but digesting that which is gathered ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... prepare his food, while he tended his little flock? who was there to collect the dry branches in the forest, for the winter's fuel, while the aged shepherd watched a few sheep that he possessed? who would now spin him warm clothing to protect his weak ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... love in her own. During childhood she had sat contentedly on his knee, or on a stool at his feet, listening with rapt interest to his stories of adventure by land and sea. The Captain had never been able to spin the wild yarns commonly known to be his habit when Elizabeth Fox was his only audience. This was not due to any fear that she would have detected fraud in his impossible tales, but to the fact that he could ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... without noise. In the midst of it, patient and nervous, sat Joyce, watching always that spot in the bushes where a blue overall and a brown head had disappeared. The under-note of alarm which stirred her senses died down; a child finds it hard to spin out a mood; she simply sat, half-dreaming in the peace of the morning, half-watching the wood. Time slipped by her, and presently there came Mother, smiling and seeking through the trees for ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... and had also made extensive inroads into the English market. The textile industry had not only transformed great centers of New England into an American Lancashire, but the Southern States, recovering from the demoralization of the Civil War, had begun to spin their own cotton and to send the finished product to all parts of the world. American shoe manufacturers had developed their art to a point where "American shoes" had acquired a distinctive standing in practically ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... likes big, unmistakable, knock-down effects; it likes to get its money back in palpable, computable change. It's in a tremendous hurry, squeezed together, with a sort of generalized gape, and the last thing it expects of you is that you will spin things fine. You can't portray a character, alas, or even, vividly, any sort of human figure, unless, in some degree, you do that. Therefore the theatre, inevitably accommodating itself, will be at last a landscape without figures. I mean, of course, ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... more fair than is the sun's bright beams, Or snow-white Alps beneath fair Cynthia! Who would refuse with Hercules to spin, When such fair faces bears us company? Fair Polyxena never was so fair: Nor she that was proud love to Troylus. Great Alexander's love, Queen of Amazons, Was not so fair as is fair Alfrida. But, Perin, be thou secret to the king, And I will sound these ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... tiny wheels, strapped on to their boots. The smooth London pavements are very good for this sport, and the boys skate about, getting wonderfully clever at it, and enjoying themselves immensely. Then they have their tops, which they spin on the pavements or in the roadway among the feet of the people walking, without minding in the least. There are tops all over the streets at some times of the year spinning gaily. The girls have their skipping-ropes, which are apt to be a nuisance to the people who ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... impressionable Czar Alexander I of Russia, acclaimed as the "White Angel" and the "Universal Savior," and Prince Metternich, the real ruler of Austria, the spider who was for the next thirty years to spin the web of European secret diplomacy. While the Czar invited all governments to unite in a "Holy Alliance" to prevent war, Metternich for the same purpose formed the less holy but more powerful "Quadruple Alliance" of Russia, Prussia, ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... that half hid me would not suffice to obscure Varvilliers. Or would it? I smiled for an instant. Instead of hiding behind the wardrobe, I saw myself becoming part of it, blending with it. Should I take rank as the four-hundred-and-first frock? "Willingly give thyself up to Clotho, allowing her to spin thy thread into whatever things she pleases." Even into a frock, O Emperor? Goes the philosophy as ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... his grip and his footing. For a moment he hung, while his heart stood still. Then he fell with sickening thud and crash from beam to beam. The startled sexton looked up and cried out; and the traitor's body toppled in its last wild spin, and fell at his feet. He lifted it up. The face was beaten almost out of recognition, and ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... whirled along—nearer and nearer it drew to the terrible ring of white foam that marked the deadly whirl. And now he could see plainly the grim crag that kept watch over that ghastly abyss, and now he almost touched its outermost eddy—and now he was dragged into it and began to spin dizzily round in lessening circles nearer and ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... issue till the Last Banjo should indeed sound. Here I sidled vaguely about for a long time, hoping that I looked like a man preparing for some vast culminating feat, a side-step or a buzz or a double-Jazz-spin or an ordinary ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various
... that he would rather have the man with him than on his way to report the departure of the Nelson. "We are just going to look the ship over—perhaps take a little spin. Come along." ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson
... come alive again, was going as fast as we were, or rather we were going no faster than the rest of the world. It was like slowing down as one comes into a railway station. Everything seemed to spin round for a second or two, I had the most transient feeling of nausea, and that was all. And the little dog which had seemed to hang for a moment when the force of Gibberne's arm was expended fell with a swift acceleration ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... blast, could she find occupation at home for her increasing population and the means of purchasing their subsistence from abroad. The German machine was like a top which to maintain its equilibrium must spin ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... over, the girls were called to spin, which they did in the large hall, sitting round the fire with the two ladies and Perrote. Amphillis, as a newcomer, was excused for that evening; and she sat studying her neighbours and surroundings till Mistress Perrote pronounced it bed-time. Then each girl rose ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... million Germans should die, while he survives. It is ignorant, it is insincere, to put on a frown of offended virtue and to say: For shame, what are you thronging into the towns for? Go back to the land; plough, spin, weave, ply the blacksmith's hammer, as did our forefathers, who were the proper sort of people. And leave the people like us, who think and write poetry and brood and dream for you, a house embowered in vines—there will be room enough for that!—Ah, ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... said one day. Taking up a wineglass, he continued: "Suppose I choose to call this a character, fancy it a man, endue it with certain qualities; and soon the fine filmy webs of thought, almost impalpable, coming from every direction, we know not whence, spin and weave about it, until it assumes form and beauty, and ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... a brownie, With a long beard on his chin; 'I have spun up all the tow,' said he, 'And I want some more to spin. ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... and my mither couldna spin; I toil'd day and night, but their bread I couldna win;— Auld Rob maintain'd them baith, and, wi' tears in his e'e, Said, "Jeanie, oh, for their sakes, will ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... and span, had something on his mind, however, which he did not know how to put. He continued to reflect upon Mrs. Germain, but only by way of marking time. "She used to be very good fun in my young days. And she made things spin in Berkshire, they tell me. I know she did in London—while it lasted. What's she doing? There was a ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... not again undergo the vexation Of such a soiree, for the wealth of a nation." "With you I agree," the sage Emperor replied, Who deemed it a lesson to cure them of pride; "And I trust that the thread of our lives will spin out, Ere we ever again attempt such a rout. Alas! we must own we were never designed To flit in the sunshine, or soar on the wind; Nature's changeless decree has allotted its share To each beast of the field, to each ...
— The Emperor's Rout • Unknown
... mother herself, "when I remember how we used to sit round with the lamp in the middle, and spin the whole table when we wanted a drawer on the further side. But it won't bring back those who sat there! and now the light falls anywhere but where it is wanted, and our goods get into each other's way! Yes, Babie, you may dispose of it in the back ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to see the dawn of day, though they were no longer obliged to spin and weave, for the old woman was locked up in the kitchen, and could not interfere with them. That day they amused themselves by showing their guest all over the house, and all the treasure-chambers, but they blushed and dropped their eyes whenever ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... slowly scrambled up. On a sudden, as he faced me, his hand shot downward—I heard the surge and shout of men and women, to the stunning report of his revolver ducked aside, felt my left arm jerk and sting—felt my own gun explode in my hand (and how it came there I did not know)—beheld him spin around and collapse; ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... great courage into us. For their part they seized the bar of olive wood, that was sharpened at the point, and thrust it into his eye, while I from my place aloft turned it about, as when a man bores a ship's beam with a drill while his fellows below spin it with a strap, which they hold at either end, and the auger runs round continually. Even so did we seize the fiery-pointed brand and whirled it round in his eye, and the blood flowed about the heated bar. ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... off the engines. With the added weight to the right the plane became steadier. Danger of a whirling spin to the ice-surface seemed ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... did not mean to wilfully deceive them. Very probably he had his excuse ready. Malcolm could almost hear his words. "I said nothing about the Jacobis because I knew your prejudice, and I did not want to fluster you. I thought Mrs. Godfrey would spin her yarn, and I left it to her. It was not my fault if the Wallaces took to them, and that they were often up at Fettercairn." Some such words Cedric would say when ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... brightened. "Oh, yes," she said, "and watch him play, and see him spin his tops and chase the butterflies. Oh, that ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... campaign in Italy. The treaty between the Pope and the Duke of Alva was signed on the 14th September (1557), and the Spanish general retired for the winter to Milan. Cardinal Caraffa was removed from the French court to that of Madrid, there to spin new schemes for the embroilment of nations and the advancement of his own family. Very little glory was gained by any of the combatants in this campaign. Spain, France, nor Paul IV., not one of them came out of the Italian contest in better condition than that in which they entered upon it. In fact ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... discovery, a far more serious event occurred. Pothinus the eunuch, Achillas, the Egyptian commander of the army, and Theodotus, a "rhetoric teacher," whose real business was to spin, not words, but court intrigues, had plotted together to place the young King Ptolemaeus in sole power. The conspiracy ran its course. There was a rising of the "Macedonian"[180] guard at the palace, a gathering of citizens in the squares of the capital, culminating in bloody riots ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... humanity and America. On the other hand we were not ignorant that the labour and manufactures of Ireland, like those of the silkworm, were of little moment to herself, but served only to give luxury to those who neither toil nor spin. We perceived that if we continued our commerce with you, our agreement not to import from Britain must be fruitless. Compelled to behold thousands of our countrymen imprisoned; and men, women, and children in promiscuous and unmerited misery—when we found all faith at ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... scrutinizing his friend's pale and rather worn face critically. It would have seemed to him still paler and more worn if he could have seen it in contrast with his own fresh-tinted features, ruddy with his morning's drive. "Better come with me for an afternoon spin farther up State, and a good dinner at a place I know. ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... "I'll spin my yarn as soon as I've rested a hit, lads," he said, as he finished the last morsel of food. "I'm clean spent, now, and want to stretch out for ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... spin beneath my pyramid of night, Which points into the heavens dreaming delight, 445 Murmuring victorious joy in my enchanted sleep; As a youth lulled in love-dreams faintly sighing, Under the shadow of his beauty lying, Which round his rest a watch of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... road is, it happens, an old Stane Street, along which Roman legions marched to clean up the councils and clerks of the British tribal system two thousand years ago, and no doubt an historian could spin delightful consequences; this does not alter the fact that these quaint complications in English affairs mean in the aggregate enormous obstruction and waste of human energy. It does not alter the much graver fact, the fact that darkens all my outlook upon the future, that we have ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... all In arch and floor of the tower tall. And maidens three are living there All in the upper chamber fair, Hung with silver, hung with pall, And stories painted on the wall. And softly goes the whirring loom In my ladies' upper room, For they shall spin both night and day Until the stars do pass away. But every night at evening. The window open wide they fling, And one of them says a word they know And out as three white swans they go, And the murmuring of the woods is drowned In the soft wings' whirring ...
— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis
... laid As faint through heat, or dight to pleasant sin; And was arrayed or rather disarrayed, All in a veil of silk and silver thin, That hid no whit her alabaster skin, But rather shewed more white, if more might be: More subtle web Arachne cannot spin; Nor the fine nets, which oft we woven see Of scorched dew, do not in ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... go out into the garden and help to gather the rose leaves?" Then, before I could answer, as if angry with herself at her own folly, she called out to Mary's little black maid, Sukey, to bid her mistress come in from the garden and spin. But before the maid started I said low in Madam Cavendish's ear: "Madam, think you not that the sweet air of the garden is better for her after the ball, than the hot ball and the labour at the wheel?" And she gave one look at me, and called out to Sukey ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... Sleep slept slept Slide slid slidden Sling slung slung Slink slunk slunk Slit slit, R. slit Smite smote smitten Sow sowed sown, R. Speak spoke spoken Speed sped sped Spend spent spent Spill spilt, R. spilt, R. Spin spun spun Spit spit, spat spit, spitten [10] Split split split Spread spread spread Spring sprung, sprang sprung Stand stood stood Steal stole stolen Stick stuck stuck Sting stung stung Stink stunk stunk Stride strode, strid stridden ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... the farm-houses round, for he could turn a hand to anything and always kept the maids laughing in the kitchen. One morning he dropped in on Farmer Joby and asked for a job to earn his dinner; and Joby gave him some straw to spin for thatching. By dinner-time Tom had spun two bundles of such very large size that the farmer rubbed his chin when he looked ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... very elastic. Masters are regarded as common enemies; and it is never necessary to tell them the truth. Expediency is the golden rule in all relations with the common room. And after a very few weeks even Congreve would have had to own that the timid new boy could spin quite as broad a yarn as he. The parents do not realise this. It is just as well. It is a stage in the development of youth. Everyone must pass through it. Yet sometimes it leads to quite a lot ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... of fact, she was thinking of unpaid bills; since human lilies of the field, though they neither toil nor spin, must pay for irreproachable shoes and ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... many things turned out all for my good—the mare and the colt in the snow, the dingo running after her through hunger, and my dog barking at it, showed me where my house was, when I was fairly lost, and thus saved my life, and enabled me to spin you this yarn, which I must now finish by saying that since that time I am always glad to have a warm house to shelter me in such weather as this, and cannot help thinking that if any boys had ever been placed in my predicament, they would only be ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... They are of medium stature or tall. Their noses are the largest and most prominent in indian Mexico, and are boldly aquiline. The men are rarely idle; even as they walk, they carry with them their netting, or spindle with which they spin cord for making nets. It seems to be law, and is certainly custom, that persons coming to the plaza are expected to be more fully dressed than when travelling on the road or when in their homes. Usually white cotton ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... sick, and giddy, with closed eyes for some time, and it was only by the strongest effort of my will that I could force myself to again open them, and work my way gradually back to the little ledge. There I threw myself down, panting and deadly sick, the whole world seeming to spin round me; and there I lay for some time inert and helpless, before I could brace myself sufficiently for a further effort. At length I roused myself and started up again in another direction, towards where I could see a few stunted bushes growing, and here to my joy I found a ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... in Galatians, Once you trip on it, entails Twenty-nine distinct damnations, One sure, if another fails: If I trip him just a-dying, Sure of heaven as sure can be, Spin him round and send him flying Off ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... progressive points protract the line, As pendant spiders spin the filmy twine: Thus lengthened lines impetuous sweeping round, Spread the wide plane, and mark its circling bound; Thus planes, their substance with their motion grown, Form the huge ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... of Dublin, one of the first clinical teachers of our time, always insisted on his students' beginning at once to visit the hospital. At the bedside the student must learn to treat disease, and just as certainly as we spin out and multiply our academic prelections we shall work in more and more stuffing, more and more rubbish, more and more irrelevant, useless detail which the student will get rid of just as soon as he leaves us. Then the next thing will be a new ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... lowering and blustering, like our fortunes. Mea virtute me involvo. But I must say to the Muse of fiction, as the Earl of Pembroke said to the ejected nuns of Wilton, "Go spin, you jades, go spin!" Perhaps she has no tow on her rock.[160] When I was at Kilkenny last year we went to see a nunnery, but could not converse with the sisters because they were in strict retreat. I was delighted ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... undeceived; all caterpillars and all butterflies are subject to them; but there are few caterpillars which spin so valuable a cocoon as the silk-worm. Moreover, some bury themselves in the earth; while others hide in the middle of a leaf, the edges of which they curl round so as to form a kind of bag, in which they are protected from the beaks of birds; again, ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... solicitous to preserve it from slight falls and other trifling accidents. A little practice soon enables the child to take care of itself, and experience acts the part of a nurse. As they advance in life, the girls are taught to spin cotton, and to beat corn, and are instructed in other domestic duties; and the boys are employed in the labours of the field. Both sexes, whether Bushreens or Kafirs, on attaining the age of puberty, are circumcised. This painful operation is not ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... Lola," said Kilfane, dreamily waving his cigarette towards her. "I have managed to make the last hundred spin out. You have brought me ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... as a public, spin themselves any reasons or excuses for their hearty approval of Canada's engagement in the war. Her or their contributions of men and money to its fields of slaughter and waste appeared and appear to them natural, proper, inevitable. They applauded seriously the country's ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... her only with the aid of her daughters. Not only were there to be filled those daily household duties which to-day, too, the small middle class housewife has to attend to, but a number of others also, which the housewife of to-day is freed from through modern development. She had to spin, weave, bleach and sew the linen and clothes, prepare soap and candles, brew beer,—in short, she was the veriest Cinderella: her only recreation was Sunday's church. Marriage was contracted only within the same social circles; the ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... perfectly at home here myself, not that your nerves are going to pieces or anything like that. It won't be for long, though, sweetheart—as soon as we get the chariot fixed up we'll beat it back to the Earth so fast it'll make your head spin." ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... growing deeper in his eyes and the high look whitening on his brow, when suddenly a woman on the front seat stood up, laid her sleeping infant on the floor with careful deliberation, took off her black calico bonnet, stepped into the aisle, slapped her hands together and began to spin around and around upon her toes with incredible celerity. Her homespun skirt ballooned about her, the ruffle of her collar stood out like a little frill of white neck feathers. She had a fixed, foolish expression, maintained an energy of motion that was persistent and amazing, and gave out at ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... went to her spinning-wheel, and, with her back to the audience, arranged the spindle and the flax. Then stopping in her work and standing in thought, she half hummed, half sang the song "Le Roi de Thule." Not till she had nearly finished did she sit down and spin, and then only for a moment, as though too restless and disturbed for work ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... on their own energies, may more than compensate for the higher price of particular articles. It has been found not to be good for the human race to have things made too pleasant. The West Indian negroes, "who toil not, neither do they spin," but pick the fruits of the earth ready to their hands, are not the most exalted specimens of mankind. It may be a good thing for a man not to have things too cheaply, if owing to this he is stirred up to work, and can get money enough to live. ...
— Six Letters From the Colonies • Robert Seaton
... inspire us to a renewal of war against the evils which Jesus Christ died to put away. Victory will not come without conflict. In respect to anxiety we are to be quiescent as the lilies, which neither toil nor spin, but in respect of moral evil, within or without, we must be ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... far wider range, and embraces a much ampler truth. Yes, I doubt if any man ever yet sought without finding. When I was a boy I lost my peg-top. It was a somewhat expensive one, owing partly to the fact that it would really spin. I noticed this peculiarity about it whilst it was still the property of its previous possessor. I had several tops; indeed, my pockets bulged out with my ample store, but none of them would spin. After pointing out to the owner of the coveted ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... the camp-fire at night was cheerful, the food satisfying. They bundled close under the blankets and, when it was too cold to sleep, looked up at the stars, while the future entertainer of kings would spin yarn after yarn that made his hearers forget their discomforts. Judge Oliver, the last one of the party alive, in a recent letter to the writer of this ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... frank radiation of the animal enchanted as it was by elusive gleams of the spiritual, of the Laisdom—in a word, of all the sexual damnability of a woman which, as Francois Villon points out, set Sardanapalus to spin among the women, David to forget the fear of God, Herod to slay the Baptist, and made Samson lose his sight. Whether I should have yielded to or resisted the temptation is another matter. Honestly speaking, I ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... the engine went merrily on and left us out in the rice-fields. Suffice it to say I landed in a whirl that spun me down to Uncle's house and back to the hotel. And by the way my thoughts are going, for all I know I may be booked to spin on through eternity. ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... music woven through This fragile web of cadences I spin, That I have only caught these songs since you Voiced them ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... fruit, malt, hops, to tend, to dry, to utter, To beat, strip, spin the wool, the hemp, the flax, Breed poultry, gather honey, try the wax, And more than all, to have good cheese and butter. Then next a step, but yet a large step higher, Came civill vertue fitter for the citty, With modest looks, good clothes, and answers witty. ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... him to play the invalid for a day or two and investigate her. Meantime, he must call up that garage and see what could be done for the car. If he could get it patched up by noon he might take the girl out for a spin in the afternoon. One could judge a girl much better getting her off by herself that way. He didn't seem to relish the memory of that father's smile and haughty tone as he said "My daughter." Probably was all kinds ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... not neither do they spin might know the feel of fabrics so cunningly devised that they lay to the flesh like the inner petals of buds, three hundred and fifty men, women, and children contrived, between strikes, to make the show-rooms of the Kessler Costume Company, Incorporated, a sort of mauve and ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... witch ordered the girl to spin the thread, and the boy, her brother, to carry water in a sieve to fill a big tub. The poor orphan girl wept at her spinning-wheel and wiped away her bitter tears. At once all around her appeared small mice squeaking ...
— Folk Tales from the Russian • Various
... and get acquainted with his inside self, as Glen Eddy used to say. So you understand, U-Bim, that you are not to give us away or let on that we are any kin to the Caspars. Sabe? All right. Now for a twenty-mile spin down-stream, and then we'll hunt a place to lie by ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... They'd seen skip by - Seven fine churches, And five old mills, Farms in the valley, And sheep on the hills; Old Man's Acre And Dead Man's Pool All left behind, As they danced through Wool. And Wool gone by, Like tops that seem To spin in sleep They danced in dream; Withy - Wellover - Wassop-Wo- Like an old clock Their heels did go. A league and a league And a league they went, And not one weary, And not one spent. And Io, and behold! Past Willow-cum-Leigh ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... to Prigg's he went about three o'clock on that Thursday afternoon. I do not undertake to describe furniture, so I say nothing of Prigg's dingy office, except this, that if Prigg had been a spider, it was just the sort of corner in which I should have expected him to spin his web. Being a man of enormous practice, and in all probability having some fifty to sixty representatives of county families to confer with, two hours elapsed before Mr. Bumpkin could be introduced. ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... spin a yarn Twice laid with words of silken stuff. A fact's a fact; and ye may larn The rights o' this, though wild and rough My words may loom. 'Tis your consarn, Not mine, to ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... a bit fed up with 'in-laws,'" returned Nan a trifle wearily. "I'll go out and walk it off. Or, better still, lend me your bike, Kitty, and I'll just do a spin to Tintagel. By the time I've climbed up to King Arthur's Castle, I'll feel different. It always makes me feel good to get to ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... may last; or simply as a prisoner toiling at the treadmill because you must: the well in the garden is a pleasanter conception than all these and wholesomer. Foster it while you may. Now that India has wakened up and begun to spin after the rest of the great world down the ringing grooves of change, these tints of dawn will soon fade away, and in the light of noon the instructed Aryan will learn to see and deplore the monstrous inequalities in the distribution of wealth. He will come to understand the essential ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... is so sweet, Monsieur, but if you say disagreeable things, if you want me to learn to sew and to read—and to spin—the De Bers have just had a spinning wheel come. It is a queer thing and hums strangely. And Marie will learn to spin, her mother says. Then she will never be able to go in the woods for wild grapes ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... teeth all shinin' through 'is lovely black mustarch. And the little uns dance round him, you'd laugh until you cried If you saw my little brothers do their 'ornpipes side by side, And the gals they spin about as well, and don't they move their feet, When they 'ear that pianner-orgin man, as plays ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 30, 1892 • Various
... his hand. "See! this is for six months. Dame! you must go to work right off and earn some money. The few sous I had laid by are all gone. Oh! let me sit down. You look so pleased—it gives me a turn—it makes my head spin. I haven't any legs." ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... So liberty to brotherhood shall lead, and brotherhood to peace, and brotherhood and peace shall bring to unity all human families, and men shall live no more in petty strife for gain, but for the souls of men. The destinies then, as in Virgil's eye, shall spin life's web, and to their spindles say, 'Thus go forever and forever on!' He is the leader appointed by Heaven for sublime events. I am sent to him as a knight of God. I go to York. I was true at Metz to liberty, and in the council hall I shall be true, ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... just to let it alone. Nor would it be much lost if some kindly disposed gentleman would kill off a few score of our Union savers, who, like quack doctors, go about with their pockets full of plasters, and are for ever hunting for the crack in the nation's skull. And I would advise all politicians to spin less patriotic yarns, to be more modest, to learn wisdom, to drink less whiskey; in truth, to think more of God and their country, and to get them honest godfathers, who will teach them what a sad thing it is to think so much of the nation's gold." Having said this, the major ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... brought home by a soldier Hathaway for wife. But there is this difference, if you please, sir; I throw down my work because I have fought my fight and conquered it, am mistress of what I will in my household craft. Think you that I love the molding of butter and the care of poultry, or to spin, to cut, to sew, because I do them and do them well? It is not the thing I love, Will—it is in the victory I find the joy. I would conquer them to feel my power. Conquer your book, Will, stride ahead of your class, then play your fill till they arrive abreast of you again. ...
— A Warwickshire Lad - The Story of the Boyhood of William Shakespeare • George Madden Martin
... must say I liked very much to see one of them looking at the machinery through his eye-glass. There was one very venturesome chap: I thought he was going to catch hold of the fly-wheel, but I gave him a spin which I believed saved his life, though he did rather stare. ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... that Chateau-Renard's two supporters were both polite men of the world. They were as indifferent as Louis was to the choice of weapons, and by a spin of a coin it was decided that pistols were to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Now, whatever right anybody may have to any property, if he be out of possession he is in a hobble; while he who happens to be in possession, let him be the biggest usurper in the world, may laugh at the other fellow, and spin the case out indefinitely. Now, here am I, for instance. Just fancy, the inheritance, the rich property, was almost in my hands; I hasten to the spot in order to enter into my rights, and I find that some one has been before me, ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... other, and the next they are separated; at one instant they are close to the abyss, and the waters below roar in delight of their anticipated victims, and in the next a favouring change of the vortex increases their distance from the danger—there they spin—and there you may leave them, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... quite still for a veil had descended over his eyes. The whole arena began to spin and to dance before him, the marble columns were twisted awry, thousands upon thousands of distorted faces grinned hideously upon him. Over the trees and the grass and the stream there was a film of red, the colour of blood, and through this film—which ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... couple of servants in livery, a boy of ten or twelve years holding the lines from his seat in the light and graceful little vehicle. Merry young misses drive their ribbon-decked hoops with special relish, and roguish boys spin their tops with equal zeal. Clouds of toy-balloons, of various colors and sizes, flash high above the heads of itinerant vendors, while the sparkling fountains throw up softly musical jets everywhere. Soldiers off duty, strolling idly about, dot the scene with their various ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... was saying, the Female Samson would swing on this bar, and then she would take the Dwarf's belt in her teeth and hold him in that way for five minutes. There was a swivel in the belt, so that the Dwarf would spin round while she was holding him, which he didn't like much, but which pleased the public. After she had swung the Dwarf she would do the same act with the Giant. She had to be very careful not to drop ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... afraid it was very difficult, because the only way was to get a lock of hair from the head of a king's daughter, to spin it, and to make from it a cloak for the giant, who lived up on the top of ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... some toc-marteau (death watches) in a little box, and five spiders in a cage that Pere Larcher had made for me with some wire netting. I used, very cruelly, to give flies to my spiders, and they, fat and well fed, would spin their webs. Very often during recreation a whole group of us, ten or twelve little girls, would stand round, with a cage on a bench or tree stump, and watch the wonderful work of these little creatures. If one of my schoolfellows ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... dawdling as much as possible in coming in and taking their places, entering into long-winded explanations of what was the usual course of the regular master of the form, and others of the stock contrivances of boys for wasting time in school, they could not spin out the lesson so that he should not work them through more than the forty lines; as to which quantity there was a perpetual fight going on between the master and his form, the latter insisting, and enforcing by passive resistance, that it was the prescribed quantity of Homer for ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... back, he perceived many things, and chiefly that he had taken a wrong line, and approached Mary's husband from a fatal angle. Too late he recognized his error. It was inevitable that a hint of suspected danger would confirm the sailor in his resolution; and that such a hint should follow the spin of the coin against Lennox, and be accompanied by the assurance that, had he won, Henry would have proceeded, despite his intuitions, to do what he now begged Tom not to do—that was a piece of clumsy ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... luxuriously, even opulently, until they have made the ham and bacon which, poor things, they cannot save, and then pass into the pork barrel or the smoke-house without a sigh of regret. They toil not, neither do they spin; but they have a place in the world's economy, and they fit it perfectly. So long as one animal must eat another, the man animal should thank the hog animal for ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... "and I'm afraid I shall disappoint you all, for I have no yarn to spin, only a few items of information to give in regard to other varieties of sharks than are to be ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... do spin and hachell it, and the English tarre it in threed and lay the cable. And one cable of those is woorth two of Danzick, because the Danzickers put in old cable and rotten stuffe, which in fowle weather is found ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... "I really should spin this thing up to a proof load," he said. "Might be interesting to see what kind of an assembly job they did on you. But we'll just leave you this way. All you've got to do is keep quiet. You're deaf, dumb, and blind, you understand?" He ...
— Alarm Clock • Everett B. Cole
... time, there's a dear fellow! Spin out the case as long as you can, and don't let the jury retire for at least three quarters of an hour. I know you can do it better than any other man ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... in a barn to spin; Pussy came by, and popped her head in; "Shall I come in, and cut your threads off?" "Oh, no, kind sir, you will snap ...
— Young Canada's Nursery Rhymes • Various
... his knife and leap. I saw him like a man shot, drop his arm and spin right-about as two screams rang out from the gallery over his head. It must have been I who screamed: and to me, now, that is the inexplicable part of it. I cannot remember uttering the screams: yet I can see Evans as he turned at ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... long. Yet would I have thee see my children. Forget not the token on my hand which thou holdest. But now get thee to thy folk with no more words; for after all, playmate, the sundering is grievous to me, and I would not spin out ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... beautiful by dancing in the flax. But many superstitions have clustered round the latter plant, it having in years gone by been a popular notion that it will only flower at the time of day on which it was originally sown. To spin on Saturday is said in Germany to bring ill fortune, and as a warning the following legend is among the household tales of the peasantry:—"Two old women, good friends, were the most industrious spinners in their village, Saturday finding them as engrossed ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... make that mistake. In Buenos Ayres, the land of my nativity, earth teems with these interesting little creatures. They abound in and on the water, they swarm in the grass and herbage, which everywhere glistens with the silvery veil they spin over it. Indeed it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that there is an atmosphere of spiders, for they are always floating about invisible in the air; their filmy threads are unfelt when they fly against ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... stranded in 1403 near Haerlem,—driven ashore by a tempest, said one Meyer, a Dutchman. It was brought to feed upon bread and milk, taught to spin, and lived for many years. John Gerard of Leyden adds, that she would frequently pull off her clothes and run toward the water, and that her speech was so confused a noise as not to be understood by anybody. She was buried in the churchyard, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... out the moon, And 'twill as easily be done: Love's power's too great to be withstood By feeble human flesh and blood. 350 'Twas he that brought upon his knees The hect'ring, kill-cow HERCULES; Transform'd his leager-lion's skin T' a petticoat, and made him spin; Seiz'd on his club, and made it dwindle 355 T' a feeble distaff, and a spindle. 'Twas he that made emperors gallants To their own sisters and their aunts; Set popes and cardinals agog, To play with pages at leap-frog. 360 'Twas he that gave our Senate purges, And flux'd the House of many a burgess; ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... must be jesting, Posidon; you cannot have forgotten that we have no say in the matter? It is the Fates that spin a man's thread, whether he be destined to the thunderbolt or the sword, to fever or consumption. If it had depended on me, do you suppose I should have let those temple-robbers get off unblasted ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... couldn't possibly be moved now, and if she could, it will be months before the house is fit to live in. But we cannot stay here in comfort, unless thy mother will let me make up in some way. Mother will not need me all the time, and I know thy mother hires women to spin." ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... over the fire with half a cup of grape-juice, bring to a boil and cook until it will spin a thread from the tip of the spoon. Have ready the yolks of three eggs, beaten well, pour the grape-juice syrup upon it, and add two cups of whipped cream. Turn into a mold, pack in ice, salt and leave ...
— Stevenson Memorial Cook Book • Various
... woo', tar-ry woo', Tar-ry woo' is ill to spin: Card it weel, card it weel, Card it weel ere you begin. ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... don't mind telling you about that, youngster, though I ain't much of a story-teller. You just wait till I get my pipe filled, and I'll spin a yarn for you, as they used to say down ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens |
