"Threads" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gazing longingly over the starboard rail at the tops of the Java volcanoes, which had followed one another in succession, some with the clouds hanging round their sides and their peaks clear, but two with what looked in the distance like tiny threads of smoke rising from their summits, and spreading out into a ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... feel within me the power to do it. Ladies, hear now why I invited you to these rooms tonight—why I asked you to appear before your queen. Yes, Sire, the purpose of this hour was that the threads of your political scheming might be torn apart by two hands destined to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... angle of the triangle the Indus streams down to the Arabian Sea. The sources of the Indus and Bramaputra lie close to each other, up in Tibet, and the Himalayas are set like an immense jewel between the glistening silver threads of the two rivers. On the west the Indus cuts through a valley as much as 10,000 feet deep, and on the east the Bramaputra makes its way down to the lowlands through a deep-cut cleft not less wild ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... thatch of coarse graying hair and a heavy, fleshy face, he did not look like a brain. Yet Ross had been on the roster long enough to know that it was Millaird's thick and hairy hands that gathered together all the loose threads of Operation Retrograde and deftly wove them into a workable pattern. Now the director leaned back in a chair which was too small for his bulk, ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... to driue carts: to lay their houses vpon carts and to take them downe again: to milke kine: to make butter and Gry-vt: to dresse skins and to sow them, which they vsually sowe with thread made of sinewes, for they diuide sinewes into slender threads, and then twine them into one long thread. They make sandals and socks and other garments. Howbeit they neuer wash any apparel: for they say that God is then angry, and that dreadful thunder wil ensue, if washed garments be hanged forth to drie: yea, they beat such as wash and take their garments ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... Encyclical of the Pope to the Bishops of Poland presents a significant step in meeting the wishes of the Russian Government—the Vatican could render us an invaluable service by communicating matter-of-fact data on the dissolving Jewish freemasonry organisation and its branches, whose threads converge in Paris—an organisation about which our Government is unfortunately but little informed, whereas the Vatican is sure to watch its activity ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... son plus beau chapeau, son chapeau bleu" ... and then? Why, then picking up her skirt she threads her way through the crowded streets, reads the advertisements on the walls, hails the omnibus, inquires at the concierge's loge, murmurs as she goes upstairs, "Que c'est haut le cinqieme," and then? Why, the door opens, and she ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... barbaric in its furnishings. The cabin into which we were shown and in which Nancy was to change was in strangely carved wood, and there was a wolfskin on the floor in front of the low bed. The coverlet was of a fine-woven red-silk cloth, weighed down by a border of gold and silver threads. On the wall hung a square of tapestry which showed a strange old ship with sails of blue and red and green, and with golden ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... year to Liverpool amounted to 300,000. The rich coloring of the haliotis is used for inlaying art furniture. From the pinna, silk of a peculiar quality is obtained. It is the byssus or cable of the animal. The threads are extremely fine, and equal in diameter throughout their entire length. It is first cleaned with soap and water, and dried by rubbing through the hands, and finally passed through combs of bone, iron, or wood, of different sizes, so that a pound of the material in the rough gives ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... paused at the top of the hill, and Frank, shading his eyes with his hand, thought he could see her turn and look behind. Look back, dear child, towards your home and those who love you! For who knows more than this faithful worshiper what threads of the past Fate is weaving into your future, or whether happiness ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... century the need-fire was lit in the common way by causing a cross-bar to revolve rapidly on its axis between two upright posts. The rope which produced the revolution of the bar had to be new, but it was if possible woven from threads taken from a gallows-rope, with which people had been hanged. While the need-fire was being kindled in this fashion, every other fire in the town had to be put out; search was made through the houses, and any fire discovered to be burning was extinguished. ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... Lachesis, who sent with each of them their genius or attendant to fulfil their lot. He first of all brought them under the hand of Clotho, and drew them within the revolution of the spindle impelled by her hand; from her they were carried to Atropos, who made the threads irreversible; whence, without turning round, they passed beneath the throne of Necessity; and when they had all passed, they moved on in scorching heat to the plain of Forgetfulness and rested at evening by the river Unmindful, whose water could not be retained in any vessel; of this they ...
— The Republic • Plato
... brought out a veiled maiden, and said, "Look! her feet are like ivory, and her hair like threads of gold; and she is the sweetest singer in the whole valley. And she shall be thine, if thou wilt be like other people, and prophesy smooth things unto us, and torment us no more with talk about liberty, equality, and brotherhood; for they never were, and never will be, on ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... in scenes gladsome or sad, the old Domine was a constant presence, an influence for righteousness, moulding his people in that simplicity of life and independence of spirit, which in all times have been preeminent as features in the Dutch character. Into the homespun of common life, he wove the threads of gold, revealing by life and precept that type of religion which is not "too bright and good ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... went another shower of rockets, which continued without cessation, filling the air with long delicate threads of smoke, under which the vessels passed in safety, the effect being most beautiful. These events occupied some time; and as soon as the sternmost ships of the squadron were well out of range of shot, the Gorgon ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... Armstrong household for some things which were not wholly utilitarian. This keeping of pigeons was, as it were, a link with a golden past, a bright thread in the tapestry of the bygone, which hung on the eye of imagination in contrast with the sordid present, where few of the threads were bright except to the inexhaustible fancy of a child, who can see brightness ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... only a little more labor for my long-used wheel, and the threads of my uneven life will have run on to the crisis. I cannot console myself with the thought that it has been watched through its tedious progress, by loving or partial glances: the bobbin was faulty and stiff at times, and the worker grew pensive and weary. Sometimes, the sunlight broke ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... interests; but stealthily, quietly, with noiseless tread like spirits from another world, they come to us, put their question, speak the word, and vanish to heaven with our reply. In after years, possibly, with "the long results of time" to guide us upward as by a stream to the tiny threads of this fountain of life and action, we may be able in a greater degree to realise of what tremendous importance they were to us. "Had we only known this at the time!" we exclaim, as we revolve those memories, and think of all we would have said or done;—"had we only known!" But it is not God's ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... sponge, which grow adhering to the rocks under water. Their methods do not favour much of ingenuity. For the coral, they lower down a swab, composed of what is called spunyarn on board our ships of war, hanging in distinct threads, and sunk by means of a great weight, which, striking against the coral in its descent, disengages it from the rocks; and some of the pieces being intangled among the threads of the swab, are brought up with it ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... the wisdom of this alliance," he said, "it is not too late yet. Let me dismiss my following, and cross not the seas. Unless thy heart is with the marriage, the ties I would form are but threads and cobwebs." ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... of the beard explains at once why the necktie, always crumpled and rolled by the gestures of a disquiet head, has its own beard, infinitely softer than that of the good old man, and formed of threads scratched ...
— A Street Of Paris And Its Inhabitant • Honore De Balzac
... and barns were incrusted by the chilling vapor. It hung upon the manes of the cattle, and decorated, wherever seen, the humble grass, which appeared bending, like threads of crystal. The small bushes were indescribably beautiful, and seemed as if chiseled out of the whitest marble. As far as the eye could extend, over brooks, fields, and woods, the same striking and singular sight ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... quilt, so full of pellets that if they had not through the holes shown themselves to be wool, they would to the touch seem to be pebbles. There was a pair of sheets made of target leather; and as for the coverlet, if any one had chosen to count the threads of it he could not have missed one ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... unravelled the threads and had brought to light the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It made a singularly simple story, after all but that was so much the worse for Buxton. The only near relation Mr. Hayne had in the world was this one younger sister, who six years before ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... threads of railway, with their puffs of smoke and steam changing places so fast, make it so lively for me," she went on. "I think of the number of people who can go where they wish, on their business, or their pleasure; I remember that ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... as often as the chupprassee himself. As the day draws near its close, he watches the shadow like a hireling, and when it touches the foot of the long arm chair, he springs to his feet, rolls up his rags and threads into a bundle, and trips gaily out. As he does so you will observe that his legs are bandy, the knees refusing to approach each other. This is the result of the position in ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... composure of mind to discover till he was gone that the same loving heart still beat under the blue dress and bright buttons. And while she thought of him with a new pride, she felt an undercurrent of sadness in the consciousness that the pleasant threads of daily intercourse had been broken, and the old childish playfellow ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... water herons stalked near the margin, and great flocks of wild-fowl dotted the surface. Other signs of life there were none, although a sharp eye might have detected light threads of smoke curling up here and there from spots where the ground rose somewhat above the general level. These slight elevations, however, were not visible to the eye, for the herbage here grew shorter than on the lower and wetter ground, ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... 16. Iris' woof, material dyed in rainbow colours. The goddess Iris was a personification of the rainbow: comp. l. 992 and Par. Lost, xi. 244, "Iris had dipped the woof." Etymologically, woof is connected with web and weave: it is short for on-wef on-web, i.e. the cross threads laid on ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... at the outset that nobody really knew when people began to spin. Most likely they got the idea from pulling out fibers of cotton or wool long as they could make them with their fingers, and then twisting the stuff together into larger and longer threads. As they could do this better if they had the end fastened to something, they got the notion of using a stick or some sort of spool or spindle to wind the thread up on as they made it. They would go walking round with a mass of material ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... down at the blurred, hurrying swarms and he looked across, over the roofs with their panting jets of vapor, into the vast, foggy heart of the smoke. Dizzy traceries of steel were rising dimly against it, chattering with steel on steel, and screeching in steam, while tiny figures of men walked on threads in the dull sky. Buildings would overtop the Sheridan. Bigness ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... in red threads ran down the snow-white vestment, and that was all! The heart had forever ceased to beat, and the blood to circulate. The golden bowl was broken and the silver cord of life loosed forever, and yet ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... he threads the dark woods Ere the bloodhounds have hunted him back; Thou leadest him on over mountains and floods, With thy beams shining full on his track. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Harp • Various
... to his wish not even their children were allowed to touch it.[417] It was fashioned of pure gold, the border thereof inlaid with onyx stones and bdellium, and the cover was gold woven work joined to the bier with threads that were held together with hooks of onyx stones and bdellium. Joseph placed a large golden crown upon the head of his father, and a golden sceptre he put in his hand, arraying him like ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... our coming there rose from the great rock such a multitude of jackdaws that for some seconds they darkened the air. With harsh screams the birds soared higher and higher above their fortress, which they had possessed for ages in perfect security. We reached the bed of the stream, where scattered threads of water tinkled as they fell over huge blocks into little pools below, and then went whispering on their way towards the darkness. At the botton of a long slant of greenish slimy stone, patched here and there with moss, ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... nitrates or soluble form is soluble in nitro-glycerine under the influence of heat, a temperature of about 50 deg. C. being required. At lower temperatures the dissolution is very imperfect indeed; and after the materials have been left in contact for days, the threads of the cotton can still be distinguished. The insoluble form or gun-cotton is entirely insoluble in nitro-glycerine. It can, however, be made to dissolve[A] by the aid of acetone or acetic ether. Both or rather all ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... so rich, too, that silver and gold were as common as the stones that he saw lying in the streets, as he rode through Jerusalem in his open chariot, clothed in white, threads of glittering gold mixed ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... possessing a personal significance and betraying a meaning, which in the beginning would not have been suspected back of the dream, but which stand in a very close symbolical relation, even to details, to the dream facade. This peculiar thought-complex, in which all the threads of the dream are united, is the looked-for conflict in a certain variation which is determined by the circumstances. What is painful and contradictory in the conflict is so confused here that one can speak of a wish-fulfillment; let us, however, immediately add that the fulfilled wishes ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... last thirty years. 'Mary (her granddaughter with whom she lives), show the lady my shroud.' I keeps it wropped up in blue cloth. They tells me at the store to do that to keep it from turning yellow. 'Show her that las' quilt I made.' Yes'm I made this all by myself. I threads my own needle, too, and cuts out the pieces. I has worked hard all ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... instincts, the pathetic circumstances and dramatic relations which the historian too often only eclipses by his reasoning, and disconnects by his arrangement. It is for her to trace the hidden equities of divine reward, and catch sight, through the darkness, of the fateful threads of woven fire that connect ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... like Gulliver in Lilliput, is fastened to some spot of earth, by the thousand small threads which habit and association are continually stealing over him. Of these, perhaps, one of the strongest is here ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... flitted back again,—but for that, home would have seemed the veriest dream that ever buzzed in an idle brain: would so have seemed to other maidens, not to us, for the fibres of the Strathsay heart were threads that never wore thin or parted. Two twelvemonths more, and we should cross the sea ourselves at last; and wearying now of school a bit, all our visions centred in St. Anne's, and the merry doings, the goings and comings, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... sheep's wool, and, like wool, is capable of being felted. True hair does not possess that property. The degeneration called albinoism has a remarkable influence upon the hair, destroying its coarse, nappy, wooly appearance, and converting it into fine, long, soft, silky, curly threads. Often, the whole external skin, so remarkably void of hair in the healthy negro, becomes covered with a very fine, silky down, scarcely perceptible to the naked eye, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... this confidence. She never confounded relations, but kept a hundred fine threads in her hand, without crossing or entangling any. An entire intimacy, which seemed to make both sharers of the whole horizon of each others' and of all truth, did not yet make her false to any other friend; gave no title to the history that an equal trust of another friend had put ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... that evening was to linger long in Bert's memory. A red fire spluttered and blazed close by the electricians at their work, and red gleams xan up the vertical steel mast and threads of copper wire towards the zenith. The Prince sat on a rock close by, with his chin on his hand, waiting. Beyond and to the northward was the cairn that covered Von Winterfeld, surmounted by a cross of steel, and from among the tumbled rocks in the distance the eyes of a wolf ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... cogitating in a vain endeavour to disentangle the threads of mingled thought that seemed to be inextricably wound together in his throbbing, struggling brain, two warm drops splashed upon his face, and the same low voice that he had ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... is generic term for all worms that weave threads from within their bellies. It does not always mean the spider. Here, it implies a silk-worm. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... she had made a very cunning mend of the garments, whilst that she did sit so utter long beside me to tend me; for she had gotten threads from her torn garments, and had made needles from thorns that did grow on the little bushes of the island; and the thorns did brake oft, and she then to have another, and so to persist an hundred times. And this way she did be ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... to a slight state of fermentation, we discover the first stage of the existence of the future brood of mushrooms. This is practically called 'spawn,' and consists of a white, fibrous substance, running like broken threads through the mass of dung, which appears to be its only and proper nidus."—M'Int. It is ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... see the ends of the tail- feathers; give it the solution and replace it. Now take out all the cotton which you have been putting into the body from time to time to preserve the feathers from grease and stains. Place the bird upon your knee on its back; tie together the two threads which you had fastened to the end of the wing- joints, leaving exactly the same space betwixt them as your knowledge in anatomy informs you existed there when the bird was entire; hold the skin ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... repose, O Red Spider. Quickly you have brought and laid down the red path. O great adawehi, quickly you have brought down the red threads from above. The intruder in the tooth has spoken and it is only a worm. The tormentor has wrapped itself around the root of the tooth. Quickly you have dropped down the red threads, for it is just what you eat. Now it is ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... longer white and smooth as in the days of his youth, and the kindly open glance of his blue eyes had grown a little hard, as if from much peering through the smoke of battles. The ebony crop on Colonel Feraud's head, coarse and crinkly like a cap of horsehair, showed many silver threads about the temples. A detestable warfare of ambushes and inglorious surprises had not improved his temper. The beaklike curve of his nose was unpleasantly set off by deep folds on each side of his mouth. The ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... Fin very much; for, after all, he had great confidence in his wife, knowing, as he did, that she had got him out of many a quandary before. Oonagh then drew the nine woollen threads of different colours, which she always did to find out the best way of succeeding in anything of importance she went about. She then platted them into three plats with three colours in each, putting one on her right arm, one round her heart, and the third round her right ankle, ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... live like the Greeks" became a by-word and reproach. Beyond this, the authors throw the whole force of their genius into the construction of the plot, upon the strength and intricacy of which their success depends; and the management of the various threads of the story so as to meet together in the conclusion, shows a great improvement in art since the days of Aristophanes. Advancing time seems also to have brought a greater refinement in language. The indelicacy we now meet with is almost entirely of an amatory character, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... pursue all the subtle threads from end to end might be eminently valuable, but not as a tribute to peace and conciliation. Few discoveries are more irritating than those which expose the pedigree of ideas. Sharp definitions and unsparing analysis would displace the veil beneath which society dissembles its divisions, ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... you don't, I shall. Oh, such feet! I feel such confidence in them that when I am on him I don't consider he has feet at all. And he's quick as a cat, and instantly obedient. Bridle-wise is no name for it! You could guide him with silken threads. Oh, I know I'm enthusiastic, but if you don't buy him, Chris. I shall. Remember, ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... summary is never an essay. The writer must synthesize, make his own combination of thoughts, facts, incidents, characteristics, anecdotes, interpretations, illustrations, according to his own pattern. A writer is a weaver, weaving various threads of various hues and textures into a design ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... kind as it was firm, "we shall see what the days will bring. Your mother's spirit may be guiding you, and your father's love is always with you. Whatever snarls and tangles have gotten into your threads, time and patience will straighten and unravel. Whatever wrong you may have done, willingly or unwillingly, you must make right. ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... wax flowers that lie between their two green leaves flat on the sand. We hardly dare pick them, but we feel compelled to do so; and we smell and smell till the delight becomes almost pain. Afterward we pull the green leaves softly into pieces to see the silk threads ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... blithely at meat, enjoying the solitary place, there entered the garden two young damsels of maybe fifteen years of age, with hair like threads of gold, all ringleted and hanging loose, whereon was a light chaplet of pervinck-blossoms. Their faces bespoke them rather angels than otherwhat, so delicately fair they were, and they were clad each upon her skin in ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... note was a continuation of that skilful manoeuvring which the Princess Korchagin had already practised for two months in order to bind him closer and closer with invisible threads. And yet, beside the usual hesitation of men past their youth to marry unless they are very much in love, Nekhludoff had very good reasons why, even if he did make up his mind to it, he could not propose ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... at once, and then her womanly pity and sense of duty gained the mastery. Vinton Arnold was now a dying man, and she but a trained nurse. Perhaps God's hand was in their strange and unexpected meeting, and it was His will that the threads of two lives that had been bound so closely should not be severed in fatal evil. Should she thwart ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... showed the hour to be but one past midnight. It must have been a profound yearning for human sympathy that had induced our courteous and considerate guide thus to awaken us. Sleep, however, soon again took up her broken threads, and so firmly reknit their ravelled edges, that the web needed the morning dew and the approaching glories of a brilliant sunrise once more to break and give freedom to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... almost unnecessary to say that these people go naked. They, however, wore belts round the waist, and fillets about the head and upper parts of the arm. These were formed of hair, twisted into yarn-like threads, and then into bandages, mostly reticulated. Indeed the inhabitants of this bay appeared to possess in general a very pointed difference from, if not a superiority over, those of New South Wales, particularly in their net-works. ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... archives of Simpson hold stories well worth the reading! We would fain linger and dream in front of this sun-dial across whose dulled face the suns of twenty lustrums have cast their shadows, but we begrudge every moment not spent in fossicking round the old buildings. We seek for threads which shall unite this mid-summer day to all the days of glamour that are gone. In a rambling building, forming the back of a hollow square, we come across the mouldy remains of a once splendid museum of natural history, the life work of one Captain Bell of the ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... This case of yours is very complex, Sir Henry. When taken in conjunction with your uncle's death I am not sure that of all the five hundred cases of capital importance which I have handled there is one which cuts so deep. But we hold several threads in our hands, and the odds are that one or other of them guides us to the truth. We may waste time in following the wrong one, but sooner or later we must come upon ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... attention, and would have been spread upon the court records by uninterested clerks with never a second thought. But there were elements entering into it of whose existence the outside world could not have even dreamed. Into it converged threads which now may be traced back to scenes and events in three continents; threads whose intricate windings led through trackless forest and dim-lit church; through court of fashion and hut of poverty; back through ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... eye-glass and, stepping back a pace or two, took a general survey of the whole; he then approached it again, and taking hold of it in different places with his hand, examined it in detail so closely that it seemed as if he were trying to count the number of threads. Being apparently unwilling in so difficult an investigation to trust to the evidence of any one sense, he replaced his eye-glass in his waistcoat pocket, and began rubbing a portion of the skirt between his hands; the sense of touch failing, however, to throw any new light ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... speaking of fishing, cannot one or another of you work up one of the nails out of those hatches into a fish-hook with your knives? The others meanwhile might get some threads out of that piece of spare canvas which we cut off the topgallant sail, and twist ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... rose the soaring blue of the June sky, with a white cloud or two floating in it, and a blue peak or two leaning its colour against it. Through the green grass and the green corn below crept two silvery threads, meeting far away and flowing in one—the two rivers which watered the valley of Strathglamour. Between the rivers lay the gray stone town, with its roofs of thatch and slate. One of its main streets stopped suddenly ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... intelligence hourly encreased, and whose frame was endowed with an intense, and I fondly thought, a strong and permanent spirit of life. Who, after a great disaster, has not looked back with wonder at his inconceivable obtuseness of understanding, that could not perceive the many minute threads with which fate weaves the inextricable net of our destinies, until he is ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... it was—that dress in Evelina's shop off Shaftesbury Avenue! It was four o'clock on a fine day early in April, and was Fanny the one to spend four o'clock on a fine day indoors? Other girls in that very street sat over ledgers, or drew long threads wearily between silk and gauze; or, festooned with ribbons in Swan and Edgars, rapidly added up pence and farthings on the back of the bill and twisted the yard and three-quarters in tissue paper and asked "Your ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... Then of her mother's dying words he thought— Her dying words—"I leave my child to Heaven." And twisting them with his own wishes, wove A chain therewith that bound her wavering will; A chain made mighty by the golden threads Of rev'rence and of holy memories. And so with heavy heart she gave her vow, That in the autumn she would leave the world, But first for one free summer did ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley
... a number of brass balls in constant motion by striking them with his elbows and then with his hands. He next performed a still more difficult feat. He balanced on his nose a small stick, which had at the top of it an inverted ball or cup. From the rim of the cup were suspended by silken threads twelve balls with holes in them. He next placed in his mouth twelve rods of ivory, and while the balls were made to fly round, by managing the rods with his lips and tongue, he contrived to fit a rod into every ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Falls of the Mississippi at St. Anthony, and the lovely little Fall of Minnehaha, lay only some seven miles distant. Minnehaha is a perfect little beauty; its bright sparkling waters, forming innumerable fleecy threads! of silk-like wavelets, seem to laugh over the rocky edge; so light and so lace-like is the curtain, that the sunlight streaming through looks like a lovely bride through some rich bridal veil. The Falls of St. ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... finest inspirations of the mediaeval mind, yet she is inherently French, though France scarcely was in her time: and national, though as yet there were rather the elements of a nation than any indivisible People in that great country. Was not she herself one of the strongest and purest threads of gold to draw that broken race together and bind it irrevocably, ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... calm with which you subject to your analysis the infirmities of reason and the tumults of passion. And all those laws of the social state which seem to me so fixed and immovable you treat with so quiet a scorn, as if they were but the gossamer threads which a touch of your slight woman's hand could brush away. But I cannot venture to discuss such subjects with you. It is only the skilled enchanter who can stand safely in the magic circle, and compel the spirits that he summons, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... where love and affection awaited him, ready to make him forget what he had suffered. But the silver threads in his dark hair and a certain quiet seriousness in his manner, and in the hearts of all the dwellers in the old mansion, showed that the occurrence of that fatal 27th of September had thrown a shadow over them all which was ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... his primal duties had been that bold youth—but too apt to forget the many smaller ones that are wrapt round a life of poverty like invisible threads, and that cannot be broken violently or carelessly, without endangering the calm consistency of all its ongoings, and ultimately causing perhaps great losses, errors, and distress. He did not keep evil society—but neither did he shun it: and ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... was sometimes intense, but at intervals a refreshing wind would blow, the air being as fickle as the rain; and now and then we would see a slender column of dust, a thousand or two feet high, marching across the desert, apparently not more than two feet in diameter, and wavering like the threads of moisture that tried in vain to reach the earth as rain. Of life there was not much to be seen in our desert route. In the first day we encountered no habitation except the ranch-house mentioned, and saw no human being; and the second day none except the solitary occupant of the dried well at Red ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... went up to the window and threw his cap on the table. He was not much changed, but had grown rather yellow in the last two years; silver threads shone here and there in his curls, and his eyes, still magnificent, seemed somehow dimmed, fine lines, the traces of bitter and disquieting emotions, lay about his lips and on his temples. His clothes were shabby and ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... 1980, the Congress passed the Refugee Act of 1980 which brought together, for the first time, in one piece of legislation the various threads of U.S. policy towards refugees. The law laid down a new, broader definition of the term refugee, established mechanisms for arriving at a level of refugee admissions through consultation with Congress, and established the Office of the United States ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... dust and take along with it the neighboring edifices on both sides of the street. There were also the hidden possibilities of betrayal, of treachery, for we knew that scores of Wall Street's most ingenious minds were bent on unravelling and exposing the secret threads of our enterprise. ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... They bathe, they dance, they sing songs of enchantment, so that those who seem oddly in love with nature, and strange among their fellows, are still said to be nympholepti; above all, they are weavers or spinsters, spinning or weaving with airiest fingers, and subtlest, many-coloured threads, the foliage of the trees, the petals of flowers, the skins of the fruit, the long thin stalks on which the poplar leaves are set so lightly that Homer compares to them, in their constant motion, the maids who sit spinning in the house of Alcinous. The ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... store of the best and strongest white paper, nice knives and scissars, pasting and rolling-press" work—the arduous task was at length accomplished: and Mary Collet, one of Mr. Ferrar's nieces, put the grand finishing stroke to the whole, by "doing a deed"—which has snapt asunder the threads of Penelope's web for envy:—"She bound the book entirely, ALL WROUGHT IN GOLD, in a new and most elegant fashion." The fame of this book, or concordance, as it was called, reached the ears of Charles I., who "intreated" (such was his Majesty's expression) to be favoured with a sight of it. ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... share consisted in having given him opium and then stopped it suddenly, till he surrendered and told the truth—or a large part of it—what I have told you already. He would not own that he killed Miss Bamberger himself with the rusty little knife that had a few red silk threads sticking to the handle. He must have put it back into his case of instruments as it was, and he never had the courage to look at it again. He had studied medicine, I believe. But he confessed everything else, how he had been madly in love with the poor girl when he was her father's secretary, ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... positive character; in contrast to Hosea, he did not expect a temporary suspension of the theocracy, to be followed by its complete reconstruction, but in the pious and God-fearing individuals who were still to be met with in this Sodom of iniquity, he saw the threads, thin indeed yet sufficient, which formed the links between the Israel of the present and its better future. Over against the vain confidence of the multitude Isaiah had hitherto brought into prominence the darker ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... was spacious and not gloomy, for there was a wide door, apparently unguarded, and another square opening cut in the rock to serve as a window. Through both openings light streamed in like taut threads of Yasmini's golden hair—strings of a golden zither, on which his own heart's promptings played ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... attach to higher and greater ones. Be always ready to renounce the meaner at the invitation of the nobler. The soul, like a grand frigate, may be loosely tied by a thousand separate strings, but should be held firm by one cable. Our relations to fellow creatures are those threads; our supreme relation to God, that cable. Those are the gossamer of time; this the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... also, an artist that no man can equal. Its magic touch has intermingled the finest shades of orange, yellow, purple, red, and brown; sometimes in solid masses, at other places diversified by slender threads, like skeins of multicolored silk. Yet in producing all these wonderful effects, there is no violence, no uproar. The boiling water passes over the mounds it has produced with the low murmur of a sweet cascade. Its tiny wavelets touch the stone work like a sculptor's fingers, molding ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... of her old favour, in order to sustain and secretly encourage the malcontents, inspire them with her audacity, and stir them up to fresh conspiracies? She still held in her grasp the scarcely-severed threads of the plot; and at her right hand there was a man too wary to allow himself to be again compromised by such dark doings, but quite ready to profit by them, and whom Madame de Chevreuse had sedulously exhibited not only to Anne of Austria, but to France and all Europe, as a man singularly capable ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... the leaves from the season's shoots, sterile flowers from the lower axils, in heads suspended at the end of silky threads 1-2 inches long; calyx campanulate, pubescent, yellowish-green, mostly 6-lobed; petals none; stamens 6-16; anthers exserted; ovary wanting or abortive: fertile flowers from the upper axils, usually single or in ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... poor mad woman who still proclaims in her seclusion the justice of the deed which she did, has now been told. It may perhaps be well to collect the scattered ends of the threads of the tale for the benefit of readers who desire to know the ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... for home until nearly ten o'clock; and long before that Miss Stein's nerves felt as if they had been run, like threads, through the eyes of hot needles. Again Win had helped her in the afternoon by placing blouses of congenial colours together on the counters instead of letting them lie anyhow, as Miss Stein, in her recklessness, would have done. But less than ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... He fingered the loose threads which had aforetime snugged the button to the wool. The carelessness of a tailor had saved his life. Had that button held, his bones at this moment would be reposing on the hillside in far-away Hong-Kong. Evidently Fate had some ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... she exclaimed, "just like threads of silk. You must let it grow long. And such lovely eyes; but ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... beast of prey, the silent and deadly reptile, the verdant swamp, flower-strewn and fathomless, wooing to destruction, the rushing torrent and resistless hurricane, are but a few of the dangers through which he threads his way. And when, at close of day, weary and hungry, foot-sore or saddle-galled, he halts for refreshment and repose, it seems but the beginning of his labours. Wood must be cut and collected, the fire lit, the meal prepared, often its very materials must be sought ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... light played over the group of the dainty maids of honor, yet each showed, for her only color, the arms of her ancient Venetian house wrought large upon the creamy fabric of her tunic, the threads of gold and gleam of jewels half lost within its folds as she walked: but the people looked for the heraldic devices and named them eagerly as, two by two, the maidens stepped on shore—Mocenigo—Giustiniani—Morosini— Dandolo—Contarini—a new name for every sweet ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... was a terrible time, as little or nothing that occurs in ecclesiastical affairs can interest children and young people. Still, with all my inattention and repugnance, so much of that reading remained in my mind that I was able, in after times, to take up many threads of the narrative. ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... They were the first agriculturists of the Old World, raising all the cereals, cattle, horses, sheep, etc. They manufactured linen of so fine a quality that in the days of King Amasis (600 years B.C.) a single thread of a garment was composed of three hundred and sixty-five minor threads. They worked in gold, silver, copper, bronze, and iron; they tempered iron to the hardness of steel. They were the first chemists. The word "chemistry" comes from chemi, and chemi means Egypt. They manufactured glass and all kinds of pottery; they made boats out of earthenware; and, ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... first tap was to be forced on the open end of the pipe. This of course was pierced with holes, so that the pressure beneath it might not be altogether shut off. This was to be forced down upon the steel drill tube, after which the regulator was to be similarly attached to the threads of the preliminary cap. The situation was hazardous for all. There was danger that the out-rushing gas in the trench below might explode when it rose and came in contact with the roaring blaze above. But it was hoped that the work might be done so quickly ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... hidden sweetness, and a depth of feeling which only intimate contact reveals. He is now taking his post-graduate course at Harvard, and for well-nigh two months we have not met; yet so many invisible threads of common experience unite us that we could meet after years and ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... on the edge of the rug. It was thin and strong, woven of fine metal threads. They were just over the edge of the ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... taken refuge in the fairest of his isles, and enjoyed there perpetual spring and very little else. I paid him a visit on my return from Spain, but I shall relate our meeting when I come to my adventures, my pleasures, my misfortunes, and above all my follies there, for of such threads was the weft of my life composed, and folly ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... thongs by which the ox had been tied up were snapped like threads, and many of the other oxen had, in their agony of fear, broken their fastenings and escaped. As the lion bounded away through the assembled party, it appeared as if the ox was not a feather's weight to him. He had, however, stepped ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... beauty that is called classic. The fur cap upon the small head was snow encrusted and sat upon her cold beauty like a coronet; under it the escaping tendrils of jet black hair were fashioned by the cold into a glistening mesh of silver threads. ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... sparsely furnished. Sitting cross-legged on a cushion near the door was Nema, juggling something in her hands. It looked like a cluster of colored threads, partly woven into a rather garish pattern. On a raised bench between two windows sat the old figure of Sather Karf, resting his chin on hands that held a staff and ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... never seen My home in the pleasant forest green, With the sunshine weaving its threads of gold Through the boughs of elm and of maples old, And soft green moss and wild flowers sweet, What carpet more fitting for ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... with the hard towel for the scalp and the soft towel for the hair. She had rubbed brilliantine in to give it the approved gloss. The whole proceeding had lasted fully two hours; now she stood and brushed out the long fine threads of grey turning to silver with just the steady gentle pressure which was necessary and which, according to Mrs. Grant, no one but Mabel ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... while from beneath their crests The ground receding sinks; the trees, whose stems Seemed lately hid within their leafy tresses, Rise into elevation, and display Their branching shoulders; yonder streams, whose waters, Like silver threads, but now were scarcely seen, Grow into mighty rivers; lo! the earth Seems upward hurled by some ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... "Honourables" who resembled him; grey-haired Conrad Gross; tall, broad-shouldered Friedrich Holzschuher, whose long, snow-white hair fell in thick waves to his shoulders; Ulrich Haller, in whose locks threads of silver were just appearing, princely in form and bearing; stately Hermann Waldstromer, who had the keen eyes of a huntsman; the noble Ebner brothers, who would have attracted attention even in an assembly of knights and counts—nay, the Emperor ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... longer than the spathe. The flowers have the arrangement and structure common to the genus, the females being crowded at the base of the spadix, the males immediately above them, and these passing gradually into fleshy incurved processes, which in their turn pass gradually into long, slender, purplish threads, covering the whole of the free end of the spadix.—M.T.M., in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... sensible couple,' quoth Sir Gervas, who, having completed his toilet, had betaken him to his couch. 'I now begin to understand your manufacture, Clarke. I see the threads that are used in the weaving of you. Your father looks to your spiritual wants. Your mother concerns herself with the material. Yet the old carpenter's preaching is, methinks, more to your taste. You are a rank latitudinarian, man. Sir Stephen would cry fie upon ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of iron occasionally collected; of them they made a kind of wire, which, being heated red hot, was pierced with a knife, ground to a sharp point, which formed the eye of a needle.—The sinews of bears and rein-deer, split into threads, served for sewing the pieces of leather together, which enabled the Russians to procure jackets and trowsers for summer dress, and a long fur gown with a hood for ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... from Cavendish Square to Charing Cross, Cynthia was crossing London on a converging line from St. Pancras to the Savoy Hotel. Strange, indeed, was the play of Fate's shuttle that it should have so nearly reunited the unseen threads of their destinies! Again, a trifling circumstance conspired to detain Vanrenen in London. One of his business associates in Paris, rendered impatient by the failure of the great man to return as ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... at this cotton!" he ejaculated. His father approached. The cotton lay in silken handfuls, clean and shimmering, with threads full two inches long. The idlers, black and white, clustered round, gazing at it, and fingering it ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... well what grandpa's favourite was; it was one of the first pieces she had learned by heart. So she played for him "Silver Threads among the Gold." ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... old woman of the opium den, Durdles, the tombstone maker, and The Deputy, the ragged stone-thrower, Dick Datchery unraveled the threads which finally, made into a net, caught Jasper, the murderer, in its meshes. Little by little, word by word, he was made at ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... nobility even when deprived of their metal ornaments and polychromatic decoration. The architects of Babylon and Nineveh were differently situated. Deprived of metals some of their finest effects would have been impossible. The latter could be used at will in flexible threads or long, narrow bands, which could be nailed or riveted on to wood or brick. They may be beaten with the hammer, shaped by the chisel, or engraved by the burin; their surfaces may be either dead or polished; the variety of shades of which they are capable, and the brilliance ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... Other threads were weaving themselves into the "sad-colored" web of daily life, the pattern taking on new aspects as the days went on. Four years after the landing of the Arbella and her consorts, one of the many bands of Separatists, who followed their lead, came over, the celebrated Thomas ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... for books that consumed the labour of lives to copy, and decorate with ornamental letters, or illustrative paintings. In the fifteenth century covers of leather embossed with storied ornament were in use; ladies also frequently employed their needles to construct, with threads of gold and silver, on grounds of coloured silk, the cover of a favourite volume. In the British Museum one is preserved of a later date—the work of our Queen Elizabeth. In the sixteenth century small ornaments, capable of being conjoined into a variety of elaborate ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... this grand scene of reconciliation were on that day reciprocally decorated with the orders of the respective courts, while the imperial guards of both emperors received food and drink for a great festivity. Next day Napoleon paid his farewell visit. At his morning toilet he had his valet loosen the threads which fastened the cross of the Legion of Honor to his coat, and as the Czar advanced to meet him he asked in audible tones permission to decorate the first grenadier of Russia. A veteran named Lazaref was ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... stretched apart in a machine like that shown in Fig. 9. The upper end of the bar is held in wedged jaws by the top cross-head, and the lower end grasped by the movable head. The latter is moved up and down by three long screws, driven at the same speed, which pass through threads cut in the corners of the cross-head. When the test piece is fixed in position the motor which drives the machine is given a few turns, which by proper gearing pulls the cross-head down with a certain pull. This pull is transmitted to the upper cross-head by ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... song; perhaps the only one he had known, for he had shoved that blest cart of his since a boy of thirteen; he had worn himself as threadbare as the clothes on his back, and at last the threads had snapped. He had died of old age—in his thirties. And his junk-cart, with its bells, stood, silent and unmanned, upon the vacant lot just ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... purple of the hills beyond. Down in the desert basin, drifting above and woven through the ever-shifting masses of color, shimmering phantom lakes, and dull, dusky patches of green and brown, long streamers, bars and threads of dust shone ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright |
