"Ell" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was going to use the MS. to patch his books withal." Rossi, who may have seen Naude at work, tells us how he would enter a shop with a yard-measure in his hand, buying books, we are sorry to say, by the ell. "The stalls where he had passed were like the towns through which Attila or the Tartars had swept, with ruin in their train,—ut non hominis unius sedulitas, sed calamitas quaedam per omnes bibliopolarum ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... 'We-ell, ye-es,' he returned, thinking about it, not quite satisfied with the phrase: 'or perhaps I might say, if it was in him. Supposing, for instance, that a man wanted to be always marching, he would find your mother an inestimable companion. But if he had any taste for walking, or should wish ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... And where Irene seems hard and cruel, as in the Bois de Boulogne, or the Goupenor Gallery, she is but wisely realistic—knowing that the least concession is the inch which precedes the impossible, the repulsive ell. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... roughly and bigly. Then he cast aside his spear and drew sword, and as Martimor walloped toward him, he lightly swerved, and with one stroke cut in twain the young fir-tree, so that not above an ell was left in the ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... strides have widened for us the horizon of the universe by some few inches—stand ready, almost eager, to appeal to the sword as soon as the globe of the earth has shrunk beneath our growing numbers by another ell or so. And democracy, which has elected to pin its faith to the supremacy of material interests, will have to fight their battles to the bitter end, on a mere pittance—unless, indeed, some statesman of exceptional ability and overwhelming prestige succeeds in carrying through an international ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... winter after Sidonia's death, and the numberless mock suns that appeared in different places, or of that strange rain, when a sulphureous matter, like starch in appearance, fell from the air (item, a snow-white pike was caught at Colzow in Wellin, seven quarters long, and half an ell broad, with red round eyes, and red fins), a stranger wonder than all was seen at Wolgast; for suddenly, during a review held there, one of the soldier's muskets went off without a finger being laid on it, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... thee bravely: play the man. Look not on pleasures as they come, but go. Defer not the least vertue: life's poore span Make not an ell, by trifling in thy woe. If thou do ill, the joy fades, not the pains. If well, the pain doth fade, ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... stand it! Blow you to 'ell they do! Look at me! I'm slathered in blood! I can't stand it! They ain't no man ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... away, as nature gave them birth, in the conception of sensual gratification, and they seek no more. Tens of thousands are overwhelmed by the burdens of craft and trade; by the weight of the hammer, the ell, or the crane, and they are no more. But I know a man, who did seek more; the joy of simplicity dwelt in his heart, and he had faith in mankind such as few men have; his soul was made for friendship; love was his element, and fidelity his strongest tie. But he was not made by this world nor for ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... grasses where free stepping was difficult. As she groped her way along, she had ample opportunity to hear again the intermittent sounds of the hammer, and to note that they reached their maximum at a point where the ell of the judge's study ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... visiting England was very indignant at the representation of his countrymen on the London stage: he describes how, "Two actors came in, one dressed in the English manner very decently, and the other with black eye-brows, a riband an ell long under his chin, a big peruke immoderately powdered, and his nose all bedaubed with snuff. What Englishman could not know a Frenchman by this ridiculous picture?... But when it was found that the man thus equipped, being also laced down every seam of ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... ick wh at th at sh ell ch ild wh en th is sh y ch air wh y th ese sh ore ch ill wh ere th ose sh ine ch erry wh ich th ere sh ow ch ildren th en th eir sh e ch urch th ey th ey sh all ch ...
— How to Teach Phonics • Lida M. Williams
... silver plate for a few pence, taking it for pewter," says M. de Barante. Those magnificent silks and velvets, that cloth of gold and damask, that Flanders lace, and those carpets from Arras which were found heaped up in chests, were cut in pieces and distributed by the ell, like common canvas in a village shop. The duke's large diamond which he wore round his neck, and which had once upon a time glittered in the crown of the Great Mogul, was found on the road, inside a little box set with fine pearls. The man who picked it up kept ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... was over the kitchen, which was in the ell part. The roof was sloping, and, toward the eaves, very low. There was one window near ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger
... ready enough to take care of the wench when thy mother was ill; there was reason for that. And the child is a nice child enough, when she is not cross; but still there are some folks, it seems, who, if you give them an inch, will take an ell. Where's Bessy, that she ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... fair and even? If thou stand on Will's haw [hillock], the oak on thy right hand is the largest tree; if thou stand on Dick's, it shall be the beech on thy left. And thine ell-wand reacheth not. How then ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... altered," cried Will Scarlett; "we will call a feast, and henceforth, because he is full seven feet tall and round the waist at least an ell, he shall be called Little John." And thus it was done; but at the feast Little John, who always liked to know exactly what work he had to do, put some questions to Robin Hood. "Before I join hands with you, tell me first what sort of life is this you lead? How am I to ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... fate with human cries: Through the wide wound the vital spirit flies. I drew, and casting on the river's side The bloody spear, his gather'd feet I tied With twining osiers which the bank supplied. An ell in length the pliant wisp I weaved, And the huge body on my shoulders heaved: Then leaning on my spear with both my hands, Upbore my load, and press'd the sinking sands With weighty steps, till at the ship I threw The welcome ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... "We-ell?" she drawled in her most pronounced accent, "if I've got to think of 'em, I might as well talk of 'em, and I'm bound to think of 'em!" She relaxed the grasp of her knees, and lay back against the trunk of a tree, chuckling softly in retrospective ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... others hung back. They had seen man after man struck down at the gun, they could hear the hiss and whitt of the bullets over their heads, the constant cracker-like smacks of others that hit the parapet, and—they hung back. "Why th' 'ell don't you do it yerself?" demanded one of them, angered by Bunthrop's goading and in some degree, no doubt, by the disagreeable knowledge that they ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... speak of the Tilt, for that is rich in natural wood—being closely planted with trees, and those chiefly firs; but many of the old fir-trees are, as single trees, very fine. On each side of the glen is an ell-wide gravel walk, which the gardener told us was swept once a week. It is conducted at the top of the banks, on each side, at nearly equal height, and equal distance from the stream; they lead you up one of these paths, ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... rendered by the holy maiden, the councillors of the captive Duke Charles of Orleans, gave her a green cloak and a robe of crimson Flemish cloth or fine Brussels purple. Jean Luillier, who furnished the stuff, asked eight crowns for two ells of fine Brussels at four crowns the ell; two crowns for the lining of the robe; two crowns for an ell of yellowish green cloth, making in all twelve golden crowns.[1223] Jean Luillier was a young woollen draper who adored the Maid and regarded her as an ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... a letter with his ground-sheet under him in the mud. The sissified one blurted out: "Holy gee! but I'm perspiring profusely." The kid writing the letter looked up and sarcastically answered, "Wouldn't sweatin' like 'ell be more to the point." Later in my military career I had a chat with the commander of the company to which the "sissy" belonged, and he incidentally remarked that the lad had turned out to be one of the most reliable and plucky fellows in the battalion. I have often wondered ...
— Through St. Dunstan's to Light • James H. Rawlinson
... family to escape? Yes. They were only too glad, for with the family out, the ell, which was not commanded by our fire, offered a tempting ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... quid in his cheek, and slyly drawled out, "W-ell, if ye must, ye must! I a'n't a-goin' ter stand in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... was a fairly large one, situated in an ell at the rear of the building. Of its two windows, one, as has already been pointed out, overlooked the court between the apartment building and the house next door. The other faced toward the rear. Duvall ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... worse for them. Princes and emperors have granted the pope vast privileges, by which in course of time he has become their master, till now all men bow down and kiss his feet. Where he was given an inch, he has taken an ell.... Christ told Saint Peter to feed his lambs. But the popes with their satellites have long since ceased to feed Christ's lambs, and for centuries have done naught but fleece and slaughter them, not acting like faithful shepherds, but like ravening wolves."[147] This vehement ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... son-in-law, followed by forty or fifty stately fellows in their short hose and belted plaids, armed each of them with a well-fixed gun on his shoulder, a strong handsome target, with a sharp-pointed steel of above half an ell in length screwed into the navel of it, on his left arm, a sturdy claymore by his side, and a pistol or two, with a dirk and knife, in his belt."—Rae's History of the Rebellion, 4to, ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... "We-e-e-ell," he drawls, half chucklin', half sing-songy, "I wisht I could get you to kind of look around for a young fellah in thayah,—sort of a well favored, upstandin' young man, straight as a cornstalk, and with his front haiah a ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... Johnnie; "we-e-ell—" and stopped. Countless times he had punished Big Tom in his own way; and had looked ahead to the hour when, grown-up, and the longshoreman's physical equal, he could measure out to the latter punishment ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... "We're all sinners, you and me, but Jesus can save us. 'E loves sinners. 'E bears their sins; your sins an' my sins, dear brethren; 'e bears the sins of the 'ole world. Why, that's wot 'e came inter the world for—to save sinners. Ter save 'em from death an' everlasting 'ell! That's wot ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... directly over the basement kitchen, jutted in an ell off the rear of the house so that from the back parlor it was not difficult to precede the immediate overhead response to that bell. A black-faced genii of the bowl and weal, in a very dubiously white-duck coat thrust on hurriedly over clothing reminiscent of the day's window washing ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... made up tonight, Crass," 'e ses, "ready for fust thing in the mornin'," 'e ses. "Oh," I ses, lookin' 'im straight in the bloody eye, "Oh, yer do, do yer?"—just like that. "Yes," 'e ses. "Well, you can bloody well make it yerself!" I ses, "'cos I ain't agoin' to," I ses—just like that. "Wot the 'ell do yer mean," I ses, "by comin' 'ere at this time o' night with a order like that?" I ses. You'd a larfed,' continued Crass, as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand after taking another drink ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... 'ell don't you leave the boy alone?' said Harlow, another painter. 'If you don't like the tea you needn't drink it. For my part, I'm sick of listening to you about it every ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... was the white farmhouse, nestling among the apple trees, the front to the west and facing on the lane that led up to a farm above. The house had a one-story ell on the end toward him, containing the kitchen and pantry—this ell projected back almost to the smokehouse. On the opposite side, but hidden from his view, there was a wide porch running the full length of house and ell, and in the angle formed by the porch, stood the ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... pictures that paint the tailor's shop of Chartres in the first quarter of the thirteenth century. The shop-boy takes cloth from chests for his master to show to customers, and to measure off by his ell. The story of Saint James begins in the lower panel, where he receives his mission from Christ, Above, on the right, he seems to be preaching. On the left appears a figure which tells the reason for the popularity of the story. It is Almogenes, or in the ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... their human chattels. Mr. Auld promptly forbade continuance of her instruction; telling her, in the first place, that the thing itself was unlawful; that it was also unsafe, and could only lead to mischief. To use{114} his own words, further, he said, "if you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell;" "he should know nothing but the will of his master, and learn to obey it." "if you teach that nigger—speaking of myself—how to read the bible, there will be no keeping him;" "it would forever unfit him for the duties of a slave;" and "as to himself, learning would do him ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... declaring his own unpopular name, and appealing to the linen-draper's feelings of hospitality; whereupon, the linen-draper, utterly forgetful of all party rancour, nobly responded to the appeal, and telling his wife to conduct his lordship upstairs, jumped over the counter with his ell in his hand, and placing himself with half a dozen of his assistants at the door of his boutique, manfully confronted the mob, telling them that he would allow himself to be torn to a thousand pieces, ere he would permit them to injure a hair of his lordship's ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... of a class of men, Who, though they bow to fashion and frivolity, No fancied claims or woes fictitious pen, But wrongs ell-wide, and of a ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... was not satisfied so easily and many more peaceful moments I would have had if I had never pried further as I did. After all, I only asked one question and that early the next morning. In the house next to ours a brick ell was built way out to the alleyway along half the yard. The kitchen windows looked out on the passage. There was a maid in that house,—a second girl, as they call them in this country,—and I knew she was a great person for staying up late, telling ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... struggle with the stream. His melancholy blinded him even to the good qualities of his neighbours. The only things he saw in perfection were stupidity and canting. 'Prose they only know in graces, prayers, etc., and the value of these they estimate, as they do their plaiding webs, by the ell. As for the Muses, they have as much an idea of a rhinoceros as of a poet.' He was, in fact, ungracious towards his neighbours, not that they were boorish or uninformed folk, but simply because, though living at ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... connected with the kitchen, finished in hardwood, handsomely decorated, and hung with rich tapestries, was provided for the cook, in the vain hope that she might be induced permanently to occupy her position. The Queen Anne wing and Elizabethan ell were constructed, the latter to provide bowling-alleys and smoking-rooms for the probable cousins of possible culinary queens, and many there were who accepted the office with alacrity, throwing it up with still ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... returned, still at her task. Then she rose, holding a bulb in her hands, and said: "It's a funny kind of relation. Her father and mother egging her on—and you know that kind of a man; give him an inch and he'll take an ell. I wonder how far he has got." She took the bulb to a pile near the rear of the house. "Those are the nice big yellow ones I'm saving for Mrs. Barclay. But I'm sure of one thing, Molly has no notion of marrying Brownwell." ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... "We-ell." Tom looked as though he wanted to advise against that course, but he didn't. Instead, "Do you mind waiting for me a minute?" he asked. "I want to run down and ask Mr. Daley about something, if he's back. ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... to give them whatever there was in the country for their money, and they settled to give for the bahar of cloves fourteen ells of yellow cloth of seventy-seven tem, which are worth in Castile a ducat the ell; of red cloth of the same kind ten ells; they also gave thirty ells of Britanny linen cloth, and for each of these quantities they received a bahar of cloves; likewise for thirty knives, eight bahars. Having ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... that were odder than the bonnets; swallow-tailed coats; broad-skirted blue ones with brass buttons; baby waists and basquines; leg-of-mutton sleeves, balloons, and military; collars inch-wide and collars ell-wide with ruffles rayonnantes; gathers and gores, tunnel-skirts, and barrel-skirts and paniers. She made monstrous paper dickeys, and high black stocks, and great bundling neckcloths; the very pocket-handkerchiefs were as ridiculous as anything, from the waiter-napkin ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... won't present us with a racing stud," lisps the gunner, "but, by G——, they'll shy chaff enough at us to keep all the bloomin' horses between 'ere and 'ell, and the girls will send us a kid's feedin' bottle, as a mark of feelin' and esteem, every Valentine's Day for ten years to come, because of the glorious name we made for Australia on the bloody fields of ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... "To 'ell if you like," he replied. Then struck with curiosity, he inquired, "Where do you want to go to? This pillar ain't a ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... during the singing of a hymn the music came to a sudden stop. There was a solemn pause, and then the clerk was seen to make his way to the front of the singing gallery, and was heard addressing the vicar in a loud tone, saying, "Please, sor, an-ell 'as coom off." The handle had come off the instrument. At another church, in Huntingdonshire, the organ was hidden from view by drawn curtains, behind which the clerk used to retire when he had given out the Psalm. On one occasion, however, no sound of music issued ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... hideous thing Cappen had ever seen: nearly as tall as he, she was twice as broad and thick, and the knotted arms hung down past bowed knees till their clawed fingers brushed the ground. Her head was beast-like, almost split in half by the tusked mouth, the eyes wells of darkness, the nose an ell long; her hairless skin was green and cold, moving on her bones. A tattered shift covered some of her monstrousness, but she ...
— The Valor of Cappen Varra • Poul William Anderson
... lovin' beasts, "An' terrier dogs are fair, "But never yet was terrier born, "Wi' ell-lang ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... this ain't a go! 'Ere I be, innercent as a lamb, an' 'ere you be, lost all o' your top 'amper an' out o' your reckonin', run me foul an' goin' to rake me into 'ell-fire. ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... on Cap'tol 'ell (Capitol Hill)—seex t'ousand tollars it costet. Eef I got id feeften 'undret—could haf borrowed dot much—I vould haf bought id, but I couldn't get dot feeften 'undret, and now I am glat. It vould have costet seexty fife tollars a mont to leeve and den I haf to geeve a party and a sopper and ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... hold enough to marry then. What the 'ell would you do with a woman in the 'ouse if you couldn't corner 'er? I tell 'e, women 'ave to 'ave a master, and no man better tackle that job until 'e can be sure 'e can ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... allure the conversation By many windings to their clever clinch; And secondly, must let slip no occasion, Nor bate (abate) their hearers of an inch, But take an ell—and make a great sensation, If possible; and thirdly, never flinch When some smart talker puts them to the test, But seize the last word, which no doubt 's ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... proposed to incorporate into the Confederacy the remnants of the Hurons, the Jesuits discerned nothing in the plan but the most excellent means to convert pagan Iroquois by Christian Hurons. Having gained an inch, the Iroquois demanded the proverbial ell. They asked that a French settlement be made in the Iroquois country. The Indians wanted a supply of firearms to war against all enemies; and with a French settlement miles away from help, the Iroquois could wage what war they pleased against the Algonquins without fear of reprisals ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... later in the ell of our house for my friends among the Hanover children—forty-five scholars in all. Kept it going successfully ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... and female, asleep two and two on the seats. The exhausted woman's head rests on the shoulder of her companion, the man's arm around her to hold her steady. What do you suppose happens when a thing like that is kept up for awhile? Aw! W'at t'ell." ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... you've been reading out," he said. "Oh! don't talk to me! I ain't littery and that, but I know fairy-tales when I hear 'em. I got a bit stumped in some of the philosophical bits and felt inclined to go out for a B. and S. But we're living in West 'Ampstead and not in 'Ell; and the long and the short of it is that some things 'appen and some things don't 'appen. Those are ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... "We—ell, I suppose so," he admitted hesitatingly. "But you can't just subpoena a woman like that without any warning and put her on the stand and make her testify. It ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... dressed as you like it, a la Matignon. Pepi has built a tower upon your head at least three quarters of an ell high, and above that is a blue rosette, with ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... ell-lang wee thing then I ran Wi' the ither neeber bairns, To pu' the hazel's shining nuts, An' to wander 'mang the ferns; An' to feast on the bramble-berries brown, An' gather the glossy slaes, By the burnie's side, an' aye sinsyne I ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... was one large room; and a smaller room, like an ell, at the back. The large room contained the front door and two front windows, also a window at each end. The smaller room had no outer exit, but three windows gave ample ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... I argued. But the fact is, I stayed because I couldn't go away. Of course, it was an abominable position, but I assure you it felt like heaven when it didn't feel like 'ell." ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... of a genuine artist no line can be drawn between knowledge and imagination. Probably—almost certainly—Mrs. Woods has to a remarkable degree that gift which Mr. Henry James describes as "the faculty which when you give it an inch takes an ell, and which for an artist is a much greater source of strength than any accident of residence or of place in the social scale ... the power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implication ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... "We-ell," said the school chaplain slowly, "I don't know what Corkran's appreciation of your style may be, but young McTurk reads ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... Because by deeds like his with whom he came, He weens the mob expects to see him known. So that it now behoves his valour flame More clear than light, or they, to censure prone, — Errs he a finger's breadth — an inch — will swell His fault, and of that inch will make an ell. ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... chosen and peculiar people destined, one day or other, by hook or by crook, to get possession of it. In truth, they are a wonderful and all-prevalent people; of that class who only require an inch to gain an ell; or a halter to gain a horse. From the time they first gained a foothold on Plymouth Rock, they began to migrate, progressing and progressing from place to place, and land to land, making a little here and a little there, and controverting ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... jumps on a bench excitedly, gesticulating with a bottle in his hand.] Listen 'ere, Comrades! Yank 'ere is right. 'E says this 'ere stinkin' ship is our 'ome. And 'e says as 'ome is 'ell. And 'e's right! This is 'ell. We lives in 'ell, Comrades—and right enough we'll die in it. [Raging.] And who's ter blame, I arsks yer? We ain't. We wasn't born this rotten way. All men is born free and ...
— The Hairy Ape • Eugene O'Neill
... better than card-boxes. They seem to be built of bamboos, with wicker-work and plants. Each of them has a veranda in front, which is a nice place to sit and read, with a kind of ell at each end. I think I should like to live in one of them for a week ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... said he in reply to the chairman's indignant questioning, "what could I do? I was werry busy at the time. So when the gentleman says as his name was Luscombe, I could do no better than tell him to go to h'ell for his luggage, and he'd have found it ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... Bookseller's shop, reading in a book of some Embassages into Moscovia, &c., where was very good reading, and then to Mrs. Turner's, and thither came Smith to me, with whom I did agree for L4 to make a handsome one, ell square within the frame. After he was gone I sat an houre talking of the suddennesse of his death within 7 days, and how by little and little death came upon him, neither he nor they thinking it would come to that. He died after a day's raveing, through lightness ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... the Wasp, his companion, did bring, But they promised that evening to lay by their sting. And the sly little Dormouse crept out of his hole, And brought to the Feast his blind Brother, the Mole; And the Snail, with his horns peeping out of his shell, Came from a great distance, the length of an ell. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... in his passage, when he reached the firm ground, carrying a load of planks which a horse or a pair of oxen could hardly have dragged along. He had brought them from Pleskau to build a refuge for his people; over twenty dozen planks, three inches thick, an ell broad, and ten yards long. He drew his sword to trim the timber, and the sorcerer determined to reward himself for his late exertions in raising the tempest by possessing himself of it; but this was not the time for action, ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... stroke Merrihew swung forward his body. The end of the race came sooner than any one expected. A police barge nosed round an ell; by the time Pompeo was off again, the ferrule of the pursuing gondola scraped past Pompeo's blade. Pompeo called and Achille answered. There was a war of words, figure of a dog, name of a pig. Achille was in the wrong, but ten lire were ten lire. ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... the shaft of the hammer of Thor, but an ell's length the sword blade of Frey; 'Tis enough, for your weapon will ne'er be too short if you dare ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... an' 'eed, you rookies, which is always grumblin' sore, There's worser things than marchin' from Umballa to Cawnpore; An' if your 'eels are blistered an' they feels to 'urt like 'ell, You drop some tallow in your socks an' that will make 'em well. For it's ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... throne with that bright eagle eye which nothing escaped. He might be pardoned if he felt some little vindictive pleasure in annoying those who had cruelly annoyed him. "I saw," he wrote to Portland the next day, "faces an ell long. I saw some of those men change colour with vexation twenty times while I ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... then here at once that the word signifies the orifice or opening with which the nose is thrilled, drilled, or pierced. We might have read the word for ever in our modern spelling without being taught this. 'Ell' tells us nothing about itself; but in 'eln' used in Holland's translation of Camden, we ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... toward the rear of the house, was another door. Duvall stole over to it, listened carefully, then slowly opened it and looked within. The room proved to be the doctor's private office, and he saw at once that it was built in a sort of ell, and could not be entered except through the room in which he stood. There was a door, it is true, in the right-hand wall, which had once given entrance to the hall, but against this a heavy instrument case, ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... acquaintance costs Lady Katrine at least a sad headache; but Miss Stanley's marriage, likely as it is to be so happy after all, as he politely said, foredooms poor Lady Katrine to a month's heartache at the least, and a face full ell long." ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... bridges, and having no access to most of its houses but by drawbridges or boats. They described the arms of the Mexicans as consisting of double-headed darts, which were projected by a kind of slings, lances having stone heads, an ell in length, and both edges as sharp as a razor, and two-handed swords, edged likewise with sharp stones, besides shields and other defensive armour. The chiefs shewed large nequen cloths, on which their various battles were represented, with all ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... "handsome limbs, slender arms, pretty hands, and when they sing they have a pleasant tange in their voices. The men shaved their hair on the right side, the women acting as barbers, and left the hair full length on the left side, with a lock an ell long." A Puritan divine—"New England's Plantation, 1630"—says of the Indians about him, "their hair is generally black, and cut before like our gentlewomen, and one lock longer than the rest, much like ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... "How'n 'ell did he git here—the doctor?" he demanded, making a great effort to hold his voice down to a whisper, and forgetting now and then. "How'd he know Brit rolled off'n the grade? Us here, we never knowed it, and I was tryin' to send him back when you came. He said somebody telephoned there ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... flanked on either side by still perfect towers, frowned the massive gateway of the old Norman castle. Then, to the west, almost at the foot of Molehill, the ground broke away in a deep bank clothed with timber, which led the eye down by slow descents into the beautiful valley of the Ell. Here the silver river wound its gentle way through lush and poplar-bordered marshes, where the cattle stand knee-deep in flowers; past quaint wooden mill-houses, through Boisingham Old Common, windy looking even now, and brightened here and there with a dash of golden gorse, till it ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... the first. Its benches, hideously hacked and thick with grime, were as hard and uncomfortable as when I first saw them, and the windows remained unshaded and unwashed. Most of the farm-houses in the region remained equally unadorned, but Deacon Gammons had added an "ell" and established a "parlor," and Anson Burtch had painted his barn. The plain began to take on a comfortable look, for some of the trees of the wind-breaks had risen above the roofs, and growing maples softened the effect of the ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... the irate young lady, "we have to thank you for this. What did I say? Give these people an inch and they will take an ell—a mile indeed, if ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... mother bought me, yesterday, at a merchant's in Cheapside, three new shifts, that cost fourteen pence an ell, and I am to have a pair of new stuff shoes, for my Lord of Norfolk's ball, which will be ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... hands. And the result was, as Stow tells us, "a costly and marvellous cunning pageant by the merchants of the Stilyard, wherein was the Mount Parnassus, with the Fountaine of Helicon, which was of white marble; and four streams without pipe did rise an ell high and mette together in a little cup above the fountaine; which fountaine ran abundantly with Rhenish wine till night. On the mountaine sat Apollo, and at his feet sat Calliope; and on every side of the mountaine sate four Muses, playing on ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... PE ELL is a town of 1,000 people on the South Bend branch of the Northern Pacific railway, chiefly engaged in ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell
... nothing more than an outspread sheet of deep Alpine mud. Well, there is nothing so good for incredulity, don't you know, as capping the climax. If a man will not swallow an inch of fact, the best remedy is to make him gulp down an ell of it. And, indeed, the Lombard plain is but an insignificant mud flat compared with the vast alluvial plains of Asiatic and American rivers. The alluvium of the Euphrates, of the Mississippi, of the Hoang Ho, of the Amazons would take in many Lombardies ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... long, with a piazza, and a long corridor ran through the whole building. All this announced an inn. The windows in the part of the house assigned to guests were dark. In the others, situated opposite the piazza, and not higher than half-an-ell from the ground, which was covered with straw and hay and all kinds of rubbish, the lights of Sabbath shone forth from behind ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... he stepped out upon the sloping roof of the ell part, and slid down to the end where he jumped off, the height not being more than four feet from the ground. By some accident, a tub of suds was standing under the eaves, and Ben, much to his ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... used to live there so quietly—I and an old landlady who is now dead. How my heart aches to remember her, for she was a good woman, and never overcharged for her rooms. Her whole time was spent in making patchwork quilts with knitting-needles that were an arshin [An ell.] long. Oftentimes we shared the same candle and board. Also she had a granddaughter, Masha—a girl who was then a mere baby, but must now be a girl of thirteen. This little piece of mischief, how she used to make us laugh the day long! We lived together, a happy family of three. Often of a ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... and then pushed Duke Lane back. "Don't like that—sounds like a crack on the head. Hey, Jim! Say something!" he called softly. The three knocks were repeated, but Boggs was suspicious and he shook his head decisively. "To 'ell with the ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... at a side door of the dark-red pile of building which boasted the illuminated tower-clock and a jutting ell ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... in boats. These they call quintans, as the West Indians call their canoas. They make them with one tree, by burning and scraping away the coals with stones and shells till they have made them in the form of a trough. Some of them are an ell deep and forty or fifty foot in length and some will transport forty men, but the most ordinary are smaller and will ferry ten or twenty, with some luggage, over their broadest rivers. Instead of oars, they use paddles and ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... but her name and three quarters, that's an ell and three quarters, will not measure her from hip to ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... make merry on the Green They left, and Summer dresses in new sheen, Ourselves must we beneath the springing Turf Add our Ell to ...
— The Golfer's Rubaiyat • H. W. Boynton
... the windows in Philip's study partly open. But that did not prove anything, although a man might have crawled in and out again through that window from an ell of the parsonage, the roof of which ran near enough to the window so that an active person could gain entrance that way. The whole affair remained more or less a mystery to Philip. However, the letters and the knife were real. He took them ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... very interesting account of this temple say, "what we called the altar was on the east side of the temple. There were many doors to the temple, all of which were plated with gold, and the four walls the whole way round were crowned with a rich golden garland, more than an ell in width. Round the temple were five square pavilions, whose tops were in the form of pyramids. The fifth was lined entirely with gold, and was for the use of the Royal High-Priest of sacrifices, ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... "Mebbe so. What th' 'ell, annyhow. Mebbe 'tis as bad to take champagne out iv wan man's mouth as round steak out iv another's. Lent is near over. I seen Doherty out shinin' up his pipe that's been behind th' clock since Ash Winsdah. Th' girls 'll be layin' lilies on th' altar in a day or ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... an' dare was de steward w'at gin me de bahsket to tote. 'W'at th'ell you doin' on bo'd ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... Young's "Night Thoughts." The fireplace flue so seldom held a fire that the swallows utilized the chimney for their nests. Back of this was the dining-room, in which we lived. It had a large brick oven and a serviceable fireplace. The kitchen was an ell, from which stretched woodshed, carriage-house, pigpen, smoking-house, etc. Currant and quince bushes, rhubarb, mulberry, maple, and butternut trees were scattered about. An apple orchard helped to increase ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... precious stones and also girdles silvered and gilded over and silken veils and she carries her veil too high above her forehead, so that her forehead, being entirely uncovered, can be seen of all, and she wears furs of vair. Also she wears shifts of cloth of Rennes, which costs sixteen pence the ell. Also she wears kirtles laced with silk and tiring pins of silver and silver gilt and has made all the nuns wear the like. Also she wears above her veil a cap of estate, furred with budge. Item, she has on her neck a long silken band, in English a lace, which hangs down ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... could not open their mouths, as is done (in Europe) with mastiff-dogs so that they may not bite: they were of such savage aspect that none of us dared to take one away, thinking that they were poisonous: they are of the bigness of a kid, and in length an ell and a half: their feet are long and thick, and armed with big claws: they have a hard skin, and are of various colors: they have the muzzle and face of a serpent: and from their snouts there rises a crest like a saw which extends along the middle of the back as far as the tip of the ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... they must allure the conversation, By many windings to their clever clinch; And secondly, must let slip no occasion, Nor bate (abate) their hearers of an inch,[mt] But take an ell—and make a great sensation, If possible; and thirdly, never flinch When some smart talker puts them to the test, But seize the last word, which no doubt's ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... tell you what I'll do with you,—I'll lay you two to one, in fives or fifties if you like, that you knew before you axed, and that Thunderbolt don't win the Riddlesworth." "Really," said Mr. Jorrocks, "I'm not a betting man." "Then, wot the 'ell business have you at Newmarket?" was all the answer he got. Disgusted with such inhospitable impertinence, Mr. Jorrocks turned on his heel and walked away. Before the "White Hart" Inn was a smartish ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... the completion of the poem in 1663. The first incident of any importance is his migration to Chalfont St. Giles, near Beaconsfield, in Buckinghamshire, about July, 1665, to escape the plague then devastating London. Ell wood, whose family lived in the neighbourhood of Chalfont, had at his request taken for him "a pretty box" in that village; and we are, says Professor Masson, "to imagine Milton's house in Artillery Walk shuttered up, and a coach ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... in shoes of considerably smaller dimensions than Mr. Jeremiah demanded. And from a pretty large choice of coats there was not one which he could turn to account. For, to say nothing of their being one and all too short by a good half ell, even in the very best of them he looked precisely as that man looks who has lately slaughtered a hog, or as that man looks who designs to slaughter ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... fashion is changed (for in Italy they are come to nothing)—so much the worse for the public; they were two Flemish ells and a half in length, so that allowing a moderate woman two ells, she had half an ell to spare, to do what she ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... "Enthusiastic? We-ell, I can't say I know much about it. Of course, I know the sort of putrid tosh he'll sling at them, but what I want is ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... every pint of honey a gallon of gall; for every dram of pleasure a pound of pain; for every inch of mirth an ell of moan; and as the ivy twines around the oak, so does misery and misfortune encompass the happy man. Felicity, pure and unalloyed felicity, is not a plant of earthly growth; her ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... had heard Pa blame Ma about her cold feet, so I got a piece of ice about as big as a raisin box, just zactly like one of Ma's feet, and laid it right against the small of Pa's back. I couldn't help laffing, but pretty soon Pa began to squirm and he said, 'Why'n 'ell don't you warm them feet before you come to bed,' and then he hauled back his leg and kicked me clear out in the middle of the floor, and said if he married again he would marry a woman who had lost ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck |
