"Spin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was there to make sure one side didn't face the sun too long and heat up. My plan called for stopping the bird's spin so that I could get reasonable solar heating of the part I was working on. The trouble was there was nothing to grab as the satellite turned. But we had worked on that part, too, and I went into my act ...
— The Trouble with Telstar • John Berryman
... Boat Club, of which Beau Larch was a member and whither he asked Aladdin to supper. Fishes and lobsters and clams were the staple articles of Boat Club suppers, and over savory messes of these, helped down with much whisky and water, Aladdin and Beau Larch made the evening spin. Aladdin, talking eagerly and with the naivete of a child, wondered why he had never liked this man so much before. And Larch told the somewhat abject story of his life three times with an introduction ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... of restlessness and discovery, and he tends to put more and more of his genius into the technique of his verse and less into the meaning. The versification is marvellous, but one gets tired of it, and he often has nothing to say and has to spin out commonplaces in rich language. One feels this even in the "Idylls of the King," which are the best of his later or middle long efforts: they are artificial, not impulsive; Virgil, not Homer; Meredith calls them 'dandiacal flutings,' which is an ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... I could spin many a tale of tyranny in high places, and almost as many, no doubt, of the pettinesses of workingmen. But what is the good? Why stir up my bile? In progressive incarnations, I have now passed through those of baker and petty tradesman. I am no longer an employer who exploits the ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... can try mighty hard," retorted the man grimly. "But we've got to go easy, Sarah Ellen,—no bungling. We've got to spin some sort of a yarn that won't break, nor have any weak places; and of course, as far as the real work of the farm is concerned, we'll still do the most of it. But the place'll be theirs. ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... that it was his own handiwork, drawn up in order to spin out the negotiations and leave his master a few days of grace.[434] They respected his intentions, and nine days of grace were gained; but the only answer that Napoleon vouchsafed to Caulaincourt's appeals ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... are equally productive. The persimmon is a delicious fruit, after the frost has destroyed its astringent properties. The black mulberry grows in most parts, and is used for the feeding of silk-worms with success. They appear to thrive and spin as well as on the Italian mulberry. The gooseberry, strawberry, and blackberry, grow wild and in great profusion. Of our nuts, the hickory, black walnut, and pecan, deserve notice. The last is an oblong, thin shelled, delicious nut, that ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... sounded outside, and the room whirled round George in a manner which, if it had happened to Reggie Byng, would have caused that injudicious drinker to abandon the habits of a lifetime. When the furniture had returned to its place and the rug had ceased to spin, Maud was ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... the bows, which stood well out of water; handy enough for beaching, but not to be taken through breakers, by reason of its sitting low in the stern. O'Hara, as I yelled at him, pulled his starboard paddle and brought her (for these prams spin round easily) almost broadside on to a tall comber. As we slid up the side of it and hung there, I had a glimpse of a steep clean fissure straight through the wall of rock ahead; and in that instant O'Hara sprawled his arms and toppled overboard. The boat and I went ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... ladies are engaged in various elegant employments. Three, at a table to the left, are making a mitre for the Bishop, as may be seen from the model on the table. Some are merely spinning or about to spin. One young lady, sitting rather apart from the others, is doing an elaborate piece of needlework at a tambour-frame near the window; others are making lace or slippers, probably for the new curate; another is struggling with a letter, or perhaps a theme, which seems to be giving her a ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... which he has observed, not those of which he has dreamt; and he delivers his facts in the fewest possible words, and in the plainest possible way. He does not cultivate flowers of rhetoric; he does not unduly spin out his narrative. It is plain that he is especially bent on making his meaning clear, and he succeeds ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... and mourning I sit to spin; My Love passed by, and he didn't come in; He passes by me, both day and night, And carries off my ...
— Sixteen Poems • William Allingham
... don't want to go. I hate automobiles. I hate seeing sights. I despise this town. I've a grouch against everything in America—except you. Let me go down and tell the Captain to take his spin alone." ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... the camp-fire at night was cheerful, the food satisfying. They bundled close under the blankets and, when it was too cold to sleep, looked up at the stars, while the future entertainer of kings would spin yarn after yarn that made his hearers forget their discomforts. Judge Oliver, the last one of the party alive, in a recent letter to the writer of this ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... what it is to spin a yarn, my boy? That lad down in the gig has been spinning you a fine one," said his father, as he sat down ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... the memory and report of them, are the chief causes of temptation to others, as showing the pleasantness and absolving power of riches; so that thus they are singing serpents. And the worms are the souls of the common money getters and traffickers, who do nothing but eat and spin: and who gain habitually by the distress or foolishness of others (as you see the butchers have been gaining out of the panic at the cattle plague, among the poor),—so they are made to eat the dark leaves, ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... priest, the wise people of the village, the captain of Vaucouleurs, doubted and refused to aid her. "I must go to the King," persisted the peasant girl, "even if I wear my limbs to the very knees." "I had far rather rest and spin by my mother's side," she pleaded with a touching pathos, "for this is no work of my choosing, but I must go and do it, for my Lord wills it." "And who," they asked, "is your Lord?" "He is God." Words such as these touched the rough captain at last: he took Jeanne by the hand and swore to lead ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... industrial promotion program is to become manufacturer of a goodly portion of the textiles worn in her vast "sphere of commerce." The Japanese have seen that the British Isles, growing not a pound of cotton, spin and weave the staple for half the people of the earth, and wish to profit by the example of their prosperous ally. To this end, cotton mills have sprung into being throughout Japan, in which American-grown fiber is transformed by the cheapest competent labor in the world into fabrics ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... Paddington continued to spin out threads of small talk, while Rayel sat listening. The dinner was nearly over when the climax came which I had already begun ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... fiddle most melodiously, And sings, 'twould make your ears prick up, to hear him Gent. Shortly she'l make him spin: and 'tis thought He will prove an admirable maker of Bonelace, And what a rare gift will ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... to spin the heel the spectacles the cassock to forget my window looks out on to the courtyard he was walking with long strides ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... than ever before for worthy occupation, there has never been a time nor a country in which their traditionary sphere has shrunk to so small dimensions. Nowhere else are there so many women of such a station that they are not obliged to toil and spin, nor to sleep all day to make up for nights of dissipation. For all those who do not have to concern themselves with the wherewithal of living, the art of living easily has been brought to a state of great perfection. The ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... Clem and her disengaged hand gripping the light rail of the cart, strove to fix her mind, to bring her brain to work upon Jim's words. But they seemed to spin past her with the hedgerows and the rushing wind in her ears. A terrible blow had fallen. Why could she not feel it? Why did she sit idly wondering, when even a dumb creature like Actress seemed to understand and put forth all ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... declared that they were without power to consent to this. Hereupon the Assembly became violent, and many members denounced the refusal as equivalent to breaking off the negotiations. Everything indicated, so it was urged, a desire on the Spanish side to spin delays out of delays, and, meantime, to invent daily some new trap for deception. Such was the vehemence upon this point that the industrious Franciscan posted back to Brussels, and returned with the archduke's permission to deliver the document. Three conditions, however, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... spread yourselves out and rest! You hear me! Here—Jim, Tom, Pete, Jake, fly around! Take that team to my place—put the wagon in my lot—put the horses under the shed, and get out hay and oats and fill them up! Ain't any hay and oats? Well get some—have it charged to me—come, spin around, now! Now, Hawkins, the procession's ready; mark time, ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... bounded from his wheel, letting the vessel spin off to destruction, and danced, stretching his long mustaches abroad in both hands as the ancients must have rent their clothes. He cried that he had ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... vice of greatness, pride; I meant each softest virtue there should meet, Fit in that softer bosom to abide, Only a learned and a manly soul I purposed her, that should with even powers The rock, the spindle, and the shears control Of destiny, and spin her own free hours.'" ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... insufficient to justify the manufacture of linen on a large scale in Belfast, quantities of flax were shipped from Belfast to Manchester to be spun there and reimported as yarn. Mulholland determined to try if he could not spin yarn as well as the Manchester people, and accordingly in 1830, "the first bundle of linen yarn produced by machinery in Belfast was thrown off from the York Street mill." That, and not legislation nor any system of State bounties or State favour, was the ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... was laid As faint through heat, or dight to pleasant sin; And was arrayed or rather disarrayed, All in a veil of silk and silver thin, That hid no whit her alabaster skin, But rather shewed more white, if more might be: More subtle web Arachne cannot spin; Nor the fine nets, which oft we woven see Of scorched dew, do not in ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... chattering magpie; or again to Arachne, who having been taught the art of weaving by Athene, pretended to compete with her own instructress, and being metamorphosed by her into a spider, was condemned, like the sophists, to spin out of her own entrails endless ugly webs, which are destroyed, as soon as finished, ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... spin and weave for their household, and they also embroider very beautifully. The young women learn the use of fire-arms, as their brothers do, either to shoot game or defend ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... claim, by the use of this invention, to be able to spin any fibrous material which can be drawn by draught-rolls, of any required degree of softness of twist, such as can be spun by any mule whatever, and to do this with the attention only of children of from twelve to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... he said; and they walked on slowly. "I know what presumption this is; but I will not spin phrases about that. Nor do I ask what is impossible; but I will only ask leave to teach you in my turn ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... to enable them to say when the kettle, or the frying-pan, or gridiron, would be wanted. They rubbed their eyes grievously, and spun round three times, if time had brought or left them the power so to spin; and they pulled an Irish halfpenny, with the harp on, from their pockets, and moistened it with saliva—which in English means spat on it—and then threw it into the pocket on the other side of body. But none of these accredited appeals to heaven put a speck upon ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... think of accident and sudden death. Contrast this ill-boding hand with the quick, skilful, quiet hand of a nurse whom I remember with affection because she took the best care of my teacher. I have clasped the hands of some rich people that spin not and toil not, and yet are not beautiful. Beneath their soft, smooth roundness what a chaos of ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... said, coolly,—"for the time being. You don't play at your friendships, do you? If so, I pity you. As I was saying, they're like one thread. By-and-by one spindle is moved, the strands spin away from each other, and become strange yarn. What's the use of sending little locks of wool across to keep them acquainted? They're two yarns from henceforth. Reach out for some other thread,—there's plenty near,—and spin into that. We're made all up of little locks from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... cause of all this turmoil, about which I am to spin my narrative, lay in her education. I hold that a German princess should never be educated save as a German. By this I mean to convey that her education should not go beyond German literature, German history, ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... the King's daughter; "what are you doing there?" "I am spinning," said the old woman, and nodded her head. "What sort of thing is that, that rattles round so merrily?" said the girl, and she took the spindle and wanted to spin too. But scarcely had she touched the spindle when the magic decree was fulfilled, and she ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... mother; we'll be rich yet, and I'll make you a queen yourself, and then you need spin no more," said Jim, wild with ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... cobweb shirt more thin Than ever spider since could spin, Bleach'd in the whiteness of the snow, When that the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various
... kingdom, and lead us with Him. We are to give up our old ways, and the selfish things we lived in once, and not think about our own raiment any more. He will give it to us, as He gives it to the lilies; and the glory of it will be something that we could not in any way spin for our selves. And by and by it will come to be full and right, all through; we shall be clothed with his righteousness. What is righteousness ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... foreign lands, for rescuing human lives. I chatted with the men of Deal whose profession it is to work in the storm, and succour ships in distress, and who have little to do but lounge on the beach and spin yarns when the weather is fine. I also listened to the thrilling yarns of Jarman until I felt a strong desire to go off with him to a wreck. This, however, was not possible. No amateur is allowed to go off in the Ramsgate boat on any pretext whatever, but the restriction is not so absolute ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... labourer finds his own food; but in harvest and hay times wages are about one shilling per day and the labourer hath all his diet. In the north of England poor labouring men do rather better than nearer London. Industrious women who spin in the factories get some fourpence, some fivepence, and so on to tenpence per day, and find their own house-room and diet. Great numbers of poor people live chiefly on bread and water, and there are many poor children ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... we may not increase the labour of the mind unseasonably, we should watch for the moment when habit has made one lesson easy, and when we may go forward a new step. In teaching the children at the House of Industry at Munich to spin, Count Rumford wisely ordered that they should be made perfect in one motion before any other was shown to them: at first they were allowed only to move the wheel by the treadle with their feet; when, ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... I think that his books emanated from a high artistic ideal. I do not believe that he was really much interested in his craft. Rather he visualised a story very vividly, and then it seemed to him the finest fun in the world to spin it all as rapidly as he could out of his brain, to make it all alert with glancing life. It was all a personal confession; his books bristle with his own dreams, his own dilemmas, his own social relations; and ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... These learned tourists generally obtain the greater part of their information from retired old South-Sea rovers, who have domesticated themselves among the barbarous tribes of the Pacific. Jack, who has long been accustomed to the long-bow, and to spin tough yarns on the ship's forecastle, invariably officiates as showman of the island on which he has settled, and having mastered a few dozen words of the language, is supposed to know all about the people who speak it. A natural desire to make himself of consequence in the eyes of the ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... silence that followed the two thunderous reports, a pistol shot rang out sharply, and I saw Captain Whidden spin round ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... The Russians do spin and hachell it, and the English tarre it in threed and lay the cable. And one cable of those is woorth two of Danzick, because the Danzickers put in old cable and rotten stuffe, which in fowle weather is found ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... religion, they will be in far too much haste, to wait to apply a strict test to their holy men's visions. Furthermore they will have so few visions, that any will awe them; so naturally they will accept any vision as valid. Then their rapid and fertile inventiveness will come into play, and spin the wildest creeds from each ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... the wavelets wimple in O'erlapping tiers of crystal shelves, And little circles dimple in, As if the waters quaffed themselves, The while they spin: ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... genius to prove all things, and it lay in his temperament to seek rapport with all sorts of men. He was infinitely related;—not an individual of note in his day but was linked with him by some common interest or some polemic grapple; not a savant or statesman with whom Leibnitz did not spin, on one pretence or another, a thread of communication. Europe was reticulated with the meshes of his correspondence. "Never," says Voltaire, "was intercourse among philosophers more universal; Leibnitz servait a l'animer." He writes now to Spinoza at the Hague, to suggest new ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... single cow That charges for her milk, And though they are not paid a sou, The silkworms still spin silk. ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... sheikh blew in an' tole us you had gone under. He heard the shootin', you see, an', accordin' to his account, you were as full of lead as Tagg'll be full of beer when he listens to the yarn I'll spin ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... kind, used for covering furniture, to the finest description, used for personal adornment It is very cheap, wears for ever, and strongly resembles the torchon lace, now so fashionable in Paris and London for trimming petticoats and children's frocks. The women also spin, dye, and weave the wool from the fleece of their own sheep into the bright-coloured ponchos universally worn, winter and summer, by the men in this country. These ponchos are not made of nearly such good material as those used in the Argentine Republic, but they are ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... Mr Bram Stoker afterwards took the child apart and told him that one of these days he would be very proud of having been taken on that old gentleman's knee. "Oh! I know," the imp responded, "it's old Gladstone; I don't want to be bothered with him. I have promised another boy to go and spin tops with ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... vessel was like, for I had seen numbers in the Thames, and one of Alfred's great pleasures was to take me with him to Greenwich Hospital, and to sit down on the benches and to watch the vessels sailing up and down the river, while we talked with the old pensioners, who were always ready to spin some of their longest yarns for our edification, though older people who went down there for the purpose found no little difficulty in getting anything out of them. This was not surprising. The old sailors found in us ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... many several wayes that may be done. Secondly, The Breeding of Silkworms, the choosing of good Eggs, and their hatching, as also the Feeding of the Worms, and preserving them from sickness, and Curing them of it, together with the way of making them spin to best advantage. Thirdly, The manner of winding their Silk from their Bottoms, adding the Scheme of the Instrument serving for that purpose. Fourthly, The way of keeping Silkworms Eggs for the ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... important one, and morphology was in an unsound state so long as it rested upon the mere perception of the analogies which obtain between fully formed parts. The unchecked ingenuity of speculative anatomists proved itself fully competent to spin any number of contradictory hypotheses out of the same facts, and endless morphological dreams ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... vein I should resist, Which day and night within my bosom stirs. Life is not life if I must cease to think, Or, thinking, cease to poetize. Forbid the silk-worm any more to spin, Because its own life lies upon the thread. Still it uncoils the precious golden web, And ceases not till, dying, it has closed Its own tomb o'er it. May the good God grant We, one day, share the fate of that same worm!— That we, too, in some valley bright with heaven, Surprised with sudden ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... late that afternoon when we met our third general, and this meeting was quite by chance. Coming back from a spin down the lines we stopped in a small village called Amifontaine, to let our chauffeur, known affectionately as The Human Rabbit, tinker with a leaky tire valve or something. A young officer came up through the dusk ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... home they have left. Their first disposition is to reproduce as far as possible in the new world the institutions and the social order of the old. Just as the spider spins his web out of his own body, so the immigrant tends to spin out of his experience and traditions, a social organization which reproduces, as far as circumstances will permit, the organization and the life of the ancestral community. In this way the older culture is transplanted and renews itself, under ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... as Mr. Hennessey talked. "After the sugar has been crystallized in the pans it passes into a mixer, where it is stirred and kept from caking until it is put into the centrifugal machines, which actually spin off the crystals. These machines are lined with gauze, and as they whirl at tremendous velocity they force out through this gauze the liquid part of the sugar and leave the sugar crystals inside the machine. When these ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... industry succeeded in his district because the employers "exerted themselves" and the girls "worked with the devotion of soldiers." I thought of a motto written by the Empress, which I had seen at Ueda, "It is my wish that the girls whose service it is to spin silk shall be always diligent." Behind the desk of this factory proprietor hung the motto, "Cultivate ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... have some land," said Christine; that was the promise, and we thought to raise vegetables and fruits; fowls, too, and perhaps bees; but we can cook, wash the clothes, keep the house clean, spin, and weave, ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... another, παρ' αλληλας {par' allêlas}, all the way. Similarly a mathematician should know that a rhombus is so called from its resemblance to a form of spinning-top (ῥομβος {rhombos} from ῥεμβω {rhembô}, to spin) and that, just as a parallelogram is a figure formed by two pairs of parallel straight lines, so a parallelepiped is a solid figure bounded by three pairs of parallel planes (παραλληλος {parallêlos}, parallel, ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... him by a yell of fury and contempt. He was a dog—a woman—fit only to weave and spin; and a volley of stones and arrows flew at him. One struck him on the head and dropped him senseless. The Indians set up a howl of terror; and frightened at what they had done, ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... Wellsley in time for classes. We have only thirty minutes in school in the morning and fifteen in the afternoon. Our teachers are in telepathic touch with all knowledge and we get it in condensed form. A few days ago, just after lunch at noon I took a spin up into Canada; the machine got a little out of fix, so I jumped on a gyroscope and returned in time ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... drops in, And while the running sands Their golden thread unheeded spin, He warms his ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... for the matrons. Each of the three has its peculiar character. In the first, the children work and amuse themselves under the superintendence of an old woman, who trims the torch* and endeavours to keep order. The little girls spin flax in a primitive way without the aid of a jenny, and the boys, who are, on the whole, much less industrious, make simple bits of wicker-work. Formerly—I mean within my own recollection—many of them used to make rude shoes of plaited bark, called lapty, but these are being rapidly supplanted ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... good chroniclers tell us—and hied him off to Canterbury or Cologne, Rome, Jerusalem, or Timbuctoo. Mrs. Pilgrim was left at home to play "patience," and to keep the house and bairns. She was generally a long-suffering creature, but sometimes she did get into mischief. She could not always spin yarn, so she occasionally varied her task by weaving nets—traps for the unwary who was not ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Rationalists are like the spiders, they spin all out of their own bowels. But give me a philosopher who, like the bee, hath a middle faculty, gathering from abroad, but digesting that which is gathered by its own ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... you will know, it is the root of the bulrush." He who could with perfect ease spin a sentence a whole day long, seemed to be exhausted by the effort of pronouncing that ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... step-sisters went to the village in the evening to spin, the old man's daughter did not allow herself to be interrupted in her work, but finished a whole sieve full of spools, while the old woman's daughter with difficulty completed a single one. When they came home late at night, the old woman's daughter jumped nimbly over the fence ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... that the doctors had to cut off the leg under the knee, and leave him to stump about on a timber toe for the rest of his life. I tell you what, Master Cyril: we might make the thing safer still if I spin the Captain a yarn as how Matthew has strained his back and ain't fit to work for a bit; then I can take on another hand to work in the yard, and we can put him on watch all day. He might come on duty ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... those shiftings and turnings which the equivocal possessor may practise with an unwary assailant. Far different was the fate of Hobbes in the open daylight of mathematics: there his hardy genius lost him, and his sophistry could spin no web; as we shall see in the memorable war of twenty years waged between Hobbes and Dr. Wallis. But the gall of controversy was sometimes tasted, and the flames of persecution flashed at times in the closet of our philosopher. The ungenerous ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... maltreat these. Sometimes they play, too, with stuffed squirrels, but there are no special children's games. The father makes bows and arrows for the boys, and instructs them in hunting and agricultural work. As the girls grow up, the mother teaches them how to spin yarn and weave blankets, "for," she tells them, "otherwise they will become men." She also warns them not to have children too rapidly in succession, for there is no one to carry them for her. Women cannot eat ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... perfume filled the room; and bending over the flower, and inhaling the delicious fragrance, the master softly said—'My children, the blessed Word of God says—Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin, and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Carl ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... claim, his knees began to smite together, and he felt so weak he could hardly drag one foot after the other. He threw down his pick; he began to tremble and spin around. The world seemed to be turning over and over, and he trying in vain to hold on to it. He jerked the pipe from his teeth, and throwing it down on the bank, he tumbled down too, and clutching at the grass with both hands tried ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... also quotes Sylvester de Petra Sancta, who would have this shield to "represent a cushion, whereon women used to sit and spin, or ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various
... product of a parasite which first took possession of the intestinal canal of the silkworm, spread throughout its body, and filled the sack which ought to contain the viscid matter of the silk. Thus smitten, the worm would go automatically through the process of spinning when it had nothing to spin. ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... taught to dance, and sometimes to play on some instrument, although this last is not quite a proper accomplishment for young women of good family. Hardly any one dreams of giving a woman any systematic intellectual training.[] Much more important it is that she should know how to weave, spin, embroider, dominate the cook, and superintend the details of a dinner party. She will have hardly time to learn these matters thoroughly before she is "given a husband," and her childhood days are forever over (see ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... I will not spin this note any further, but shall be glad of a line to tell me you are well. I have not seen Mr. Lort since he roosted under the metropolitan Wings of his grace of ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... mind in the extreme, but of a sort wholly failing to provoke that reaction of the vital forces which builds up and develops the parts exercised. From time immemorial the boy had gone out to dig and hunt with his father, or contend for the mastery with other youths while the girl stayed at home to spin and bake. Up to fifteen she might share with her brother a few of his more insipid sports, but with the beginnings of womanhood came the end of all participation in active physical outdoor life. What could be expected save what resulted—a dwarfed and enfeebled physique and a semi-invalid existence? ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... I spin my flax. Graze away, little ox, while I spin my flax!" And while she spun, her head drooped down and she began to doze, and while she was dozing, from behind the dark wood and from the back of the huge pines a bear came rushing out upon the ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... livin when young, An when tha grew up tha'd to spin; An if labor like that wornt wrong, Tha con hardly call wayvin ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... Malone watched the spin begin with mixed feelings. There was five thousand dollars riding on the little ball. But, after all, Her Majesty was a ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... imagine how hard these three sisters worked when you remember that the thread of life of every mortal had to pass through their fateful fingers. Hercules would have liked them to tell him how long they had yet to spin for him, but they had no time to answer questions and so the hero ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... will sit on the ground, hold his tail in his mouth, and fumble head over heels, or roll over and over, or spin round and round—just for fun! In fact, the black bear is among the few grown-up animals that love to play. Many young animals of course, such as kittens, puppy dogs, calves, and many others, love to play. ...
— The Wonders of the Jungle - Book One • Prince Sarath Ghosh
... spin, but not in weave; My second in part, but not in leave; My third is in rain, but not in storm; My fourth in chilly, but not in warm; My fifth in hen, but not in coop; My whole is ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... captivating? Have you not renounced many of your beautiful gifts—your pleasure in literature and music—nay, in short, what is the most lovely part of life, in order to bury yourself in concealment and oblivion, and there, like the silkworm, to spin your own sepulchre of the threads which another will wind off? You bow your own will continually before that of another; your innocent pleasures you sacrifice daily either to him or to others: are you so very happy amid all ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... his accident to his uncle and Patty, who anxiously inquired what had detained him so long, and what had been the matter. In the midst of the history of his disaster, he was just proving to Patty that his taking the hat-band to spin his top had nothing to do with his misfortune; and he was at the same time endeavoring to refute his uncle's opinion, that the waste of the whipcord that tied the parcel, was the original cause of all his evils, when he was summoned to ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... playing in the bright blue sea at the vessel's side, the boatswain, who was a fine specimen of a sea-faring man, came up and, seating himself on a fowl-coop near me, commenced sorting rope-yarns for the men to spin. Presently Frederic walked up the ladder with a bucket of water to pour into the troughs for the thirsty poultry, who were stretching their necks through the bars and opening their bills, longing for the refreshing ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... One bright, moonlight night his parents were awakened by a soft, whirring sound, and found their little son enjoying his realized ambition. In the moonlit room he had successfully started the wheel and begun to spin, much to his parents' astonishment. This was the beginning of his creative genius, but many years went over his youthful head before he created the works which made him famous. His father carved wooden ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson
... the Maori hero, invented barbs for hooks, angling has been essentially one and the same thing. South Sea islanders spin for fish with a mother-of-pearl lure which is also a hook, and answers to our spoon. We have hooks of stone, and hooks of bone; and a bronze hook, found in Ireland, has the familiar Limerick bend. What Homer meant by making anglers throw 'the horn of an ox ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang
... a tendency to roll to the right. If I hadn't kept fighting it back, it would have soon worked up a dandy little spin. I was spending so much time juggling with the controls that I practically missed a couple of my beacon rocks, and that would have been just too bad. If I'd gotten off the course I had carefully outlined for myself, I'd never have found my bearings again, and I would have ...
— The Risk Profession • Donald Edwin Westlake
... things." .... "Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself." .... "And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?" .... "Are not ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... dear!" said Mattie. "And what would become of poor me supposing thou wert any bigger? As it is, I can bake the little loaves thou lovest to eat, and I can spin and knit enough for us both. But, oh, dear! wert thou the size of Farmer Fairweather or Miller Mealy, ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... food. He brought with him to our shores cows and sheep and goats, horses and dogs. Moreover he made pottery, moulding the clay with his hand, and baking it in a fire. He had not discovered the advantages of a kiln. He could spin thread, and weave stuffs, though he usually wore garments ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... had the same brightness that made Dorothy's so attractive, except that years had tarnished that of Mrs. White, while her niece had seen only sunshine in life to polish the golden warp that beauty loves to spin. There were many features in both that marked relationship, and it was always declared that Dorothy was a Dale both in character ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose
... American popular successes ("On the Banks of the Wabash," "Just Tell Them That You Saw Me," and various others), as a third owner of one of the most successful popular music publishing houses in the city and as an actor and playwright of some small repute, he was wont to spin like a moth in the white light of Broadway. By reason of a little luck and some talent he had come so far, done so much for himself. In his day he had been by turn a novitiate in a Western seminary which trained aspirants for the Catholic priesthood; a singer and entertainer with ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... o'clock, and Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall have not come. It is Lestock's last day, and he and Fanny and Lucy are so busy and so happy putting the transit instrument to rights, and setting black spotted and yellow backed spinning spiders at work to spin for the meridian lines. I have just succeeded in catching the right sort by descending to the infernal regions, and setting kitchenmaid and housemaid at work. I was glad Mr. and Mrs. Hall did not arrive just at the crisis ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... drop off. Any poet, if he is to survive as a writer beyond his twenty-fifth year, must alter; he must seek new literary influences; he will have different emotions to express. This is disconcerting to that public which likes a poet to spin his whole work out of the feelings of his youth; which likes to be able to open a new volume of his poems with the assurance that they will be able to approach it exactly as they approached the preceding. ...
— Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry • T.S. Eliot
... of Haleakala rose up in a long line against the sky on the left, and the deeply eroded and canyoned mountains of the older, or west, end of the island on our right. Toward the latter our guide took us. It was a pleasant spin along the good roads, in the fresh morning air, near the beach, to Wailuku, the shire town of the island, two or three miles distant. Here we were most hospitably entertained in the home of Mr. Penhallow, the director of ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... children were taught to spin, and had the decided advantage of being taught to read and write, apparently, for their "schooling" cost the parish 2d. a head, paid to Henry Watson. The {40} Workhouse was regularly visited by two members of the Committee appointed in rotation to that office. In villages the Workhouse administration ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... rather worn face critically. It would have seemed to him still paler and more worn if he could have seen it in contrast with his own fresh-tinted features, ruddy with his morning's drive. "Better come with me for an afternoon spin farther up State, and a good dinner at a place I know. Get you back ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... nearer to each other, the princes began to spin the web of their treason; and for this purpose a messenger was sent by them to Tarik, informing him how Roderic, who had been a mere menial and servant to their father, had, after his death, usurped the throne; that the princes had by no means relinquished their ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... afflictive providence, be in some measure excused, or at least be less censured, for passing sentence on several persons as being the instruments of Satan in those diabolical operations, when they were involved in such a dark and dismal scene of providence, in which Satan did seem to spin a finer thread of spiritual wickedness than in the ordinary methods of witchcraft: hence the judges, desiring to bear due testimony against such diabolical practices, were inclined to admit the validity of such a sort of evidence as was not so clearly and directly demonstrable to human ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... have seen him spin that little dancing Frenchman against the wall, papa. I wish I'd been big enough! I'd ...
— Eric - or, Under the Sea • Mrs. S. B. C. Samuels
... sprang like a dog. A sodden, thudding blow met him and he slunk away without a cry. Another rabid beast launched his white body at the giant. Like a flash the ax descended. In agony the wolf fell, to spin round and round, running on his hind legs, while his head and shoulders and forelegs remained in the snow. ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... I am truly glad to see thee alive and well, friend Christison. I have a long yarn to spin into thine ear, but it is as well that our red friends shall not hear it. They might not hold the white skins in quite as much respect as ...
— A True Hero - A Story of the Days of William Penn • W.H.G. Kingston
... and many other wines, made from rice or cane—to say nothing of the great profits they make from wax and gold, which are ordinarily produced in all the islands. There is a great deal of cotton, which they work and spin, and make into fine cloths; these are very valuable to the Indians in their trade. The Chinese bring them many silks, porcelains, and perfumes; with iron and other articles, from which they make great profits. For all this and many other reasons and causes, which are well known everywhere, the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair
... church door of Wittenberg. Then it was that men felt as if suddenly freed from the force and pressure of a thousand years; the artists, most of all, again breathed freely as the nightmare of Christianity seemed to spin whirling from their breasts, and they threw themselves with enthusiasm into the sea of Greek joyousness from whose foam rose to them goddesses of beauty. Painters once more limned the ambrosial joys of Olympus; ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... I commanded an early dinner for them, since the colonel was pleased to tarry long enough for a little politics and to spin a glass. And I profess, was I to live neighbours with such a man, I might come to his way of thinking, despite myself. Though I say it that shouldn't, some of his Majesty's ministers are ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... therefrom the young one start-up by miracle, and fly heavenward. Far otherwise! In that Fire-whirlwind, Creation and Destruction proceed together; ever as the ashes of the Old are blown about, do organic filaments of the New mysteriously spin themselves: and amid the rushing and the waving of the Whirlwind-Element come tones of a melodious Deathsong, which end not but in tones of a more melodious Birthsong. Nay, look into the Fire-whirlwind with thy own eyes, and thou ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... will weigh very nearly the same as any other yard. The fibers, however, are lying "every which way," and before they can be drawn out into thread, they must be made to lie parallel. This is brought about in part by carding. When people used to spin and weave in their own houses, they used "hand cards." These were somewhat like brushes for the hair, but instead of bristles they had wires shaped much as if wire hairpins had been bent twice and ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... then, the maids to please, At midnight I card up their wooll; And while they sleepe, and take their ease, With wheel to threads their flax I pull. I grind at mill Their malt up still; I dress their hemp, I spin their tow. If any 'wake. And would me take, I wend me, laughing, ho, ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... grew, but for many weeks lived in common on an irregular web, feeding together on the crushed flies or bugs thrown to them. But when one fourth of an inch in length, they showed a disposition to separate, and to spin each for herself a regular web, out of which all intruders were kept. And now it was found that all these webs were inclined at nearly the same angle, and were never exactly vertical; that, like the spider in the first web she made in the Botanical Garden, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... painted black, too! Well, their trick succeeded. Just this minute we'd have no more chance of finding 'em than a needle in a haystack. But it may clear again before night, and then we'll see! Go ahead now and spin your yarn, my lad!" ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... him to the blush. I should have liked very much to see your daughter bring a couple of hundred thalers with her; and that was quite natural, because she herself would thereby be so much the better off with me. If a girl brings her bed in her trunk, then she will not have to card wool and spin yarn. In this case it will not be so, but what of it? We'll make a Sunday dinner out of Lenten fare, and a Christmas feast out of Sunday's roast. In that way we'll make ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... morning. In fact, the word 'fresh' hardly describes the feeling of buoyancy they gave proof of. For a time it was as difficult to mount one as it would be for a fly to alight on a top at full spin. We took them to the paddock, where the grass and moss were soft. Donald, Dugald, and I held Flora's fiery steed vi et armis till she got ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... there are four certain children between you, but I go over to visit my mother at Hillsboro as often as she'll have the caravan and plead with Billy Harvey or Hampton Dibrell to keep me out until I'm late for dinner every time they pick me up for a little charitable spin. That and other deceptions have kept Mark Morgan uncertainly happy so far, but if I am pushed to the wall I'll—I'll go to the Reverend Mr. Goodloe's study for ministerial counsel like you did last Friday afternoon, Harriet," was Nell's ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... in the town," said he. "He told me to tell ye that he'll be round in about an hour or so to take you for a spin. He was in a new car, which he did his best to sell to me, but he ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... I had had a scene with Nichoune, and had quitted her in a fury, that I would go for a long bicycle ride into the country, taking my shame and rage with me. On a certain Saturday, bestriding my faithful bike, I went for a spin along the dusty high-road which runs past the camp. After going at high speed, I dismounted, seated myself under a tree in the shade, by the side of a ditch, and was falling asleep. It was summer, the sun was ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... opinion of fair ladies who dwell in ceiled houses in our older Eastern States and cities, who like lilies, neither toil nor spin, whose fair hands would gather close their silken apparel at the thought of touching the homelier garments of many a heroine of Kansas—whatever they may say in reference to this question, we, the women of the Spartan State, declare, we want ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... of strong hooks at the posterior end of its soft defenceless abdomen. Their food appears for the most part to be of a vegetable nature. Some species, however, are alleged to be carnivorous, and a North American form of the genus Hydropsyche is said to spin around the mouth of its burrow a silken net for the capture of small animal organisms living in the water. Before passing into the pupal stage, the larva partially closes the orifice of the tube with silk or pieces of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... indeed, he wanted to turn out and dress and go on deck. But Cunningham, who had assumed the role of surgeon, would not hear of such a thing—would not even permit Brown to leave his bunk; so, as a compromise, I just had to sit down and spin the whole yarn of our adventure over again to him. The poor old fellow seemed very much cut up when he learned that we had lost six men—all of them compatriots of his, too—and bitterly reproached himself for having come to the island at all. Of course we comforted him as well ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... hot-house culture yields nought for the beauties of Flora, nor the sweetness of her priceless perfumes. The spider would not be a butterfly even if you could give him wings. The power to fly would only enable him to spin his web in air, and obscure the sunlight. His own way is best, both for ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... put her down, and stood breathless after her last glorious spin, "I do so wish we might, Polly; oh, ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... are probably offshoots from the Kurmis and Kunbis, but now rank below them because they grow this crop; and in the Kurmi caste itself a subcaste of Santora (hemp-picking) Kurmis has grown up. In Bilaspur the Patharia Kurmis will grow san-hemp and ret it, but will not spin or weave the fibre; while the Atharia Kurmis will not grow the crop, but will spin the fibre and make sacking. The Saugor Kewats grow this fibre, and here Brahmans and other high castes will not take water from Kewats, though ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... Monica than I had expected. In fact, its chief fault is that it is too much spun out; and, just at this time, Saint Monica mustn't be associated in any sort of way with the House at Cambridge where they spin. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... thinking that he would rather have the man with him than on his way to report the departure of the Nelson. "We are just going to look the ship over—perhaps take a little spin. Come along." ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson
... neither do they spin might know the feel of fabrics so cunningly devised that they lay to the flesh like the inner petals of buds, three hundred and fifty men, women, and children contrived, between strikes, to make the show-rooms of the Kessler Costume Company, Incorporated, a sort of mauve and mirrored Delphi ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... the memory of old England! She is more sensible than I ever thought for. They couldn't have done a nobler thing than to have placed her likeness here!" and thus the jolly fellow's tongue flew, as if he would re-spin all the forecastle yarns of his lifetime, much to the discomfiture of the eagle-eyed guide, who bade the intruder begone; but our nautical friend, deigning to give this polite invitation to depart no further notice than he would have given to ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... of the parchment, she continued to spin and flutter around the fire until the water in the kettle began to boil. At the first ebullitions, she stood poised for an instant upon her toe, like the famous statue of Mercury, and so lightly that she seemed to be sustained by undiscoverable wings, ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... people"—those caravans that yearly poured unceasing into the not too comfortable caravanserai down town—stretched eager hands toward this circle; for, to them, it meant Washington. Having clutched an insecure grasp upon its rim, away they went with a fizz and a spin, dizzy and delighted—devil take the hindmost! Therein did the thousand lobbyists, who yearly came to roll logs, pull wires and juggle through bills, ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... interesting story—or might be made so," said Erskine. "But you make my head spin with your confounded exchange values and stuff. Everything is a question ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... and Chloe listened with open mouth and round eyes to another of the most wonderful stories in the world, while Lydia forgot to spin and the wine-cup of Melas stood untouched within reach of his hand. Even Lydia forgot all about time, and when the story was finished, the moon had already risen and was looking down upon them over the wall. Lydia pointed to ...
— The Spartan Twins • Lucy (Fitch) Perkins
... had been sent in from the laundry. Before she could straighten herself up to answer the call, her elbows were seized from behind, and Eugenia began waltzing her around backwards at a rate that made her head spin. ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... from in front of the embassy early in the morning. The ambassador brought him out for a spin in his automobile and left him out in front a moment. When he went back to continue his morning ride the automobile and the boy were nowhere to be seen! This was before nine o'clock Monday morning. Yesterday, along ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... low nook under the slanting roof but found nothing more exciting than a spider. "Huh, it's no fun hunting for robbers. Guess I'll spin ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... a book by Andrew Yarenton an account of the spinning-schools in Germany, as follows: "In all towns there are schools for little girls, from six years old and upwards, to teach them to spin, and to bring their tender fingers by degrees to spin very fine; their wheels go all by the foot, made to go with much ease, whereby the action or motion is very easie and delightful. The way, method, rule, and order how they are governed is, 1st. There is a large room, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... his own pronunciation and bowed in response to this mark of attention. It was a pretty sight to see him bending forward, his hands resting on his knees, watching a battle royal between the tops of Speug and Howieson; and if anything could be better it was to see the Count trying to spin a top himself, and expostulating with it in ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... victims so Whirl madly. Shrinks her head and swims; This is not glory's ardent glow, But fever's hectic, herald sure Of dread corruption, if unstayed. Dance on the footing insecure Of the keen edge of War's red blade, Rather than this mad dervish spin, Drunk with that poison-breath; The music is the devil's din, The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various
... the planned and fought for, was over. They were there, strung out gayly along deck,—Mrs. Marne, Hare, Peter, Mary Carstairs, and he. Then, by some deft stratagem, the others were gone and he was sitting alone by Mary at the rail. The Cypriani was slowly moving, as though for a ten-minute spin down the river. And then, as she gathered headway, he turned suddenly to Mary and told her everything: how he had deceived and tricked her, and how she would not go back to ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... his time mostly in cobwebs which he digilently spins between posts and catches flies to eat them. They are different coloured and sizes and have legs in pairs. Spiders also spin their webs in corners or in weeds or on a fence and sometimes in the grass. They are more able to get about quicker than catapillars or fishing worms, but cannot fly such as pinching bugs, lightning bugs, and birds because having no wings, nor jump as far ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... assist in the work of the house, or to perform its entire duties if occasion requires it; to understand the mystery of soap, candle, and sugar-making; to make bread, butter, and cheese, or even to milk her own cows; to knit and spin, and prepare the wool for the loom. In these matters we bush-ladies have a wholesome disregard of what Mr. or Mrs. So-and-so thinks or says. We pride ourselves on conforming to circumstances; and as a British ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... and hung over a pole, look as though they were sitting in a saddle—cheese on horseback, or "cacio a cavallo." Then we ring in Lazy Lou's first assistant, an old, silver-plated, revolving Florentine magnum-holder. It's designed to spin a gigantic flask of Chianti. The flick of a finger and the bottle is before you. Gently pull it down and hold your ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... did not seem to know much about anything. I thought I had a right to be amused too; and I must say I liked very much to see one of them looking at the machinery through his eye-glass. There was one very venturesome chap: I thought he was going to catch hold of the fly-wheel, but I gave him a spin which I believed saved his life, though he did rather ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... locomotion to be met at a station with high-class horseflesh instead of the ubiquitous motor, and the landscape was not of such a nature that one wished to be whirled through it in a cloud of dust. After a quick spin of some ten or fifteen minutes through twisting hedge-girt country roads, the roans turned in at a wide gateway, and went with dancing, rhythmic step along the park drive. The screen of oak-crowned upland suddenly fell away and a grey sharp-cornered ...
— When William Came • Saki
... at her work," thought the dame. "I would I might sing and spin like that!" and with a little sigh she leaned her head against the door-post and closed her eyes; a sweet, pale face, colorless and pure as an Easter lily, and eyes whose blueness seemed to show through the weary lids with their deep ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... process, or the progress of the work. Abundantly supplied with every article of convenience from Europe, and prejudiced in their favour because from thence, we make but little use of the raw materials Sumatra affords. We do not spin its cotton; we do not rear its silkworms; we do not smelt its metals; we do not even hew its stone: neglecting these, it is in vain we exhibit to the people, for their improvement in the arts, our rich ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden |
