"Thread" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... taking up the thread of Roswell Martin Field's strange and unique story, let me give a letter written by his father to his sister, Miss Mary Field, then at the school of Miss Emma Willard in Troy, N.Y., as exhibit number one, that Eugene Field came by his peculiarities, literary ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... attacks Heorot, and kills Hrothgar's favorite thane. The next day, Beowulf pursues her to her den under the waters of the fen, and after a terrific combat slays her. The hero returns home to Sweden laden with gifts. This ends the main thread of the first incident. In the second incident, after an interval of fifty years, we find Beowulf an old man. He has been for many years king of the Geats. A fire-breathing dragon, the guardian of a great treasure, is devastating the land. The heroic old king, accompanied ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the love passages with a sudden and sympathetic insight. No longer did he feel tempted to skim those pages hastily that he might resume the thread of the main and more engrossing plot. Didn't Louise live almost across the street from him? Wasn't his interest in her explained by that paragraph, "A wondrous and subtle thing is love, for here were we two who had never seen each other before ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... replied verbally that he thought like M. Venizelos. But, as it happened, the question did not arise; Servia's promise was coupled with so many stipulations and reservations, that, in the opinion of the Entente Powers, {52} it amounted almost to a refusal;[4] and the thread of the negotiations was very soon broken by events. Destiny ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... lost the thread... Lise... I love and respect that angel as before; just as before; but it seems to me they both asked me simply to find out something from me, that is more simply to get something out of me, and then to get rid of ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... towards the base of the leaf, the [page 369] pedicels are multicellular, are longer than elsewhere, and bear smaller glands. All the glands secrete a colourless fluid, which is so viscid that I have seen a fine thread drawn out to a length of 18 inches; but the fluid in this case was secreted by a gland which had been excited. The edge of the leaf is translucent, and does not bear any glands; and here the spiral vessels, ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... now the best hands, plying the needle unceasingly during the long, long day, can earn only three or four shillings a week. Before the invention of machinery for flax-spinning, the manufacture of fine thread by hand-labour was a most profitable employment. Wonders were wrought in this way by female fingers. The author of 'Our Staple Manufactures' states that in 1799, out of a pound and a half of flax, costing 10 s., a woman produced yarn of the value ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... who was holding something in a pair of pliers in his left hand, and winding a thread of silk brought up from the mill round it with his right, "he hasn't been near us yet. Josh and I keep running against him in the woods, or up one of the river paths; but, as soon as he sees us, he turns his back and goes in among ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... Lydia's face showed him that he had said enough. "I had not thought of this," she said, after a silence that seemed long to him. "Our observations are so meaningless until we are given the thread to string them on! You must think better of this, Lucian. The relation that at present exists between us is the very best that our different characters will admit of. Why do you desire ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... downstairs. When he entered I saw at a glance that it was one of his gala nights, for he wore the ceremonial white waistcoat and cravat, and had thrown the accommodating coat wide open. His hair, too, was brushed back from his broad forehead with more than usual care, each silver thread keeping its proper place in the general scheme of iron-gray; while his goatee was twisted to so fine a point that it curled upward like a fishhook. He had also changed his shoes, his white stockings now being incased in low prunellas tied with ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... affairs in that first day of our history. Subtle politicians speak the phrases and practice the arts of intricate diplomacy from council chambers placed within log huts within a clearing. Men in ruffs and lace and polished shoe-buckles thread the lonely glades of primeval forests. The microscopical distinctions of the schools, the thin notes of a metaphysical theology are woven in and out through the labyrinths of grave sermons that run hours long upon ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... day of our journey, we had a very heavy rain, and in a few hours after it commenced, we had not a dry thread upon our bodies. This made our journey still more unpleasant. On the tenth day, we found ourselves entirely destitute of provisions, and how to obtain any we could not tell. We finally resolved to stop at some farmhouse, and try ...
— The Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave • William Wells Brown
... came with her needle and thread in the little leather case she always carried, and Dot, in the importance of being fitted for a new frock, quite forgot to envy Meg and Bobby, who hurried ...
— Four Little Blossoms on Apple Tree Island • Mabel C. Hawley
... was drawn from the blue silk, and a needleful of scarlet went in instead, while the end of the blue thread was carefully secured in Beatrice's left hand for ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... and the shorter, sturdier ones of slaves. Any one of those dozens of grotesque pedestrians might glance up, see him, and pick him off with the deadly tubes. Under his fingers the mortar crumbled and left him hanging, more than once, by one hand. For fully five minutes his life hung by a thread apt to be severed at any time. But—he made it. Helped by the decreased gravity of the red spot, and released from inhibiting fear by the fact that he was already, figuratively, a dead man, he performed ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... defective toe, and then made a not very successful shift at tightening the center webbing of askimoneiab, or heavy, membranous moose filling. The mending of his clothes was a comparatively simple matter by means of needle and thread. ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... a paroxysm during which I had seemed to stand a great way off and listen to my own shrieks, there came to me a moment of calm. I knew that my one tenuous thread of hope lay in launching myself into that wild flood that was tearing through into the cove. I was not a strong swimmer, but a buoyant one. I might find refuge on some half-submerged rock on the shores of the cove—at least I should perish in the open, in the sunlight, ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... expecting Granville with the Bishop of Winchester,[*] when the groom arrived with the message that the Bishop had had a bad fall. An hour and a half later Granville entered, pale and sad: 'It's all over.' In an instant the thread of that precious life was snapped, We were all ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... all adrift, Miles!" Marble shouted, leaning forward to be heard. "Both bowers have snapped like thread, and here we go, ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... centre were completely covered with separate pieces of linen, and thus produced being quite flat. This being an exceedingly neat and convenient button, it became largely patronised, as it still is by housewives, for all underclothing, having superseded the old thread button formed of a ring of wire, with threads drawn over it and gathered in the centre. A slight improvement was made by Mr. Elliott. During the time that the patent lasted these two gentlemen worked in concert, and established a very ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various
... us. This was evidently his intention, for the accommodation ladder went down with a rattle, and the canoe with her twenty spear-shaped paddles swung alongside like a naval pinnace, and a fat old chap, dressed in a vast white flannel nightgown with a sort of dress-shirt front pleated on it in blue thread, came slowly up the ladder. Came up and walked past with a heavy, flat-footed tread, and disappeared into the saloon with the Old Man. I was too astonished to speak for some time. That old fellow's face behind its broad benevolence and its confusing ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... other scale, if they made a free choice, after deliberation, between well-defined and well-argued opinions, then what happened is not assignable to invincible causes, and history must turn from general and easy explanation to track the sinuosities of a tangled thread. In Mr. Lea's acceptation of ecclesiastical history intolerance was handed down as a rule of life from the days of St. Cyprian, and the few who shrank half-hearted from the gallows and the flames were exceptions, were men navigating ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... liberation. The illumined mind sees and hears and feels the vibrations that emanate from all who are travailing in the meshes of the sense-conscious life; but through all the sympathetic sorrow, there runs the thread of a divine assurance and certainty of profound joy—a bliss that passes ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... varnish of an essentially aristocratic temper, was conscious of a certain dismay at the culture of the democracy as the man sat down. Mr. Flaxman, glancing to the right, saw a group of men standing, and amongst them a slight sharp-featured thread-paper of a man, with a taller companion, whom he identified as the pair he had noticed on the night of the story-telling. The little gasfitter was clearly all nervous fidget and expectation; the other, large and gaunt in figure, with a square impassive face, and close-shut lips that had ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... popular prejudice, enlarged upon no enormities to please the lover of tragedy, regarded neither beauty nor the art of novel making, nor created suffering heroines to excite an outpouring of sorrow and tears. The incidents of our story, which at best is but a mere thread, are founded in facts; and these facts we have so modified as to make them acceptable to the reader, while shielding ourself from the charge of exaggeration. And, too, we are conscious that our humble influence, heretofore exerted, has contributed to the benefit of a certain ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... Murfreesboro, over miserable dirt roads. About December 19th or 20th, we were on the march at an early hour, but the rain was there before us, and stuck by us closer than a brother. We were drenched through and through, and few had a dry thread. We waded streams of water nearly waist deep; we pulled through mud that seemed to have no bottom, and where many a soldier left his shoes seeking for it. The open woods pasture where we went into camp that night, was surrounded with a high fence made of cedar rails. That fence ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... wide to right and left, the gay, prosperous-looking city; white villas rising one above the other, hanging gardens and terraced lawns, making greenery and verdure in mid-air. On the occasion of my first visit in August, 1881, the Loire was so low as to appear a mere thread of palest blue amid white sands; at the time I now write of, broad and beautiful it flowed beneath the noble bridge, a deep twilight sky ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... a reason additional to its economy why this practice should not die out. The tearing up into strips of old garments, and the tacking of their ends together with needle and thread is work eminently suited for children, and one in which they take great pride, as it gives them a share in the creation of a useful and ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... dealer, could endure Peter's mode of transacting business no longer. She knew that if he once got into the true spirit of applying the oil of flattery to the landlord, he would have rubbed him into a perfect froth ere he quitted him. She, therefore, took up the thread of the discourse, and finished the compliment with much more delicacy than honest Peter ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... prefer the modern napery, so exquisitely embroidered in gold thread, which affords an opportunity to show the family coat of arms, or the heraldic animals—the lion and the two-headed eagle and the griffin—intertwined in graceful shapes around the whole edge of the table ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... quiet in his own. And as they had so often stood together in their short day and their two nights of the moon, so now again they stood with a serenading silence between them. A plaintive waltz-refrain from the house ran through the blue woof of starlit air as a sad-colored thread through the tapestry of night; they heard the mellow croon of the 'cello and the silver plaints of violins, the chiming harp, and the triangle bells, all woven into a minor strain of dance-music that beat gently upon their ears with such suggestion of the past, that, as by ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... yourself but one among the many threads which make up the texture of the doublet. You should aim at being like men in general—just as your thread has no ambition either to be anything distinguished compared with the other threads. But I desire to be the purple—that small and shining part which makes the rest seem fair and beautiful. Why then do you bid me become even as the ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... read where Mr. Denis Oglethorpe stood, by the queer, sudden inner light in her eyes, and the unconscious fluctuation of rich color in her bright glowing face. He was struck with a secret pang in a second. There would be so frail a thread of hope for the man who was only second with a ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... dazzle, never frazzle, not a thread but wool! All together! All together! That's the way we ...
— Owen Clancy's Happy Trail - or, The Motor Wizard in California • Burt L. Standish
... requires great care and patience to do it nicely. When all the flesh is thus loosened, take the turkey by the neck, give it a pull, and the skeleton will come out entire from the flesh, as easily as you draw your hand out of a glove. The flesh will then be a shapeless mass. With a needle and thread mend or sew up any holes that may ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie
... Hast thou in time past saved me when in flight From foes. I never fled, but steadfastly Withstood the charge of all the Trojan host. Furious the enemy came on like a flood But I by might of hands cut short the thread Of many lives. Herein thou sayest not true Me in the fray thou didst not shield nor save, But for thine own life roughtest, lest a spear Should pierce thy back if thou shouldst turn to flee From war. My ships? I drew them up mid-line, Not dreading the battle-fury ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... time: but first come Continental tours, and the moody longing for Eastern travel; your native downs and moors can hold you no longer; with larger stride you burst away from these slips and patches of free-land,—you thread your way through the crowds of Europe, and at last, on the banks of the Jordan, you joyfully know that you are upon the very frontier of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... wearied Spaniards endeavored to thread the mazes of this tangled thicket, where the creepers and flowering vines, that shoot up luxuriant in a hot and humid atmosphere, had twined themselves round the huge trunks of the forest-trees, and made a network that could be ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... rolled out from behind a cloud, and shone full on his face. He drew out his watch-chain, touched it with his thumb-nail, and placed the trinket in my hand. It was such as a child might wear, an enameled thread encircling it. Through the glass I could see the tiny nest of ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... cream; granulated sugar, twenty pounds; water, three quarts. Boiled to a thread, set off, add three pounds of glucose dissolved; pour, let get cold. Cream, melt, add pinch of glucose to one pint simple syrup; four tablespoonfuls of glycerine. ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... talk much and has to be pumped. He doesn't lose the thread of the discourse. His failure to talk on details of his early life seem to the interviewer due to unwillingness rather than lack of memory. While his age is advanced, his mind is sharp for one who has had ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... cloth than is used anywhere else, so that which they make use of is much less costly. They use linen cloth more; but that is prepared with less labour, and they value cloth only by the whiteness of the linen, or the cleanness of the wool, without much regard to the fineness of the thread: while in other places, four or five upper garments of woollen cloth, of different colours, and as many vests of silk, will scarce serve one man; and while those that are nicer think ten too few, every man there is content with one, which very often serves him two years. Nor is there ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... not finished till the Saturday afternoon. I gave the tailor six sequins and dismissed him, but I kept Zenobia to attend on the ladies. I took care to place powder, pomade, combs, pins, and everything that a lady needs, on the table, not forgetting ribbons and pack-thread. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... doubt. His mind wandered back to that day when he had visited the old house as a patient, and from that along the strange road they had both come since then. He reflected, not exactly in those terms, that life, any man's life, was only one thread in a pattern woven of an infinite number of threads, and that to tangle the one thread was to interfere with all the others. David Livingstone, the girl in the blue dress, the man twitching uneasily on the bed, Wilkins the sheriff, himself, who could tell ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... was, as all such mistakes are, inexplicable. Did her hand shake? Had she miscounted the number of tablets? Had she, in her nervous state, deliberately risked a larger dose whose danger she did not realise? These questions would never be answered. She had been alone in her room, nor was there a thread of evidence upon which to hang a theory. Esther, the nurse, Jane, Dr. Callandar (poor man!) had noticed nothing out of the ordinary when they had parted from her that last time. Aunt Amy's evidence was not taken. No one thought ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... thunderstorms, but let them go and listen to that one that thundered in Cuba when Bill was buying his crystal and they'd find that they didn't know what thunder was. But then I interrupted him, unfortunately perhaps, for it broke the thread of his tale and set him rambling a while, and cursing other people and talking of other lands, China, Port Said and Spain: but I brought him back to Cuba again in the end. I asked him how they could play chess with a crystal; and he said that you looked at the board and looked at the ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... must be tucked up in her little bed and see nurse take away the candle. She would lie and stare with her bright round eyes into the thick blackness, and feel grateful if she could fix them on any little faint thread of light coming through chink or crevice. She could not have told you what it was she feared, and perhaps this was the reason why she never spoke of it to anyone—not even to mother. Besides, in the bright morning light she forgot her fears, and being naturally a cheerful and courageous child ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... satisfaction of all parties. The Indian deputies were gratified with a valuable present, consisting of looking-glasses, knives, tobacco-boxes, sleeve-buttons, thimbles, sheers, gun-locks, ivory combs, shirts, shoes, stockings, hats, caps, handkerchiefs, thread, clothes, blankets, gartering, serges, watch-coats, and a few suits of laced clothes for their chieftains. To crown their happiness, the stores of rum were opened; they drank themselves into a state of brutal intoxication, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... beasts trot away, scamper away so fast with their nimble legs, that one cannot see them. What delicate forms they have! they must have worn corsets when they were young. Ah! there is a sort of knot in this thread which fastens the corselet to the belly. Wait, little fellow, wait while I look at you a little nearer!" The small, thin finger of Piccolissima caught one of the little creatures, but she found some ...
— Piccolissima • Eliza Lee Follen
... a thread of green from a bundle of silk in her lap deliberately. "No; you never told me that," ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... explaining to the audience that the strands of a spider's web were purposely rough so that the spider could climb them easily, but that a quartz fibre was smooth and glassy, and a spider would never attempt to ascend one. He showed on the sheet a single thread of a spider's web and a single quartz fibre, and amid the breathless excitement of the audience a real live spider was put into the lantern. The applause with which it was greeted must have made the poor thing nervous, ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... in order to economize time, to increase the velocity. Twisting the fibres of wool by the fingers would be a most tedious operation: in the common spinning-wheel the velocity of the foot is moderate, but by a very simple contrivance that of the thread is most rapid. A piece of catgut passing round a large wheel, and then round a small spindle, effects this change. This contrivance is common to a multitude of machines, some of them very simple. In large shops for the retail of ribands, it is necessary at short intervals ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... lark I never had one," Howard said to Jack, when they were safely housed and had changed their clothes, not a thread of which was dry. ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... know, and will not betray! Sanctuary! Thou seekest sanctuary, and thou shalt have it if I can aid thee; but no time is to be lost. Rush on as if thy life hung on a single thread. Turn to the right, pass the Stadium, wind quickly around the hill Pion, and thou shalt see the Temple bathed in glorious light, and close to it the sacred grove; but I fear the hour has passed to ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... "The thread of this great discourse was his present and past relations to Virginia and Virginians. After gratefully acknowledging his infinite obligations to the great Virginians of the first age of the federal republic, he modestly and unpretendingly recounted the unsought exalted honors heaped upon him by ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... have been in a mighty big hurry," quavered the old step-mother. "June ain't goin' to be with us long, I'm afeerd:" and, without looking up, June knew the wireless significance of the speech was going around from eye to eye, but calmly she pulled her thread through a green pod and said calmly, with a little enigmatical shake of ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... in to light the lamp, which she placed on a square table in front of the fire; then she fetched her distaff, her ball of thread, and a small stool, on which she seated herself in the recess of a window and began as usual to spin. Gasselin was still busy about the offices; he looked to the horses of the baron and Calyste, saw that the stable was in order ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... men. Whether some feeble fibre in the race had already developed in this early representative of the name, or whether it was the persistent ill-fortune which has always pursued them, making life a continual struggle and death a violent ending, the fatal thread which has run through their history for so many generations comes here into the most tragic prominence, the beginning of a long series of tragedies. It adds a softening touch to the record of David's unhappy fate that the death of his mother is recorded as one of the ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... thousand pesos. This would lead to greater care in producing and cultivating the cotton, because they would not have the Sangleys acting as middlemen. The rest that they bring is silks, very poor and sleazy, except some silk which is brought in raw or spun into thread. This last, I fear, exceeds in quantity that brought from the Spanish kingdoms; and would interfere with your Majesty's royal revenues from the silks of Granada, Murcia, and Valencia, which would be most undesirable. Besides this, there is another ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume VIII (of 55), 1591-1593 • Emma Helen Blair
... plain enough. A slight thread of blood was trickling slowly from a spot on the smooth glistening bald head of the prostrate man, while as, with a moan of anguish, the girl thrust her arm softly beneath his neck, and raised the head, the mark of another blow was ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... long and earnestly over her breakfast. She thought deeply as she proceeded to her office. Even the business of again taking up the thread of her ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... as it was cold; they had begun tearing the skin at the neck and had opened it down to the breast-bone. Caleb took this bird, too, and by and by, sitting down to examine it, he thought he would try to mend the torn skin with the needle and thread he always carried inside his cap. He succeeded in stitching it neatly up, and putting back the feathers in their place the rent was quite concealed. That evening he took the two birds to a man in the village who made a livelihood by collecting bones, ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... confuse Minna. I begged him to be silent, and did my best to help her to find the lost thread of her story. ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... one magnificently upright, the other shrinking, were re-passing over the muting rugs, through the corridor of noble marble, by the lackeys between whose common palms and the hands of patrician guests was the antiseptic intermediary of white thread gloves. ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... through the medium of enriching himself by a 'salva regina', made his friends prepare for him that just retribution, which ended in a 'de profundis'. At a period when all his vices were called to aid one virtuous action, his thread of vicious life was shortened, and he; no doubt, became the victim of his insatiable avarice. That he was poisoned is not to be disproved; though it was thought necessary to keep it from the knowledge of ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 6 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... her own called Fensalir, or the Hall of Mists, where she spent much of her time at her wheel, spinning golden thread, or weaving web after web of many-coloured clouds. All night long she sat at this golden wheel, and if you look at the sky on a starry night you may chance to see it set up where the men of the South show a constellation called the Girdle ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... head, heels, and tail for over a year, with nothing else but the corn meal that Rufus trades meat with Silas for. I thought, honeybunch, when I saw you coming so stylish and beautiful with those none-such chickens that you must have been bringing a silk purse sewed with gold thread with you. I said to Silas as he put out the lamp last night, 'The good Lord may let His deliverance horses lag along the track, but He always drives them in on the home stretch for His own, of which Moseby Craddock is one.' 'Why, she's ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... entered the tent again. In her hand she carried a rather decrepit hussif and a hank of strong linen thread. She held them ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... A mere thread of a footpath, almost blotted out by tall grasses, led gently up the slope for sixty yards to where, above a natural hedge of celery blooms, a little cabin of weather-beaten drift-logs cuddled at the foot of a steep, green hill. A porch jutted out ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... golden grain, tempts the majority), it is quite pitiful to note how they cling to that notion of 'the corn-sieve,' and cannot be persuaded that story-telling requires an apprenticeship like any other calling. They flatter themselves that they can weave plots as the spider spins his thread from (what let us delicately term) his inner consciousness, and fondly hope that intuition will supply the place of experience. Some of them, with a simplicity that recalls the days of Dick Whittington, think that ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... these together, and, taking off his coat—a stout cotton summer one—began to sew the loop inside, under the left arm. His hands shook violently, but he accomplished his task satisfactorily, and when he again put on his coat nothing was visible. Needle and thread had been procured long ago, and lay on the table in a piece of paper. The loop was provided for a hatchet. It would never have done to have appeared in the streets carrying a hatchet, and if he placed ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... Warrants, bailiffs, bills unpaid, Lords of laundresses afraid; Rogues, that nightly rob and shoot men, Hangmen, aldermen, and footmen; Lawyers, poets, priests, physicians, Noble, simple, all conditions; Worth beneath a thread-bare cover, Villainy bedaubed all over; Women, black, red, fair, and grey, Prudes, and such as never pray; Handsome, ugly, noisy still, Some that will not, some that will; Many a beau without a shilling, Many a widow not unwilling; ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... also procured a patent, which they shared with Sir Edward Villiers, brother to Buckingham, for the sole making of gold and silver thread and lace, and had obtained very extraordinary powers for preventing any rivalship in these manufactures: they were armed with authority to search for all goods which might interfere with their patent; and even ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... in an early hotbed. Many will ripen during summer, and may be gathered. In the fall, when frost comes, the vines will be covered with blossoms and with peppers of all sizes. Fall-grown green ones, strung on a thread, and hung in a warm, dry room, will ripen finely. They are very hardy, and may be transplanted without injury. Hen-manure is best ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... discussing the outlook and expecting to learn that some agreement had been reached. In an adjoining room the members of the delegation were sitting in conference on the burning subject, painfully aware that time pressed, that the Damocles's sword of Mr. Wilson's declaration hung by a thread over their heads, and that a spirit of large compromise was indispensable. At three o'clock Mr. Lloyd George's secretary brought the reply of the Council of Three to Italy's maximum of concessions. Only one point remained ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... was a muscle—cold, flabby, and red; And N was a Nerve, like a bit of white thread. O was some Opium, a fool chose to take; And P were the Pins used to keep him awake. Fol ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... and thought with Max and Brenda asleep by his side and the parrot preening its bright feathers on the parapet of the tower, while Lucy and the Lord High Islander played cat's cradle with a long thread ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... his hand to the hilt, thinking to essay pulling it out by strength; but lo! he drew it out with as much ease as though it had hung by a thread of untwisted silk. And immediately every door in the enchanted garden flew open, and the magician Ormadine appeared, his hair standing on end; and he, after kissing the hand of the champion, led him to a cave where a young man wrapped in a sheet of gold lay sleeping, lulled by ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... the Muscovites, when his terrified guards had dispersed, had mounted his followers, and hearing shots, was leading his cavalry into the firing line, himself at their head, with his steel raised aloft. At once Rykov cried, "Platoon fire!" A fiery thread flew along over the locks, and from the black levelled barrels three hundred bullets whistled. Three riders fell wounded, and one lay dead. The Count's steed fell, and the Count with it; with a cry the Warden ran to the rescue, for he saw that the yagers had ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... barn, rigging a new block and tackle for the hayloft. Barney was helping thread the new, manila line from a coil ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael
... that's so. I've seen boys try to do it, ever and ever so many times, and they usually threw the needle and thread away two or three times ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart
... legends which the early races framed to express their notions of divine things,—the Fates, who spin and snip the thread of life; ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... cloud, in which only one out of many millions of floating particles can ever hit the mark. The mosquito is able to procreate without ever satisfying its ravenous appetite for blood. To swell its grey thread-like abdomen to a coral bead is a delight to the insect, but not necessary to its existence, like food and water to ours; it is the great prize in the lottery of life, which few can ever succeed in ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... If our thread of life has expanded from Cain to Christ, from the man who murders to him who submits to murder for the love of man, who can doubt that the Cain-like in the race will gradually pass away and ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... been erased! How many fancies have been shed! How many failures might be traced To this—this average-reader dread! I've seen an average single bed; I've seen an average garden-weeder; I've seen an average cotton thread— I've ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... not a man to whom the expression of admiration came easily: his long sallow face and distrustful eyes seemed always barricaded against the expansive emotions. But, where her own influence was concerned, Lily's intuitions sent out thread-like feelers, and as she made room for him on the narrow sofa she was sure he found a dumb pleasure in being near her. Few women took the trouble to make themselves agreeable to Dorset, and Lily had been kind to him at ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... this cannot be done all at once; when we first begin to write, we find how difficult it is to keep the thread of our thoughts; we keep turning out of the main road to explore attractive by-paths; we cannot arrange our ideas. All writers who produce original work pass through a stage in which they are conscious of a throng of kindred notions, all ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to herself the sermon printed in a certain religious weekly which reached her every Saturday, and concluded with a chapter or two of the Bible. But to-day something had gone wrong with her mind. She could not follow the thread of the Reverend Doctor MacMichael's discourse. She could not fix her attention on the wanderings and misdeeds of Israel as recorded in the Book of Exodus. She must always be getting up to look at the pot on the fire, or to open the back door and study the ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... if not a slightly rakish look; but I believe a man, even in that light, would have seen in him something manly and far from unattractive. He had a rather gruff but not unmusical voice, with what some might have thought a thread of pathos in it. He always reminded certain of his friends of the portrait of Jean Paul in the Paris edition of his works. He was hardly above the middle height, and, I am sorry to say, wore his hat on the ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... thought yourself back to England. No matter what train of thought you went upon, it always worked its way by one thread or another to England. Mine ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... the offending wire. His flashlight still operated, and he could see the heavy insulation which had been scraped away. No charring; then it must have been the extension rods that had scissored through the insulation. The wire hung together by a thread, the strands of metal severed completely. He groped for his tool kit, trying to ignore ...
— Tight Squeeze • Dean Charles Ing
... nerve has two roots, one from the anterior, the other from the posterior portion of the cord. These unite and run side by side, forming as they pass between the vertebrae one silvery thread, or nerve trunk. Although bound up in one bundle, the nerve fibers of the two roots remain quite distinct, and perform two entirely ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... seed-cotton in the same space of time. Previous to being spun, the cotton is prepared pretty much in the same way as in Japan or China, the cotton being tossed into the air with a view to separating the staple; but the spinning-wheel commonly used in Corea only makes one thread at ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... wander from the thread of my story, as old folks will do. After all, it is only a small story, of a small life; not every man is born to be great, my dear. Yet, while I sat on my shoemaker's bench, stitching away, I thought of greatness, as I suppose most boys do. I thought of a scholar's life, like that of Father ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... hands, I toss you all away; The winds shall blow you through the world To seek my wedding day. Or East you go, or West you go And fall on land or sea, Find the one that I love best And bring him here to me. And if he finds me spinning 'Tis short I'll break my thread; And if he finds me dancing I'll dance with him instead; If he finds me at the Mass— (Ah, let this not be, Lest I forget my sweetest saint The ...
— The Dreamers - And Other Poems • Theodosia Garrison
... opportunity, cautiously and briefly; too cautiously to betray his presence by the slightest noise. Indeed, I shouldn't have discovered that he had been there, except for the disarrangement of the drapery about the corpse's face, and for observing on the floor a curl of light hair, fastened with a silver thread; which, on examination, I ascertained to have been taken from a locket hung round Catherine's neck. Heathcliff had opened the trinket and cast out its contents, replacing them by a black lock of his own. I twisted the two, ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... a silk thread to her wrist and gave one end to Morton. "We will keep this taut," he said; ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... corresponding in size with the rest of the furniture; and the captain, pulling open the drawers of the first named, showed them well stocked with material of various kinds, suitable for making into new garments for the dolls, and with all the necessary implements,—needles, thread, thimbles, ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley
... that you shall take a vacation until you have deserved it. What right have you to rest before you have labored—before you have earned a thread that clothes you or a mouthful that nourishes you. There are men whose whole lives are a vacation. These words are not for them. From my viewpoint, such men might as well be dead. The men upon whom I am urging the wisdom of taking periods for recuperation are those who have been ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... the poetic allusions that occupied the boys' hours at school. The simple plot of the shepherd and the gnat was selected from the type of fable lore thought suitable for school-room reading. It served by its very incongruity as a suitable thread for a catalogue of facts and fiction. Vergil himself furnishes the clue for this interpretation of the Culex, but it has been overlooked because of the wretched condition of the text that we have. The first lines[5] of the ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... time ago to see a machine, which offers something new. A man had applied to a light boat, a very large screw, the thread of which was a thin plate, two feet broad, applied by its edge spirally round a small axis. It somewhat resembled a bottle-brush, if you will suppose the hairs of the bottle-brush joining together, and forming a spiral plane. This, turned ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... the one we had just passed and climb again a steeper ascent before we could reach it. The valley of the Jiddah, a tributary of the Nile, was between us and our halting-place—a stiff march, as the silver thread we viewed from the narrow passage between the basaltic columns of the Eastern Begemder ridge was 3,000 feet below us. Tired and worn out, at last; we accomplished ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... these, with like records of a dim past, present to thinking travellers the crown and first glory of the Moor. Integral portions of the ambient desolation are they—rude toys that infant humanity has left in Mother Nature's lap; and the spectacle of them twines a golden thread of human interest into the fabric of each lonely heath, each storm-scarred mountain-top and heron-haunted stream. Nothing is changed since skin-clad soldiers and shepherds strode these wastes, felt their hearts quicken at sight of women, or their hands clench over celt-headed spears before ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... the cape and sweater over him. Macartney went to the edge of the plateau to prospect. A billowy sea of white stretched out to a blue infinity. The clouds had lifted or been vaporised. He could see nothing of Odde; but he believed that he could make out a thread of silver, which must be the fiord. It would take him too long to get out there and back—and yet to stay here! That meant that the pair of them would die. It is but just to him to say that no alternative presented itself to him. The pair of them would die? Well, yes. What else was there? ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... at the bar in almost obscurity, had, on a sudden, his brilliancy noticed and his great talents acknowledged, and no sooner had he reached that eminence in his profession, when all was made easy before him, than unpitying Clolho stept up, and cut his thread of life; I must ask your indulgence, for the reasons you will see, as you proceed in this my life of him, as also, from the very scanty materials I have been able to collect for it. How the first idea of ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... the skins of the animals they domesticated and of those they hunted provided them with some form of covering, at any rate in countries where it was needed. Possibly they spun wool or flax into a thread, for at Halsaflieni two objects were found which look like spindle-whorls, and others occur on sites which are almost certainly to be attributed to the megalithic people. There is, however, nothing to show that they ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet
... pound, fortie pound, yea a hundred pound of one pair of Breeches. (God be merciful unto us!)" To these gay hose they add nether-socks, curiously knit with open seams down the leg, with quirks and clocks about the ankles, and sometimes interlaced with gold and silver thread as is wonderful to behold. Time has been when a man could clothe his whole body for the price of these nether-socks." Satan was further let loose in the land by reason of cork shoes and fine slippers, of all colors, carved, cut, and stitched with silk, and laced on with gold and silver, which ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... when she saw the King's son gazing in at her, she blushed red all over, cast down her eyes and span on. Whether the thread was quite as even as usual I really cannot say, but she went on spinning till the King's son had ridden off. Then she stepped to the window and opened the lattice, saying, 'The room is so hot,' but she looked ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... her momentary displeasure as the insistent appeal of the landscape crowded everything else from her mind. The white road lay like a carelessly flung thread on the billowing plateau land. The air was crisp with the magic of the upper altitudes. Gray clumps of sagebrush stood forth like little islands in the sea of grass. A winding line of willows told where a small stream ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman |
