"Yarn" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a silly yarn. The boatmen here in Westport have been telling this lie to the summer visitors for years. The sort that gets taken out for a row at a shilling a head—and asks foolish questions—must be told something to pass the time away. D'ye know anything more silly than being pulled in a boat along a ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... meaning as true as a yarn of Allan Quatermain's. Well, my blood was up; no man shall call Allan Quatermain a liar. The fellow was going on with a prodigious palaver about a white feather of Truth, and Mount Sinai, and the Land of Absolute Negation, ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... are formed of an oval case of sacking, filled with combustible matter, and attached to a culot of cast-iron. The whole is covered with a net of spun-yarn. Light-balls are used to light up our own works, and are not armed; fire-balls being employed to light up the works or approaches of an enemy, it is necessary to arm them with pistol-barrels, in order to prevent, any one from extinguishing them. ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... man, build the barn, Thinner man, spool the yarn, Longen man, stir the brew, Gowden man, make a shoe, Littlen man, ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... go straight to Soapy with it, and his dear friend would persuade him it was just a yarn cooked up to get him to throw down the only genuwine straight-up ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... want to say"—Joel threw himself over by Tom, his arms around him—"that he's the biggest fraud to spring such a trap on me, and plan to get off that yarn here." ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... practice of planters to keep a supply of materials on hand, a quantity of piece-goods in dowlas, lockram, dimity, coarse Holland, fine Holland and tufted Holland, osnaburg and kersey, and seventeen ells (45 inches in English measure and 27 inches in Dutch measure) of sheeting, as well as yarn stockings. A limited supply of colored calico, East Indian stuff and Norway stuff are evidence that the English merchantmen, tramping to all parts of the world, brought some of their cargoes ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... glanced into the library. There she saw Mrs. Fox in one armchair, and Olive in another, both reading. In the hall were the two little girls, busily engaged in harnessing two small chairs to a large armchair by means of a ball of pink yarn. Outside, about a hundred yards away, she saw Mr. Hemphill irresolutely approaching the house. Miss Raleigh's mind, frequently dormant, was very brisk and lively when she had occasion to waken it. She made a ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... you met a shark on land?' 'I did, Madam,' answered the sailor. 'I met a shark right in New York, and he did me out of every copper I had in my pockets. He was a hotel-keeper who played cards.'" And at this little yarn there was a ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer
... said, "I've listened most attentively to your yarn, and I've been trying to look at the matter from an unprejudiced and independent standpoint. Of course, as you very truthfully say, anything in the nature of gun-running or smuggling is totally opposed to all ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... of the wrecked ship; and as he and his colleagues, both of the lifeboat and the steam-tug, want no better introduction than their own deeds to the sympathy and attention of the public, let Charles Edward Fish begin his yarn without further preface. ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... give Nancy no trouble after he could walk excep' to keep him in clothes. Most o' the time he went bar'foot. Ever wear a wet buckskin glove? Them moccasins wasn't no putection ag'inst the wet. Birch bark with hickory bark soles, strapped on over yarn socks, beat buckskin all holler, fur snow. Abe'n me got purty handy contrivin' things that way. An' Abe was right out in the woods about as soon's he was weaned, fishin' in the creek, settin' traps fur rabbits an' muskrats, goin' on coon-hunts ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... was her name—had little thoughts of ever being "smugged," as it was termed, by our schoolfellows to make a guy on the fifth of November, and sat quietly enough spinning her wheel and drawing out her yarn. Sometimes the thrum of the old wheel would send her soundly to sleep, and then she never dreamed of such a thing as was to ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... Grummidge, after he had hastily staunched the blood which was flowing copiously from his own cheek. The stout seaman was well able to play the part of amateur surgeon, being a handy fellow, and he usually carried about with him two or three odd pieces of spun-yarn for emergencies—also a lump of cotton-waste as a handkerchief, while the tail of his shirt served at all ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... and wrong, Lend a hand to help him along; When his stockings have holes to darn, Don't you grudge him your ball of yarn. ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... said later on, as Mr. Nugent, after a faint objection or two, took his candle—"I suppose this yarn about my being married will ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... marvellous swiftness, accuracy and ease with which each of the complex machines, fed by human hands, performed its function. These human hands were swift, too, as when they thrust the bobbins of roving on the ring-spinning frames to be twisted into yarn. She saw a woman, in the space of an instant, mend a broken thread. Women and boys were here, doffer boys to lift off the full bobbins of yarn with one hand and set on the empty bobbins with the other: while skilled workmen, alert for the first sign of trouble, followed up and down in its travels ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... from any share in this business, she worked every day at her tidies for the store, and knit stockings, besides, for some of the neighbors, who furnished the yarn and paid her a fair price. There were people who thought Mrs. Loudon did wrong in allowing her daughter to work for money in this way, but Kate's mother said that the end justified the work, and that so ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... had told them of a lonely unknown place in the wilderness, where the ground was literally strewn with gold. Nuggets as big as a man's fist, he said, could be found by merely scratching the surface of the soil. They swallowed the yarn with the necessary grain of salt; but in the gold region, where so many miracles have happened, nothing is deemed impossible. The wildest romance receives credence. Vast fortunes had been made over night on clues no less preposterous. Anyhow, it was worth investigating. ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... friend Jack to come away aboard, her high peaked cap shining like snow on a dark surface. The truth was, that Splitwater, as he was styled, had become so much absorbed in excitement as to forget the length of his yarn. "Come away, now!" says the good wife, "everybody's left the Maggy to-night; and ther's na knowin' what 'd a' become 'un her if a'h hadn't looked right sharp, for ther' wer' a muckle ship a'mast run her dune; an' if ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... whom the bard: "If thou observe the tokens, which this man Trac'd by the finger of the angel bears, 'Tis plain that in the kingdom of the just He needs must share. But sithence she, whose wheel Spins day and night, for him not yet had drawn That yarn, which, on the fatal distaff pil'd, Clotho apportions to each wight that breathes, His soul, that sister is to mine and thine, Not of herself could mount, for not like ours Her ken: whence I, from forth the ample gulf Of hell was ta'en, to lead him, and will lead Far as my lore ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... and spring, booties are worn on top of the stockings. These booties should be crocheted or knitted out of the heavy Germantown yarn, and there should be enough of them so that the child may have a clean pair ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... Mr. Tarbox held big hanks of blue and yellow yarn, which Zosephine wound off into balls. A square table quite filled the centre of the room. There was a confusion of objects on it, and now on one side and now on another Claude leaned over it and slowly toiled, from morning until evening ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... yarn out of window but hold fast to one end and begin to wind. As you wind say, "I wind, who holds?" over and over again; before end of yarn is reached, face of future partner will appear in window, or name of sweetheart will ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... Edinburgh. Never did her wheel spin so blithely since her husband was taken from her side, as when she put the first lint upon the rock for his college sarks. Proudly did she show to her neighbours her double spinel yarn—observing, "It's nae finer than he deserves, poor fallow, for he'll pay me back some day." The web was bleached and the shirts made by her own hands; and the day of his departure arrived. It was a day of joy mingled with anguish. He attended the classes regularly and ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... deny that there have been times when I've felt a bit brighter and more in the mood for spinning out a yarn, as ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... central fibre of his faith, there were strands of a strange philosophy; he held strongly the doctrine of Illusion, by which the one impersonal Spirit, "in the illusion which overspreads it, is to the external world what yarn is to cloth, what milk is to curds, what clay is to a jar, but only in that illusion," that is, "he is not the actual material cause of the world, as clay of a jar, but the illusory material cause, as a rope ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... was taken with travail, found refuge in some poor house there, and the boy she bore was named MARTIN LUTHER. Strange enough to reflect upon it. This poor Frau Luther, she had gone with her husband to make her small merchandisings; perhaps to sell the lock of yarn she had been spinning, to buy the small winter-necessaries for her narrow hut or household; in the whole world, that day, there was not a more entirely unimportant-looking pair of people than this Miner and his Wife. And ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... light his pipe, and I noticed that his face was grave. He was not telling us this yarn for our amusement. ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... cruelty to separate two such good shanty-boat mates as you. I'll find something for you to do aboard, and by thunder you'll see the world together. That cruise was immense, and I'd have enjoyed nothing better myself than to have been along with you. I expect to hear many a yarn concerning those happenings as we sail across the big pond; for our next port call is going to be Liverpool, where we take on a cargo for Australia, and then to Japan, so you see before you're a year older both of you may have gone almost around the world; for we're likely to bring up at 'Frisco. ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... hushed; for tenderer thoughts Than ever were bodied in word or sound, Trembled like stars in her downcast eyes, As she knit in the dark yarn round and round. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... door, he found that it opened directly into a bedroom. A little bed stood within, near which was seated a woman who was knitting with red yarn. Rico placed himself before the threshold, and began to play and sing ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... such a wonderful yarn after all, sir. You see, something like two hundred and fifty years ago, when our Civil Wars were going on— you've heard of them, I suppose?—yonder castle belonged to a stout Charles the First's man called Fulke. ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... on the window pane. Let's draw the curtains close and sit Beside the fire awhile and knit. Two purl—two plain. A well-shaped sock, And warm. (I thought I heard a knock, But 'twas the slam of Jones's door.) Yes, good Scotch yarn is far before The fleecy wools—a different thing, And best for wear. (Was that his ring?) No. 'Tis the muffin man I see; We'll have threepennyworth for tea. Two plain—two purl; that heel is neat. (I hear his step far ...
— The Verse-Book Of A Homely Woman • Elizabeth Rebecca Ward, AKA Fay Inchfawn
... operations with maps and a fine imagination, and never allowing his paper to want for news. I think that he was quite prepared to have taken pupils for his new school of war correspondents. Often he would come to me for a yarn—in halting French on both sides—and would explain the campaign as it was being carried on. One eloquent gesture he habitually had—a sweeping motion which brought his arms together as though they were gathering up a bundle of spears, then ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... that we held no communication with the shore—without them we should still have had four more days' quarantine; and with twelve Greek sailors besides, we started merrily enough picking up the Canea cable.... To our utter dismay, the yarn covering began to come up quite decayed, and the cable, which when laid should have borne half a ton, was now in danger of snapping with a tenth part of that strain. We went as slow as possible in fear of a break at every instant. My watch was from eight to twelve in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sure I'm safe. You think it over, and come and talk to me any time you feel like it. Be sure I'll be delighted to give any help I can. Look here! there's a friend of mine staying at the White Hart in Lewes: Captain Arnutt, of the Royal North-west Mounted Police. Go and look him up and have a yarn with him about how he made his start. He nearly broke his heart trying to pass into Sandhurst without getting the necessary stuff into his hard head. But, begad! there isn't a finer man in the North-west ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... to tell you a story, a yarn of the firin' line, Of our thin red kharki 'eroes, out there where the bullets whine; Out there where the bombs are bustin', and the cannons like 'ell-doors slam— Just order another drink, boys, and I'll tell you ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... true yarn. To separate the circumstances of the story from the story itself, I will first give you ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... try-on all right," he added. "Evidence was against you, but they struck an unexpected snag. You'll have to keep it up, though"; and deciding "there was nothing in the yarn," the Dandy slept in the Quarters, and I in the House, leaving the doors and ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... of our lives is of mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipt them not; and our vices would despair, if they were not encouraged by our virtues.' This was truly and finely said long ago, by one who knew the strong and weak ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... We've got a cow and the filly and some sheep; and mother shears and cards, and Lurindy spins,—I can't spin, it makes my head swim,—and I knit, knit socks and sell them. Sometimes I have needles almost as big as a pipe-stem, and choose the coarse, uneven yarn of the thrums, and then the work goes off like machinery. Why, I can knit two pair, and sometimes three, a day, and get just as much for them as I do for the nice ones,—they're warm. But when I want to knit well, as I did the day Aunt Mimy was in, I take my best blue needles and my fine white ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... Into the mountain's abyss boldly the miner descends. Mulciber's anvil resounds with the measured stroke of the hammer; Under the fist's nervous blow, spurt out the sparks of the steel. Brilliantly twines the golden flax round the swift-whirling spindles, Through the strings of the yarn ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... reader,—at all events no account of the many "lamentable shipwrecks on the Barbary coast" had ever fallen into his hands,—and he knew nothing of the terrible reputation of its people. Neither had Bill obtained any knowledge of it from books; but, for all that,—thanks to many a forecastle yarn,—the old sailor was well informed both about the character of the coast on which they had suffered shipwreck, and its inhabitants. Bill had the best of reasons for dreading the ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... or belt in which they carry their hammer and knife is manufactured from the fur of the opossum spun into a small yarn like worsted; it is tightly bound at least three or four hundred times round the stomach; very few however possessed this ornament; and it is not improbable that the natives who had their hair clubbed, those that wore ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... the man that sings the verses, he's called the chantyman. He sings while the crew heaves on the ropes an' they all come in on the chorus. If he's a real good chantyman he makes up new verses every time, a kind of a yarn he spins ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... father (drawn evidently from the experience of the lamented Pottinger), which not only deeply interested her hearers, but momentarily exalted Prosper in their minds as the son of that hero. "Now you speak o' that, ma'am," said the ingenuous Wynbrook, "there's a good deal o' Prossy in that yarn o' his father's; same kind o' keerless grit! You remember, boys, that day the dam broke and he stood thar, the water up to his neck, heavin' logs in the break till he stopped it." Briefly, the evening, in spite of its initial culinary failure and its surprises, was a decided social ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... de spinners operate wid deir foots, settin' by de wheel and workin' it wid deir foots, sorta lak a sewing machine is run. Her 'low de thread dat come to her in de weave-room from dis kind of spinnin' was smoother and more finer than de other kind. After de yarn was spin, it was reeled off de spools into hanks and then took to de warper. Then she woofed it, warped it, and loomed it into cloth. Her make ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... and have the dust and dirt blown away, then that carding machines would lay all the fibers parallel, that drawing machines would group them into slender ribbons, and a roving machine twist them into a soft cord, and then that a mule or a throstle would spin the roving into yarn, and the yarn would go to the weaving-rooms, where a thousand wonderful machines would turn them into miles and miles of calico; the machines doing all the hard work, while women and girls adjusted and ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... the sudden change from cotton to linen is an instructive one. Cotton appears to have forced itself to the front because cotton spinning could be carried on by machinery whilst the linen weavers were still dependent on the spinning wheel for their yarn. It was Andrew Mulholland, the owner of the York Street cotton mill, who first took note of the fact that while the supply of hand-made linen yarn was quite insufficient to justify the manufacture of linen on a large scale in Belfast, quantities of flax were shipped ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... the day he started for Philadelphia, William King read over his Martha's memorandum with the bewildered carefulness peculiar to good husbands: ten yards of crash; a pitcher for sorghum; samples of yarn; an ounce ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... stockings, and she threaded her needle and snipped off the yarn before she answered, "No, thank you, Becky. Mother couldn't do without me, and I hate going to school. I can read and write and cipher as well as anybody now, and that's enough for me. I'd die rather than teach school for a living. The winter'll go fast, for Will Melville is going to lend me his ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... packed her up, and put her into her nursery. She'll mind me when she sees I will be minded; and as for little Owen, nothing would satisfy him but his promising not to go away. I saw that chap asleep before I came down, so there's no fear of the yarn beginning again; but you see what chance there is of his mending while those children are ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was still more enraged, and thought of nothing but how to do every possible injury to the man's daughter, whose beauty, however, grew daily greater. At length she took a cauldron, set it on the fire, and boiled yarn in it. When it was boiled, she flung it on the poor girl's shoulder, and gave her an axe in order that she might go on the frozen river, cut a hole in the ice, and rinse the yarn. She was obedient, went thither ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... of the curled darling of Fortune soon faded away under Hawke's measured social leading. A silver wine cooler stood behind their chairs, and the old yarn of a British officer playing Olivier Pain became very misty under the subtle influence of the Pommery Sec. Alan Hawke guarded the expected story of his own wanderings, waiting craftily until Bacchus and Venus ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... is that the yarn that's going round about his having had a lot of m-money stolen in a country house? By Jove! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... ring on his finger, and must needs try if it would open the other slits also. And out he drew drawer after drawer full of gold bracelets and silver bracelets, glass pearls, brooches and rings, bracelets and laced caps, yarn, night-caps and woollen drawers, coffee, sugar, groats, tobacco pipes, buttons, hooks and eyes, knives, axes, ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... of yarn, with which kittens have been making cobwebs, has always seemed to me a much easier task than to unknot the tangled skein of confused influences, that trip up our feet at every step in life's path. Here was I, who ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... comes off the goat's back, may be estimated to make one shawl 54 in. square. It will, therefore, require ten goats, male and female, to furnish materials for one shawl. Mr. Tower has this year had three shawls made of his wool, one of which was examined by the committee of manufacturers, The yarn was spun by Messrs. Pease of Darlington and was woven by Messrs. Miller and Sons of Paisley. Mr. Tower's shawl was compared with one made in Scotland, of French shawl-goat wool, to which it was evidently far superior. It was also compared with a shawl of M. Terneaux's own make; and was considered ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various
... unexpected manner, so that one can only move by daylight and then often only by constant sounding. Consequently, starting at noon on Monday, it took us till 5 p.m. Wednesday to do the 130 miles. It is much less for a crow, but the river winds so, that one can quite believe Herodotus's yarn of the place where you pass the same village on three consecutive days. Up to Kurna, which we reached at 7 a.m. Tuesday, the river is about 500 yards to 300 yards broad, and the country mainly poor, bare, flat pasture; the date fringe diminishing and ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... too old a sailor to be taken in by a yarn like that. I believe this letter to be a forgery, and I will not give the air-ship up ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... would have to admit, however, that there is no sharpness in Georgiana's pleasantry. The child-nature in her is so sunny, sportive, so bent on harmless mischief. She still plays with life as a kitten with a ball of yarn. Some day Kitty will fall asleep with the Ball poised in the cup of one foot. Then, waking, when her dream is over, she will find that her plaything has become a rocky, thorny, storm-swept, immeasurable world, and that she, a woman, ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... blocked with stalls and wares. Coal is for sale, both pure and mixed with clay in briquettes, and salt in blocks almost as black as coal, and three times as heavy, and piles of drugs—a medley of bones, horns, roots, leaves, and minerals—and raw cotton and cotton yarn from Wuchang and Bombay, and finished goods from Manchester. At one of the villages there was a chair for hire, and, knowing how difficult was the country, I was willing to pay the amount asked—namely, 7d. for nearly seven ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... the spoon-fed idealists who would govern India with the platitudes of ignorance, and not only to make her sympathetic, but to convince me of her attractions, which (especially just now) was not easy work. Decidedly a first-rate yarn. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... expected to concoct, and sent down his agent to the districts of Gweedore in Donegal and Maam in Galway, with instructions to engage as many families as possible to work in the mills of the firm, noted all over the world for thread, yarn, and linen-weaving. An enormous affair, employing a whole township. The agent was provided with a document emanating from the priest of the district into which they were invited to migrate, setting forth that no proselytism ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... on my cape, and it wa'n't very warm. She asked me when I come away, if I wa'n't sorry I hadn't a shawl. I expect I did catch cold. I couldn't set up nor do nothing for more 'n three weeks. When I got so I could knit, my yarn was gone. I never knew what become of it; and one of the women used to borrow my shoes for her little girl, and she wore 'em out So, come spring, I was just where I was the year before, only lonesomer, cause Jinny ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... comes of them no 'count, fashionable sto' gallowses—' 'spenders' I believe they calls 'em. Never mind, honey! I'll send for Johnny, tell him how it happened, 'pologize to him, and knit him a real nice pair of yarn gallowses, jest like your pa's; and they never ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... hands warmly, and then Walters said, "Come along with me, Jack, to the Water Police Station; we can have a yarn there.... Oh, yes, I'm a Sydney man now—a full-fledged inspector of police... tell you all about it by and by. But, push along, old man. One of my men has just told me that a woman who jumped off the Circular Quay and tried to drown herself, is lying at the station, and is not expected ...
— In The Far North - 1901 • Louis Becke
... cabin before we uncork the entire yarn," suggested Frank. "To tell you the truth, boys, I didn't have half enough breakfast, and I'm about ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... You telephone me six hundred words on this thing inside of an hour. No frills you understand. Just give me the straight facts. We'll fix the yarn up here." ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... dress, she wore them frequently until they became quite worn out; as often, however, as a hole appeared in these choice articles, she very carefully darned it up; but for this purpose, having no silk, she was obliged to use white yarn. She usually appropriated Saturday evenings to this exercise. Finally, she had darned them so much that not a single particle of the original material or color remained. Yet such was the force of habit with her that as often as Saturday evening ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... Ballad" we have had with us from the days of Robin Hood, but W. S. Gilbert in his "Bab Ballads" reached heights before his time unsuspected. By the use of catchy stanzas and unusual rhymes he made the type a thing of art. Most readers are familiar with the "Yarn of the Nancy Bell," in which ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... girl would have invented the same yarn, yet it hurt me more than the bigger one she had told on Hance's trail. Small as the incident was, it made me very blue, and led me to shut myself up in my own car for the rest of that afternoon and evening. Indeed, ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... straight path through the clover and a gap in the wall. This was the road to much friendly gossip, and there were few bright days which did not find two matrons met at the wall, their heads together over some amiable yarn. But now one house is closed, its windows boarded up, like eyes shut down forever, and the grass has grown over the little path: a line erased, perhaps never to be renewed. It is easier to wipe out a story from nature than ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... was, that tang again. But from now to the end of the yarn I want you to forget it. I tell you I forgot it, sitting there on the edge of that swan-skin robe and listening and looking at the most wonderful woman that ever stepped out of the pages of Thoreau or of any ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... ye once get it fixed in yer head that this world's bumpin' 'round through the air like a football, there isn't anny fool yarn you're not ready to believe." He stopped suddenly. The Duke of Wellington was coming up the steps, and his remarks trailed off into coughs and incoherent murmurs about the weather. Spectacle John knew better ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... can well be, and are sufficiently hard to allow of their being used in the manufacture of brooches and other ornamental objects. Another use to which peat of some kinds has been put is in the manufacture of yarn, the result being a material which is said to resemble brown worsted. On digging a ditch to drain a part of a bog in Maine, U.S., in which peat to a depth of twenty feet had accumulated, a substance similar to cannel ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... would have got as much out of their cross-country trip if they'd all been blindfolded and shot through a tunnel two thousand feet under the ground. Man is like an audience and he has walked out on mystery and adventure. The show kind of tired him. And got his goat. It would have been a good yarn otherwise, the motor vagabonds. I'd ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... of the humerus the patient is to be bound in the supine position, a wedge-shaped stone wrapped with yarn placed in the axilla, and the surgeon, pressing against the padded stone with his foot and raising the humerus with his hands, reduces the head of the bone to its natural position. If this method fails, a long crutch-like stick is prepared to receive ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... in assuming that the cuts were made transversely, or across, and that therefore the complete length was nine cables. The skipper, however, explained (and the point is quite as veracious as the rest of his yarn) that his cuts were made longitudinally—straight from the tip of the nose to the tip of the tail! The complete length was therefore only three cables, the same as each piece. Simon was not asked the exact length of the ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... more particularly so in the Middle Ages, when cloth-making was the staple industry of England. There is a woolpack in the coat-of-arms of Minehead, and the most striking feature of the little mediaeval town of Dunster is the yarn-market in the centre ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... out mysterious hints I could not understand when rumors of them reached me; and at last came the fire that burned them out, and then the stories of what Clancy had said in his delirium; and then she came to my wife and told her a yarn that—she swore to its truth, and nearly drove Mrs. Rayner wild with anxiety. She swore that when Clancy got to drinking he imagined he had seen me take that money from Captain Hull's saddle-bags and replace the ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... winna marry thee, For a' the gear that ye can gi'e; Nor will I gang a step ajee, For a' the gowd in Gowrie. My father will gi'e me twa kye; My mother 's gaun some yarn to dye; I 'll get a gown just like the sky, Gif I 'll ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... "I'll read the yarn to you while you eat," smiled his father. "This is a great day for you, lad. You're tasting, for the first time, the sensation of looming large in ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock
... spun her yarn, Miles," the mate resumed, "we will go on with matters and things. I have been talking with the mother of the youngster that fell overboard, and giving her some advice for the benefit of her son in time to come; and what do you think ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... yore stuff on this here cayuse while you let them tha' dogs out of their chicken coop boxes. You can cache your dude duds in the Emporium general store over yonder next to Squinty Quinn's saloon, an' then we're off for the hills. I'll yarn about this Wild Hunter while we ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... little boy, called Anders, who had a new cap. And a prettier cap you never could see, for mother herself had knitted it, and nobody could make anything quite as nice as mother could. And it was altogether red, except a small part in the middle which was green, for the red yarn had given out; and the ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... while the sailor, as Rollo and Jane observed on this occasion, was obliged in his fastenings to wind his ropes round and round, and tie them into complicated knots, and then secure the ends with "spun yarn." ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott
... refined mode of torture. One day, some of us, while walking the poop, had our attention directed to a sucking-fish, about two and a half feet in length, which had been made fast by the tail to a billet of wood, by a fathom or so of spun-yarn, and turned adrift. An immense striped shark, apparently about fourteen feet in length, which had been cruising about the ship all the morning, sailed slowly up, and turning slightly on one side, attempted to seize the seemingly helpless fish; but the sucker, with great dexterity, made himself ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... my faith, this gear is all entangled, Like to the yarn-clew of the drowsy knitter, Dragg'd by the frolic kitten through the cabin, While the good dame sits nodding o'er the fire! Masters, attend; 'twill crave some skill to clear it. ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... some slight convulsive motion. But the dim, staring eyes struck chill to her heart. At last she ceased her delicate, busy cares: but she still held the head softly, as if caressing it. She thought over all the possibilities and chances in the mingled yarn of their lives that might, by so slight a turn, have ended far otherwise. If her mother's cold had been early tended, so that the responsibility as to her brother's weal or woe had not fallen upon her; if the fever had not taken such ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... moorlands of Leek, I would not care to see it. I go miles on end about it to visit my sick folk, and mostly in a day's riding I see nobody but a stray shepherd, a flash pedlar twanning his way across country with his gewgaws, and now and then a weaver scouring the outlying cottages for yarn." ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... nightfall, I recollect, with hatches off, and had the seas slopping in before the morning. He remembered it, he said. And he asked me if it was true that I was goin'—well, to the port I was bound for. And I said it was God's truth. Then he told me a long yarn of two cases outshipped that was lying down at the wharf. Transshipment goods on a through bill of lading. And the bill of lading gone a missing in the post. A long story, all lies, as I ought to have known at the time. He ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... glory, and stars clustered about her like a swarm of golden bees, I thought this night was rather the parent of a new life. But, indeed, there is a solemnity in night beyond all jesting: for night knits up the tangled yarn of our day's doings into a pattern either good or ill; it renews the vigor of the living, and with the lapsing of the tide it draws the dying toward night's impenetrable depths, gently; and it honors the secrecy of lovers as zealously as that of rogues. In the morning our bodies rise ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... to support the adoptive parent is emphasized. The amount of sustenance varies much. Another list of yearly allowances reads one shekel of silver, woollen yarn, six KA of oil, four isinni Shamash, ten KA of fat, one side, two GUR of corn. Many others could be instanced, but they make no great ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... have the goody sort! By the poker! they sell their sermons dearer than we sell the rarest and realest thing on earth—pleasure.—And they can spin a yarn! There, I know them. I have seen plenty in my mother's house. They think everything is allowable for the Church and for—Really, my dear love, you ought to be ashamed of yourself—for you are not so open-handed! You have not given me two ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... Cockle," said I, "as Moonshine will be gone some time, suppose you spin us a yarn ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... joyous Tim, "to think of me manning the helm with you on the ship. Take you it, you dog you, and spin us your yarn." ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... good hand at it," returned Billy, "but I know that the mate o' the Sparrow there can spin a good yarn. Come, Evan, tell us about that dead man what came up to ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... religion, but I did hope I'd done him some good but felt dubersome about it. But knowin' I'd clung to Duty's apron strings I felt like leavin' the event. And when Miss Meechim come in I wuz settin' calm and serene in a big chair windin' some clouded blue and white yarn, Aronette holdin' the skein. I'd brung along a lot of woollen yarn to knit Josiah some socks on the way, to make ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... I wonder what this yarn's about? I can't construe half of it. It's in Greek, and it's something about Neopalia, and there's a lot about ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... that he was an agent for brushes, and he opened his box and showed me the greatest assortment of big and little brushes: bristle brushes, broom brushes, yarn brushes, wire brushes, brushes for man and brushes for beast, brushes of every conceivable size and shape that ever I saw in all my life. He had out one of his especial pets—he called it his "leader"—and feeling it familiarly in his hand he instinctively began the jargon of well-handled ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... chief conversation among the men was about Bobby Smudge's suicide, and of the threats he had uttered of haunting the ship. This led to the recounting of similar circumstances; and many a forecastle yarn was spun that evening, abounding in horrors sufficient to make the hairs of a less stout-hearted auditory stand on end. From the extraordinary remarks I heard as I passed about the decks, I declared, when I went to the berth, that I believed that some of the men fully ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... Miss Prue, that Jasper would be all that is good and noble; ah! there is Molly coming back; I wonder if she succeeded in matching your yarn," and rising with a relieved air, she hurried ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... suspicions were lulling as in a smalling circle she neared the tempting feast from the windward side. She had even advanced straight toward it for a few steps when the sweaty leather sang loud and strong again, and smoke and iron mingled like two strands of a parti-colored yarn. Centring all her attention on this, she advanced within two leaps of the Calf. There on the ground was a scrap of leather, telling also of a human touch, close at hand the Calf, and now the iron and smoke on the full vast smell of Calf were like a snake trail across the trail of a ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... had told it to me," admitted Merritt, "I'd have made up my mind right away he was trying to pull the wool over my eyes with a silly yarn. And yet there was Grandfather Crawford just as sober as you ever saw anyone, and vouching for every word ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... darkness. In the north-east of Scotland lint seed was used instead of hemp seed and answered the purpose quite as well.[600] Again, a mode of ascertaining your future husband or wife was this. Take a clue of blue yarn and go to a lime-kiln. Throw the clue into the kiln, but keep one end of the thread in your hand and wind it on to another clue. As you come near the end somebody or something will hold the other end tight in the kiln. Then ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... bottoms and black paint, but otherwise they had withstood the generations. They were probably a part of the old house's original furnishing—these and at least one of the spinning-wheels, of which there were four, the large kind, used for spinning wool; also the reel for winding yarn. Then we noticed a low wooden cradle, darkened with age, its sides polished by the hands that had rocked it—that had come next, no doubt. We remarked that one of the spinning-wheels was considerably smaller than the others—a ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... In the mingled yarn of human life, tragedy is never far asunder from farce; and it is amusing to retrace in immediate succession to this incident of epic dignity, which has its only parallel by the way in the case of Vasco de Gama, (according to the narrative of Camoens,) when met and confronted by a sea ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... dear. My eyes will not let me sew much in the evening, else I should have finished that batch to-night. Thee will find the yarn and ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... use asking the meaning of this, I suppose," said Uncle Roger with the calm of despair. "I've gave up trying to fathom you young ones. Peter, where's the key? What yarn ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... exact knowledge of any part of the river above the lower end of the Grand Canyon, is apparent to one who is familiar with the ground, and the many discrepancies brand the whole story as a fabrication. In the language of the frontier, he "pitched a yarn," and it took beautifully. Hardy, whom I met in Arizona a good many years ago, told me he believed the man told the truth, but his belief was apparently based only on the condition White was in when rescued. That he was nearly dead is true, but that is about all of his yarn that is. White was ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... but feel some disdain and some regret to find, blended together, the noblest actions and the paltriest motives. But whether in ancient times or in modern, the web of human affairs is woven from a mingled yarn, and the individuals who save nations are not always those most acceptable to the moralist. The share of Themistocles in this business is not, however, so much to his discredit as to that of the Spartan Eurybiades. We cannot but observe that no system contrary ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... kidnapping of the Mackenzie child, how came you to do it, what happened to Dave Henderson, and full directions where I may locate Frances Mackenzie. Begin at the beginning, and I'll fire questions at you when you don't make any point clear to me. Turn loose your yarn at me hot off ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... only breathe the name I name upon my knees, Ah, surely I should catch the word above such sounds as these. And Grannie's needles click no more, the ball of yarn is done, And she's asleep outside the door where shines ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... book to be sure. The directions are easy. That settles the girls except maybe the little friend, Carrie. How would she like some slippers? I make them very pretty and they cost so little; two or three skeins of yarn for one pair and the ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... three-pounder!" said Abner, pathetically. "We could jess sot it in the middle of the road, and all creation couldn't get intew Lee. Yew an I could stop em alone then. Gosh naow wat wouldn't I give fer a cannon the size o' Mis Perry's yarn-beam thar. Ef the white feathers seen a gun the size o' that p'inted at em an a feller behind it with a hot coal, I callate they'd be durn glad tew 'gree tew a fa'r settlement. But Lordomassy, gosh knows we hain't got no cannon, ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... was no such thing as going to town to buy things. All of our clothing was homespun, our socks were knitted, and everything. We had our looms, and made our own suits, we also had reels, and we carved, spun, and knitted. We always wore yarn socks for winter, which we made. It didn't get cold, in the winter in Tennessee, just a little frost was all. We fixed all of our cotton and ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kansas Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... came an interval of quiet working on the young lady's part, and of rather listless knitting on the part of the mother, whose eyes went wistfully to the window without seeing anything. And this lasted till a step was heard at the front door. Mrs. Dallas let fall her needles and her yarn and rose hurriedly, crying out, 'That is not Mr. Dallas!' and so speaking, ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... that making plywood reminds him of the way Mrs. Bunyan made pies during the hard times of pioneer days. She would take pancakes, spread molasses between and sew around the edges with yarn. ...
— The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan • W.B. Laughead
... the language of the nursery whether for rich or poor, in which great philological academy no toleration is given to words in 'osity' or 'ation'. There is therefore a great advantage, as regards the consecration to our feelings, settled by usage and custom upon the Saxon strands in the mixed yarn of our native tongue. And universally, this may be remarked—that wherever the passion of a poem is of that sort which uses, presumes, or postulates the ideas, without seeking to extend them, ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... for instance, a nice, clean youngster; third officer, I believe, on the Caliobre, one of the newest ships of the Special Patrol Service. He drops in to see me as often as he has leave here at Base, to give me the latest news, and to coax a yarn, if he can, of the old days. He is courteous, respectful ... and yet just a shade condescending. The condescension ...
— Vampires of Space • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... to have in holdfast or secure, vide Jamieson's Scotch Dictionary, tit. hanck, or from handkill, to murder, vide Jamieson, under that word; or lastly, may be metaphorically used, from hanck, also signifying a skein of yarn or worsted which is tied ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... it isn't his at-home day, he's at Timsdale-Horton Races. When this gaff's over, the belated soothsayers will tell me: 'you ought to have roused the police and laid your case before them,' in one of the three great towns that I drove through last night. And what yarn was I to pitch? That there might be murder going to be done at a place called 'The Myrtles'? And what time had I to tell it in? And where'd you be now, daughter, if I'd been two minutes later than ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... The Lang Men o' Larut is an anecdote. On Greenhow Hill is founded on a study of the human heart, and it is upon the human heart that the tale constrains one's interest. The Lang Men o' Larut is just a yarn spun for the yarn's sake: it informs us of nothing, and is closely related (if I may use some of Mr. Howells' expressive language for the occasion) to "the lies swapped between men after the ladies have left the table." And ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... bowl and berries in the prime!) Coxswain I o' the Commodore's crew,— Under me the fellows that manned his fine gig, Spinning him ashore, a king in full fig. Chirrupy even when crosses rubbed me, Bridegroom Dick lieutenants dubbed me. Pleasant at a yarn, Bob o' Linkum in a song, Diligent in duty and nattily arrayed, Favored I was, wife, and fleeted right along; And though but a tot for such a tall grade, A high quartermaster at last ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... to hear of the correspondence between the editor and the author, it appealed to his sense of humor, and the published story was the result. If it mattered, it is possible that Brander Matthews could accurately reveal the originator of the much-published yarn. ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... airth is he up to, hey?" "Don'o'—the' 's suthin' er other to pay, Er he wouldn't 'a' stayed to hum today." Says Burke, "His toothache's all 'n his eye! He never'd miss a Fo'th-o'-July Ef he hedn't got some machine to try. Le's hurry back an' hide in the barn, An' pay him fer tellin' us that yarn!" "Agreed!" Through the orchard they creep back, Along by the fences, behind the stack, And one by one, through a hole in the wall, In under the dusty barn they crawl, Dressed in their Sunday garments ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... matter of secrecy, the bird is not particular to the material, so that be of the nature of the strings or threads. A lady friend once told me that, while working by an open window, one of these birds approaching during her momentary absence, and, seizing a skein of some kind of thread or yarn, made off with it to its half-finished nest. But the perverse yarn caught fast in the branches, and, in the bird's effort to extricate it, got hopelessly tangled. She tugged away at it all day, but was finally obliged to content herself with a few detached ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs |
