"Yarn" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her feet, and we staggered on, but ere we could leave the passage which led into the larger room I heard a loud rattling and thundering above, and the next instant something struck my head and everything reeled around me. Yet I did not drop the blue yarn stockings, but tottered on with them into the large open space, where ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Sally's admirers far and wide, and old 'Zekiel sat by the chimney corner, watching his sister, Aunt Poll, rake up the rest of the hickory log in the ashes, while he rubbed away sturdily at his feet, holding in one hand the blue yarn stockings, "wrought by no hand, as you may guess," but that of Sally; the talk, that had momentarily died away, began again, and with a glance at Long Snapps,—a lank, shrewd-faced old sailor, who, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... reposed beside the entrance to the stable. "We've just got two hours and a half before dark," he added slowly. "That means an hour in which to talk." Then he quietly prepared to roll a cigarette. "Now, Jacky, let's have your yarn first; after that ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... nationality find every day in troublous Mexico. Twisty Barlow, an old-time friend with whom once he had gone adventuring in Peru, a man who had been deep sea sailor and near pirate, real estate juggler, miner, trapper and mule skinner, sat at his elbow, put many an incisive question, had many a yarn of ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... 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 long as Kate ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... Oliver, indignantly. "Here have you two chaps kept me all this time spinning a miserable yarn about a bird that I began to hope was a fine specimen worth having, and ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... with knitting cotton or yarn, being careful to keep winding even. When the winding is completed, draw the end of cotton underneath the winding with ...
— Spool Knitting • Mary A. McCormack
... say what. The geese* [An enormous quantity of water-fowl breed in Tibet, including many Indian species that migrate no further north. The natives collect their eggs for the markets at Jigatzi, Giantchi, and Lhassa, along the banks of the Yarn river, Ramchoo, and Yarbru and Dochen lakes. Amongst other birds the Sara, or great crane of India (see "Turner's Tibet," p. 212), repairs to these enormous elevations to breed. The fact of birds characteristic ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... head was enveloped in the scarf which his hostess had lent him when he set forth upon his walk. It—the scarf—was tied under his chin and the fringed ends flapped in the wind. His round face, surrounded by the yarn folds, looked like that of the small boy in the pictures advertising ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... going?" he groaned. "To one of the grandest houses in England! Oh, Lord! I ought to have told you. You 'll need all the clothes you have down here. And—and a valet and maid will unpack the bags—oh, hell!" After more of the same kind of talk, he began to cook up some yarn ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown
... favourites off so easily and would give their enemies a better sporting chance, he would more readily sustain the illusion which is of the essence of real enjoyment in this kind of fantasy. But I imagine the normal human boy will find nothing whatever to complain of, and to him I chiefly commend this yarn. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... presented, lady-mothers and aunts must continue to project breakfasts, water parties, and galas, whereby to throw them in the way of flirtation, courtship, and marriage. Mischief, in her most smiling mask, sits like the beautiful witch in Thalaba at an everlasting spinning-wheel, weaving a mingled yarn of sin and sorrow for the daughters of Fashion. Although the cauldron of Hecate and her priestesses has vanished from the heath at Forres, it bubbles in nightly incantations among the elm-trees of Grosvenor Square; and Hopper and Hellway, Puckle and Straddling, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 548 - 26 May 1832 • Various
... face!" cried the old woman; "but I would give all the yarn in my muckle chest to catch one look of his lucky eye! I warrant you, witch nor fairy could never harm ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... and squares, copse-woods and grass and heather grew. In the hollow at the foot of these green braes, and by the side of the Water of Leith, a chain of little hamlets—Dean, Stockbridge, and Canon-mills—nestled, and in the mid-most of these Robert Raeburn established himself as a yarn-boiler. Although in the country, his home was less than a mile from St Giles's Kirk. His business appears to have prospered, and during the early forties he married Miss Ann Elder. There was a difference of twelve years in the ages ...
— Raeburn • James L. Caw
... positively charged body and the latter the negative. A film of moisture stops this action. When wool is spun in factories it tends to become in certain stages of the process too dry and too free from grease; the yarn then becomes electrified as it passes over the leather rollers, and when the machine tries to spin the threads together they fly apart and refuse to join up the minute hooks with which the wool fibres are furnished. The spinning ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... Joseph Conrad's latest yarn is the essence of romance. But what is romance? For years we have sought a definition in ten words; but while romance is easily recognized, it is with difficulty defined. Walter Raleigh came the nearest to it in a recent essay. "Romance," said he, "is a love affair ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... the people what they were about they would have heard that these things had been stored in the gymnasium during the War and that the place was now to be devoted to its original purpose. What they did was to believe at once the yarn of a renegade, who told them that the people were preparing to blow up the house. The Italians opened fire, wounded several persons and killed one ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... 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 ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... level plain from the city, on the road which led up again to the mountains, I counted-no less than 409 bullocks laden with nothing but firewood, and 744 mules and ponies carrying cotton yarn and other general imports coming from Burma. There was a stampede at the foot of the town, and quite against my own will, I assure the reader, I got mixed up in the affair as I stood watching the light and shade effects of the morning sun ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... in a little while the male population of the village had assembled to help. As a general thing, they were dressed in homespun "jeans," blue or yellow—here were no other varieties of it; all wore one suspender and sometimes two—yarn ones knitted at home,—some wore vests, but few wore coats. Such coats and vests as did appear, however, were rather picturesque than otherwise, for they were made of tolerably fanciful patterns of calico—a fashion which prevails thereto ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... back. I'll laugh with Yves and Leon, and I'll chaff with Rose and Jeanne; I'll seek the little, quaint buvette that's kept by Mother Merdrinac Who wears a cap of many frills, and swears just like a man. I'll yarn with hearty, hairy chaps who dance and leap and crack their heels; Who swallow cupfuls of cognac and never turn a hair; I'll watch the nut-brown boats come in with mullet, plaice and conger eels, The jeweled harvest of the ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... to Isabelle. "She was looking over hangings and curtains for her house.... She is nothing but a bag of bones, she's so worn. That husband of hers must be a brute to let her wear herself all out. She was telling me some long yarn about their troubles with the gas men,—very amusing and bright. She is a charming ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... write this yarn for me? Of course 'The Blade' is only a country daily, and our space rates are not high. But see here, Prescott, I'll pay you a dollar a column for anything you write for us that possesses local interest enough to warrant ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... A second autobiographical account of repeated sleep walking I find in the "Buch der Kindheit," the first volume of Ludwig Ganghofer's "Lebenslauf eines Optimisten." When the boy had to go away to school his mother gave him four balls of yarn to take with him, so that he might mend his own clothing and underwear. She had hidden a gulden deep within each ball, a proof of mother love, which he later discovered. In the course of time while at the school the impulses of puberty began to stir in him and pressed upon ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... high hall—Helen for whom the Kings and Princes of Greece had gone to war. Her maids were with her, and they set a chair for her near where Menelaus was and they put a rug of soft wool under her feet. Then one brought to her a silver basket filled with colored yarn. And Helen sat in her high chair and took the distaff in her hands and worked the yarn. She questioned Menelaus about the things that had happened during the day, and as she did she ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum
... judge of their needs with her own eyes, and travelled from town to town in New England, arousing the women to new effort. These might be seen, young and old, rich and poor, bearing bundles of blue flannel through the streets, and unaccustomed fingers knitting the coarse yarn, while the heart throbbed with anxiety for the dear ones gone to the war. A noble band of nurses volunteered their services, and the strife was as to which should go soonest and do the hardest work. Hannah E. Stevenson, Helen Stetson, and many another ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... and bouse away, old ship, with that yarn o' yours that's going to fright my hair off. I ain't quite ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... of the pieces of Haliotis from the Gulf of California, so valued by the Indians on this side of the Rocky Mountains. The body had been elaborately dressed for burial, the costume consisting of a red- flannel cloak, a red tunic, and frock-leggins adorned with bead-work, yarn stockings of red and black worsted, and deerskin bead-work moccasins. With the remains were numerous trinkets, a porcelain image, a China vase, strings of beads, several toys, a pair of mittens, a fur collar, a pouch of the skin of putorius ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... found it difficult to refrain from laughter.[91] Beside this nose-jewel, they had necklaces made of shells, very neatly cut and strung together; bracelets of small cord, wound two or three times about the upper part of their arm, and a string of plaited human hair about as thick as a thread of yarn, tied round the waist. Besides these, some of them had gorgets of shells hanging round the neck, so as to reach cross the breast. But though these people wear no clothes, their bodies have a covering besides the dirt, for they paint them both white and red: The red is commonly laid on in broad ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... give ye many a long yarn about the South Seas," said Buzzby, gazing abstractedly down into the deep. "One time, when I was about fifty mile to the sou'west o' Cape ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 belts, and the one who was ornamented with shells, held some particular ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... two belong to a European and a Parsee firm of merchants. The port is visited yearly by some 1300 steamers with a tonnage of 2 1/2 million tons. The principal articles of import are coffee, Cotton-piece goods, &c., grain, hides, coal, opium, cotton- twist and yarn. The exports are, in the main, a repetition of the imports. Of the total imports nearly one-third come from the east coast of Africa, and another third from Arabia. Of the total exports, nearly one-third again go to the east coast of Africa. The Aden brigade belongs ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... a yarn. I can chip in when the other fellow starts bukhing. Ask him." He pointed to Dick Four, whose nose gleamed scornfully ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... however, used of giving an intended and perhaps pleasing color to wood, glass, etc., by an application of coloring-matter which enters the substance a little below the surface, in distinction from painting, in which coloring-matter is spread upon the surface; dyeing is generally said of wool, yarn, cloth, or similar materials which are dipped into the coloring liquid. Figuratively, a standard or a garment may be dyed with blood in honorable warfare; an assassin's weapon is stained with the blood of his victim. To tinge is to color slightly, and may also be used of giving ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... difficulty.—To back a rope or chain, is to put on a preventer when it is thought likely to break from age or extra strain.—To back water. To impel a boat astern, so as to recede in a direction opposite to the former course.—Backing the worming. The act of passing small yarn in the holidays, or crevices left between the worming and edges of the rope, to prevent the admission of wet, or to render all parts of equal diameter, so that the service may be smooth.—Wind backing. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... to pickup the ball of yarn that had rolled under her chair, and her husband went towards the door as ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... and brought him back to the palace, and they sat down together in the hall. Then one of the old servants brought up a polished table and spread it for them with good things for their meal, and Penelope came and sat beside the door, spinning her fine soft yarn. She did not speak till they had finished, but then she said to her son, "Telemachus, I see I must go up to my room and lie down on my bed, the bed I have watered with my tears ever since Ulysses went away to Troy; for you are determined not to talk ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... dress quiet, pick up soft-looking gents, refuse drink, and pitch 'em a Sunday school yarn," said ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... struggling sprouts called the crop, or the few discouraged, half-dead slips which comprised the orchard. Then their conversation would be pointed with many Golden Points, Bakery Hill, Deep Creeks, Maitland Bars, Specimen Flats, and Chinamen's Gullies. And so they'd yarn till the youngster came to tell them that "Mother sez the breakfus is gettin' cold," and then the old mate would rouse himself and stretch and say, "Well, we mustn't keep the ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... as a very mixed character, in whom the evil gains for some time a most unhopeful mastery; and he takes care to provide, withal, the canon whereby he would have him judged: "The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipp'd them not; and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues." A pregnant and subtile reflection indeed, which may sound strange to many; but the truth and wisdom of it are ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... a Boston paper and read them some of the news. Miss Eunice went on with her fringe. Elizabeth was knitting a sock for Chilian out of fine linen yarn, spun by herself, and she put pretty open-work stitches all up the instep. For imported articles were still dear, and there was a pride in the women to do all for themselves that they could. Cynthia leaned her head on Rachel's lap ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... that ain't no news. You can't scace'ly get folks excited by a yarn about a shark's bitin' a cripple—but if you was to give in a yarn about a cripple bitin' a shark—well, there'd be some point to that. If you told where somebody had got a dollar away from Eben, now, we'd call you a liar, I s'pose—and be right ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... slightly puzzled. The tale was well sustained, and certainly circumstantial. After all, the boy might have really seen something. How was the poor man to know—though the chaste and lofty diction might have supplied a hint—that the whole yarn was a free adaptation from the last Penny Dreadful lent us by ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... far as that goes, I know things of which the priests themselves are ignorant. If I were to tell you all I have seen, you would be astounded. But a still tongue makes a wise head, and my father, who, all the same, delighted in spinning a yarn, did not disclose a twentieth part of what he knew. To make up for this he often repeated the same stories, and to my knowledge he told the story of Catherine Fontaine at least a ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... be at the top," said the city editor, and then he went on: "Here is something else you might look into, Larry. It might make a fine thing for the Sunday supplement. You can go up there, get the yarn, and you needn't come back to-day. Write it up the ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... implicated in a mysterious case of suspected murder in England. Through the part he played this morning, he has probably run his head into the noose. But he'll have it out again if we delay an instant. I told the manager that yarn about the dentist to avoid enquiries and waste of time. I have here a note from some man I don't know, addressed to Miss Trevert, warning her of a grave danger threatening her. It corroborates to some extent what I have told you. Here ... ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... you are talking! you must be dreaming this morning. However, we are alone; I'll light a weed, in defiance of Railway-law, while you spin that yarn; for, true or untrue, it will fill up ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... him, plus a collection of prose idylls, plus a group of poems, plus a good piece of special reporting, plus an assortment of brilliant letters; and imbedded in the mass, like a thread of gold in a tangle of yarn, as fresh and exquisite a love-story as we have had in recent English. Of course I do not mean that all these elements cannot be woven into, made relevant to, a theme, a story. Stendhal, himself a romantic, as these men are romantics, could do it. But our romantics do not so ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... obtain it for food, I pointed it out to the bo'sun, suggesting that we should try and capture it. And so, there being by now scarce any wind, he bade us get out a couple of the oars, and back the boat up to the weed. This we did, after which he made fast a piece of salt meat to a bit of spun yarn, and bent this on to the boat hook. Then he made a running bowline, and slipped the loop on to the shaft of the boat hook, after which he held out the boat hook, after the fashion of a fishing rod, over the ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... to be described the crew's quarters. The crew consisted of two hands, both strong and sturdy, and both belonging to the same coloured man. Though our trusty tar, Henry, had doubtless never heard "The Yarn of the 'Nancy Bell'" and had never eaten a shipmate in his life, yet he had a whole crew within himself as truly as the "elderly naval man" who had eaten one. There was therefore no occasion for extensive quarters. Fortunately, an available space at the stern was ample for the ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... the late hands having their tea below, where one or two had already turned in to gain a few winks of sleep before being called on duty to keep the first watch. Others again, as I've already said, where chatting and yarning on the fo'c's'le, as sailors love to chat and yarn of an evening, when the ship is sailing free with a fair wind, and there's nothing much doing, save to mind the helm and take an occasional pull at the braces to keep her "full ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... recalls. These random jottings, however, will call up many more to the reader's memory. Such is my hope—that, having started you in a reminiscent frame of mind you will now carry on "spinning the yarn" yourself. ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... count For poets all who ever felt that such They were, and all who secretly have known That such they could be; ay, moreover, all Who wind the robes of ideality About the bareness of their lives, and hang Comforting curtains, knit of fancy's yarn, Nightly betwixt them and the frosty world),— Hence we may learn, you poets, that of all We should be most content. The earth is given To us: we reign by virtue of a sense Which lets us hear the rhythm of that old verse, The ring of that old tune whereto she spins. Humanity is given to us: ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... short a yarn of talk which, when it comes to likings and dislikings, might last to almighty crack: I'll ask you to do nothing that Lord L'Estrange does not sanction. Will that ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... on large pieces of scrim, with long darning-needles and coarse red or black yarn. The scrim should be pinned to the black-board with thumb tacks, and the stitches made large enough for all to see without difficulty. A variety of completed articles should be kept on hand, in order to show ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Science in Rural Schools • Ministry of Education Ontario
... you are about the poorest 'and at a yarn!' cried the clerk. 'Crikey, it's like Ministering Children! I can tell you there would be more beer and skittles about my little jaunt. I would go and have a B. and S. for luck. Then I would get a big ulster with astrakhan fur, and take ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... drops in on you when you ain't expectin' company, and just swipes your string of fish like he did Jud's. I might 'a thought Jud was giving us a yarn to explain why he didn't have anything to show for his morning's work; but both Little Billie and Gusty saw the same thing. Say, that's another link we got to straighten out. What's a crazy man doing up here; and is he in the same bunch that made ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... "I don't know. Some yarn behind it, I suppose. Very likely a woman at the bottom of it. He's young. Young men do foolish things. Perhaps he'd be thankful for ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... an exchange with the yarn belt from his waist, for a fillet made of kangaroo hair. The muskets were kept at hand in the boat, to be prepared against any treachery; but, every thing seeming to go on well, the natives appearing ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... wouldn't she accept that wildly fanciful yarn of his? For moments that, brief though they must have been, seemed intolerably protracted, he awaited her verdict in the extremest anxiety—not, however, neglecting to employ the respite thus afforded him to make another quick survey of the ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... kitchen and saw his pretty sister Carlen at the high spinning-wheel, walking back and forth drawing the fine yarn between her chubby fingers, all the while humming a low song to which the whirring of the wheel made harmonious accompaniment, he thought to himself bitterly: "Work, indeed! As if they did not work now longer than we do, and quite as hard! She's been spinning ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... acquaintance lying chiefly among ship-chandlers and so forth, he had always plenty of the veritable ships' biscuit on his table. It was familiar with dried meats and tongues, possessing an extraordinary flavour of rope yarn. Pickles were produced upon it, in great wholesale jars, with 'dealer in all kinds of Ships' Provisions' on the label; spirits were set forth in case bottles with no throats. Old prints of ships with alphabetical references ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... there were no tired men or women in Aiken. There were no lingering groups of yarn-swapping men in the buffet, only half-melted humanity who gulped down a glass of champagne and flew back to the dance. We made so much noise that half the dogs in Aiken barked all night, and roosters waked from sleep began to crow at ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... story for the dozenth time, to a new group of callers. "I heard the shots and I went out to investigate. There he was lying, half in and half out of the ditch. The fellow was unconscious. He didn't get his senses back till after the police came. Then he told some babbling yarn about a creature that had stolen his bag of loot and that had lured him to the ditch. He was all unnerved and upset, and almost out of his head with pain. So the police had little enough trouble in 'sweating' ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... been drifting about the world so long, that I speak a little of everything, finding it convenient when I stand in need of victuals and drink. The old lady on the hill and I overhauled a famous yarn between us, sir. It seems she has a niece and a brother at Naples, who ought to have been back night before last; and she was in lots of tribulation about them, wanting to know if our ship had ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... when they see me," he said with a grin, "but it won't do them any good and I'll fix up a yarn about gettin' on and then off your trail agin, that they'll have ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... questions were rather difficult for him to answer. He told his story with considerable hesitation—believed his name was Seymour—believed he was a midshipman. He was listened to without interruption by the captain and crew of the vessel, who had gathered round to hear him "spin his yarn." When he had finished, the captain, looking Willy very hard in the face, thus addressed him:—"My little friend, excuse me, but I have some slight knowledge of the world, and I therefore wish that you had ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... prosperous and ancient town of Roxburghshire, at the confluence of the Teviot and Slitrig, 52 m. SE. of Edinburgh; is a flourishing centre of the tweed, yarn, and hosiery trade, and has besides ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the lodge War Eagle told a queer yarn. I shall modify it somewhat, but in our own sacred history there is a similar tale, well known to ...
— Indian Why Stories • Frank Bird Linderman
... son approvingly. There was a strong, glad ring in his voice, that betrayed an eagerness he would rather not have shown, for he knew of old that one could never be quite sure of Ol' Bengtsa—in the very next breath he might say it was just a yarn. ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... Ellen, if anybody is sick within ten miles round, the family are too happy to get Mrs. Vawse for a nurse. She is an admirable one. Then she goes out tailoring at the farmers' houses; she brings home wool and returns it spun into yarn; she brings home yarn and knits it up into stockings and socks; all sorts of odd jobs. I have seen her picking hops; she isn't above doing anything, and yet she never forgets her own dignity. I think wherever she goes and whatever she is about she ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... and herself not young daughter? And I could tell you of living without books, without paper for writing, in want of calico for dresses, and muslin for underclothing, without pocket-handkerchiefs, without yarn to knit stockings or a penny to buy any, living on the coarsest food And I am talking ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... Mr. Pierson, it would take me forty-eight hours to tell you all that," replied the representative of the Bellevite, taking out his watch. "If you will meet me here to-morrow night at sundown, I will make a beginning of the yarn, and I think I can finish it in two days. But really you must excuse me now; for I have to dine with the Chinese admiral at noon, and ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... before the fire at the close of the feast, and sit up all night concealed in one corner of the room, expecting the apparition of the lover to come down the chimney and turn the shimee: they throw a ball of yarn out of the window, and wind it on the reel within, convinced that if they repeat the Paternoster backwards, and look at the ball of yarn without, they shall then also see his apparition. Those who celebrate this feast have ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... allow yourself," I replied, with some asperity, "to be influenced by that absurdly impossible yarn which Julius ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... taken advantage of this occasion to go to her aunt's house and thence to the city Red Cross headquarters for a new supply of yarn for their army and navy knitting. As she emerged from the timber and continued along the edge of the woods toward the site of the camp, the assembled campers could see that she carried a good-sized ...
— Campfire Girls at Twin Lakes - The Quest of a Summer Vacation • Stella M. Francis
... became known that the stocking was made from the fleece of "Mary's little lamb," every one wanted a piece of it; so the stocking was raveled out, and the yarn cut into small pieces. Each piece was tied to a card on which "Mary" wrote her full name, and these cards sold so well that they brought the large sum of $140 in the Old ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... tell something, you know, to cover his mysterious movements. 'Tonio's story may be cock and bull for all we know. It is just such a yarn as I have heard told many a time and oft in the Columbia basin. Most Indians are born liars, and 'Tonio has everything to gain and nothing to lose in telling a believable whopper now. 'Tonio says his people are persecuted saints, and ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... I must confess that I'm very glad. Of course, I'm happy to stay and chaperone Catherine; but poor Mr. Batholommey has been alone at the parsonage for ten days ... ever since your dear uncle ... [Pauses, unwinding yarn, then unburdening her mind.] I didn't think at first that Catherine could ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... had hoped you would have known me better than to believe that I would swallow the ludicrous yarn you've prepared. Don't you ever stop and ask yourself on these occasions if ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... the tale you're free to believe, sir, or not, as you please. It stands upon my father's words, and he always declared he was ready to kiss the Book upon it, before judge and jury. He said, too, that he never had the wit to make up such a yarn; and he defied any one to explain about the lock, in particular, by any other tale. But you shall ...
— The Roll-Call Of The Reef • A. T. Quiller-Couch (AKA "Q.")
... along with skin clothing for a while, I can do with birch-bark for my correspondence," she replied laughing. "Why not catch some of those wild sheep that seem so plentiful on the hills to westward? If we could domesticate them, that would mean wool and yarn and cloth—and milk, too, wouldn't it? And if milk, why ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... strong enough to bear her own weight and all other strains that come upon them; 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
... work of the ship went on. The sailmaker and carpenter worked between decks, and the crew had their work to do upon the rigging, drawing yarns, making spun-yarn, etc., as usual in merchantmen. The night watches were much more pleasant than on board the Pilgrim. There, there were so few in a watch, that, one being at the wheel, and another on the look-out, there was no one left to talk with; but here, we had seven in a watch, so that ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... yarn and thread, that have taken the place of the wilder thorn and fibre; all kinds of small hardware; looking-glasses in lacquered frames; beads of sorts, cowries and reels of cotton; pots of odorous pomatum and shea-butter nuts; feathers of the plantain-bird ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... fleeces. Indeed, she would have lingered long before the big chute, through which compressed air forced the cleansed fibres to the height of four stories and the apartment where began its real manufacture into yarn. ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... some intricacy. A very ancient woman, in a white short gown and a green petticoat, with a string of gold beads about her neck, and what looked like a nightcap on her head, had brought a quantity of yarn to barter for the commodities of the shop. She was probably the very last person in town who still kept the time-honored spinning-wheel in constant revolution. It was worth while to hear the croaking and hollow tones of the old lady, and the pleasant ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... haughtiness of her spirit, whereby she deemed no man of mean condition, how rich soever he might be, worthy of a gentlewoman and seeing him moreover, for all his wealth, to be apt unto nothing of more moment than to lay a warp for a piece of motley or let weave a cloth or chaffer with a spinster anent her yarn, resolved on no wise to admit of his embraces, save in so far as she might not deny him, but to seek, for her own satisfaction, to find some one who should be worthier of her favours than the wool-monger appeared to her to be, and accordingly fell so fervently ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... her ball of yarn viciously, causing it to roll upon the floor, and when she had stiffly followed it and picked it from the corner her face was very red, either from the exertion of stooping or from the insult she felt she ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... a range war that grew out of the killing, and some kind of a business deal just about broke them. That's the way this fellow had it; said a trail-boss told him at Ogalalla that spring. I didn't take much stock in the yarn at the time, but I'm beginning to think he had it straight. You didn't hear anything ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Joints for acetylene, like those for steam and high-pressure water, must be made tight by using well-threaded fittings, so as to secure metallic contact between pipe and socket, &c.; the paint or spun-yarn is only an additional safeguard. In making a faced joint, washers of (say, 7 lb) lead, or coils of lead-wire arc extremely convenient and quite trustworthy; the packing ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... 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 ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... net, and heavily she creeps, Cast off, cast off—she feels the oars, and to her berth she sweeps; Now fore and aft keep hauling, and gathering up the clew, Till a silver wave of salmon rolls in among the crew. Then they may sit, with pipes a-lit, and many a joke and 'yarn';— Adieu to Belashanny, and the ...
— Sixteen Poems • William Allingham
... might be good for, people thought that to call himself a lawyer was a mere laughing matter. An awkward, stooping, ungainly fellow, dressed roughly in leather breeches and yarn stockings, and not knowing even how to pronounce the king's English correctly, how could he ever succeed in a learned profession? As a specimen of his manner of speech at that time we are told that once, when denying the ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... dunno so much about that, mister. You once get him well, and he'll spin us a yarn, I expect, such as'll make our ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... as the point is rather a long one, and as your brother said that he should expect us at two precisely, I think that we had better take the 'bus back to the Temple, when I can tell the yarn to ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... mounting excitement, she leaned forward until the ball of orange-coloured yarn rolled from her short lap and over the polished floor of the porch. Before she could stoop to pick it up, she was arrested by the reappearance of the two girls at the corner beyond which Oliver had gazed so intently. Then, as they drew nearer, she saw that ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... for soldiers. Her grandmother had given her a pair of pretty yellow needles and a ball of soft gray yarn and had started a scarf. But the stitches would drop, and there was still enough snow for sliding on the hill back of Marjory's house. Her knitting was not much further along on ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... dare say that to me, Sleight," said Renshaw quietly, "because you have in that drawer an equal evidence of my folly and my confidence; but if you are wise you will not presume too far on either. Let us see how we stand. Through the yarn of a drunken captain and a mutinous sailor you became aware of an unclaimed shipment of treasure, concealed in an unknown ship that entered this harbor. You are enabled, through me, to corroborate some facts and identify ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... where, in tempestuous weather, food was distributed to them. Every family spun from its own flock the wool with which it was clothed; a weaver was here and there found among them; and the rest of their wants was supplied by the produce of the yarn, which they carded and spun in their own houses, and carried to market, either under their arms, or more frequently on pack-horses, a small train taking their way weekly down the valley or over the mountains to the most commodious town. They had, as I have said, their rural chapel, and of course ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... minutes, Sheridan remarked as he left to go upstairs that the Prince would finish the story. But of course the Prince was not equal to the occasion, and when he got hopelessly stuck he proposed an adjournment upstairs where Sheridan would be able to complete his own yarn. It was then Selwyn realized that he had been fooled, for the first to greet him upstairs was Sheridan himself, now a full member of the club, with profuse bows and thanks for Selwyn's "friendly suffrage." Happily Selwyn had too keen a sense of humour not to make the best of the situation, ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... was 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 ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... the slip on Friday, but they must have known your game and lain in wait for you here, one or other of them, ever since. It's my belief Dan Levy put them up to it, and the yarn about the letter was just to tempt you into this trap and get you caught in the act. He didn't want a copy one bit; for God's sake, don't stop ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... quantity of foreign goods which I have been fortunate enough to purchase and to place on board his sloop without paying the duty, which you know is heavy. It consists of sugar, coffee, tobacco, cotton yarn, ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... could paint. It's beautiful—for an amateur." She said this firmly and yet endearingly, and met his eyes with her eyes. It was her tactful method of politely causing him to see that she had not accepted last night's yarn very seriously. ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... hay-loft through a window, and find a place where we can see and hear all that goes on. A veillee is worth the trouble, believe me. Come, it isn't the first time I've hidden in the hay to hear the tale of a soldier or some peasant yarn. But we must hide; if these poor people see a stranger they are constrained at once, and are ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... 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 supplied them with ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... hitches, Fig. 23, especially useful for belaying, or making fast the end of a rope round its own standing part. The end may be lashed down or seized to the standing part with a piece of spun yarn; this adds to its security ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... spent their spare time in spinning. The implements used in the cotton manufacture remained nearly as simple as those of the Homeric age, save that weaving had been facilitated by the use of the fly-shuttle. Since that invention the weaver found it difficult to obtain enough yarn for his loom, until, about 1767, a weaver named Hargreaves invented the spinning-jenny by which a child could work many spindles at once. Two years later Arkwright, who introduced many inventions into the textile manufacture, brought out a spinning machine worked by water-power. His water-frame ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... is the yarn wot Sergeant Wells O' 'Is Majesty's Marine Told in the mess 'bout seven bells— 'E's the skipper's servant an' knows a lot; An' I don't say it's true and I don't say it's not, But it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various
... said, showing Antonio. There he is cursing the mate. And there he is now, he added, the same fellow, pulling the skin with his fingers, some special knack evidently, and he laughing at a yarn. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Hatcher always ended his yarn with this declaration, and you could never make him believe that he had had only a touch ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... plaster, showing the laths underneath, with here and there, over them, sketches with burnt coal, showing that her predecessor had been an artist in his way,—his name, P. Teagarden, emblazoned on the ceiling with the smoke of a candle; heaps of hanks of yarn in the dusty corners; a half-used broom; other heaps of yarn on the old toppling desk covered with dust; a raisin-box, with P. Teagarden done on the lid in bas-relief, half full of ends of cigars, a pack of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... furious than ever, and did nothing but plot mischief against the man's daughter, who was daily growing more and more beautiful. At last, one day the wicked woman took a large pot, put it on the fire and boiled some yarn in it. When it was well scalded she hung it round the poor girl's shoulder, and giving her an axe, she bade her break a hole in the frozen river, and rinse the yarn in it. Her stepdaughter obeyed as usual, and went and broke a hole in the ice. When she was in the act of wringing out ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... her work in the chamber, and came down-stairs with some knitting-work in hand. She seated herself quietly in her own cushioned rocking-chair, and fell to work with yarn and clicking needles, like any peaceful housewife. She knitted and Eugene read, bending his handsome dark face, smiling with pleasure, over his Shakespeare book. This fierce winter day he was reading "A Midsummer-Night's Dream," and letting his fancy revel with Shakespeare's ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... thought she was such a little idiot, and he was sorry—so there! This touched Lucy's heart, and she felt more than ever that she had not laid out her tuppence to the best advantage. She tried to warn Harry of what was to happen in the morning, but he only said, 'Don't yarn; Billson Minor's coming for cricket. You can field if you like.' Lucy didn't like, but it seemed the only thing she could do to show that she accepted in a proper spirit her brother's apology about the planting out. So she fielded ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... city some thirty-five thousand. There is another little paper here of the same size, but not so many leaves, called "The Daily Advertiser," with nothing but advertisements, principally of theaters, concerts, and the daily sights, and one page devoted to some prodigious yarn, generally concerning America, of which country its readers must get the most extraordinary and frightful impression. The "Nachrichten" made the fortune of its first owner, who built himself a fine house out of it, and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... spoke and was an ideal listener, was appropriated by several men in succession, who each told him a different yarn. There was one man sitting on an up-ended pail in the far corner of the room and it was evident from the movements of his lips that he also was relating a story, although nobody knew what it was about or heard a single word of it, for no one took the slightest ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... taxed their brains to invent instruments for sounding the deep sea—for touching the bottom in what sailors call "blue water." Some have tried it with a silk thread as a plumb-line, some with spun-yarn threads, and various other materials and contrivances. It has even been tried by exploding petards and ringing bells in the deep sea, when it was supposed that an echo or reverberation might be heard, and, from the ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... ye're tellin', or jest a yarn to soothe our feelin's?" he demanded. "I don't call to mind any gallus-lookin' chap ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains |
