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More "Yarn" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Charley tell of several other visits they made that night; but, as I said before, even a Christmas yarn and a ghost story must not spin itself out, like Banquo's line, to the crack of doom. However true or authentic a story may be—and you can easily verify this by asking any member of the Christmas Club in Huckleberry Street—however true a yarn may be, it must not be so long ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... floored, of course; but his only way of carrying the thing through was to play the martyr, and tell the story that for a year somebody had been writing to him daily or weekly over the name of Abbot. What a very improbable yarn, Putnam! Just think for yourself. What man would be apt to do that sort of thing? What object could he have? Why, the doctor himself well realized what a transparent fiction it must appear, and away he slips by the night train the moment he gets back. And now our friend, the landlord, ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... not propose to enter into details respecting the progress of the trades of Belfast. The most important is the spinning of fine linen yarn, which is for the most part concentrated in that town, over 25,000,000 of pounds weight being exported annually. Towards the end of the seventeenth century the linen manufacture had made but little progress. In 1680 all Ireland ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... hitch to his trousers, which Is a trick all seamen larn, And having got rid of a thumping quid, He spun this painful yarn: ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... "The same old yarn. I've been all over that ground. There's no reef there, and if there had been it would have been found and skinned years ago," said dogmatic Billy, with ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... half an hour Levi's friends came; the first a little, thin, wizened man with a very foreign look. He was dressed in a rusty black suit and wore gray yarn stockings and shoes with brass buckles. The other was also plainly a foreigner. He was dressed in sailor fashion, with petticoat breeches of duck, a heavy pea-jacket, and thick boots, reaching to the knees. He wore ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... saltpetre, lead, accidences, oil, calamine stone, oil of blubber, glasses, paper, starch, tin, sulphur, new drapery, dried pilchards, transportation of iron ordnance, of beer, of horn, of leather, importation of Spanish wool, of Irish yarn: these are but a part of the commodities which had been appropriated to monopolists.[**] When this list was read in the house, a member cried, "Is not bread in the number?" "Bread," said every one with astonishment. "Yes, I assure you," replied ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... from force of habit, just as he had paused for the last twenty years. There had been times when roars of incredulous laughter had greeted this boast, but most of this particular group had heard the yarn more than once and let it pass with a smile and a wink, remembering the night that Abel Day had asked old Bill how they got the oxen out of the cannon on that ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... dropped at the end of the yarn she had drawn through the stocking heel, and she stared at Jeff. Then she resumed her work with the decision expressed in her tone. "Your father lived to be sixty years old, and Jackson a'n't forty! The doctor said ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... for restraint and submission, but he seemed to have been physically unable to take it. He rushed, instead, blindly to perdition. "I don't believe that yarn," he said. ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... cheap that it was a humiliation not to buy. There were other things on sale also, not for eating and drinking, but for wear and household use—from pots and pans to rag- carpets and table-linen, from woollen yarn to pictures of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... there, with his arms extended before him, 895 She standing graceful, erect, and winding the thread from his fingers, Sometimes chiding a little his clumsy manner of holding, Sometimes touching his hands, as she disentangled expertly Twist or knot in the yarn, unawares—for how could she help it?— Sending electrical thrills through every nerve in ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... she could tell stories of her own; and now and then we used to persuade her to "spin a yarn," as Bella Dornton, whose father had been a naval ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... 9th. That linen, yarn, beef, butter, tallow, hides and all other commodities, will raise to that degree by being bought with half-pence, and workmen paid with brass money, that commissions from abroad will not reach them, therefore such goods must lie on ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... principally European, several likewise come from Siberia, Bucharea, the Calmucks, and China. They consist of course woollen and linen cloths, yarn stockings, bonnets and gloves, thin Persian silks, cottons and nankeens, handkerchiefs, brass and copper pans, iron stoves, files, guns, powder and shot, hardware, looking-glasses, flour, sugar, tanned hides, &c. Though the merchants have a large profit upon these important goods, they have ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... years, has been successfully cultivated in this State for domestic use, and some for exportation. Two or three spinning factories are in operation, and produce cotton yarn from the growth of the country with promising success. This branch of business admits of enlargement, and invites the attention of eastern manufacturers with small capital. Much of the cloth made in families who have emigrated from States south of the ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... yarn. I can chip in when the other fellow starts bukhing. Ask him." He pointed to Dick Four, whose nose gleamed scornfully over ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... Miss Fenshawe, an' mebbe you've on'y heard half a yarn, if you'll pardon my way of puttin' it. Anyway, the Baron is in a mighty hurry to be off; an' isn't it plain enough that he doesn't want to be here when Mr. Royson comes back? You mark my words, ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... the Youngster. "I am disappointed again. I thought that was a simon-pure newspaper yarn—one of your reporter's ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... person in whose hands it was, and brought it with him to these parts; but he keeps it jealously from all eyes, in order that the Duke may not get wind of it, fearing he should in some way be deprived of his treasure." While spinning out this lengthy yarn, Messer Alfonso did not look at me, because we were not previously acquainted. But when that precious clay model appeared, he displayed it with such airs of ostentation, pomp, and mountebank ceremony, that, after inspecting it, I turned to Messer Alberto and ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... of the Mahars are the weaving of coarse country cloth and general labour. They formerly spun their own yarn, and their fabrics were preferred by the cultivators for their durability. But practically all thread is now bought from the mills; and the weaving industry is also in a depressed condition. Many Mahars have now taken to working in the mills, and earn ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... the cotton manufacture has been as beneficial to Liverpool as to those districts where the yarn is spun and woven. The canal system has fed, not rivalled or "tapped," the trade of the Mersey. The steamboats on which the seafaring population of Liverpool at first looked with dislike and dismay, have created for their town—first, a valuable coasting trade, independent of wind or tide, ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... 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 ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... two hours, and returned with Mrs. Darbishire. The landlord met us, and gravely said "I've been away, but the potman tells me a queer yarn. Mr. Darbishire made queer signs out of window to the man you call the Ramper, and Mr. Ramper goes to the pub over the way and then up to the room. And now Mr. Robert's been locked in for a hour and a half." My heart gave one leap, and then I felt cold. We hurried up stairs, ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... were neither men nor animals, and all faintly luminous. No one ever pretended to see human forms—always queer, huge things they could not properly describe. Sometimes the whole wood was lit up, and one fellow—he's still here and you shall see him—has a most circumstantial yarn about having seen great stars lying on the ground round the edge of ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... you are mine, not indeed by the ridiculous accident of birth (since to speak the truth I am an unmarried old sea-dog), but by the far higher and more honourable title of having been selected by me to hear this yarn. You know well enough that such a tale must be told to grandchildren, and since you undoubtedly possessed grandparents, and have been hired at a shilling an hour to listen to me, I have every right to address you as I did. Therefore I say, my grandchildren, attend to what ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... and concealed himself under the waters of a cascade called Franangursfors, where he employed himself in divining and circumventing whatever stratagems the AEsir might have recourse to in order to catch him. One day, as he sat in his dwelling, he took flax and yarn, and worked them into meshes in the manner that nets have since been made by fishermen. Odin, however, had descried his retreat out of Hlidskjalf, and Loki becoming aware that the gods were approaching, threw his net into the fire, and ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... and discussion here started, lasted the ladies for some time. Talk and business got full under weigh. Scissors and speeches, clipping and chattering, knitting and the interminable yarn of small talk. The affairs, sickness and health, of every family in the neighbourhood, with a large discussion of character and prospects by the way; going back to former history and antecedents, and forward to future probable ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... 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.
... had not fallen from the cliffs, if I had sustained my glorious position among the boys of Raxton and Graylingham as 'Fighting Hal.' I might never have won little Winifred's love. Here was a revelation of the mingled yarn of life, that I remember struck me ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... and lighting his pipe, "if you fellows like, I will spin you a yarn. I was telling one of you the other night about those three lions and how the lioness finished my unfortunate 'voorlooper,' Jim-Jim, the boy whom we buried ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... found the Fire-fish. So they threw the other fish back into the water, and Wainamoinen drew his knife and began to cut up the Fire-fish. Inside of the pike he found the trout, and inside of the trout the whiting, and on opening the whiting he came upon a ball of blue yarn. Wainamoinen quickly unwound the blue ball, and within that found a red ball, and when he had opened the red ball he came to the ball of ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind
... 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
... or doing laborious work, it was customary with The Lifter, as well as with our hero, to sit among the women and assist them in such offices as the peeling of turnips or potatoes; and holding the yarn skein whilst one of the women rolled the thread into a ball; or in scouring the knives and forks. One afternoon while all the men save The Lifter were absent, the group was seated round a small open fire. Hanging from the crane was a pot of fruit which ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... more careful this time. During the revising process "The Woman-Haters" has more than doubled in length and, let us hope, in accuracy. Even now it is, of course, not a novel, but merely a summer farce-comedy, a "yarn." And this, by the way, is all that it ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... diseases, and the dullness of our faculties, seem principally produced in this way, that flesh, or heavy, and, as I may say, too substantial food, overloads the stomach, is oppressive to the whole body, and generates a substance too dense, and spirits too obtuse. In a word, it is a yarn too coarse to be interwoven with the threads ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... the lad holds the ship in hand," said the oldest of all the seamen, who kept his gaze fastened on the proceedings of Wilder; "he is driving her through it in a mad manner, I will allow; but yet, so far, he has not parted a yarn." ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... freezing. Hurry up, so far. Afterwards there'll be a good yarn to tell in the sewer where the boys are, about what we did ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... running ahead of my yarn. We shared the hatch-cover between us. We took turn and turn about, one lying flat on the cover and resting, while the other, submerged to the neck, merely held on with his hands. For three days and nights, spell and spell, on the cover and ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... you hear of an old-time sea-fight? Would you learn who won by the light of the moon and stars? List to the yarn, as my grandmother's father the ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... short story, written by an Englishman who is regarded by a good many persons, competent to judge, as being the cleverest writer of English alive today. The story was beautifully done from the standpoint of composition; it bristled with flashing metaphors and whimsical phrasing. The scene of the yarn was supposed to be Chicago and naturally the principal figure in it was a millionaire. In one place the author has this person saying, "I reckon you'll feel pretty mean," and in another place, "I reckon I'm not ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... with spatter-work that the biggest brother had done, and with photographs and magazine pictures in splint frames. Over the front door was tacked the first yarn motto that the little girl had ever worked. It was faded, but her mother, though her eyes were dimming, could read the uneven line: "God Bless Our Home." The new cane-seated chairs were set about against the walls, and a bright blue cover ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... time there was a rich farmer who had a thrifty wife. She used to go out and gather all the little bits of wool which she could find on the hillsides, and bring them home. Then, after her family had gone to bed, she would sit up and card the wool and spin it into yarn, then she would weave the yarn into cloth to ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... Cockle," said I, "as Moonshine will be gone some time, suppose you spin us a yarn ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... wasn't of much account. I was neither dangerous, like Jim Cringle, nor good to eat, like a muskrat or a pickerel. So I don't appear any more in this yarn. If you find yourself wondering how I came to know about some of the things I'm going to tell you, just make believe I got it from the chickadee, who is the most confidential little chap in the world, or from the whisky-Jack, who makes a point, as you may have observed, of knowing everybody ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... winter and water freeze in summer. We have no more reverence for the sun than we have for a fish-tail gas-burner; we stare into his face with telescopes as at a ballet-dancer with opera-glasses; we pick his rays to pieces with prisms as if they were so many skeins of colored yarn; we tell him we do not want his company and shut him out like a troublesome vagrant. The gods of the old heathen are the servants of to-day. Neptune, Vulcan, Aolus, and the bearer of the thunderbolt himself have stepped down from their pedestals and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... on a brown woollen frock and a gingham high apron. Her skirt was straight and long. Her laced shoes only came to her ankles. Her stockings were black, and she remembered how she had watched these little girls coming down the street, their stockings were snowy white. Of course she wore white yarn ones on Sundays. A great piece of their pantalets was visible, ruffled, too. Yes, she did look queer! And the starch was mostly out of her sun-bonnet. It wasn't her best ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... the Wamsutta mills have become a corporation with a capital of three million dollars. The Potomska mills have accumulated a capital of fifteen hundred thousand, the Grinnell mill has eight hundred thousand, the Acushnet mill six hundred thousand, the Yarn mills three hundred thousand. In addition to these cotton mills other industries have sprung up, so that the total capital represented by the various corporations is over nine millions of dollars. Banking also proved profitable. Of the five national ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various
... suddenly drawing in his tentacles, upsetting his shell, and dropping to the bottom of the Lagoon, thus effectually cutting short any conversation. But this was only his way of protecting himself; after a time he grew bolder, and being a true sailor spun many a wonderful yarn ...
— How Sammy Went to Coral-Land • Emily Paret Atwater
... inmate of their house—and he assumed the office of my mentor. I stayed in Cairo, merely because he did, for some weeks, and went with him on the same boat to Jaffa. He, for some unknown reason—I suspect insanity—did not want me in Jerusalem just then; and, when we landed, spun me a strange yarn of how the people I had thought to visit were exceedingly eccentric and uncertain in their moods; and how it would be best for me to stop in Jaffa until he sent me word that I was sure of welcome. His story was entirely false, I found out later, ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... you didn't see him at all, as I understand the yarn. He was here alone with you, was ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... Deams' to wait, and when the round-up formed a solid line, they planned to stand outside, and see the sport. If they had been the foxes, maybe they wouldn't have thought it was so funny; but of course, people just couldn't have even their pigs and lambs taken. We had to have wool to spin yarn for our stockings, weave our blankets and coverlids, and our Sunday winter dresses of white flannel with narrow black crossbars were from the backs of our own sheep, and we had to have ham to fry with eggs, and boil for Sunday night suppers, and bacon to cook ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... all intercourse with the comb, hung matted upon his shoulders; a kind of mantle, or rather blanket, pinned with a wooden skewer round his neck, fell mid-leg down, concealing all his nether garments as far as a pair of hose, darned with yarn of all conceivable colors, and a pair of shoes, patched and repaired till nothing of the original structure remained, and clasped on his feet with two massy silver buckles. If the dress of the old man was rude and sordid, that of his grand-daughter was gay, and even ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... of the few that are left. But it is their own fault. There's nobody but themselves to blame. It's easy enough to keep from having the plague," Miss Penelope added confidently. "Anybody can keep from having it, if they will only take the trouble to blow real hard three times on a blue yarn ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... that the yarn that's going round about his having had a lot of m-money stolen in a country house? By ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to lie so outrageously in this yarn. My hero has killed more Indians on one war-trail than I have killed in all my life. But I understand this is what is expected in border tales. If you think the revolver and bowie-knife are used too freely, you may cut out a fatal shot ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... 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 phantom, whilst ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... women lie like the very devil. You just go and talk with her a bit about her first fall. She'll spin you such a yarn!" ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... out 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
... 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
... it was all due to that sneer of Elisha P. Bayne's. For while this was about as batty a business proposition as I ever had put up to me, this scheme of Millie's for hockin' her hubby, I'd got more or less int'rested in her yarn. And it struck me that a girl who'd done what she had wa'n't any quitter. Elisha puts on such a hard, cold sneer too; and comin' from this wise, foxy old near-plute who'd been playin' lead pipe cinches all his life, I expect, and never lettin' go of a nickel until he had ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... a crew overwhelmed with fever, almost persuades the captain to share the mate's illusion that 8 deg. 20'—The Shadow Line (DENT)—is possessed by the dead scoundrel. I found the book less interesting as a yarn than as an example of the astonishingly conscious and perfect artistry of this really great master of the ways of men and words. Mr. CONRAD never made me believe that the new captain would go so near sharing his mate's superstitious panic (which is perhaps because I know little ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... night's rest relieved us of our fatigue. The following morning, with a fair breeze and a six hours' sail, we reached our floating-home, and have ever since entertained the mess-table with the "yarn" of our adventures; until now the subject is beginning to be worn thread-bare. But, as the interior of the island of St. Antonio is one of the few regions of the earth as yet uncelebrated by voyagers and ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... 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 ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... knitting, one is making squares for the Belgian baby blankets, and the other a muffler for the Navy League. When I asked for volunteer knitters, one old colored man said, "Madam, my hands are not steady enough to knit, but I can hold the yarn for ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley
... went eight knots everything cracked aloft, and we tied our caps to our heads; but mostly she strolled on at the rate of three miles an hour. What could you expect? She was tired—that old ship. Her youth was where mine is—where yours is—you fellows who listen to this yarn; and what friend would throw your years and your weariness in your face? We didn't grumble at her. To us aft, at least, it seemed as though we had been born in her, reared in her, had lived in her for ages, had never known any other ship. I would just as soon have ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... right, so far as it goes," he admitted. "Fairly straight, for a Bayport yarn. It doesn't go far enough, ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... I so stung up about that book? Tell you fellows? Well, I don't mind knocking off a bit and giving you the yarn. That Bible belonged to Fenwick Major. Never heard of Fenwick Major! What blessed ignorant chickens you must be! Where ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... weary pund, the weary pund, [pound] The weary pund o' tow; [yarn] I think my wife will end her life Before she spin ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... captain. "We don't know who's watching us. I didn't have much trouble in running the Yankee blockade at Vera Cruz. I brought a cargo from New York, just as if it had been sent from Liverpool, but I've had to prove that I'm not an American ever since I came ashore. Spin us your yarn as we walk along." ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... say so, we admit it," I told him. "Go ahead with your story. What do you want us to do? Light a camp-fire so you can unravel your yarn?" ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... package over, we saw that some one had twisted a piece of dirty grey paper (evidently wrapping-paper from the grocer's shop) about the rope yarn which kept the roll secure. Mrs Cottier noticed it first. "Oh," she cried, "there's a letter, too. I wonder if it's ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... proceeeded to cut slits in the flippers and lash them together with rope-yarn, the animal being thus placed hors de combat. The march was again taken up, and soon another track was found, but the eggs had been laid and the game was gone. An attempt to find this nest showed the cunning displayed by these clumsy creatures. Naturally, the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... to Bastable's view of Andrews's luck—all at least except Barmer, who was a little nettled at having his story eclipsed. "I can believe the yarn about the shell," he said, "but the butter story is a bit thick, and all ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various
... two books of yours—or rather Bob read them to me," Doris said presently. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself for writing such a preposterous yarn as 'The Worm'." ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... a vulgar fraud. Schiller evidently began the novel in no very strenuous frame of mind. He wished to profit by the popular interest in tales of mysterious charlatanry which had been aroused by the exploits of Cagliostro. So he set out to spin a yarn in that vein, but he had no definite plan and did not himself know where he would bring up. The literary merits of 'The Ghostseer', Schiller's most noteworthy attempt in prose fiction, will come up for ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... say you did," she observed. "Well, if you'd like to hear the whole yarn, how I come to suspect him and all, I can ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... them, and laid on the board many dainties, giving freely of such things as she had by her. And the mother of Telemachus sat over against him by the pillar of the hall, leaning against a chair, and spinning the slender threads from the yarn. And they stretched forth their hands upon the good cheer set before them. Now when they had put from them the desire of meat and drink, the wise ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... 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 while ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... of my pet, and would curl its long wool over a stick, Finally, it was killed by an angry cow. I have a pair of little stockings, knitted of yarn spun from the lamb's wool, the heels of which have been raveled out and given ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... I took two travelling-tumblers out of my portmanteau, and, filling one of them, set it before the staff-captain. He sipped his tea and said, as if speaking to himself, "Yes, many a one!" This exclamation gave me great hopes. Your old Caucasian officer loves, I know, to talk and yarn a bit; he so rarely succeeds in getting a chance to do so. It may be his fate to be quartered five years or so with his company in some out-of-the-way place, and during the whole of that time he will not hear "good morning" ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... spinning into thread, for cotton thread there was none, excepting, possibly, a little of very poor quality in small skeins. The small wheel that we see in the far corner of the garret—just like Marguerite's—was used for spinning the fine thread. A larger wheel was used to spin the tow into yarn for the coarse clothing for boys and negroes or for "filling" in the coarser linens. All the boys, and very often the men—perhaps even our M.C. himself—wore in summer trousers made of linen cloth, for which the yarn was spun at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... large Legs, and heavy in his Going. He had on, when he went away, a felt Hat, a white knit Cap, striped with red and blue, white Shirt, and neck-cloth, a brown coloured Jacket, almost new, a frieze Coat, of a dark Colour, grey yarn Stockings, leather Breeches, trimmed with black, and round to'd Shoes. Whoever shall apprehend the said runaway Servant, and him safely convey to his above said Master, at the blue Ball, in Union street, Boston, shall ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... I hate to give out the yarn to them. It was another story in my day! I'd have caught it finely from my master for work like that. The business was carried on in different style then. A man had to know his trade—that's the last thing that's thought of ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... then cover the hills with fine earth and manure. The hops must be kept free from weeds and the ground mellow by hoeing often through the season, and hills of earth gradually raised around the vines during the summer. The vines must be assisted in running on the poles with woolen yarn, suffering them to run with the sun. By the last of August, or the first of September, the hops will be ripe, and fit to gather. This may be easily known by their colour changing, and having a fragrant smell; their seed grows ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... managed the Mount Vernon household, but she looked after the spinning of yarn, the weaving of cloth and the making of clothing for the family and for the great horde of slaves. At times, particularly during the Revolution and the non-importation days that preceded it, she had as many as sixteen spinning-wheels in operation at once. The work was done in a special spinning ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... 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
... we can get into the 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 no longer their ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... A yarn in the London Times, June 22, 1844: that some workmen, quarrying rock, close to the Tweed, about a quarter of a mile below Rutherford Mills, discovered a gold thread embedded in the stone at a depth of 8 feet: that a piece of the gold thread had been sent to the ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... "Of course, he didn't know me, and I hadn't a very good chance to introduce myself. He was jabbering with a lot of other Spaniards on a corner, with his caramba and his como esta usted, so that I didn't feel like going up to him with a yarn about a baby's shoe. Which way he went I don't know, for I had to ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... from the great chimney-place genially played over the huddled confusion of the room and the brown logs of the wall, where the gigantic shadows of the three men mimicked their every gesture with grotesque exaggeration. The rainbow yarn on the warping bars, the strings of red-pepper hanging from the ceiling, the burnished metallic flash from the guns on their racks of deer antlers, served as incidents in the monotony of the alternate yellow flicker and brown shadow. Deep under the blaze ...
— His "Day In Court" - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... to Dave's party that he "seen what you coves was up to," and that's why he called the inspector back. But he told them that after they had told their yarn—which was a mistake. ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... the satrapies and royal roads of Persia. As a rule, his information is as accurate as could be expected at such an early date, and he rarely tells marvellous stories, or if he does, he points out himself their untrustworthiness. Almost the only traveller's yarn which Herodotus reports without due scepticism is that of the ants of India that were bigger than foxes and burrowed out gold ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... Mrs. Wright's charities too. Livingstone remembered the note the preacher had written him afterwards—it had rather jarred on him, it was so grateful. He hated "gush," he said to himself; he did not want to be bothered with details of yarn-gloves, flannel petticoats, and toys. He took out his pencil and wrote Mrs. Wright's name on the stub. That also should be charged to Mrs. Wright. He carried in his mind the total amount of the contributions, and ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... luxury in her outlay. Oliver's eye meanwhile wandered over her figure and costume—a costume he had never seen before on any living woman, certainly not any woman around Kennedy Square. The cloth skirt came to her ankles, which were covered with yarn stockings, and her feet were encased in shoes that gave him the shivers, the soles being as thick as his own and the leather as tough. (Sue Clayton would have died with laughter had she seen those shoes.) Her blouse was of gray flannel, belted to the waist by a cotton ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Our sanitary engineers have set us to drinking out of sharp-edged paper cups and we blot our faces instead of wiping them. Twine is spun of paper and furniture made of the twine, a rival of rattan. Cloth and matting woven of paper yarn are being used for burlap and grass in the making of ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... 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 have ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... doubtless an old "yarn," repeated from generation to generation. We find in a Chinese work quoted by Amyot: "The palace of the king (of Japan) is remarkable for its singular construction. It is a vast edifice, of extraordinary height; ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... a river up to the top, and the river of God's help flows through the valley and seeks the lowest levels. Faith and self-despair are the upper and the under sides of the same thing, like some cunningly-woven cloth, the one side bearing a different pattern from the other, and yet made of the same yarn, and the same threads passing from the upper to the under sides. So faith and self-distrust are but two names for one ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... consecutive sobriety, and which said speculation he never failed to wind up by the total loss of the capital for Nancy, and the capital loss of a broken head for himself. Ned had eternally some bargain on his hands: at one time you might see him a yarn-merchant, planted in the next market-town upon the upper step of Mr. Birney's hall-door, where the yarn-market was held, surrounded by a crowd of eager country-women, anxious to give Ned the preference, first, ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... 1789-1800.—As soon as the new government with its wide powers was established, manufacturing started into life. Old mills were set to work. While the Revolution had been going on in America, great improvements in the spinning of yarn and the weaving of cloth had been made in England. Parliament made laws to prevent the export from England of machinery or patterns of machinery. But it could not prevent Englishmen from coming to America. Among the recent immigrants to the United States was Samuel Slater. He brought no patterns ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing
... comparison. About the time of the Reformation the day preceding Yule was a day of general preparation. Houses were cleaned out and borrowed articles were returned to their owners. Work of all kind was stopped, and a general appearance of completion of work was established; yarn was reeled off, no lint was allowed to remain on the rock of the wheel, and all work implements were laid aside. In the evening cakes were baked, one for each person, and duly marked, and great care was taken that ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... the board show that in this industry the actual manufacturing cost, aside from the question of the price of materials, is much higher in this country than it is abroad; that in the making of yarn and cloth the domestic woolen or worsted manufacturer has in general no advantage in the form of superior machinery or more efficient labor to offset the higher wages paid in this country The findings show that the cost of turning ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft
... a yarn once, your honour," said Sam Mason, "about a white shark. I mean," he added, nodding at Mr. Mole respectfully, "a squally cockylorium—a blessed rum name for a shark— as devoured all his family for dinner, supped off a Sunday school ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... any one sing, or tell a yarn, or whistle a tune, or dance a jig?" said "Bill" in a muffled tone. "If some one does not start some kind of excitement I will go to sleep in my tracks, and Doctor 'Gangway' says I mustn't sleep out of doors." His speech ended in a fit of coughing ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... 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 ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... receiving them from the hand of nature employs them to proper purposes; thus the earth, or the sea, or something else ought to supply them with provisions, and this it is the business of the master of the family to manage properly; for it is not the weaver's business to make yarn, but to use it, and to distinguish what is good and useful from what is bad and of no service; and indeed some one may inquire why getting money should be a part of economy when the art of healing is not, ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... I am 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 on ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... 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 ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... thousand dollars, and Kelly has a bag of sovereigns, or my eyes never saw salt water."—"And the girl," said a third voice, which Mr. Kelly knew to be the steward's—"and the girl did not jingle her bag for nothing the other day, when she walked by me: something there, or my head 's a ball of spun-yarn." ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... come in, Nancy? Why, you dear woman, if you had stayed away five minutes longer I should have gone for you myself. What! Another skein of yarn?" ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... story-teller does not? A cold and critical man like the professor froze the spring of narration at its source. Besides, Renmark had an objectionable habit of tracing the recital to its origin; it annoyed Yates to tell a modern yarn, and then discover that Aristophanes, or some other prehistoric poacher on the good things men were to say, had forestalled him by a thousand years or so. When a man is quick to see the point of your stories, and laughs heartily at them, you are apt to form a high opinion ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... and he heard his son chuckle again. He had certainly caught a tartar—possibly two. With a twisted smile he recalled the old yarn of the hunter who caught the bear by the tail. Willing to let go, ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... sing me the befitting corner of perdition for the man who sitteth in the house in his stockinged feet. Sisters of Patience who by reason of ties or duty have endured it in silk, yarn, cotton, lisle thread or woollen—does not the new ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... will clearly convey to the reader the way in which the smack was fitted up with concealments. The letters A and A indicate two portions of the deck planking, each portion being about a couple of feet long. These were movable, and fitted into their places with a piece of spun-yarn laid into the seams, and over this was laid some putty blackened on the top. At first sight they appeared to be part of the solid planking of the deck, but on obtaining a chisel they were easily removed. There ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... into the tapestry of our little boudoir. Within, fronting the window, stands the large spinning-wheel, one end adorned with a snowy pile of fleecy rolls,—and beside it, a reel and a basket of skeins of yarn,—and open, with its face down on the beam of the wheel, lay always a book, with which the intervals of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... Agency, sir. I found out before my wedding that one of their men had been hanging about here, so I chummed up to him. I spun him a yarn how I'd been with Hawke's once, and they gave me the bag, and I wasn't satisfied, and he'd got a lot of grievances against Hawke's, too, he had. We got very friendly. Pity I had to leave the thing for my wedding. But I came back after ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... young woman to dream that she works with yarn, foretells that she will be proudly recognized by a worthy man ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... the girl's heart was like to break, and over and over and over again like to break, so she cracked the last nut—the hazel nut—and out of it came the most wonderful wee, wee, wee-est woman reeling away at yarn as fast ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... and the Brahman began the whole story over again, not missing a single detail, and spinning as long a yarn as possible. ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... amusing stories told in the family of cousin Betty's adventures, one of which I will relate here. She was at one time making one of her long visits at Mr. Wharton's, when, getting out of yarn, and not being willing to remain long idle, she began to worry about some way to get over to the village. The horses were all out at work upon the farm, except Old Prancer, a superannuated old horse, ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... pay! But ye don't think o' bringin' him HERE in this house? 'Cept you're thinkin' o' tellin' him that yarn o' yours about the hoss trade to beguile the winter evenings. I told ye ye'd hev to pay yet to get folks to listen ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... with a sufferer, passing a friendly word of encouragement, or spinning some droll old yarn to cheer up another, ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... Turkey manufactured much of her cotton, and she exported cotton-yarn. Such was the case so recently as 1798, as will be seen by the following very interesting account of one of the seats ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... seen mittens knit with a hook something like that. Not open work and fancy, but all tight and out of good stout yarn. They're very lasting." ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... is that old fool who told us a long yarn about your being lords in disguise? I am ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... putting blue and red yarn In my white net as I knit; And I work in my embroidery White wool where it doth ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... machinery can scarcely be realized. It is reckoned that fifty men with modern machinery could do all the cotton-spinning of the whole of Lancashire a century ago. Mr. Leone Levi has calculated that to make by hand all the yarn spun in England in one year by the use of the self-acting mule, would take 100,000,000 men. The instruments which work this wonderful change are called "labour-saving" machinery. From this title it may be deemed that their first object, or at any rate their chief effect, would be to lighten labour. ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... many days for gathering and shearing sheep and lambs: for ferrying cattle from island to island, and other distant places, and several days for going on distant errands: so many pounds of wool to be spun into yarn. And over and above all this, they must lend their aid upon any unforeseen occurrence whenever they are called on. The constant service of two months at once is performed at the proper season in making kelp. On the whole, this ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... 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 ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... old Wiggins, I hopes I may go as well at the end. I don't think I ever told you about him, and if you'll let him fill 'em up ag'in—for it's one of the vartues of hot rum that the more you drinks the thirstier you gits—I'll reel you the yarn right off. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... came tearing along and put its chilly, icy, clammy clamps on the nose of Henry Hagglyhoagly, fastening the clamps like a nipping, gripping clothes pin on his nose. He put his wool yarn mittens up on his nose and rubbed till the wind took off the chilly, icy, clammy clamps. His nose was warm again; he said, "Thank you, mittens, for keeping my ...
— Rootabaga Stories • Carl Sandburg
... of our life is of mingled yarn, good and ill together," says Shakespeare. It behooves us therefore to find the good and to make the best of the ill. Two men were falling from an aeroplane. "I'll bet you five dollars," said one, "that I hit ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... comb used in connection with the loom. It is provided with teeth about one inch long; these teeth are placed between the perpendicular threads and with the hand brought down firmly on the cross-threads or yarn until it is perfectly compact. The blankets woven in this manner are water-tight. This comb ...
— Illustrated Catalogue Of The Collections Obtained From The Indians Of New Mexico And Arizona In 1879 • James Stevenson
... untwisted; but as the yarns were found to be too thick for our purpose, it became necessary to pick them into oakham; and when this was done, the most difficult part of the work remained; for this oakham could not be spun into yarn, till, by combing, it was brought into hemp, its original state. This was not seamen's work, and if it had, we should have been at a loss how to perform it for want of combs; one difficulty therefore arose upon another, and it was necessary to make combs, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... suggested Dick, who had calmly smoked his cigar throughout the colonel's animated recital, "that that kidnaping yarn sounds a little improbable? Is n't ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... coming down and raging in his blue yarn socks to the janitor, 'should I be turned out of me comfortable apartments to lay in the dirty grass like a rabbit? 'Tis like Jerome to stir up trouble wid small matters like ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... being copied; and over the tomb was spread a pall of silk, striped in red, green, and white, but much faded. Against a pillar, which supports the roof, were hung rows of coloured rags and threads of yarn, with snail-shells and sea-shells strung among them by way of further ornament. A wooden bowl, at one end of the tomb, was probably intended to receive alms for the support of the devotee who claims the ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... petroleum products, chemicals, transport equipment, iron and steel, machinery, textile yarn ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... lowly, Eyes with weeping nearly blind; Pessyeh-Tsvaitel, slowly, slowly, With the yarn creeps on behind. ...
— Songs of Labor and Other Poems • Morris Rosenfeld
... I want to revenge the injury which you have inflicted upon my friend Burley, and I also want to get a few pounds to pay me for the trouble I have taken in his behalf; so just heave ahead and shell out the shiners, and then we'll spin a yarn 'bout other affairs. ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... as night approached a sense of mystery and discomfort overhung the vessel. The man at the wheel got nervous, and flattered Bill into keeping him company by asking him to spin him a yarn. He had good reason for believing that he knew his comrade's stock of stories by heart, but in the sequel it transpired that there was one, of a prisoner turning into a cat and getting out of the porthole ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... too, to attract the Pettybaw weans, who steal in on wet days and sit on the floor playing with the thrums, or with bits of coloured ravellings. Sometimes when they have proved themselves wise and prudent little virgins, they are even allowed to touch the hanks of pink and yellow and blue yarn that lie in rainbow-hued confusion ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the Line withal, and other hot Countries, because they will stand, when others will melt, by the excessive Heat, down in the Binacles. Ever-green Oak, two sorts; Gall-Berry-Tree, bearing a black Berry, with which the Women dye their Cloaths and Yarn black; 'tis a pretty Ever-green, and very plentiful, growing always in low swampy Grounds, and amongst Ponds. We have a Prim or Privet, which grows on the dry, barren, sandy Hills, by the Sound side; ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... in a smash-up'? No,'twar done In a sort o' legitimate way; He got it a-trying to save a gal Up yar on the road last May. I heven't much time for to spin you the yarn, For we pull out at two-twenty-five— Just wait till I climb up an' toss in some coal, So's to keep ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... a rude tripod; this they swung to and fro to the tune of a weird Kurdish song. Behind one of the tents, on a primitive weaving-machine, some of them were making tent-roofing and matting. Others still were walking about with a ball of wool in one hand and a distaff in the other, spinning yarn. The flocks stood round about, bleating and lowing, or chewing their cud in quiet contentment. All seemed very domestic and peaceful except the Kurdish dogs, which set upon us with loud, fierce growls and ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... smoked for a while with closed eyes. I sat thoughtful and silent until he roused himself with a slight effort: "Draw a chair for your feet, Frank, and take a fresh cigar: you'll find them very mild. Go to sleep if I get prosy when fairly wound off on my yarn. I am going to begin at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... at his ignoring silence she appeared to receive it as a natural thing. If any word at all were uttered by the little group, it was an occasional whisper of the woman to the child—a tiny girl in short clothes and blue boots of knitted yarn—and the murmured babble of the ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... 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, ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... did. Besides, this is fairly my task—you won't deny that. Chadlands will be mine, some day, so it's up to me to knock this musty yarn on the head once and for all. Could anything be more absurd than shutting up a fine room like that? I'm really ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... maple, wych elm, and sallow, and the rough butts, when sawn off before the sharping, supplied the firing for the boiling. Green ash is splendid for burning: "The ash when green is fuel for a Queen." Later, when I adopted a Kentish system of hop-growing on coco-nut yarn supported by steel wire on heavy larch poles, our visits to the woods were less frequent, and much wear and tear of horses and waggons was saved. Some of our journeys, in the earlier days, took us to the estate of the Duc d'Aumale, on the Worcester side ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... for information! However, there's some excuse for him. Translated into Rosemont language it means that you go to the laundry and put a ball of yarn into the ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... cable, etc., formed of braided or twisted strands. In making a rope or line the fibres (A, Fig. 1) of hemp, jute, cotton, or other material are loosely twisted together to form what is technically known as a "yarn" (B, Fig. 1). When two or more yarns are twisted together they form a "strand" (C, Fig. 1). Three or more strands form a rope (D, Fig. 1), and three ropes form a cable (E, Fig. 1). To form a strand the yarns are twisted together in the opposite direction ...
— Knots, Splices and Rope Work • A. Hyatt Verrill
... Anybody would sooner have a yarn with Geisner. We'll fix some boating when you're down again. You'll come again. Won't he, Nellie? Good-bye and a pleasant trip! Good-bye, Nellie." And having shaken hands by dint of much arm stretching, George pushed his boat away from ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... appeared at the close of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, especially in England. The expanded trade and commerce of England had made such a demand for economic goods that it stimulated invention of new processes of production. The spinning of yarn became an important industry. It was a slow process, and could not supply the {436} weavers so that they could keep their looms in operation. Moreover, Kay introduced what is known as the drop-box and flying shuttle in 1738, which favored weaving ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... some very amusing stories told in the family of cousin Betty's adventures, one of which I will relate here. She was at one time making one of her long visits at Mr. Wharton's, when, getting out of yarn, and not being willing to remain long idle, she began to worry about some way to get over to the village. The horses were all out at work upon the farm, except Old Prancer, a superannuated old horse, who was never used ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... remember everything when he is all wrapped in his own business and everybody trying to meddle with it?" grumbled Candage. He fumbled in his pocket and produced a knife. He slashed away the rope yarn which lashed the marlinespike. "If you can talk sense I'll help you do it! I reckon you can holler all you want to now. Them dudes can't find their own mouths in a fog, much less ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... sweet 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 ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... Thomas, don't fancy that your diligence in cutting off legs and arms can be an excuse for cutting yours truly in this heartless manner. Not having a letter of yours to answer, I don't know how I shall scrape up material enough for a yarn. There was a big football-match on Saturday, and Jim and I were in it. You should have seen me turning somersaults, and butting my head into the fellows' stomachs. Jim and I got shoulder to shoulder once in the game. ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... 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 ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... have, while telling the story of my life, to relate more serious events, I will, after recounting one more yarn, not weary my readers with the little uninteresting details of my youthful adventures, but pass over the next three years or so, at which time, after having returned to England, I was appointed to another ship going to South America, ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... to cut slits in the flippers and lash them together with rope-yarn, the animal being thus placed hors de combat. The march was again taken up, and soon another track was found, but the eggs had been laid and the game was gone. An attempt to find this nest showed the cunning displayed by these clumsy creatures. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... the dare-devil. What a detective he'd 'a' made, wouldn't he, if he'd only a-turned his attention that way, and been on the side of the law instead of against it? He walked in bold as brass, sat down and talked with the superintendent over some cock-and-bull yarn about a 'Black Hand' letter that he said had been sent to him, and asked if he couldn't have police protection whilst he was in town. It wasn't until after he'd left that the superintendent he sees a note on the chair where the blighter ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... old man was floored, of course; but his only way of carrying the thing through was to play the martyr, and tell the story that for a year somebody had been writing to him daily or weekly over the name of Abbot. What a very improbable yarn, Putnam! Just think for yourself. What man would be apt to do that sort of thing? What object could he have? Why, the doctor himself well realized what a transparent fiction it must appear, and away he slips by the night train the moment he gets back. And now our friend, the landlord, ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... fractured portion of the deck, and barking out his indignation at the ruinous condition in which he found his marine home. Oscar had made eleven voyages in the Anne, and had twice saved the life of the captain. He was an ugly specimen of the Scotch terrier, and greatly resembled a bundle of old rope-yarn; but a more faithful or attached creature I never saw. The captain was not a little jealous of Oscar's friendship for me. I was the only person the dog had ever deigned to notice, and his master regarded it as an act of treason on the part of his four-footed favourite. When my arms ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... follow his track. She took up his trail where she had last seen him leave the camp. This she followed until she reached the so-called bandicoot's nest. Here his tracks disappeared, and nowhere could she find a sign of his having returned from this place. She felt in the hole with her yarn stick, and soon felt that there was something large there in the water. She cut a forked stick and tried to raise the body and get it out, for she felt sure it must be her son. But she could not raise it; stick after stick broke in the effort. ...
— Australian Legendary Tales - Folklore of the Noongahburrahs as told to the Piccaninnies • K. Langloh Parker
... he heard his son chuckle again. He had certainly caught a tartar—possibly two. With a twisted smile he recalled the old yarn of the hunter who caught the bear by the tail. Willing to ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... butler's face. "Well, seein' as I'm gettin' along in life, you must be a good way parst the meridian, if yer don't mind my sayin' so.... Funny thing, on the way down I run across a chap wot's visitin' pals in this 'ere village, and 'e pulls me the strangest yarn as ever a body 'eard. Summink to do wiv flames it were—Frozen Flames or icicles or frost of some kind. But 'e was so full up of mystery that there weren't no gettin' nuffin out er' im. Any one 'ere tell me the story? 'E fair got ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... those tailings by simply running them through the screens again and losing half the gold, we can build a proper roasting farnaoe, and then we can grind them, keeping the stampers for crushing alone. This morning I had a long yarn with Ah San, the boss Chinaman, and he is willing to let us have as many of his men as we want for twenty-five shillings a week each, and indenture them to me for six months—there's the labour we want, right to our hand. It's cheap labour, I admit, but that is no concern of ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke
... such articles as England wanted, to be transported to that country and other countries belonging to Great Britain. The colonists were permitted to ship to foreign markets such products only as English merchants did not want. They were prohibited from selling abroad any wool, yarn, or woolen manufactured goods. This was done to keep the markets open for British wool and manufactures. Another law declared that no iron wares of any kind should be manufactured here. Thus was it attempted to ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young
... Kate was debarred 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 persevered ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... Short, 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
... something I never could account for, but it's true as truth. I've known more such cases; some folks laughs at me for believing 'em,—'the cap'n's yarns,' they calls 'em,—but if you'll notice, everybody's got some yarn of that kind they do believe, if they won't believe yours. And there's a good deal happens in the world that's myster'ous. Now there was Widder Oliver Pinkham, over to the P'int, told me with her own lips that she—" But just here we saw the captain's expression alter suddenly, ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... almost the only office she performed at first, since Grisell had to dress her, and teach her to keep herself in a tolerable state of neatness, and likewise how to spin, luring her with the hope of spinning yarn for a new dress for herself. As to prayers, her mind was a mere blank, though she said something that sounded like a spell except that it began with "Pater." She did not know who made her, and entirely believed in Niord and Rana, the storm-gods of Norseland. Yet she had always been ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dismiss the only reference this document appears to make to your brother as a mere coincidence in names, but what you have told me makes things interesting—by Jove, it does, though. Well, here's the yarn ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... enormous increase of wealth-producing power given by the new machinery can scarcely be realized. It is reckoned that fifty men with modern machinery could do all the cotton-spinning of the whole of Lancashire a century ago. Mr. Leone Levi has calculated that to make by hand all the yarn spun in England in one year by the use of the self-acting mule, would take 100,000,000 men. The instruments which work this wonderful change are called "labour-saving" machinery. From this title it may be deemed ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... adjutant brought a small whip made of cotton, which consisted of a number of strands and knotted at the ends; but these knots were all cut off by the adjutant before the drummer took it, which made it not worse than to have been whipped with cotton yarn. ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... your Paw will be happy to give you pleasure, and you know how glad he is to have young people visiting here, rather than having you leave home to visit others," remarked Mrs. Brewster, slowly drawing the yarn through a ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... But ye don't think o' bringin' him HERE in this house? 'Cept you're thinkin' o' tellin' him that yarn o' yours about the hoss trade to beguile the winter evenings. I told ye ye'd hev to pay yet to get folks to listen ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... is necessary to produce a work of art is to take a drummer's story and tell it in dusty English, we might try our luck with the modern smoking-car yarn about the traveling-man who came to the country hotel late at night, and see how far we can get with it in the manner of James Branch Cabell ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... been unmasked as a vulgar fraud. Schiller evidently began the novel in no very strenuous frame of mind. He wished to profit by the popular interest in tales of mysterious charlatanry which had been aroused by the exploits of Cagliostro. So he set out to spin a yarn in that vein, but he had no definite plan and did not himself know where he would bring up. The literary merits of 'The Ghostseer', Schiller's most noteworthy attempt in prose fiction, will come ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... being very small in person, he did not consider that a man four times as big required twice as much rum to keep his sluggish frame in the same degree of good spirits. He held out against his crew for two days, during which time they never one of them so much as lifted a spun-yarn. The weather was, be sure, very mild and pleasant. I confess, however, that I was very uneasy, under the idea that we might all perish, from the obstinacy of the crew, on one side, and the firmness of the little man on the other. Our captain found that his government was democratical; and perceiving ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... portion of my story is at an end. My poor patient, sicker than she had been the night before, left me but little leisure for thought or action disconnected with my care for her. But towards morning she grew quieter, and finding in an open drawer those tangled threads of yarn of which I have spoken, I began to rewind them, out of a natural desire to see everything neat and orderly about me. I had nearly finished my task when I heard a strange noise from the bed. It was a sort of gurgling cry which I found hard to interpret, but which only ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... either red or blue, lined with baize, and having regimental cuffs; and a waistcoat and breeches of baize. The suit is ornamented with orris lace. He is also presented with a white orris shirt; his stockings are of yarn, one of them red, the other blue, and tied below the knee with worsted garters; his Indian shoes are sometimes put on, but he frequently walks in his stocking feet; his hat is coarse, and bedecked with three ostrich feathers ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... three of his companions. Once, when two men were drowned in a deep part of the river, Metcalf was sent for to dive for them, which he did, and brought up one of the bodies at the fourth diving: the other had been carried down the stream. He thus also saved a manufacturer's yarn, a large quantity of which had been carried by a sudden flood into a deep hole under the High Bridge. At home, in the evenings, he learnt to play the fiddle, and became so skilled on the instrument, that he was shortly able ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... see whether walking or driving through Salisbury. Although by no means a large erection, it formed one of the most striking objects in the city, and a more beautiful piece of Gothic architecture it would be difficult to imagine. It was formerly called the Yarn Market, and was said to have been erected about the year 1378 by Sir Lawrence de St. Martin as a penance for some breach of ecclesiastical law. It consisted of six arches forming an open hexagon, supported by six columns on heavy foundations, with a central pillar square at the bottom ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... please." "I don't think he wants you to know what he have been having happen to him, but I can't keep from telling you 'cause I'm tickled clean to my funny bone. Dave Hanks come over here at daylight wanting a doctor quick, and I had a cramp in my leg what I forgot to tie a yarn string around before I went to bed, so I had to let Tom hurry on over there 'count of the push they was in. Then I got to studying it over and while I knewed how Tom had had a lot of practice in such things in a hospital, I thought it was just as well to let him get a little Harpeth experience ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... explained the journalist, "—the jam and the break, and all this magnificent struggle afterwards. It makes a great yarn. I feel tempted sometimes to help it out a little—artistically, you know—but of course that wouldn't do. She'd make a ripping yarn, though, if I could get up some motive outside mere trade rivalry for the blowing up of ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... cost him much. Nellie Craig had them for a while after Cordelia died. Good old soul, Nellie. But her tongue hung in the middle and worked both ways like a bell-clapper. I always blamed her for the start of the miser yarn. Adam managed to get it over on her ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... commodities: textiles (garments, cotton cloth, and yarn), rice, leather, sports goods, and carpets ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... sorry you've got to be homing, Though I grant it's unwise to continue your roaming, But the evening's to spare ere you drop me astern, So come up to my room and indulge in a yarn. ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... 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 ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... mind like his. Well worth knowing too, both to the man and to the future creator of character, were those brave hardy sons of toil who did the rough work of his firm's harbours and lighthouses; and many a good yarn he must have heard them spin as he stood side by side with them on some solid block of granite, or on some outlying headland, or chatted and smoked with the captain and the sailors of The Pharos as she made ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... great manufacturing town, like Manchester to-day, and Bruges a busy port, like modern Antwerp or Liverpool. All this prosperity was largely dependent upon England, for it was from there that the Flemish manufacturers procured the fine, long wool which they wove on their looms into cloth and spun into yarn. In 1336 the count of Flanders, perhaps at Philip's suggestion, ordered the imprisonment of all the Englishmen in Flanders. Edward promptly retaliated by prohibiting the export of wool from England and the importation of cloth. At the same time he protected and encouraged the Flemish ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... safe in Terrence's hands," had been Dick's mock apology. "A pair of Irishmen, you know. I'd forgot Terrence was case- hardened. Do you know, after he said good night to you, he came up to me for a yarn. And he was steady as a rock. He mentioned casually of having had several sips, so I... I... never dreamed ... er... that he had ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... branch of it, however, to which this remark does not apply. The art of cotton-spinning and cotton-weaving struck deep root in Russian soil. After remaining for generations in the condition of a cottage industry—the yarn being distributed among the peasants and worked up by them in their own homes—it began, about 1825, to be modernised. Though it still required to be protected against foreign competition, it rapidly outgrew the necessity for direct ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... though he was on a steamboat excursion in rough weather. The boy took the pipe by the tail, and the tobacco paper in his other hand, and went out, and soon returned with a heavy blanket coat on, a pair of felt boots, and a toboggan knit-cap, and a pair of yarn mittens on, though it was late in July, and the weather was quite hot. Uncle Ike looked at him in wonder, as though he was not sure but it was winter, and he was so ill as not to know that summer and fall had passed ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... outworn elders were with them, some on foot, some riding on oxen and asses. In their forefront went the two signs of the Battle-shaft and the War-spear. But moreover, in front of all was borne a great staff with the cloth of a banner wrapped round about it, and tied up with a hempen yarn that it ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... "the three," as the youngest were called in the councils of their elders. So a name was printed by Santa Claus on a large red card and pinned upon each receptacle, FLOSSY or LAURA, while all were willing to accept of his bounties contained within, even if they did not recognize yarn or knitting as familiar. Matty hurried back with their treasures. She brought from her own room the large red tickets, already prepared, and then, on the floor by her mother's bedside, assorted the innumerable parcels, ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... performed that office, it would exceedingly depreciate them. * * * In the winter season, the women gather buffalo's hair, a sort of coarse, brown, curled wool; and having spun it as fine as they can, and properly doubled it, they put small beads of different colours upon the yarn, as they work it, the figures they work in those small webs, are generally uniform, but sometimes they diversify them on both sides. The Choktah weave shot-pouches which have raised work inside and outside. They likewise make turkey feather blankets with the long feathers of the neck and ...
— Prehistoric Textile Art of Eastern United States • William Henry Holmes
... the paddles. It's many's the time I shot the self-same riffle before, and it's many's the time after, but niver a wink of the same have I seen. 'Twas the sight of a lifetime.' 'Do tell!' dryly commented Bettles. 'D'ye think I'd b'lieve such a yarn? I'd ruther say the glister of light'd gone to your eyes, and the snap of the air to your tongue.' ''Twas me own eyes that beheld it, an' if Sitka Charley was here, he'd be the lad to back me.' 'But facts is facts, an' they ain't no gettin' round 'em. It ain't in the nature of things for the water ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... 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 ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... Sir Peter Warren, who receives with him the enemy's submission, is a rough and haughty English seaman, greedy of fame, but despising those who have won it for him. Pressing forward to the portal, sword in hand, comes a comical figure in a brown suit, and blue yarn stockings, with a huge frill sticking forth from his bosom, to which the whole man seems an appendage this is that famous worthy of Plymouth County, who went to the war with two plain shirts and a ruffled one, and is now ...
— Biographical Sketches - (From: "Fanshawe and Other Pieces") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... his return from California, the tangled web of my yarn began to unravel. Mat Bailey had reported that nothing had been heard of the highwaymen "from that day to this." But John Keeler's work had not been done in vain. O'Leary of You Bet, the Nevada City jail-bird, had been duly impressed with the handsome reward offered for ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... late nineteenth century teenager's book, and if you like that sort of thing you will enjoy it too, for it is what used to be called a crackingly good yarn. ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... summoned all my strength, and called out long before we floated past her Anderson reading the Bible to Jack Anderson reading the news of the Battle of the Nile Jack's Father landing after the Battle of the Nile Jack in Nanny's Room Jack and Bramble aboard the Indiaman The Fore-peak Yarn "How's her head, Tom?" Bramble saving Bessie Jack heaving the lead Nanny relating her story Jack and his Father under the Colonnade A Surprise Bramble and Jack carried into a French Port The Leith Smack and the Privateer ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... 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 ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... we can sell the cow for any thing at all to Mr. Dennis, since his eye is set upon her, better let him have her mother, dear; and that and my yarn, which Mrs. Garraghty says she'll allow me for, will make up the rent—and Brian need not talk of America. But it must be in golden guineas, the agent will take the rent no other way; and you won't get a guinea for less than five shillings. Well, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... and I daresay there are a good many others who will recollect all about it as well as myself. But to explain the matter properly I must go back a little in my dates; for, instead of Callao at the commencement of my yarn, you must read Calabar. ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... more 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 ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... staring at me up to this point, leaning forward on their benches, for sailors are nearly as fond of a good yarn as they are of tobacco; and I heard afterwards that they had voted parson's yarn a good one. Now, however, I saw one of them, probably more ignorant than the others, cast a questioning glance at his neighbour. It was not returned, ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... "I suppose they would drop the notoriety yarn and find time to consider whether the working woman is treated fairly or not. The weakness in her defence at present seems solely that not enough pretty women make up her defenders. Bah! You all ought to have kittens to play with, and ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... arrived in the evening at my dear home, kissed my wife and all the women I could meet with that were worth the trouble, sat myself down in a snug elbow-chair near a comfortable English fire, told a long, tough yarn about mountains of sugar and rivers of rum, bottle-nosed porpoises, sharks, grampuses, and flying-fish, until I fell sound asleep, but, however, not so sound to prevent my hearing my best end of the ship whispering to someone to put more coals on the fire, ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... anything that can swim," replied Jupp, quite in his element when talking of the sea, and always ready to spin a yarn or tell what he knew. "It might be made of spare spars, or boards, or anything that can float. When I was in the Neptune off Terra del Faygo I've seed the natives there coming off to us seated on a couple of branches of a tree lashed together, ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... Excusing himself for a few 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 ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... transport equipment, electric power machinery, food and livestock, metal and metal products, chemicals and chemical products, plastics, yarn, paper ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... before us. I was able to enter upon it only six months ago. Five families that had left off the calling have reverted to it and they are doing a prosperous business. The Ashram supplies them at their door with the yarn they need; its volunteers take delivery of the cloth woven, paying them cash at the market rate. The Ashram merely loses interest on the loan advanced for the yarn. It has as yet suffered no loss and is able to ...
— Third class in Indian railways • Mahatma Gandhi
... had in the world. It was to be on the race-track. Say, she didn't demonstrate worth a cent. My syndicate jibbed, and I—well, here I am, a cattleman—you see cattle haven't the speed of automobiles, but they mostly do what's expected. That's my yarn, boss. You didn't know much of me. It's not a great yarn as life goes. Mostly ordinary. But there's a deal of life in it, in its way. There's a pile of hope busted, and hope busted isn't a pleasant thing. Makes you think a deal. However, Will Henderson ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... pain. He wore a white tennis-cap pulled over his eyes, and a short gray jacket that reached to his waist. Under one arm was a wooden crutch. His left leg was bent at the knee, and swung clear when he jerked his little body along the ground. The other, though unhurt, was thin and bony, the yarn stocking wrinkling ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... exercises were the catches, such as "Peter Piper picks a peck of pickled peppers," or "Selina Seamstich stitches seven seams slowly, surely, serenely and slovenly," or "Around a rugged rock a ragged rascal ran a rural race." Then, too, Professor Stokes had composed a wonderful yarn about the memory, entitled "My M-made memory medley, mentioning memory's most marvelous manifestations." This took up as much as three or four pages of this book, every word beginning with m. It was a marvelous exercise for lingual development. He also had "The Far-Famed Fairy Tale of Fenella," ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... told by the mate 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 ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... the first, no more. There is not a heart-beat in the whole grind. As to Willis—he failed egregiously, when he attempted to 'gild refined gold and paint the lily,' as he did in his so-called 'Sacred Poems.' He can spin a yarn pretty well, and coin a new word for a make-shift, amusingly, but save me from the foil-glitter of ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... sturdy craft "Nomad" and the stranger experiences of the Rangers themselves with Morello's schooner and a mysterious derelict form the basis of this well-spun yarn of the sea. ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... the tiny cabin with an extra suit of clothes of his own, made of the roughest kind of gray jeans, home knit yarn socks and a pair of heavy brogan shoes. A second trip brought underclothing of the same rough quality, but Harry changed into them gladly. Jarvis meanwhile produced a bottle ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Next, a turner would be seen, either out upon the sidewalk, or close to his door, turning with a bow lathe; and next a range of families all along the street, the women knitting or sewing, or spinning yarn, and the children playing about on the pavements near. Perhaps one of the oldest of the children would be tending the baby, either holding it in her arms, or rocking it to sleep in a round-bottomed basket on the pavement. ...
— Rollo in Naples • Jacob Abbott
... 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 place where I had seen the crab. Almost immediately, ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... TRUE; it's sixteen pages of the South Seas; their essence. What am I to do? Lose this little gem - for I'll be bold, and that's what I think it - or go on with the rest, which I don't believe in, and don't like, and which can never make aught but a silly yarn? Make another end to it? Ah, yes, but that's not the way I write; the whole tale is implied; I never use an effect, when I can help it, unless it prepares the effects that are to follow; that's what a story ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the detective.' He resembles a cock-sparrow, so I asked him why he didn't fly in through an attic window. He took my point at once, and remarked that he wanted none of my lip, or he would ask me officially what became of Don Ramon de Santander's big pink pearl. It's a queer yarn. There was a ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... me; while I have been spinning this long yarn, you have been smoking and imbibing; I am very willing to join you in both; but to-night I am tired out. The next time we meet, I shall be delighted to tell you what particulars I learned on my return to New Orleans, relative to Adele and her poor orphan child; ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... entangled my old gut casting-line, and at the end of the line was an eel of two pounds' weight! On cutting him open, there, sure enough, was the identical clipped salmon fly; it had been inside that eel for three weeks without hurting him. This sounds like a regular angler's yarn, and nobody need believe it unless he likes; nevertheless, it is perfectly true. I had got "fixed up" in the same stick that had broken my line on ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... nodded, and as she turned to limp down the passage, her ball of gray yarn slipped from her grasp and rolled after her until Corinna recovered it. In silence the cripple led the way, and in silence they followed her, until she opened the closed door at the end of the hall, and they entered the room, with the ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... sot off in one, Josiah in one also nigh by with Tommy. One side of it comes off so you can git in and set on a high cushion and read or knit. I took my knittin' and most knit one of Josiah's heels whilst I rid by palaces and elephants and camels and fakirs and palm trees. Oh, Jonesville yarn! you never expected to be knit amid seens like this. I can knit and admire scenery first rate, and my blue and white yarn seemed to connect me with Jonesville in some occult way, and then I knew Josiah would need his socks before ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... to her. So of any other ordinary business. Yet when it comes to teaching, anything like definite study or observation of the mode of doing it, is almost unknown! It is really no exaggeration to say that many teachers bungle in their work as egregiously as would a woman who should put yarn into a churn, and expect, after a proper amount of ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... said Peaks, as he seated himself on the main-hatch, and twined his long legs around those of the prisoner, so that he was held as fast as though he had been in the folds of an anaconda. "Hold still, now, and I'll spin you a sea-yarn. Once on a time there was a little boy that wanted to ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... Manufactures, the value of the textile products of North Carolina was greater than that of Massachusetts. Every farmhouse had spinning-wheels and one loom or several on which the women of the family spun yarn and wove cloth for the family wardrobe. On the large plantations negro women produced much of the cloth for both slaves and family. Except on special occasions, a very large proportion of the clothing worn by the average Southern community was of household or local manufacture. Hats were ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... with this 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 might be of a snake"; and the spirit ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... ever hear Bob Taylor's yarn about Uncle 'Rastus's funeral? Funniest thing Bob ever got off." ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... 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 miles; but my friend the convert, who arranged these ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... he left because he didn't like the crowd or the life there. We haven't changed the story any since our return. We'll tell you fellows, for we never used to have any secrets from you in the old days. But you mustn't pass the yarn around." ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock
... at length the Queen took upon herself to grant patents of monopoly by scores. There was scarcely a family in the realm which did not feel itself aggrieved by the oppression and extortion which this abuse naturally caused. Iron, oil, vinegar, coal, saltpetre, lead, starch, yarn, skins, leather, glass, could be bought only at exorbitant prices. The House of Commons met in an angry and determined mood. It was in vain that a courtly minority blamed the Speaker for suffering the acts of the Queen's Highness to be called in question. The language of the discontented ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... indicted. There was the whirlwind of talk you can imagine. Reminiscent, too! 'Don't you remember?' from house to house, and whenever two men met in the road or hung over the fence to spit and yarn. It was amazing, the number of folks who had set him down as 'queer,' 'odd,' all the country verdicts on the chap that's got to be accounted for. Even his religion was brought up against him. The chief argument ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... I told him. "She is slick as a whistle. Lindstrom fell for her yarn that it was sleight of hand—but it was HC. I'd have sworn it ...
— Modus Vivendi • Gordon Randall Garrett
... 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 ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... heavily laden with marine curiosities. There were sou'westers, and tarpaulins, and skull-caps; frieze jackets, and overalls, and hickory shirts; tarpaulin coats, and heavy sea-boots, and duck blouses with old bunches of oakum sticking out of the pockets; there were coils of rope-yarn well tarred, and jack-knives in leather cases, still black with whale-gurry: and a few telescopes and log-glasses. "Take 'em all," said the captain. "They smell a little fishy, but no matter. It's all the better ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... damn it, I don't like it that way. I want strings, see? I want meshes of 'em, balls of 'em, like what comes in yarn—get it?" ...
— The Very Black • Dean Evans
... an old "yarn," repeated from generation to generation. We find in a Chinese work quoted by Amyot: "The palace of the king (of Japan) is remarkable for its singular construction. It is a vast edifice, of extraordinary height; it has ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... take the skunks into the secret, more or less, an' they've played it double on us both. Meant bagging the letter from you to blackmail me with it; that's what they meant! Of course, when they failed to bring it off, they'd pitch any yarn to you. But that was their game all right. You must see for yourself it could never have been mine, Raffles, and—and let me out o' ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... army began to gather into Boston. Tall, lanky, awkward, fellows, came in squads, and companies, and regiments, swaggering along, dressed in their brown homespun clothes and blue yarn stockings. They stooped, as if they still had hold of the plough-handles, and marched without any time or tune. Hither they came, from the corn-fields, from the clearing in the forest, from the blacksmith's forge, from the carpenter's workshop, ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... by this that he said: "The old pauper woman whom I saw to-day in the poorhouse, in her hunger saving her apple to give to the little orphan just brought in, and unraveling her stocking and bending her twisted old fingers to knit its yarn into socks for the blue feet of the child will, I verily believe, begin her life at death with more intellectual genius—mark the words, intellectual genius—than will begin that second life any statesman or prime minister or man famed in our day. For I know of none who hath been faithful ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... of the half-breed woman—a giantess—who had a dozen sons, has about it for me all the glamour of an ancient yarn. The sons were free-trappers, you know, and, incidentally, thieves and murderers. (I suspect some of our classic heroes were as much!) But they were doubtless living up to the light that was in them, and they were game to the finish. So was the old woman; they called her "the mother of the devils." ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... took it up, and Hank had to spend a barrel of money to come clear. That, and 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
... lingo. It's Malory brought up to date, with a dash of Quixote. I nearly died at that place where the knight breaks his lance on the first automobile he ever saw and then rides at the head of the circus parade. It's certainly a ticklesome yarn." ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... "This is a curious yarn that I am going to tell you," said Carnacki, as after a quiet little dinner we made ourselves comfortable ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... actresses ambling to and fro, his own delicious presence dressed in his best, his "funny" stories, his songs being ground out by the hand organs, his friends extending their hands, clapping him on the shoulder, cackling over the latest idle yarn. ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... a silk hat, that he might go to Washington with head- gear equal to the occasion. A farmer's wife knit him a pair of yarn stockings. Hundreds of such attentions, kind in intent, grotesque in appearance, he received with that kindness which is the soul of courtesy. There was a woman at whose modest farmhouse he had once dined on a bowl of bread and milk, because he ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... said Bob, "I'll be careful." And to show how careful he intended to be, he let the cutter run up amidst the reeds, and jumped out with a dozen men, provided with some fiery spirit, and some spun yarn and matches. ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... 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 it's ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... and turned up his hands in a gesture of frank wonder. "Professor Lambert," he said, "I can't believe what I have seen myself. If I told such a yarn to the reporters, they'd never forget it. They'd kid me out of ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... However, my lady was very charitable in her own way. She had a charity school for poor children, where they were taught to read and write gratis, and where they were kept well to spinning gratis for my lady in return; for she had always heaps of duty yarn from the tenants, and got all her household linen out of the estate from first to last; for after the spinning, the weavers on the estate took it in hand for nothing, because of the looms my lady's interest ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... stories are true or not, the fact remains that Mr. Koussevitzky became a conductor and a great one—one of the greatest. The yarn of the mirrors is the most credible of the lot, for the Russian batonist's platform appearance is so meticulous and his movements are so obviously studied to produce the desired effects that he seems to conduct ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... preceding Yule was a day of general preparation. Houses were cleaned out and borrowed articles were returned to their owners. Work of all kind was stopped, and a general appearance of completion of work was established; yarn was reeled off, no lint was allowed to remain on the rock of the wheel, and all work implements were laid aside. In the evening cakes were baked, one for each person, and duly marked, and great care was taken that none should break in the firing, as such an accident was a bad ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... 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 ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... the end of the story. As soon as the boilers cooled off they worked all right on those supply pumps. May I be hanged if they had not sucked in, somehow, a long string of yarn, and cloth, and, if you will believe me, a wire of some woman's crinoline. And that French folly of a sham Empress cut short that day the victory of the Confederate navy, and old Davis himself can't tell when we shall have ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... cotton cloth, and yarn), rice, leather goods, sports goods, chemicals, manufactures, carpets ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... Simon persisted 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 serpent, but how long ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... It had been done by H. G. Wells and God knew how many other writers. Break a yarn like that and nobody would believe it. Still, if he could get his hands on ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... that "Tidy," as we will call him, was the first speaker who had something to say. He had a reason for talking, for some evil genius had followed him for two days. The yarn is best told in his own words, so far ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... board a ship in a storm may be real confusion and riot, or it may only seem so to those not used to the sea. Often what is a hopelessly tangled mass of sails, ropes, spars and gears to the landsman, is as clear to a sailor as a skein of yarn is to an experienced knitter, who can ply her needles in ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... 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 all others ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... gave her inarticulate but infinitely expressive answer to the question of Maurice Kirkwood. The good-hearted woman thought it time to leave the young people. Down went the stocking with the needles in it; out of her lap tumbled the ball of worsted, rolling along the floor with its yarn trailing after it, like some village matron who goes about circulating from hearth to hearth, leaving all along her track the story of the new engagement or of the arrival ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... 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 but a month ago had a supreme contempt for guile and a lofty ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... was a curious thing that you should come across that youngster Jimmy, just through having a yarn with a sailor on ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... the same every time he plays that. I know what I'm in for. Tomorrow, when I want to get up—nothing doing!" If he was not going to play they talked, and one of the friends—usually the painter who was in favour there that year—would "spin," as M. Verdurin put it, "a damned funny yarn that made 'em all split with laughter," and especially Mme. Verdurin, for whom—so strong was her habit of taking literally the figurative accounts of her emotions—Dr. Cottard, who was then just starting in general practice, would "really ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... in a mood to relate his strange yarn, from its outset in the ill-fated merchant trader, Plymouth Adventure. Eagerly he begged information concerning her people after their shipwreck, but Captain Bonnet had been cruising far offshore to intercept a convoy ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... fine and coarse sewing thread and yarn to make socks and stockings with. Her stockings and socks for the babies and papa would always be yarn. She could do pretty work. She had a large family. She had seventeen children and she kept them all ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... articles brought from France; though, for that matter, they did not look very different from Barton furniture generally, except, perhaps, in being plainer. Just now the chairs, lounges, and card-table were covered with blue yarn, blue woollen cloth, unbleached cotton, and other things requisite for the soldiers. They, the soldiers, had worn out the miserable socks provided by government in two days' marching, and sent up the cry, to the mothers and sisters in New England, "Give us such stockings as you are used ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... not consider that a man four times as big required twice as much rum to keep his sluggish frame in the same degree of good spirits. He held out against his crew for two days, during which time they never one of them so much as lifted a spun-yarn. The weather was, be sure, very mild and pleasant. I confess, however, that I was very uneasy, under the idea that we might all perish, from the obstinacy of the crew, on one side, and the firmness of the little man on the other. ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... 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 ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... and revealing two encrusted ancles, with feet stuck into old shoes, turned under at the heels for convenience sake. A remark from the cribber touches his pride, and borrowing a few pins he commences pinning together the shattered threads of his nether garment. A rope-yarn secured about his waist gives a sailor-like air to his outfit. But, notwithstanding Tom affects the trim of the craft, the skilled eye can easily detect the deception; for the craftsman, even under a press of head sail, ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... now remained to be done was to secure my provisions and wine, which I did by stowing the whole in a double thickness of tarpaulin, the edges of which I gathered together and tightly lashed with spun-yarn, finally securing the bundle to the raft by a short end of rope, so that it might not be washed away when the felucca should take her final plunge; and I had then done everything that it was possible for me ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... swift weaver's knot John Best mended the flying yarn. Then he turned from a novice at the Gill Spinner and listened, not very patiently, to ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... way, fore-scuttle and after hatchway, stove our compasses to pieces in the binnacles, cut away tiller-ropes, halliards, braces, and most of our running rigging, cut our sails to pieces badly; took a tub of tarred rope-yarn and what combustibles they could find about deck, put them in the caboose house and set them on fire; then left us, taking with them our boat and colors. When they got alongside of the schooner they scuttled our boat, took in their own, and made ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... through it round the band place; a green cloth jump-coat, threadbare, even to the threads being worn white, and breeches of the same, with long knees down to the garter; with an old sweaty leathern doublet, a pair of white flannel stockings next to his legs, and upon them a pair of old green yarn stockings, all worn and darned at the knees, with their feet cut off: his shoes were old, all slashed for the ease of his feet, with little rolls of paper between his toes to keep them from galling; and an old coarse shirt, patched both ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... Van, yet he looked uneasy. "It would be a great comfort to every one, to take Joe down. He does yarn so." ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... 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 yet what were all Emperors, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... light into electricity by spectrum is an interesting possibility. The idea of using foreign proteins on the human system to repel enemies, is also interesting. Do you get it? We didn't either until we read the story. Read the yarn and ...
— The Sword and the Atopen • Taylor H. Greenfield
... The public money, of which the King was generally so sparing, was lavishly spent in ploughing bogs, in planting mulberry trees amidst the sand, in bringing sheep from Spain to improve the Saxon wool, in bestowing prizes for fine yarn, in building manufactories of porcelain, manufactories of carpets, manufactories of hardware, manufactories of lace. Neither the experience of other rulers, nor his own, could ever teach him that something more than an edict and a grant of public money was required to create a Lyons, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... vigorous and briskly moving yarn—the best thing of the kind we have encountered for ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... consented to spin them a yarn. The old gentleman settled himself in his chair, my mother smoothed her apron, folded her hands, and looked meekly into my face. Tom Lokins filled his pipe, stretched out his foot to poke the fire with the toe of his shoe, and began to smoke like a steam-engine; then I cleared my throat ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... If I'd been doing it, I should on'y have thought of tying it on with a bit o' spun-yarn; but this here tin holds it ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... the blow. Alas! it was a very solid dog that I struck against, being nothing more nor less than the side of one of my boxes, and I barked my knuckles rather badly. The laughter of the Dayaks was loud and prolonged when Dubi translated the yarn to them next day, and they remembered it long afterwards. Until I heard the roar of laughter that went up, the story had not struck me as ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... decided on direct action. Scotty opened the door of the room he shared with Rick and looked about him unhappily, not really seeing anything. He knew Rick's captors would not have an easy time making his pal talk. And even when Rick did open up, he would spin some kind of yarn that would throw them off the trail. Scotty thought that Rick would not be in any great danger until he disclosed the cat's whereabouts. But he didn't like the idea of what Rick would have ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... chair," said Danny. "You've gone back a heap these last few months, frettin' over your bad boys, Danny an' Gene. You'll need support under you while I'm throwin' my yarn. Story of my life, Bill." He placed a chair for Madeline. "Miss Hammond, beggin' your pardon again, I want you to listen, also. You've the face an' eyes of a woman who loves to hear of other people's happiness. Besides, somehow, it's easy for me ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... "Illustrations of the Author of 'Waverley," clears up a point doubtful in Scott's memory, by saying that Geimells really was a Blue-Gown. He rode a horse of his own, and at races was a bookmaker. He once dropped at Rutherford, in Teviotdale, a clue of yarn containing twenty guineas. Like Edie Ochiltree, he had served at Fontenoy. He died at Roxburgh Newton in 1793, at the age of one hundred and five, according to his own reckoning. "His wealth was the means of enriching a nephew in Ayrshire, who is now (1825) a considerable landholder there, and ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... some state or other is rich in timber for shipbuilding, where is it to find a market (12) for the product except by persuading the ruler of the sea? Or, suppose the wealth of some state or other to consist of iron, or may be of bronze, (13) or of linen yarn, where will it find a market except by permission of the supreme maritime power? Yet these are the very things, you see, which I need for my ships. Timber I must have from one, and from another iron, from ...
— The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians • Xenophon
... night was a crusty old sea-dog whose memory of wrecks and marine disasters of every conceivable nature was as complete as an encyclopaedia. This "old man of the sea" spun his tempestuous yarn with fascinating composure, and the whole company was awed into silence with the haggard realism of his narrative. The cabin must have been air-tight—it was as close as possible—yet we heard the shrieking of the wind as it tore through the rigging, and the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... "The yarn I told you about myself was true enough," continued Stingaree. "Only the names were altered, as they say; it happened to the other fellow, not to me. I made it happen. He is hardly likely to have lived to tell ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... a grimace so much like his own, that it brought on a contest in which the yarn winding was laid aside for a time, while they stood before a mirror, each trying to outdo the other in ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... old lady twisted 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 ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... are considered to be proficient. In the census of 1901 nearly a quarter of the whole caste were shown as malguzars or village proprietors and lessees. They wear a coarse cloth of homespun yarn which they get woven for them by Gandas; probably in consequence of this the Agharias do not consider the touch of the Ganda to pollute them, as other castes do. They will not grow turmeric, onions, garlic, san-hemp or tomatoes, nor will they ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... Although by no means a large erection, it formed one of the most striking objects in the city, and a more beautiful piece of Gothic architecture it would be difficult to imagine. It was formerly called the Yarn Market, and was said to have been erected about the year 1378 by Sir Lawrence de St. Martin as a penance for some breach of ecclesiastical law. It consisted of six arches forming an open hexagon, supported by six columns on heavy foundations, with a central pillar square ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... 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 ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... 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 rather shy than otherwise, Mr. Flinders joined his companion, ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... or Cologne, Rome, Jerusalem, or Timbuctoo. Mrs. Pilgrim was left at home to play "patience," and to keep the house and bairns. She was generally a long-suffering creature, but sometimes she did get into mischief. She could not always spin yarn, so she occasionally varied her task by weaving nets—traps for the unwary who ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... artists, and East-enders. That was Mr. Kipling's trick. He assumed the realistic manner as Jacob assumed the hairy hands of Esau. He compelled us to believe him by describing with elaborate detail the setting of his story. And, having once got us in the mood of belief, he proceeded to spin a yarn that as often as not was as unlike life as A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur. His characters are inventions, not portraits. Even the dialects they speak—dialects which used to be enthusiastically spoken of as masterly ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... concerned lest he cause trouble between Callum and Hibbs. He protested that he did not want to, when, in reality, he was dying to tell. At last he came out with, "Why, he's circulated the yarn that your sister had something to do with this man Cowperwood, who was tried here recently, and that that's why he's ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... wider and wider, until apparently it got too wide for the bed, and the boy leaped out of his couch upon the floor. The first thing he did was to pat the ball gently but firmly, very much as a kitten manifests its interest in a ball of yarn. Then his attentions to his new plaything grew more pronounced and vigorous, and within fifteen minutes it had been chased out of the nursery into the parental bedchamber. Still Jarley slept. Mrs. Jarley was merely half asleep. She tried to tell Jack to be quiet; but ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... you think he's making up the whole yarn?" Jerry asked. "Well, even if he is, it's a mighty good one, and it might have happened to him, ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... another, racking a crew overwhelmed with fever, almost persuades the captain to share the mate's illusion that 8 deg. 20'—The Shadow Line (DENT)—is possessed by the dead scoundrel. I found the book less interesting as a yarn than as an example of the astonishingly conscious and perfect artistry of this really great master of the ways of men and words. Mr. CONRAD never made me believe that the new captain would go so near sharing his mate's superstitious panic (which is perhaps ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... molasses and other commodities. The principal exports are wood-pulp, timber, nails, paper, butter and margarine, matches, condensed milk, fish, leather and hides, ice, sealskins, &c. Of the imports, Great Britain supplies the greater part of the cotton and woollen yarn, the machinery (including ships), and the raw metals; the United States about one-half of the oils and fats, and a large proportion of the food-stuffs, and skins, feathers, &c. Of the exports, almost the whole of the timber goes to Great Britain, together with the larger portion of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... Hard, with a reminiscent chuckle, "of a yarn. I was in New Mexico on a hunting trip with Joe McArthur—you remember the Boston McArthurs who had a ranch near one of the Apache reservations? Well, we rode up to the agency store to ask old Slade, the ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... looked up at it with a great deal of pride, and said that he had been thinking of improving it, and that he hoped the hammer and a little piece of broken glass beside it 'would play music before long.' He had extracted some colours from the yarn with which he worked, and painted a few poor figures on the wall. One, of a female, over the door, he called 'The Lady of ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... curd soaps (boiled very dry), as free as possible from uncombined caustic alkali. The raw wool, after this cleansing operation, is oiled with olive oil or oleine, prior to spinning; after spinning and weaving, the fabric, in the form of yarn or cloth, has to be scoured to free it from oil. The soap in most general use for scouring woollen fabrics is neutral oleine-soda soap. Some manufacturers prefer a cheap curd soap, such as is generally termed "second curd," and in cases where lower grades of wools are ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons
... back into the water, and Wainamoinen drew his knife and began to cut up the Fire-fish. Inside of the pike he found the trout, and inside of the trout the whiting, and on opening the whiting he came upon a ball of blue yarn. Wainamoinen quickly unwound the blue ball, and within that found a red ball, and when he had opened the red ball he came to the ball ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind
... failed. He said a gentleman had hired him as a clerk, and that was all he knew. He had left him at the Stock Exchange; if they would let him go, he would try and find him and bring him around to the bank. J. Bull is gullible, but not so much so as to swallow that yarn. ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... a habit of knitting the day's events in with her yarn. What she had done and said and heard were all thought over again to the rhythmic click of her needles. And the results at the end of the evening were usually a finished comforter and a comfortable feeling. This ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... have no cotton-wool growing, because the country is cold, yet they wear mantles thereof, as your honor may see by the show thereof; and true it is, that there was found in their houses certain yarn made of cotton-wool."—Coronado's Relation, Hakluyt's Coll. of Voyages, London ed., 1600, iii, ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... office; so Lyman had to settle the matter by making the rank of both officers equal. The commander of an ignorant crew like that has many troubles and vexations which probably do not occur in the regular army at all. However, with the song-singing and yarn-spinning around the camp-fire, everything presently became serene again; and by-and-by we raked the corn down level in one end of the crib, and all went to bed on it, tying a horse to the door, so that he would neigh if any ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... I ain't done with him yet," growled Archie, and rising from his seat, he took down his gun and began polishing the barrel with an old yarn stocking of Sarah's. ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... deny nor confirm the legend. "I dunno what people you! I bin tell-straight my yarn go one time like wind to Medina. What more you want? I dunno what kind people you!" One mystery at a time ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... were by barter. All payments, tribute, rent, fulfilment of contract, fine, damages, wages, or however else arising, were made in kind—horses, cows, store cattle, sheep, pigs, corn, meal, malt, bacon, salt beef, geese, butter, honey, wool, flax, yarn, cloth, dye-plants, leather, manufactured articles of use or ornament, gold, and silver—whatever one party could spare and the other find ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... and the sweet children. If upon this earth we ever have a glimpse of heaven, it is when we pass a home in winter, at night, and through the windows, the curtains drawn aside, we see the family about the pleasant hearth; the old lady knitting; the cat playing with the yarn; the children wishing they had as many dolls or dollars or knives or somethings, as there are sparks going out to join the roaring blast; the father reading and smoking, and the clouds rising like incense from the altar of domestic joy. I never passed such a house without feeling that I had ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... Ben blustered. "If Jean didn't tell you this cock-and-bull yarn, how would you know ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... a hurry this time." He exchanged a rapid glance with the latter. "You must know, maman, that Pyotr Stepanovitch is the universal peacemaker; that's his part in life, his weakness, his hobby, and I particularly recommend him to you from that point of view. I can guess what a yarn he's been spinning. He's a great hand at spinning them; he has a perfect record-office in his head. He's such a realist, you know, that he can't tell a lie, and prefers truthfulness to effect... except, of course, in special ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... to think? What will the police think? What will the jury think when they hear your flimsy yarn—an' the straightforward evidence of my daughter? They'll think that the coat she wore to the show, an' that she still has, is the coat she wore from the store, an' that you've got the other. An' when Kranz tells ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... say one word. Friend Barbara took up her knitting, and I saw that she was rounding the heel of a stocking; and I trust I am truthful, if volatile, when I remember me that I wished I were her knitting-needle. She was very quiet: her ball of yarn slipped away, lacking proper gravitation. "My!" said she, and went and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... 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 the ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... linen, yarn, or anything, for these frocks are of absolute necessity—nothing can be done without them. His Royal Highness desires you to acquaint Glenmoriston and Glenco, if they come your way of this intended march, so that they may go by Taybridge (if you please, with you), ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... bit," Charlie objected. "Wait till I come down. Let's have a yarn. You don't want to go ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... date, with a dash of Quixote. I nearly died at that place where the knight breaks his lance on the first automobile he ever saw and then rides at the head of the circus parade. It's certainly a ticklesome yarn." ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... ain't all dough yet. It all 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
... "Mr. Lincoln wore flax and tow linen pantaloons—I thought about five inches too short in the legs—and frequently he had but one suspender, no vest or coat. He had a calico shirt such as he had in the Black Hawk War; coarse brogues, tan-colour; blue yarn socks, a straw hat, old style, and without a band." It is recorded that he preferred dealing with men and boys, and disliked to wait on the ladies. Possibly, if his attire has been rightly described, the ladies, even the Clary's Grove ladies, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... 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 ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... is the end of the story. As soon as the boilers cooled off they worked all right on those supply pumps. May I be hanged if they had not sucked in, somehow, a long string of yarn, and cloth, and, if you will believe me, a wire of some woman's crinoline. And that French folly of a sham Empress cut short that day the victory of the Confederate navy, and old Davis himself can't tell when we shall ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... had these bits of rope-yarn on my wrists long enough? I'm not used, you see, to walking the deck without the use of my hands; and a heavy lurch, as like as not, would send me slap into the lee scuppers—sailor though I be. Besides, I won't jump overboard without leave, you may rely upon that. Neither ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... that the little old man told us; but, absurd though it was, he had an air of impressive sincerity; and although every one of us would have laughed the yarn out of meeting had it been told of Captain Whidden, affairs had changed in the last days aboard ship. Certainly we did not trust Captain Falk. I thought of the cook's dark words, "A little roun' hole in the ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... had just promised. Passing into the waist of the ship, he provided himself with a suitable hatchet, and then, without speaking a syllable to any of the mute but attentive seamen, he sprang into the fore-rigging, every strand and rope-yarn of which was tightened by the strain nearly to snapping. The understanding eyes of his observers comprehended his intention; and with precisely the same pride of station as had urged him to the dangerous undertaking four or five of the oldest mariners jumped ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... you 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 our printing it. ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... adventures of the sturdy craft "Nomad" and the stranger experiences of the Rangers themselves with Morello's schooner and a mysterious derelict form the basic of this well-spun yarn of the sea. ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... all led into the sitting room, and Bertha flushed a little. She seemed to see all its shabbiness at a glance—the worn spot of carpet by her father's desk, and another in front of the sofa, the old-fashioned furniture, and grandmother sitting there in her corner, knitting a blue yarn stocking. ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... yourself. You are on fire with the ardour of the chase. Is not that it? Accept the advice of an older man, Prince, and sleep on this affair. I have little fancy for nocturnal escapades two nights together. As for you, Nella, off with you to bed. The Prince and I will have a yarn over such fluids as can ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... a short talk with Captain Simms when she docked. Not much of a yarn. She didn't have a good ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... pleasing coincidence, Conte Crayon himself appeared with the desired explanation. "You see," he said, "that beast of a Siccatif de Courtray hunted me up yesterday and told me the yarn about you and the slop-shop man. He wanted me to write it up and publish it, 'as a joke,' he said; but it was clear enough that he was in ugly earnest about it. And so, you see, I had to rush it into print in the way I chose to tell it—which won't do you a bit of harm, ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... of you to put it like that," said Archie, gratefully. "I mean to say, makes it easier and so forth. What I mean is, you know how rotten you feel telling the deuce of a long yarn and wondering if the party of the second part is wishing you would turn off the tap and go ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... larch, maple, wych elm, and sallow, and the rough butts, when sawn off before the sharping, supplied the firing for the boiling. Green ash is splendid for burning: "The ash when green is fuel for a Queen." Later, when I adopted a Kentish system of hop-growing on coco-nut yarn supported by steel wire on heavy larch poles, our visits to the woods were less frequent, and much wear and tear of horses and waggons was saved. Some of our journeys, in the earlier days, took us to the estate of the Duc d'Aumale, on the Worcester side of Evesham, ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... spin a hard-luck yarn," Frank went on, "but I have not had the best of everything, dear. I started wrong with uncle. He never liked my father nor any of my father's family. His treatment of his wife was infamous. My poor governor ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... force of habit, just as he had paused for the last twenty years. There had been times when roars of incredulous laughter had greeted this boast, but most of this particular group had heard the yarn more than once and let it pass with a smile and a wink, remembering the night that Abel Day had asked old Bill how they got the oxen out of the cannon on that most ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of which were secured by a long string wrapped over the ring like a slipnoose. When the ring was placed over the mouth of the invalid the string was pulled and the ring dropped and rolled out of the lodge, the long tail of white cotton yarn, with eagle plume attached to the end, extending far behind. Hostjoboard repeated this ceremony with a second ring, and so did Hostjobokon and Hostjoboard alternately, until the twelve rings were disposed of. Three of the rings were afterward taken to the ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... to the middle of the sea, and then to step on the shell with his left foot, when he would immediately find himself in the under-world, while every one there was asleep. He also advised him to make himself a bag of spun yarn in which to put the water-birds with gold and silver plumage, and then he could return unmolested. Everything fell out as the old man predicted, but Slyboots had hardly reached the sea-shore with his booty when he heard his former ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... from almost any fabric—satin, velvet, georgette, maline, ribbon, soft leather, oilcloth, yarn, and chenille. A scrapbag for odds and ends should always be kept for small pieces of materials. Any piece two inches square may be used for flowers or fruits. Such a bag of pieces will prove a veritable gold mine to use in making flowers and fruit trimmings. Each year ...
— Make Your Own Hats • Gene Allen Martin
... is now among our sick, his cutting tools are but few, and these mostly broken and bound about with rope-yarn as fast as may be. Thus our pinnace, on which lyeth so much of our hope of escape, is but in ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... had been of the tenderest; and if in the rough battle of life she became a little rough and masculine, the poor crippled mother felt none of it. Kirsty managed everything with a strong, capable hand, from felling trees to spinning yarn and making butter. She received plenty of help, of course; Big Malcolm and Long Lauchie were her nearest neighbours, and their families vied with each other in seeing who could do the most for her. Weaver Jimmie, too, would have been willing ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... 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
... the tale a thousand ways, But never could git through the maze That hangs around that queer day's doin's; But I'll tell the yarn ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... to him about that lace you found in the dead man's hand—or at any rate not until you find out more about it. The glove he can have since it is pretty obvious that it belonged to Sir Horace. We'll spin Crewe a yarn that we are depending on it as ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... everything cracked aloft, and we tied our caps to our heads; but mostly she strolled on at the rate of three miles an hour. What could you expect? She was tired—that old ship. Her youth was where mine is—where yours is—you fellows who listen to this yarn; and what friend would throw your years and your weariness in your face? We didn't grumble at her. To us aft, at least, it seemed as though we had been born in her, reared in her, had lived in her for ages, had never known ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... exclaimed Jarwin, turning round, and looking full at his audience, while a bright smile lit up his sunburnt countenance, as if a sudden idea had occurred to him, "I'll do my best to palaver. Here goes, then, for a yarn." ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne
... sent me a copy of your paper containing an article of which you do me the honor to make me the subject. What can have put such an extravagant yarn into the head of so amiable and good-natured a fellow? I never said the thing which you attribute to me in any interview, caucus or anywhere else. I never inherited any wealth or had any. My father was a lawyer in very large practice for his ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... virile passion. He lacked indeed the temperamental balance of Lamb. His insight into human nature was intellectual rather than sympathetic. Though as a philosopher he understood that the web of life is of a mingled yarn, he has given us none of those rare glimpses of laughter ending in tears or of tears subsiding in a tender smile which are the sources of Lamb's depth and his charm. The same thing is true of his humor. He relished heartily its appearance ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... and she was sensitively alert to the slightest imputation of untruthfulness. She offered no specious explanations for her withdrawal from the debate, and when Mary Brooks innocently inquired "what little yarn" she told the registrar, that she could get away so often, Eleanor fixed her with an unpleasantly penetrative stare and answered with all her old-time hauteur that she did not ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... in the middle, well available for lance ends, one hundred and thirty of which are worth one thaler in Schoa; also pieces of copper, tin, and zinc; calf-skins; black, printed, and unprinted cotton cloth; pieces of cloth; coarse red cotton yarn (for knitting); and strings of beads. The universal and intergroup money is the Maria Theresa thaler weighing 571.5 to 576 English grains.[287] Cameron mentions the exchange of intergroup money for intragroup money at a fair at Kawile, on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... person who has been hoodwinked. We know Dr. Cook very well and also his reputation, and we know that he was never good for a hard day's work; in fact he was not up to the average, and he is no hand at all in making the most of his resources. He probably has spun this yarn to Mr. Whitney and the boatswain to make himself ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... mighty queer about this whole proposition. That yarn of yours last night, Jerry, didn't sit very easy on my pillow, and it doesn't rest very easy on my breakfast, either. What's the idea? What you trying to hide, ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... sermons that he preached during the festival had much the same value. You are aware that these friars never fail to go begging for their Easter eggs, and receive not only eggs, but many other things, such as linen, yarn, chitterlings, hams, chines, and similar trifles. So when Easter Tuesday came, and the friar was making those exhortations to charity of which such folks as he are ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... Out of the little doctor's chaos of pink flannel Harmony had brought order. The result, masculine and complete even to its tassels and cord of pink yarn, was ready to be presented. It was with mingled emotions that Anna Gates wrapped it up and gave it to Harmony ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
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