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Needle   Listen
verb
Needle  v. t.  
1.
To form in the shape of a needle; as, to needle crystals.
2.
To tease (a person), especially repeatedly.
3.
To prod or goad (someone) into action by teasing or daring.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Needle" Quotes from Famous Books



... picture of the Rat Killer is of another kind. The figures and objects are indicated by lines instead of by masses of color. You would call it a drawing, and it is in fact a drawing of one kind, but properly speaking, an etching. An etching is a drawing made on copper by means of a needle. The etcher first covers the surface of the metal with a layer of some waxy substance and draws his picture through this coating, or "etching ground," as it is called. Next he immerses the copper plate in an acid bath which "bites," or grooves, the metal along the lines he has drawn without ...
— Rembrandt - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... her at our house some time ago," Carrissima explained. "It was really quite entertaining. Those two seemed to draw together on the instant, as if one were the magnet and the other the needle. Besides, I have the advantage of Sybil's confidences. Poor Sybil! I can assure you she is in the ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb

... side, for Skyrocket had scared up a rabbit and the boys wanted to see the bunny, though they would not have let the dog harm it. Trouble started to follow his brother and the other two lads, but as he reached the top of the pine-needle-covered ...
— The Curlytops and Their Playmates - or Jolly Times Through the Holidays • Howard R. Garis

... quickly falling dusk—all the girls are pretty then, and are quite conscious of it—you know, Marsham. Behind them, at the end of the street, one of these great cypress wind-screens showed black against the sky, a ragged edge something like the line the needle draws on a rainfall chart; and you could only tell whether they were men or women under the plantains by their voices rippling and chattering and suddenly a deeper note.... Once I heard a muffled scuffle and a sound like a kiss.... ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions

... where there is the less strength to endure, as we see it in delicate ladies, hath there been the more niggard of support, I purpose, for the succour and solace of ladies in love (unto others[1] the needle and the spindle and the reel suffice) to recount an hundred stories or fables or parables or histories or whatever you like to style them, in ten days' time related by an honourable company of seven ladies and three young men made in the days of the late deadly pestilence, together ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... eight can be supported on the weekly wages. The trade of muslin embroidery once flourished here, and in the pretty little neighbouring town of Comber; but it has so fallen off that now the best hands, plying the needle unceasingly during the long, long day, can earn only three or four shillings a week. Before the invention of machinery for flax-spinning, the manufacture of fine thread by hand-labour was a most profitable ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... to get across the first deep fissures, and eventually descended far under the crest and climbed back. It was desperately hard work, for we had so little time. R.C. was to be at the middle of that ridge and I at the end in an hour. Like Trojans we worked. Some slippery pine-needle slopes we had to run across, for light quick steps were the only means of safe travel. And that was not safe! When we surmounted to the crest we found a jumble of weathered rocks ready to slide down ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey

... its worst and every nerve on edge, another scream from behind us cut our ears like a needle, the eyes of the tigress as well as ours sought the door, and there in her golden curls and white "nightie" stood little Madeline. The eyes of the tigress softened to tenderest love, and with a bound, ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... The tape is first folded and creased by rubbing over an edge. The end of the tape is then turned in. Take a corner of the sail and place it inside the fold of the tape, care being taken to get the raw edge right up against the crease. The needle of the machine should then be lowered through it as near to the edge of the tape as practicable, taking care that it goes through both edges. Keeping a slight pull on the binding, arrange the cloth ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates

... Point-device, a term explained by Mr. Douce. He thinks that it is borrowed from the labours of the needle, as we have point-lace, so point-device, i.e., point, a stitch, and devise, devised or invented; applied to describe anything uncommonly exact, or worked with the nicety and precision of stitches made or devised by the needle.—Illustrations ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... The magpies had probably found it already dead, as it was cold; they had begun tearing the skin at the neck and had opened it down to the breast-bone. Caleb took this bird, too, and by and by, sitting down to examine it, he thought he would try to mend the torn skin with the needle and thread he always carried inside his cap. He succeeded in stitching it neatly up, and putting back the feathers in their place the rent was quite concealed. That evening he took the two birds to a man in the ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson

... five o'clock in the afternoon. Presently a woman came hurrying across the field, with some needle-work gathered up in her arms. She had been spending the afternoon at a neighbor's with her sewing, and was now hastening home to get supper for her husband. She was a pretty woman, and she had not been married long. She nodded to Barney as she hurried past him, holding ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... I would not blame you so much. But you quote to me the opinions of four mariners, who, as they were driven out of their way to Frandes or to some other ports to which they commonly navigated, had not, and could not have used, the needle and the chart; but do you go, however, and make your voyage without regard to their opinion,—and, by the grace of God, you will not bring out of it ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... (from Gr. a-, privative, and gonia, an angle), the term given to the imaginary lines on the earth's surface connecting points at which the magnetic needle points to the geographical north and south. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... shoeing, and see how you'll like the job. By the Lord, senor, if she would only give her admirers leave to look at her, she might roll in gold; but she's more touch-me-not than a hedgehog; she's a devourer of Ave Marias, and spends the whole day at her needle and her prayers. I wish I was as sure of a good legacy as she is of working miracles some day. Bless you, she's a downright saint; my mistress says she wears ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... compass, I made a discovery that sent the blood with sudden rush first to my heart and then to my brain; a small piece of iron, invisible in an ordinary light, had been driven into the framework of the compass, close to that part of the card marked "W," thereby deflecting the needle to the point in question, so that ever since our departure from Quipai, we had been steering due west, instead of north by west, as I intended and believed. The dodge might not have deceived a seaman, but ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall

... The needle of the gramophone, after the manner of its kind, slipped raspingly over the surface of the wax, and the rest ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse

... machine. His simplicity and transparent honesty induced him to include everything, in fact he seemed to glory in the number of false trails he laboriously followed. He was one who might be expected to find the proverbial "needle in a haystack," but unfortunately the needle was not always there. Delambre says, "Ardent, restless, burning to distinguish himself by his discoveries he attempted everything, and having once obtained a glimpse of one, ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant

... The air smelled faintly-sour of brier, and was as still as boughs of snow. There the not-unhappy Princess reclined before a looking-glass, whither I suppose she had run to view her own alarm when the sharp needle pierced her thumb. All alarm was stilled now on her face. She, one might think, of all that company of the sleepy, was the only one that dreamed. Her youthful lips lay a little asunder; the heavy beauty of her hair was parted on her forehead; her childish ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare

... pleasant journey. The far-famed Needles are a row of wedge-like masses of hard chalk running out to sea in the direction of the axis of the range of hills. They do not now much resemble their name, but in earlier years there was among them a conspicuous pinnacle, a veritable needle, one hundred and twenty feet in height, that fell in 1764. At present the new lighthouse, built at the seaward end of the outermost cliff, is the nearest approach to a needle. The headland behind them is crowned by a fort several hundred feet above the sea. There were originally five ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... have its needle point directly to the real or true North. But practically no compass with which you will become familiar will be correct. It will have an error in it due to the magnetism of the earth. This is called Variation. It will also have an error in it due to the magnetism of the iron in ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper

... is no great harm done," said Uncle Wiggily to himself, as he found no bones broken. "I had a little slide, that's all. I must bring Sammie and Susie Littletail here some day, and let them slide on pine needle hill. Johnnie and Billie Bushytail, the two squirrels, would also like it, and so would Nannie and Billie Wagtail, my two ...
— Uncle Wiggily in the Woods • Howard R. Garis

... chair toward her and sat down, smiling as usual, but, at first, not speaking. She watched him, with her needle poised, and with a certain shy, fluttered look which she always wore when he approached her. There was something in Felix's manner that quickened her modesty, her self-consciousness; if absolute choice had been given her she ...
— The Europeans • Henry James

... of silk, of an especially brilliant hue, which had caught her eye in town. She was a very useful member of the Methodist Society, for she had always innumerable odds and ends for pin-cushions and needle-books; and although her religious experiences did not seek those stormy channels which the Reverend Mr. Purdo believed to have been elected for the saints, yet her sympathies were so ready, her heart so kind, that, when he saw her after a day of activity collect her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various

... and thread with her. Whipping up the skirt of her dress on her knee, she bent forward over it, and set herself industriously to the repair of the torn trimming. In this position her lithe figure showed charmingly its firm yet easy line. The needle, in her dexterous brown fingers, flew through its work. The locker was a broad one; Launce was able to seat himself partially behind her. In this position who could have resisted the temptation ...
— Miss or Mrs.? • Wilkie Collins

... be lined with the same round discs which covered the walls of the vessel, every disc closely touching its neighbour. With extreme caution and delicacy Morgana set one of the tubes she held upright in the socket made to receive it, and as she did this, fine sharp, needle like flashes of light broke from it in a complete circle, filling the whole receptacle with vibrating rays which instantly ran round each disc, and glittered in and out among them like a stream of quicksilver. As soon as this manifestation occurred, Morgana beckoned ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli

... lived with his father-in-law, hath not taken some little thing from the household of his father-in-law, a knife, or other trifle? But thou hast felt about all my stuff, what hast thou found of all thy household stuff? Not so much as a needle ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... much light as a piece of chalk," complained Jackson testily. "Knows you? You bet I do! How are you, Harry? Where you been keepin' yourself? You look 'bout as fat as a stall-fed knittin' needle." ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... this. Miss Paget resumed her work with rapid fingers. She was picking up shining little beads one by one on the point of her needle, and transferring them to the canvas stretched upon an embroidery frame before her. It was a kind of work exacting extreme care and precision, and the girl's hand never faltered, though a tempest of passionate feeling agitated her as ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... the advantage of being uniformly tunicked—with no Company badge to betray their ship or status. So that could well be the "Polestar" standing needle slim behind them—and not the notorious "Solar Queen." But each, as he passed through the inner lock, gave a hitch to his belt which brought the butt of his sleep rod closer to hand. Innocuous as that weapon was, in close quarters its effects, if only temporary, was ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton

... wicker woven close together, only some were of leather; but afterwards they found ships made with round keels, and canvas sails, and in all respects like our ships; and the seamen understood both astronomy and navigation. He got wonderfully into their favour, by showing them the use of the needle, of which till then they were utterly ignorant. They sailed before with great caution, and only in summer-time, but now they count all seasons alike, trusting wholly to the loadstone, in which they are perhaps more secure than safe; so that there ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... earnest between Prussia and Austria for the prize of ascendency. Both parties were confident of success,—Austria as the larger State, with proud traditions, triumphant over rebellious Italy; and Prussia, with its enlarged military organization and the new breech-loading needle-gun. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord

... a woman would see with what a small outlay that is done. She has that gift for the needle which a poet ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable

... was merry as a bird. She chattered of this and of that, and sang snatches of songs, old and new. And all the time her heart beat out its own glad refrain, "My bow of orange ribbon, my bow of orange ribbon!" Her needle went to her thoughts, and her thoughts went to melody; for, as she ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr

... for a needle in sand; but, if I mistake not, Madame de Poitiers will prove a magnet. Let us keep ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats

... sun is high, and the lower one, B, for winter. The indicator is pivoted by a large screw to the centre, C, of the face, so that it can be turned round like the hand of a clock. At the upper end of the indicator a little pointer is fastened directly over the scale of hours and minutes. A needle, or a pin with the head cut off, makes ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... was, if it be not still, the custom among persons of New England origin to call the ordinary sitting-apartment,—he bolstered up in an easy-chair, on account of increasing infirmities, and she plying the needle in her customary way. The chairs of both were so placed that it was easy for either to look out upon that bay, now of a wintry aspect, where Roswell had last ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... transmitting mechanisms, it is to the working machine we must look in order to get a clear idea of the differences between machines and tools. A tool may be quite simple in form and action as a knife, a needle, a saw, a roller, a hammer, or it may embody more complex thought in its construction, more variety in its movement, and call for the play of higher human skill. Such tools or implements are the hand-loom, the lathe, the potter's-wheel. To these tools man ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson

... threatening, while he told his story. But nothing could be done—nothing. They did not know that Chad was up in the woods or they would have gone in search of him—knowing that when they found him they would find Jack—but to look for Jack now would be like searching for a needle in a hay-stack. There was nothing to do, then, but to wait for Jack to come home, which he would surely do—to get to Chad—and it was while old Joel was promising that the dog should be surrendered to the Sheriff that little Tad Dillon gave ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox

... bachelor, and he was always such a reliable fellow. If I set him to whittling a bit of wood or to sawing a board, he was sure soon to apply for a bandage to stop the flow of blood from a wound. On trying to bore a hole through a board with a sharpened knitting-needle, only the bone of his second finger prevented the instrument from passing through that also. Even with the axe he was an expert; lifting it high to take a vigorous blow he would bring the back down on his own head, and rush ...
— Short Sketches from Oldest America • John Driggs

... went tramping round the capstan to the sound of the merry fife, the anchor was away, and under a wide spread of snowy canvas the dashing "Blanche" of thirty-two guns, commanded by the gallant Captain Faulkner, stood through the Needle passage between the Isle of Wight and the main, on her way down channel, bound out to the West Indies. It was a station where hurricanes, yellow fever, and sicknesses, and dangers of all sorts were to be encountered, but it was also one where enemies were to be met with, battles ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston

... light their cigarettes the women bring out their pyjamas and add stitch upon stitch. Pyjama legs are awkward things in a breeze, being apt to flap about, but they are resolutely tucked round arms or otherwise restrained, and the needle continues its deft work in spite of all difficulties. Pyjama jackets, too, are of course made in the proper number, but they are not so dramatic in their movements as the legs, and I have not noticed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 26th, 1914 • Various

... other Sophia, working a collar. The ladies were evidently in a state of expectation—a state exceedingly trying to people who, living at ease in the country, have rarely anything to expect beyond the days of the week, the newspaper, and their dinners. Mrs Grey gave her needle a rest every few minutes, to listen! and rang the bell three times in a quarter of an hour, to make inquiries of her maid about the arrangements of the best bedroom. Sophia could not attend to her work, and presently gave information that Fanny and Mary ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... in affairs of this kind is to get a good start, and Fate, feeling perhaps that it had been a little hard upon Mr. Downing, gave him a most magnificent start. Instead of having to hunt for a needle in a haystack, he found himself in a moment in the position of being set to find it in a mere ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse

... that I should be marked for identification in the usual manner, but I shuddered at the thought. I was far too ticklish; I should have died under the needle! ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock

... It was thus that at the magic [107] touch of Romanino's art the dim, early, hunted-down Brescian church of the primitive centuries, crushed into the dust, it might seem, was "brought to her king," out of those old dark crypts, "in raiment of needle-work"—the delicate, richly folded, pontifical white vestments, the mitre and staff and gloves, and rich jewelled cope, blue or green. The face, of remarkable beauty after a type which all feel though ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... cattle, for the gipsies are very clever in killing them, without leaving any traces which can be converted into a charge of malevolence against them. They kill the cows by piercing them to the heart with a long and very fine needle, so that the blood flowing inwardly, it may be supposed that the animal died of disease. They stifle poultry with brimstone; they know that then they will give them the dead birds; and whilst they imagine that they have a taste for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various

... teller, or as a simple demonstration of magnetism. In the second part of the Epistle Peter turns to practical instruments, describing for the first time, the construction of a magnetic compass consisting of a loadstone or iron needle pivoted with a casing marked with a scale of degrees. The third chapter of this section, concluding the Epistle, then continues with the description of a perpetual motion wheel, "elaboured with marvellous ingenuity, ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price

... fire now, and the Wilbur twin admiringly noted that his father greeted this rare being, too, as an equal. The gypsy held beneath an arm a trim young gamecock feathered in rich browns and reds, with a hint of black, and armed with needle-pointed spurs. He stroked the neck of the bird and sat on his haunches with Dave before the fire to discuss affairs of the road; for he, too, divined at a glance that Dave was here but a gypsy transient, even though he spoke ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... this fair damsel, that she could step from one foamy crest of a wave to the foamy crest of another, without wetting more than the sole of her sandal. She had grown up in a very wild way, and talked much about the rights of women, and loved hunting and war far better than her needle. But in my opinion, the most remarkable of this famous company were two sons of the North Wind (airy youngsters, and of rather a blustering disposition) who had wings on their shoulders, and, in case of ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... sewing is due in three days," said Cynthia, raising her roughened hand on which the needle-scars showed even in the moonlight. "Mother has worried so to-day that I couldn't work except at odd moments, but I can easily manage to sit up to-night and get it done. She thinks I'm embroidering an ottoman, you see, and this evening she asked to ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... the same day land was sighted at 4 p. m.; the North Farallones of San Francisco were seen to the north and Point Ano Nuevo to the southeast. At 7 p. m., the South Farallones were seen at a distance of about two leagues to the northeast. The variation of the needle was observed and found ...
— The March of Portola - and, The Log of the San Carlos and Original Documents - Translated and Annotated • Zoeth S. Eldredge and E. J. Molera

... lessons she flies where he walks. She cries for his floggings oftener than he can laugh at her failures. She needs less machinery than he to arrive at the same mental and moral results. Nature has given him a mental hammer, but it has given her a mental needle, and she has embroidered the rainbow before he has forged the thunder. How does he overtake her swift steps? How tame and bind ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... said she, "what shall I do? Mother will keep me to my chamber for a month, and make me work at the tapestry of the nine bold knights. She promised as much last week, when I fell into Wilverley bog, and yet she knows that I cannot abide needle-work." ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the agonized reptile flung wildly in the air and flapped on the arched back of the imperturbable tigress. The whiskered muzzle of Stoffles dropped quietly, and her teeth met once, twice, thrice, like the needle and hook of a sewing-machine, in the neck of the Blue Dryad; and when, after much deliberation, she let it go, the beast fell into a ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various

... and suddenly that Therese, being already nervous, pricked her finger with her needle till the blood came; a mishap which decided her to ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin

... the sensitive parts underneath from injury and helps to keep out germs. Therefore when blisters are formed don't tear off the skin. Insert a needle under the skin a little distance back from the blister and push it through to the opposite side. Press out the liquid through the holes thus formed. Heat the needle red hot first, with a match or candle, to kill ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department

... evermore turned toward Pavonia. Nay, Sir, I am convinced that at this moment, if I were to take down the cocked hat of my lamented father from the peg on which it has hung for years, and were to carry it to the Battery, its centre point, true as the needle to the pole, would ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... her custom, the old lady came quickly to the point and appeared to transfix the question with the end of her knitting-needle. "I really think that it is Betty, my child," she ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... Test.—Certain practical details about this test are of interest to every one. Blood for it is usually drawn from a small vein in the arm. The discomfort is insignificant—no more than that of a sharp pin-prick. Blood is drawn in the same way for other kinds of blood tests, so that a needle-prick in the arm is not necessarily for a Wassermann test. There is no cutting and no scar remains. The amount of blood drawn is small and does not weaken one in the least. The test is done on the serum or ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes

... he loved best to forgather with those of his own sex, woman meant much for him! There must be a woman somewhere in the world—a needle in a bottle of hay—a nature that could dovetail and fit in with his own; but what a life-long quest to find her! She must be young and beautiful, like Julia—rien que ca!—and as kind and clever and simple and well-bred and easy to live with as Aunt Caroline, ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... imperial bird of storms—it will continue securely to soar amid every tempest. All attempts to impede its progress will be as powerless and vain as attempts to drive back the flowing tide with the point of a needle. When infidels can grasp the winds in their fists, hush the voice of the thunder by the breath of their mouth, suspend the succession of the seasons by their nod, and extinguish the light of the sun by a veil, then, and not till then, can they arrest the ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... Mrs. Libby, inarticulately. She held between her lips some ravellings and bits of thread, and she was sitting by the open window, laboriously pushing her needle through a piece of heavy ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich

... stately reception rooms of the Embassy. "You see, we are all living a sort of touchy life here, nowadays. We try to be civil to any of the German or Austrian lot when we meet, but of course they don't come to our functions. And every now and then some of those plaguey neutrals get the needle and they don't come, so we never know quite where we are, Guadopolis has been avoiding us lately, and I hear he was seen out at the Lakewood Country Club with Count Reszka, the Rumanian Minister, a few days ago. Gave the Chief quite a little ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... around the shower of gaslight. Miss Kaufman fumbling in her flowered work-bag, finally curling her foot up under her, her needle flashing and shirring through one of the ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst

... the best known laces were those of Venice, Milan and Genoa. The Italians claim the invention of point or needle-made lace; but the Venetian point is now a product of the past, and England and France supply most of the fine ...
— The Art of Modern Lace Making • The Butterick Publishing Co.

... of firearms, ranges through the forest in chase of the fiercest and largest animals which haunt its shade, armed with a slender tube, and a quiver full of needle-like arrows. The tube, ten or eleven feet long, is the celebrated gravatana, or blow-pipe; called also the zarabatana by the Spaniards. Slight as are the arrows which are blown through this weapon, they will penetrate the thickest hide; ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... a better brain than usual, for when the whirl came to an end, it always found his pointing like the magnetic needle to the north. It had been Master Joseph's plan to pretend a good deal of earnestness in the struggle which he was certain would come in this place; but he was pleased to find that there was no need of any pretence in the matter. The horse, under the circumstances, ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson

... follows: 1st round.—(Slip the first st. of each round, and carry the working thread to the wrong side, slipping it through between both needles; the last st. is always knit off plain with both threads, catching them together. This will not be referred to further.) Lay the chinchilla worsted on the needle from the front to the wrong side, knit the next st. plain with the white thread, * carry the chinchilla thread underneath the needle and over the white thread to the front, lay the white thread on the needle from the front to the wrong side, purl the next st. with the chinchilla worsted, lay ...
— Harper's Young People, March 2, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... of his surroundings. Plainly there was a flight of steps ascending from his own level to that of this illuminated doorway; and indeed he thought he could make out another thread of light, as fine as a needle, and as faint as phosphorescence, which might very well be reflected along the polished wood of a handrail. Since he had begun to suspect that he was not alone, his heart had continued to beat with smothering ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... nothing, even if it be given, [187] for if he happen to give one anything in the presence of others, even if it be a needle, [188] all will demand that in justice the same be given to them. In this they closely resemble the laborers of the twentieth chapter of St. Matthew, who construed as an injury the favor that the householder showed to their companions. This is covetousness and lack of consideration. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin

... shrub grows in the karroo, called the ill-tempered thorn. It resembles a mass of miniature porcupine quills, an inch or two in length, planted as thickly as possible together, with the needle-points up and bristling. On one of ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne

... lord who had cut off the king of Morocco's head. Among several other figures, he was very well pleased to see the statesman Cecil upon his knees; and concluding them all to be great men, was conducted to the figure which represents that martyr to good housewifery, who died by the prick of a needle. Upon our interpreter's telling us that she was a maid of honour to queen Elizabeth, the Knight was very inquisitive into her name and family; and after having regarded her finger for some time, 'I wonder,' ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various

... theodolite. Two hundred and five points have been determined in altitude by means of 1,319 barometric observations, and seventeen by means of the theodolite and spirit level. One hundred and ninety-two observations have been made for determining the variation of the magnetic needle at three ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... about introducing an evil-smelling water- tortoise; he went forth to exploit it in the yard. From time to time his shrill voice reached her; then the frayed edges of David's black trousers of ceremony engaged her, to the exclusion of all else. Between the scissors and the needle, at last, there stole on her ear a faint tap, tap—such a sound as water dropping on to a board makes. It left her unconscious for a while, and then grew a little louder, with a note of vehemence. At last she looked ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon

... penetrated by the head of a pin. Scald them and rub off the outside skin, put them in a strong brine for six days, changing the water every other day, keeping them closely covered from the air. Then drain and wipe them (piercing each nut through in several places with a large needle) and prepare the pickle as follows: For a hundred large nuts, take of black pepper and ginger root each an ounce; and of cloves, mace and nutmeg, each a half ounce. Pound all the spices to powder and mix them well together, ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette

... and to waste them. As prosperity came, however, and new elements entered the colony they were, doubtless, affected by the law of the General Court, in 1634, which forbade further acquisition of laces, threads of silver and gold, needle-work caps, bands and rails, and silver girdles and belts. This law was enacted not by the Pilgrims of Plymouth, but by the ...
— The Women Who Came in the Mayflower • Annie Russell Marble

... entire ring of anthers in perfect equilibrium, each with its two orifices closed by close contact with the style, thus retaining the pollen. It will readily be seen that an insect's tongue, as indicated by the needle, in probing between them in search for nectar, must needs dislocate one or more of the anthers, and thus release their dusty contents, while the position of the stigma below is such as to ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson

... a man who had seen many changes, And always changed as true as any needle; His Polar Star being one which rather ranges, And not the fixed—he knew the way to wheedle: So vile he 'scaped the doom which oft avenges; And being fluent (save indeed when fee'd ill), He lied with ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... there were several other little particulars in which this good lady had rendered herself obnoxious to the whispered remarks of some of her female visitants. An Episcopalian herself, she was always observed to be employed with her needle on the evenings of Saturdays, though by no means distinguished for her ordinary industry. It was, however, a sort of manner the good lady had of exhibiting her adherence to the belief that the night of Sunday was the orthodox evening of the Sabbath. On this subject there was, in truth, a species ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper

... found in the meadow, before a rather bunched-up figure appeared, walking along the field-path on the other side of the water, with a magenta parasol studiously lowered in our direction throughout her slow progress, as if that were the magnetic needle and we the fixed pole. Seaton at once lost all nerve in his riding. At the next lurch of the old mare's heels he toppled over into the grass, and I slid off the sleek broad back to join him where he stood, rubbing ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... labourer who gets his shilling daily for despicable toils. Are you surprised? It is even so. And you repeat it every Sunday in your churches. 'It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.' I have heard this and similar texts ingeniously explained away and brushed from the path of the aspiring Christian by the tender Great-heart of the parish. One excellent clergyman told us that the 'eye ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Mrs. Little to her, "these clever creatures we look up to so are rather stupid in some things. Slave! Why, I am a general leading my Amazons to victory." And she waved her needle ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... meet, And each for other's weelfare kindly speirs: The social hours, swift-wing'd, unnotic'd fleet: Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears. The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years; Anticipation forward points the view; The mother, wi' her needle and her shears, Gars auld claes look amaist as weel's the new; The father mixes a' wi' ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... There is a popular belief in this country, which I have never once heard contradicted, that he took a prominent part in laying the foundations of the great Pyramids, that he assisted in placing the Egyptian Sphinx in position, and that he even had something to do with Cleopatra's Needle. [Laughter.] ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... stared at me, and I crept forth into the street again among the dainty, sprigged gowns and high-collared coats amid which I wandered somewhat disconsolate until by chance my wandering gaze lighted upon a small, dingy shop in whose narrow window squatted a small, humpbacked, bespectacled man plying needle and thread with remarkable speed and dexterity. It was a small shop but so stuffed and crammed with garments of all kinds that they had overflowed into the street, for the narrow doorway was draped, choked and festooned with ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... Miko with a heat-cylinder no longer than a finger. Its needle-beam played upon Snap's naked chest. I could see the gruesome little trail of smoke rising; and as Snap twisted and jerked, there on his flesh was the red and blistered trail of the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various

... train came down the line and the two English doctors were fetched. A tourniquet which seemed like a knife, and hurt terribly, was applied as well as the bootlace. I was also given some morphia. "This will hurt a little," he said as he pushed in the needle, which I thought distinctly humorous. As if a prick from a hypodermic could be anything in comparison with what was going on "down there" where I hadn't courage to look! His remark had one good effect though, ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp

... of the needle must not be forgotten. For a year and a half, whilst at Canterbury, he went regularly for five hours a day to a tailor to learn the trade, and was found very handy with his needle. He proved to be of much use in the ...
— Kalli, the Esquimaux Christian - A Memoir • Thomas Boyles Murray

... closer to the others, to find out what Jack had to say; for strange as it might seem, when peril confronted the boys of the Motor Boat Club, they seemed to turn toward Jack with much the same confidence the needle shows in pointing directly ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel

... of plain surfaces has ever been the aim of all the arts, but especially that of the needle, which being the oldest expression of decorative intention, has, from the earliest time, been very dependent on its groundwork for its ultimate results. This is particularly the case in embroideries of the type of what is ...
— Jacobean Embroidery - Its Forms and Fillings Including Late Tudor • Ada Wentworth Fitzwilliam and A. F. Morris Hands

... "Mrs. Douglas, if you'll get a needle and thread I'll mend my coat. You see, I just stepped in there to surprise you a minute and I backed up against a hook and it caught right under my collar and tore half of it off. What makes you make your closets ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon

... and so I lay down the pen, which is more mightier than the sword, but which I'm fraid would stand a rayther slim chance beside the needle gun. ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 5 • Charles Farrar Browne

... a reason additional to its economy why this practice should not die out. The tearing up into strips of old garments, and the tacking of their ends together with needle and thread is work eminently suited for children, and one in which they take great pride, as it gives them a share in the creation of a useful ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller

... these words, which were spoken so cheerily and with such a pleasant smile, seemed to pierce the princess like the prick of a needle, and caused her to press her lips together in just such a way as if she wanted to check an outcry of pain or suppress some hidden rage. Marie Antoinette, while speaking of the sharp ears which madame always had, had hinted at the advanced age ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach

... the plea of want of time, and because she heard that Mr. Elvers, a real dragoon, declared colours to be inappropriate to riflemen. And so he did; but his wife said the point was not martial correctness, but popular feeling; so Mary gratified the party by bringing her needle, Dr. Spencer took care the blazonry of the arms of the old abbey was correct, and Flora asked the great lady of the county to present the banner, and gave the invitation to Mrs. Pugh, who sighed, shook her head, dried her eyes, and said something about goodness and spirits; and Mrs. Rivers ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... curious to let the mind travel back, and consider what was happening about that time. Just two years before the news had flashed on the philosophical and scientific world that Oersted, a Danish philosopher, had caused a deflection of the magnetic needle by the passage near it of an electric current. The relation between the two forces was then and there confirmed by separate observations all over the civilized world. This discovery probably created more interest at that time than Professor Einstein's recent announcement which, if accepted, may ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various

... The needle-like boat threaded its way in and out among the islands, and leaped into the mouth of a sluggish gulfward-stealing bayou. Here a few strokes of the paddle swept pirogue and paddler into a strange and lonely world. The tall cypress-trees on ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... doctors to have me walk I believed to be inspired by the detectives, of whom, indeed, I supposed the doctor himself to be one. Had there been any confession to make, I am sure it would have been yielded under the stress of this ultimate torture. The million needle points which, just prior to my mental collapse, seemed to goad my brain, now centred their unwelcome attention on the soles of my feet. Had the floor been studded with minute stilettos my sufferings could hardly have been more intense. For several weeks assistance was necessary with each attempt ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers

... contentedly, while Mrs. Jake and Mrs. Martin had each produced a blue yarn stocking from a capacious pocket, and the shining steel needles were presently all clicking together. One knitter after another would sheathe the spare needle under her apron strings, while they asked each other's advice from time to time about the propriety of "narrerin'" or whether it were not best to "widden" according to the progress their respective stockings had made. Mrs. Thacher had lighted an extra candle, and ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... her dark silk by his chair, and her rosy little face smiled down on him. She was, for an old woman, wonderfully pretty still. What a delicate skin she must have had! The wrinkles were etched upon it with so fine a needle, you scarcely could see them a little way off; and as she smiled her cheeks looked fresh and smooth ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... that it gives us any other then a very imperfect information even about mixt Bodies themselves: For how will the knowledge of the Tria Prima discover to us the Reason, why the Loadstone drawes a Needle and disposes it to respect the Poles, and yet seldom precisely points at them? how will this Hypothesis teach Us how a Chick is formed in the Egge, or how the Seminal Principles of Mint, Pompions, and other Vegitables, that I mention'd ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle

... in spruce timber, tramping over five feet of snow. During these electrical waves, the points of dry twigs were tipped with a smoky blue flame, and sometimes bands of this bluish flame encircled green trees just below their lower limbs. I looked at the compass a few times, and though the needle occasionally swayed a little, it was not affected in ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... method—a method by no means restricted to the Tossafists—did not blind him to its defects. "They try to force an elephant through the eye of a needle," he sarcastically said of some of the French casuists. Nachmanides thus possessed some of the independence characteristic of the Spanish Jews. He also shared the poetic spirit of Spain, and his hymn for the Day of Atonement is one of the finest products ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams

... took hours of quiet argument before Caleb could convince those shy and suspicious people that his errand was an honest one. Eventually they did come to believe him; they led him, a-foot, another half mile up the timber-fringed stream, to a log cabin set back in the balsams upon a needle carpeted knoll. And they stood and stared in stolid wonder at this portly man in riding breeches and leather puttees, when he finally emerged from that small shack, "Old Tom's" tin box under his arm, and, with lips working strangely, pinned the ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans

... into?" Here Caradoc lifted the lid, and Madden got a view. "Say, that's a torpedo, isn't it?" he asked quickly as he saw a long needle-pointed steel cigar with propeller and rudder on ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling

... its summit enjoyed the finest view of the Peak Range I had yet seen. I attempted to sketch it in its whole extent, and gave to its most remarkable peaks separate names. A long flat-topped mountain I called "Lord's Table Range," after E. Lord, Esq., of Moreton Bay; and a sharp needle-like rock, which bore west-by-north, received the name of "Fletcher's Awl," after Mr. John Fletcher, whose kind contribution towards my expedition had not a little cheered me in my undertaking. Towards the east and north-east, a flat country extended, in which ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt

... can't see anything. But I can, and I tell you, Betty is very different from the girl she used to be. Most of the time she sits and gazes out of her window. She used to be so bright, and when she was not romping with the children she busied herself with her needle. Yesterday as I entered her room she hurriedly picked up a book, and, I think, intentionally hid her face behind it. I saw she ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... Street," said the Green Plume, "and Mrs. Wilcox, that was Jeri Meyers, has got another baby girl, and the ladies of the First M. E. made seven dollars and sixty-nine cents on their needle-work bazaar and missionary tea. I ain't been home in ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber

... life into him. Somebody had raised him to a sitting posture and was supporting him there while a second person bound a cloth about his head. He opened his eyes and the light of day shot into them like a stinging, burning charge of needle-points, and he closed them again with a sharp cry of pain. That second's glance had shown him that it was a woman who was binding his head. He had not seen her face. Beyond her he had caught a half formed vision of many people and the glistening ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood

... sort of poisoning. He was taken to St. George's Hospital in an ambulance, but he never recovered. The post-mortem investigation showed a small scratch on the palm of the hand. That scratch had been produced by a pin or a needle which had been infected by one of the newly discovered poisons which, administered secretly, give a post-mortem appearance ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux

... the best bower, and set sail; and at eight having little wind, and the tide making against us, we dropped anchor again in ten fathoms, off the mouth of Rakowina harbour; the ostrog bearing N. by E. 1/2 E., two miles and a half distant; the Needle Rocks on the east side of the passage, S.S.E. 1/2 E.; and the high rock, on the west side of the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... as Male and Female. In the Spiritual world Evil and Good are in equilibrio, and it will be restored, when of the Evil Good becomes, until all is Good. Also this other world is called the World of the Balance. For, as in the Balance are two scales, one on either side and the beam and needle between them, so too in this world of restoration, the Numerations are arranged as distinct persons. For Hakemah is on the right hand, on the side of Gedulah, and Binah on the left, on the side of Geburah; and Kether is the beam of the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... To begin: the ass was in the right and Balaam in the wrong; so what becomes of your 'first fault?' She was frugal of her words, but every syllable was a needle; the worst is, some skins are so thick our needles won't enter 'em. Says she, 'This seven years you have known me; always true to the bridle and true to you. Did ever I disobey you before? Then why go and fancy I do it without ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... went to Belle's habitation, and informed her that Mr. and Mrs. Petulengro had paid us a visit of ceremony, and were awaiting her at the fireplace. "Pray go and tell them that I am busy," said Belle, who was engaged with her needle. "I do not feel disposed to take part in any such nonsense." "I shall do no such thing," said I, "and I insist upon your coming forthwith, and showing proper courtesy to your visitors. If you do not their feelings will be hurt, and you are aware that I cannot bear that people's ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow

... competent to give away the earth! Why then dost thou wish to make a gift of that over which thou hast no power? Vanquishing me in battle, rule thou this earth! Thou didst not formerly agree to give me even that much of the earth which would be covered by the point of a needle! How then, O monarch, dost thou make me a gift of the whole earth? How is it that thou, who couldst not formerly abandon even that much of land which the point of a needle would cover, now wishest to abandon the whole earth? What fool is there that would, after having obtained such prosperity ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... to her person a little negress of about the same age—her Milly, the color of a ripe gourd. So when in spring the gardener began to make his garden, with her grandmother sometimes standing over him, directing, Gabriella, taking her little chair to the apple tree,—with some pretended needle-work and a real switch,—would set Milly to work making hers. Nothing that they put into the earth ever was heard of again, though they would sometimes make the same garden over every day for a week. So that more than once, forsaking seed, they pulled off the tops of green ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen

... her. Indeed, she is bid with child, and so big, that as my Lady Northumberland says, it is plain she has a camel in her belly, and my Lord Edgecumbe says, it is as true it did not go through the eye of a needle. That Countess has been laid up with a hurt in her leg; Lady Rebecca Paulett pushed her on the birthnight against a bench: the Duchess of Grafton asked if it was true that Lady Rebecca kicked her? "Kick me, Madam! When did you ever hear of a Percy ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... he can, and keeps all he can get.' This is probably the gospel definition of the term, a rich man, who, it is said, can no more enter a world of spiritual enjoyment than a camel or a cable can go through 'the eye of a needle.' ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott

... needle," said the doctor, with disgust. "You see, either he has perfect control over himself; or he absolutely cannot speak. While I was setting his arm and fixing up his smashed ribs, he ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson

... Bath in 1840, and, after receiving his early training in a South Wales ironworks, became associated with Sir John Fowler in London. He took part in the construction of the Metropolitan railway (London), and in designing the cylindrical vessel in which Cleopatra's Needle, now standing on the Thames Embankment, London, was brought over from Egypt to England in 1877-1878. By this time he had already made himself an authority on bridge-construction, and shortly afterwards he was ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... the camp at Montmorenci; and here, as he lay in an upper chamber, helpless in bed, his singular and most unmilitary features haggard with disease and drawn with pain, no man could less have looked the hero. But as the needle, though quivering, points always to the pole, so, through torment and languor and the heats of fever, the mind of Wolfe dwelt on the capture of Quebec. His illness, which began before the twentieth of August, had so far subsided on the twenty-fifth that Knox wrote in his ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... rectangle marked off, leaving a one-inch space around the edge of the tag-board. Start at a point where a vertical and a horizontal line intersect and mark off the six-inch ends into spaces one-fourth inch apart. Next with a large needle pierce the board at each point of intersection. This will make twenty-five eyelets at each end. On the reverse side of the board draw diagonals to determine the center. Tie together the two brass rings and fasten them firmly to the center of the ...
— Construction Work for Rural and Elementary Schools • Virginia McGaw

... President of the College of Physicians at London. His De Magnete was the first noteworthy treatise on physics printed in England. He treated of the earth as a spherical magnet and suggested the variation and declination of the needle as a means of ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... ashamed of his work. He knew that at the close of the war better men than he sought and accepted gratefully such a livelihood as he disdained—that women in whose veins ran good old English blood left their wasted homes to teach in public schools, or turned their delicate hands to the needle for support. He was ashamed of his past ambition—of his vaunted aspiration—and he was ashamed of Jerry Pollard and ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... head and his wife's, had just dropped the comb with which they were arranging each other's hair. The shoemaker and his dame from Nuremberg paused in the sensible lecture they were alternately addressing to their apprentices. The Frankfort messenger put down the needle with which he was mending the badgerskin in his knapsack. The travelling musicians who, to save a few pennies, had begun to eat bread, cheese, and radishes, instead of the warm meals provided for the others, let their knives drop and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... actual generators), and safety and convenience have to be gained at the expense of the carbide. In such apparatus the supply of water is usually controlled ultimately by pressure, though a hand-operated needle-valve is frequently put on the water tube. The water actually reaches the carbide either by dropping from a jet, by passing along, upwards or downwards, a "wick" such as is used in oil-lamps, or by percolating through a mass of porous material like felt. The carbide ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... ultimate scientific conceptions we must begin at the beginning. So you must bear with me if I commence by making some simple and obvious reflections. Let us consider three statements, (i) 'Yesterday a man was run over on the Chelsea Embankment,' (ii) 'Cleopatra's Needle is on the Charing Cross Embankment,' and (iii) 'There are dark lines in the Solar Spectrum.' The first statement about the accident to the man is about what we may term an 'occurrence,' a 'happening,' or an 'event.' I will use the ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead

... the boy. "I was always freely allowed to serve him, and so I brought him a scissors and needle and thread to repair his clothing, which had been cut to ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage

... our Sences delude, 'Tis the Centre attracts our Needle; And Love's a Jest when thought to intrude, The design of it to unriddle: A Virgin may show strange coyness in Love, And tell you Chimera's of Honour; But give her her Wish, the Man she approves, No Labour he'll have ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various

... slew most of them and the others hid away. When the ape saw this his heart grew uneasy. He drew the magic giant-likeness in again, took his rod and fled. But Yang Oerlang followed hard on his heels. In his urgent need the ape thrust the rod, which he had turned into a needle, into his ear, turned into a sparrow, and flew up into the crest of a tree. Yang Oerlang who was following in his tracks, suddenly lost sight of him. But his keen eyes soon recognized that he had turned himself ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various

... every sight and sound was a source of new terror to the sailors. An eruption of a volcano at the Canaries was watched with dread as an omen of evil. They crossed the line of no magnetic variation, and when the needle of the compass began to change its usual direction, they were sure it was bewitched. They entered the great Sargasso Sea and were frightened out of their wits by the strange expanse of floating vegetation. They entered the zone of the trade winds, ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... with the baker, which shall transfer her toils from your cooking-stove to her own. Young women are eagerly rushing into every other employment, till female trades and callings are all overstocked. We are continually harrowed with tales of the sufferings of distressed needle-women, of the exactions and extortions practised on the frail sex in the many branches of labor and trade at which they try their hands; and yet women will encounter all these chances of ruin and starvation rather than make up ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... served. I mustered up my spirits at last, and addressed myself to a young man who seemed less pretending than the rest, and who had oftener been left to himself. I gently asked him, who that courteous gentleman was in grey clothes.—"Who? he that looks like an end of thread blown away from a tailor's needle?"—"Yes, he that stands alone."—"I do not know him," he answered; and, determined, as it seemed, to break off the discussion with me, turned away, and entered on a trifling conversation with ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso

... nothing to what I shall yet do in needlework, O mother, when I am of age to be trusted with my first needle, and knighted by thy hands, and enrolled amongst the valiant ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady

... with the point of a knitting needle, etc. The design is then visible on the other side of the ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel

... "do you keep your heaven locked behind a gate of the Needle's Eye? It's not my fault that I'm rich. It was wished on me. If you are serious, I'm willing to become poor as Job's turkey. Show me the way to strip myself, and I'll stand shortly before you ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... in the ether which creates the magnetic area explains why the magnetized needle of a compass unfailingly points north and south. This one simple fact is a certain proof of its existence. And once granting a magnetic field to be there it is less difficult to understand how wireless waves are produced in this congenial medium and find their way ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett

... us. Why? We might know that a cannon-ball passes through our field of vision, but we cannot locate it. Why not? Our sense of touch is also very weak and only extends over a very limited space. And as it is on the large scale, so is it with the small. We see the eye of a needle, but infusoria and bacteria, which we know to be there and which affect us so much, we cannot see. With telescopes and microscopes we can slightly extend the field of our perception, but the limitations and weakness of our sense-impressions remain none the less ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller

... was not trying to get inside; he was merely sharpening his claws after the manner of his kind, claws which were sharp enough, heaven knew, since, regularly, once a month the keepers filed them to needle-points. ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath

... go to-day to your dear little aunt in the forest," says she, "and ask her for a needle and thread to ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome

... thermology. Every wind that blows is determined by influences partly solar, partly lunar, partly hygrometric; and implies considerations of fluid equilibrium and physical geography. The direction, dip, and variations of the magnetic needle, are facts half terrestrial, half celestial—are caused by earthly forces which have cycles of change corresponding with astronomical periods. The flowing of the gulf-stream and the annual migration of icebergs towards the equator, depending as they do on the balancing ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... eyes and watched the pupils contract. "Possible concussion. We'll check at the hospital." He knelt and took a roll of cloth from his bag and unwrapped it to disclose hypodermic needles in a sterile inner wrapper. He fitted a needle to a syringe and found a bottle of alcohol and a vial of sedative. Working swiftly, he wiped the vial top and Rick's arm with alcohol, then drew fluid into the syringe. "This will help the pain," he said, and pressed the needle ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin

... sympathy in words, we sent Daga's last bit of sewing to her mother. Sure enough, no word was needed; the message explained itself; and when we went to take a last look at the dear child, the scrap of cardboard lay in the still hand, the needle threaded with yellow wool, the childish knot, soiled and cumbersome, hanging below the pattern just as she had left it. It was her only funeral offering, her only funeral service, and was it not something of a sermon? It told ...
— The Story of Patsy • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... quite close to me, Maggie, as close as I am to you now, and take each needle—one after the other—between the finger and thumb of his right hand—keeping all the other fingers away from it, stick the point of it for a moment into his other palm, to show that it was sharp, and then to all appearance swallow it bodily before your eyes. In this ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... many a morn I sprang from bed, As o'er the deadly brink The wretch, with courage of despair, Leaps from the slimy river-stair, By hopeless hope unthinking sped, Ere he can pause to think. Cold as the efforts of the dead, The needle-atom'd air, Impinged upon the limbs that shrink. On shivering shanks, and eyelids pink, And bound its bands about the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various

... ordinary punch and a hammer, each alternate tooth may be driven down until it rests flat on the inclined face (A), so that it is impossible to set the teeth wrongly. When you glance down the end of a properly set saw, you will see a V-shaped channel, and if you will place a needle in the groove and hold the saw at an angle, the needle will ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe

... sorry I stuck you, Crosby," said Sissy, softly, smoothing out her embroidery. "I forgot there was a needle ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson

... wasted, I know not how, so that my poor mother had but a hard time of it; and when I was just turned of twenty-one and was free of my apprenticeship, she had but little to live upon but what I could bring home, and what she could earn by her needle. This was no grief to me, for I was fond of my trade, and I had learned it well. My old master was fond of me, and would trust me with work of a good deal of responsibility. I neither drank nor smoked, nor was ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale

... returned to his cousin, and, seating himself at the table, took up a book, and began reading it the wrong side upwards; then he threw down a ball of silk, then he cracked a knitting-needle, and then with a husky sort of voice and a half blush, and altogether an air of infinite confusion, he said, 'This has been an odd affair, May, of the Duke of St. James and ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli

... looking for Berna. My heart hungered for her; my eyes ached for her; my mind was so full of her there seemed no room for another single thought. But it was like looking for a needle in a strawstack to find her in that seething multitude. I knew no one, and it seemed futile to inquire regarding her. These keen-eyed men with eager talk of claims and pay-dirt could not help me. There seemed to be nothing for it but to wait. So with spirits steadily ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... a gilt-framed mirror and the various knick-knacks of a girlish toilet. There was a little blue rocker and an ottoman with a work-basket on it. In the work-basket was a bit of unfinished, yellowed lace with a needle sticking in it. A small bookcase under the sloping ceiling was filled ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... to the other igloos he missed Chealuk. She had always sat in one corner plying her needle, and had always had a word for him when he came in to pay a visit. Her absence was therefore noticeable and Bob asked one of the Eskimos ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace



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