"Thread" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... left, stretched out like a silver thread amidst the green sheen of the foliage the road leading to Verdun and Paris beyond, lined along its extent with rows of tall poplars planted with mathematical regularity; while a series of pretty villages, each with its own church steeple and surrounded ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... work to make wings for himself. He shaped two great frames and covered them with feathers. The largest plumes he sewed on with thread, and the smaller ones he ...
— Classic Myths • Retold by Mary Catherine Judd
... loch, where they rest. But suppose there is a dry summer—and such things have been even in Argyleshire. The heart of the tourist is glad within him, but as the river shrinks and shrinks, a silver thread among slimy green mosses in the streams, a sheet of clear water in the pools, the angler repines. Day after sultry day goes by, and there is no hope. There is a cloud on the distant hill; it is only the smoke from some moor that has caught fire. The river grows so ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... the earthquake was a long crack made in the north bank of the Caledonian Canal near Dochgarroch Lochs. It occurred in the middle of the towing-path, and could be traced at intervals for a distance of 200 yards to the east of the Lochs, and 400 yards to the west, being often a mere thread, and in no place more than half-an-inch wide. Soon after its formation, however, the fissure was obliterated by heavy showers ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... the west bank of the river. Frendeet commences with a swelling of one of the limbs, generally accompanied with intense pain; this is caused by a worm of several feet in length, but no thicker than pack-thread. The Arab cure is to plaster the limb with cow-dung, which is their common application for almost all complaints. They then proceed to make what they term "doors," through which the worm will be able to escape; but, should it not be able to find one exit, they make ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... not cut his throat; but I cut the thread of all his comforts, and shortened his days; I broke his heart by the most ungrateful, unnatural return for the most tender, affectionate treatment that ever father gave, or child ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... is more than ever difficult to keep to the thread of this discourse. All that South Kensington did and failed to do, the aesthetic movement of the eighties, the new gospel of artistic salvation by Liberty fabrics and De Morgan tiles, the erratic changes of fashion in ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... gardens. The evening air was delicious with the smell of flowers, still wet with rain. The spirit of the breeze softly whispered among the branches above me. Far up in the darkening blues a hawk circled. The west was a thread of yellow flame; the moon rose over the hills in the east; Diana on the heels of Apollo! And the river! It was as though Nature had suddenly become lavish in her bounty and had sent a stream of melting silver trailing over all the land. There is nothing more beautiful to see than ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... caught up on its trimming, or a fastening undone, it is her duty to say: "Excuse me, madam (or miss), but there is a hook undone"—or "the drapery of your gown is caught—shall I fix it?" Which she does as quietly and quickly as possible. If there is a rip of any sort, she says: "I think there is a thread loose, I'll just tack it. It will ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... beauty! Look how she rides, the darling, like a duck! What a clipper she is, to be sure; so easy to handle! a child could steer her with a piece of thread!' ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... more important characters, and presents a striking situation. Part Second, the most admired, is elegiac in nature. It pleases by its simple melancholy. This part and the dramatic tableau of Part Three explain the cause of the duel with which Part One begins. Part Four resumes the thread of the narration where it was broken off in Part One, and ends with the Dance of Death which forms the climax of the whole. The character of Don Flix de Montemar is vigorously drawn. Originality cannot be claimed for it, as it is the conventional Don Juan Tenorio ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... precepts, exhortations, fear of God and men, fair, foul means, fame, fortune, shame, disgrace, honour cannot oppose, stave off, or withstand the fury of it, omnia vincit amor, &c. No cord nor cable can so forcibly draw, or hold so fast, as love can do with, a twined thread. The scorching beams under the equinoctial, or extremity of cold within the circle arctic, where the very seas are frozen, cold or torrid zone, cannot avoid or expel this heat, fury, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... power and intensity as a man rises to higher rank and dignity;[15] in which estate he must needs dread every moment the coming of poverty, disgrace, and every indignity, which may indeed swiftly overtake him, for they all hang by but a slender thread, not unlike the sword which the tyrant Dionysius suspended above the head of ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... of autumn raged with frightful violence throughout that gorge, and yet I have known her, while the wind was howling and the rain pouring, to go round three times in one night to the bedsides of those whose lives were hanging by a thread. Once I recollect after my recovery, going to see a young man who was very low and seemed to have life only while Mrs. Maurice bent over him. She had visited him early that evening, and had promised to come and see him again ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... from under my pillow, and counted into his hand the ten pieces which were my store. My rosary I drew out likewise; I had broken it when I shattered the cross, but one of the inn-maids had tied it together for me with a thread, and it served very well. The Italian unhooked the delicate carving from the silver chain and hung it on my wooden one, which I threw over my neck, vastly pleased with my new possession. Marcel's Virgin was a botch compared with it. I remembered that mademoiselle, who had given me half my ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... my father," he said calmly. "Thy perplexity hath not been untangled for thee, nor even a thread pulled which shall start it raveling. The priesthood can kill Mesu," he said to Loi, "and it will do them no hurt. And thou, my father, canst countenance it and seem no worse than any other monarch that loved his throne. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... himself to bleed in the arm without great risk of injury, so he decided to perform the operation on the foot, which is far less dangerous. Hot water was brought, and the white phantom removed a pair of white thread stockings of wonderful beauty, then another and another, up to six, and took off a slipper of beaver lined with white. The leg and foot thus left bare were the prettiest in the world; and Besse began to think that the figure before him must be that of a woman. At the second basinful the patient ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... the mountains which rose steep and rocky on all sides, while the valleys were richly wooded, and a silver thread, curving to and fro, marked the presence of ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... walls with wainscots of Irish wood or with high warp tapestries of gold and thread of Arras, so much sought after in that epoch. Then this hard, black soil must be repaved with green and yellow bricks or black and white flagstones. The vault must be starred with gold and sown with crossbows on a field azur, and the Marshal's cross, sable ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... through the aisles they passed, They heard strange voices on the blast, And through the cloister galleries small, Which at mid-height thread the chancel wall, Loud sobs and laughter louder ran, And voices unlike the voice of man, As if the fiends kept holiday. Scott, LAY ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... getting it down finer all the time, until it is not much bigger than a cambric needle, and she draws in a whole lot of air, and just fools with that wee bit of a note, and draws it out fine like a silk thread, and keeps letting go of it a little at a time until it seems as though it was a mile long, and the audience stops talking and eating candy, and just holds its breath, and listens for her to bite it off, and she wiggles with it, and catches ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... might justly have been called our interview. It was not very long, however, before Dinah returned to my bedside, by Mrs. Clayton's directions, to offer to comb out my hair, which was tangled beyond my skill to thread in my prostrate condition. Yet, to make an effort so far as to rise and have this done, I knew would be of benefit ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... a joy to straighten out one's limbs, And leap elastic from the level counter, Leaving the petty grievances of earth, The breaking thread, the din of clashing shears, And all the needles that do wound the spirit, For such a pensive hour of soothing silence. Kind Nature, shuffling in her loose undress, Lays bare her shady bosom;—I can feel With all around me;—I can hail the flowers That sprig ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... is that the book-hunter, if he be genuine, and have his heart in his pursuit, is also a reader and a scholar. Though he may be more or less peculiar, and even eccentric, in his style of reading, there is a necessary intellectual thread of connection running through the objects of his search which predicates some acquaintance with the contents of the accumulating volumes. Even although he profess a devotion to mere external features—the style of binding, the cut or uncut leaves, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... or stowed away upon cupboard shelves; there was no pleasant litter on tables and floor, alluring to work or play. Was that old life, of work and play which mixed and mingled, light-hearted and sweet, gone for ever? Pitt stood in the middle of the floor looking about him, gathering up many a broken thread of association; and then, obeying an impulse which had been on him all the morning, he turned, caught up ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... they advanced. The Turks remained below, which was a good sign, as it showed that their aid was not required. Now, far away, the redcoats could be discerned scattered over the hillside. Could it be that they were defeated? No; just then a long thin line, like a scarlet thread, was seen amid the smoke, far, far away, moving up the slope, in one spot ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... him upon a pedestal?" said Puss, with a thread in her mouth; "why should you all set him upon a pedestal? He is only a Yankee," said Puss, tossing her head, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... even language. As soon as it becomes known that the new saheb from England is in need of a Boy, the levee begins. First you are waited upon by a personage of imposing appearance. His broad and dignified face is ornamented with grey, well-trimmed whiskers. There is no lack of gold thread on his turban, an ample cumberbund envelopes his portly figure, and he wears canvas shoes. He left his walking-cane at the door. His testimonials are unexceptionable, mostly signed by mess secretaries; and he talks familiarly, in good English, of Members of Council. Everything ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... be simpler, nothing quieter, I trust, than a suit of dark purple knickerbockers; and you may see that my thread stockings and my coarse shoes presuppose a stroll in the plantations, where, indeed, I mean to ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... You couldn't have predicted, at any given time, what would become of 'em next. And when old Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig had gone all through the dance; advance and retire, hold hands with your partner; bow and curtsey; corkscrew; thread-the-needle, and back again to your place; Fezziwig "cut"—cut so deftly, that he appeared to wink with his legs, and came upon his feet ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the present, and can be none in the future, And I will show that whatever happens to anybody it may be turn'd to beautiful results, And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death, And I will thread a thread through my poems that time and events are compact, And that all the things of the universe are perfect miracles, each as profound ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... trades, mechanic arts, Coaches, wheelbarrows, and carts; Warrants, bailiffs, bills unpaid, Lords of laundresses afraid; Rogues, that nightly rob and shoot men, Hangmen, aldermen, and footmen; Lawyers, poets, priests, physicians, Noble, simple, all conditions; Worth beneath a thread-bare cover, Villainy bedaubed all over; Women, black, red, fair, and grey, Prudes, and such as never pray; Handsome, ugly, noisy still, Some that will not, some that will; Many a beau without a shilling, Many a widow not unwilling; Many a bargain, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... I say, but was not. It was my antagonist—it was Wilson, who then stood before me in the agonies of his dissolution. His mask and cloak lay, where he had thrown them, upon the floor. Not a thread in all his raiment—not a line in all the marked and singular lineaments of his face which was not, even in the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... making laws for themselves, and strange as it may appear, most of these laws were vastly superior to the ghost article. Through the web and woof of human legislation began to run and shine and glitter the golden thread of justice. ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... afternoon. I gave the tailor six sequins and dismissed him, but I kept Zenobia to attend on the ladies. I took care to place powder, pomade, combs, pins, and everything that a lady needs, on the table, not forgetting ribbons and pack-thread. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... firelight with her head bent, and turned this new thought about in her brain as incompetently as she twisted the blue wool round the needles. And from the silent shadows, as she played with the thread of destiny, two presences eyed each other across her bright head—one armed, the other bearing roses. Neither Mrs. Marston, with her antiphonal 'Double knit, double purl!' nor Edward, reading in his pleasant voice—he rather fancied his reading, and tried not to—saw those impalpable figures, ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... but one way of fortifying my Soul against these gloomy Presages and Terrours of Mind, and that is, by securing to my self the Friendship and Protection of that Being, who disposes of Events, and governs Futurity. He sees, at one View, the whole Thread of my Existence, not only that Part of it which I have already passed through, but that which runs forward into all the Depths of Eternity. When I lay me down to Sleep, I recommend my self to his Care; when I awake, I give my self up to his Direction. Amidst all the Evils ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... but ourselves must listen to his words. Mr. Worthing was very kind, and shared the care of the poor young man with his parents and myself. At length came the crisis of his disorder. "Now," said the physician, "for a few hours, his life will hang, as it were, upon a thread. If the powers of life of are not too far exhausted by the disease he may rally but I have many fears, for he is brought very low. All the encouragement I dare offer that is, while there is life there ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... 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 village who made a livelihood by collecting ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... her work, difficulties of all sorts presented themselves. The cream wouldn't whip, but remained exasperatingly fluid; the sugar refused to "spin a thread," and obstinately crystallised itself into a hard crust; the almonds persisted in becoming a lumpy mass, instead of a smooth paste; and the gelatine, as Patty despairingly remarked, "acted ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... woman, though well past fifty. Her splendid, dark hair had hardly a thread of gray in it, and grew luxuriantly, but she insisted upon wearing it simply parted in the middle and coiled in a mass of plaits behind, while one braid stood up coronet fashion well at the back of her head. She was addicted to rich satins and velvets, and ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... a wonderful performance—quite as neat as Colman could have made it; and I suspect that Harold did not refrain from producing needle and thread from his fat miscellaneous pocket-book, and repairing her many disasters before they reached the domestic eye; for there was a chronic feud between Dora and Colman, and the attempts of the latter to ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a subtle spider which doth sit In middle of her web, which spreadeth wide; If aught do touch the utmost thread of it, She feels it instantly ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... beat on the substantial doors, nor tread Those dusty high-roads of the aimless dead Plaintive for Earth; but rather turn and run Down some close-covered by-way of the air, Some low sweet alley between wind and wind, Stoop under faint gleams, thread the shadows, find Some ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... orders not to put any difficulty in the way of your doing whatever you please. I think, however, you had better call in Vettius.[192] In these bad times, when the life of all the best men hangs on a thread, I value one summer's enjoyment of my Palatine palaestra rather highly; but, of course, the last thing I should wish would be that Pomponia and her boy should live in fear of a ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... did Captain Bezan at this juncture, we will follow the thread of our story in another chapter, and relating to ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... and strapped on the back of the sturdy horse, to be taken into the country to be spun.... Here, at each village, he had his agents, who received the wool, distributed it amongst the peasantry and received it back as yarn. The machine employed was still the old one-thread wheel, and in summer weather on many a village green might be seen the housewives plying their busy trade, and furnishing to the poet the vision of contentment spinning at the cottage door. Returning in safety with his yarn, ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... 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
... child opportunity to experience realities that cannot be treated untruthfully. To this end various kinds of hand work and scientific study have been useful. It is impossible for the child to cheat the tools of the workshop or his instruments of precision; it is impossible to make a spool of thread do the work of two or three; or one cannot make the paint go farther by applying the brush faster. It is concrete reality that can teach the imaginative child reality; in the things he learns from ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... the fall of a grain of sand, the pendular movement of a hanging body. The machine no longer works, or does so only by suppressing almost everything that is real. It must have an ideal material point, an ideal rigid thread, an ideal point of suspension; and then the pendular movement is translated by a formula. But the problem defies all the artifices of analysis if the oscillating body is a real body, endowed with volume and friction; if the suspensory thread is a real thread, endowed with weight and ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... lying like a moat between the elevated sandy desert and the plateau on which Mourzuk is situated. This plateau, at the distance of every few miles, juts out huge buttresses of perpendicular cliffs, which frown over the broken thread of green vegetation in the valley. Thick forests of palms stretch at various points along the low plain, where are springs plentifully furnished by filtration from the high ground on either hand. The ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... designs to be executed in tapestry for the decoration of the Sistine Chapel, where Michael Angelo had painted his great frescoes. The Pope ordered these tapestries to be woven in the looms of Flanders, from the richest materials, and a quantity of gold thread was used in them. They were completed and sent to Rome in 1519, and were exhibited to the people the day after Christmas, when all the city flocked to see them. In 1527, when the Constable de Bourbon allowed the ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... scissors have not cut the mortal thread yet anyhow," he answered, smiling, permitting himself the classic conceit as a screen to possible emotion. "But we won't build too much on the clemency of Fate. How long she proposes to wait before closing her scissors it is ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... written to London signed by Dowie and the models and patterns had been sent to the village and brought to the castle by Jock Macaur. Later there had come rolls of fine flannel and lawn, with gossamer thread and fairy needles and embroidery floss. Then the ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... The thread of imperial life could hardly snap without a jar which would be felt throughout the whole extent of the empire. Trajan, like Alexander, had been cut off suddenly in the Far East, and, like Alexander, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... ruins, relics, and traditions arouse our admiration even to-day. History does not say, yet what glimmerings of history and legend there are serve to take us farther back in time, although scarcely to a fixed starting-point, for the thread of the tale of wanderings and developments of these people of Mexico—a thread which seems traceable among the ruined ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... Miss Fancher's accident and its melancholy consequences is quite affecting. It is collected from the various statements given by half a dozen friends of the family to the Herald reporter. Interwoven with it is a thread of romance, a tale of early love and courtship, of a life embittered by a cruel accident, of patient waiting, and a final release of the suitor from his engagement ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... The prevailing Artifice of their Conduct is, in every Stage of Action, to appear Great, and insinuate themselves to be thought the Favourites only of the Great. These nice Oeconomists, being equipped with one Thread-bare Suit, a German Wig, guilty of few or no Curls, and happy in a single Change of Linnen, seem to despise all superfluous Ornaments of Garniture, and have no Time on their Hands, but what is spent ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... the power of charming this black brooding from his mind. She was the golden thread that united him to a Past beyond his misery, and to a Present beyond his misery: and the sound of her voice, the light of her face, the touch of her hand, had a strong beneficial influence with him almost always. Not absolutely always, for she could recall some occasions on which ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... someone said. A wavering trail of smoke was barely visible below, a thread of white, coming up fast, blown erratically by winds into ...
— Sound of Terror • Don Berry
... to show you that," said Will, pointing to a little crack through which a thread of water made its way running over a few inches of rock, and then disappearing amongst the ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... make this pretty scarf. It is knitted with two threads, one of white and the other of chinchilla zephyr worsted, and wooden needles, crosswise, in rounds going back and forth. Strands of worsted are knotted in the ends for fringe. Begin the scarf with a thread of white and a thread of chinchilla worsted, cast on 27 st. (stitch), and knit as 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 ...
— Harper's Young People, March 2, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the order in which the poems were printed follows the order in which they were written. Fantastic endeavours have been made to detect in the original arrangement of the poems a closely connected narrative, but the thread is on any showing constantly interrupted. {96} It is usual to divide the sonnets into two groups, and to represent that all those numbered i.-cxxvi. by Thorpe were addressed to a young man, and all those numbered ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... that the thread of the narrative should not be spun to a length which might fatigue the reader, that he should imagine a week to have intervened between the scene with which the preceding chapter closed and the events with which it is our intention to ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... about for some time he continued: "The door jamb is built in vertically; that is sure. A string, or piece of thread will make a plumb-bob; here it is: now let us see; according to the plumb line the boat is at an angle of 33 degrees, as nearly as our imperfect device indicates. There, now this line A shows the top of the boat and ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward
... going, mother mine? I'm going to sit by the old grapevine, And watch the gliding swallow bring Clay for her nest from the meadow spring— Clay and straw and a bit of thread To weave ...
— The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes • Leroy F. Jackson
... undecayed. Poor child!—she was even then, sir, but a child! I, wild,—reckless—and not unskilled, perhaps, in the arts that woo and win. She could not resist my suit or her own affection!—We fled. In those words you see the thread of my after history. My sword and my Adeline were all my fortune. Society frowned on us. The Church threatened my soul. The Grand Master my life. I became a knight of fortune. Fate and my right hand favoured me. ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... darkness—spotting them, cataloguing them. And thus he came upon Emil Hillerman, his Deputy of Vital Intelligence sitting dutifully in the end seat of a middle aisle. Hillerman's thick lips hung lax, his eyes squinted laboriously as he sought to follow the thread of Cargill's lecture. ...
— The Clean and Wholesome Land • Ralph Sholto
... one! Look, he has just opened his eyes, and listen, can you not hear him faintly groan?" Then I wandered back into dream-land—into a most dangerous delirium which lasted for several weeks and during which I hung as if by a mere thread, betwixt life and death. ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... course, without previous concert, that is, that when I found her yesterday, reading the book you've wrote, she scorned me," Bows said. "What am I good for but to be laughed at? a deformed old fellow like me; an old fiddler, that wears a thread-bare coat, and gets his bread by playing tunes at an alehouse? You are a fine gentleman, you are. You wear scent in your handkerchief, and a ring on your finger. You go to dine with great people. Who ever gives a crust ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... small spot, but one that comprised a variety of surfaces, having not only marsh and upland within itself, but something that in the distance bore a fearful resemblance to a young patch of standing corn, a suspicion confirmed into certainty by a blue thread of smoke ascending a little way and falling again in a cloud. Once, upon seeing such a sight, Flor might have fallen to the ground herself,—this could be no less than the abode of those sad runaways, those mythical Goblins of the Swamp,—but it would ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... conjecture. There is something in the way in which a person wears the plainest costume which betrays the real man, no matter how he may be clothed. Thus, nothing could be more modest than this traveller's blouse, but the absence on collar and sleeves of the arabesques in white or red thread, the pride of all village dandies, was sufficient for one to realize that this was ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... of a waiting ship.... And there was commerce; the shops and markets and storerooms full of nasturtium seed, thrift seed, lupin beans and such-like provender from the garden; such stuff one stored in match boxes and pill boxes or packed in sacks of old glove fingers tied up with thread and sent off by wagons along the great military road to the beleaguered fortress on the Indian frontier beyond the worn ...
— A Catalogue of Play Equipment • Jean Lee Hunt
... archbishopric, built a separate room. He furnished the reredos of the principal altar, and gave several other alms and support for the purpose of changing that seminary to a monastery of nuns; but he was unable to attain his purpose, for God cut short the thread of his life. They have their own chaplain, their rectoress, and their portress; and they live safely retired and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... upon either Shandy or the Journey: the hero's circumstances are in general not traceable to the English model, but, spasmodically, the manner of narration and the nature of the incidents are quite slavishly copied. Acomplete summary of the thread of incident on which the various sentimental adventures, whimsical speculations and digressions are hung, can be dispensed with: it is only necessary to note instances where connection with Sterne ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... grappled with the daughter, whose knitting he spoiled by hooking the thread with his finger, jogging her elbow until he ran the needles past each other, and finally unravelling her clew; all which she bore with great good-humor. Sometimes, indeed, she ventured to give him a thwack upon the shoulder, with a laughing frown upon ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... I know myself. Not by any means! Attention! We mustn't let drink get the better of us. It seemed to me those days as if I'd been swallowing corkscrews. And I've no desire to knock at the monument just yet. Well, to go from the thread to the needle, this is what I thought: I'll make the proposition to Germinie. I'll treat myself to a little furniture. You've got what you have in your room. You know I'm not much of a shirker, I haven't ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... following his unlucky criticism of the pictures was one of great despondency to Dennis. He had read in Christine's face that he had wounded her sorely; and, though she knew it to be unintentional, would it not prejudice her mind against him, and snap the slender thread by which he hoped to draw across the gulf between them the cord, and then the cable, that might in time unite ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... written in words of blazing light the one word "Now." And as he looked into that calm, awful Face and read that word, Mr. Hardy felt his soul crumble within him. When the Face spoke it was the speech of a thousand oceans heaved by a million tempests, yet through the terror of it ran a thread of music—a still, sweet sound like everlasting love—as if angels sang somewhere a divine ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... of Crowcombe's, or the estate of Viscount Gamberley; still, such as it is, it carries my ideas, and it has an extent of marine frontage such as they might envy. We are asked 5 pounds per foot for a thread of land fronting on a highway, open to every kind of annoyance, overlooked, without any thing to look at. How much, then, per fathom (or measure, if you please, by cable-lengths) is land worth fronting the noble, silent, uncontaminating, healthful sea? Whence ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... a secret conceit, That his thin lantern jaws all her art would defeat. Lady Betty observed it, then pulls out a pin, And varies the grain of the stuff to his grin: And, to make roasted silk to resemble his raw-bone, She raised up a thread to the jet of his jaw-bone; Till at length in exactest proportion he rose, From the crown of his head to the arch of his nose; And if Lady Betty had drawn him with wig and all, 'Tis certain the copy had outdone the original. Well, that's but my outside, says ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... thin nail of tough iron, which I thought we could bend into the shape of a hook. I told no one what I was about, however, but at once began filing away so as to form the barb, the most difficult part of my task. Arthur, meantime, recollected that he had on a pair of strong thread socks; so, undoing the upper part, he produced a long line, which when doubled was of sufficient strength to bear a pretty strong pull. By the time I had prepared my hook, greatly to my satisfaction, his line was ready. It was not so long as ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... Shampuashuh is flat; never a hill or lofty object of any kind rose upon her horizon to suggest wider look-outs and higher standing-points than her present footing gave her. The best she could see was a glimpse of the distant Connecticut, a little light blue thread afar off; and I cannot tell why, what she thought of when she saw it was Tom Caruthers. I suppose Tom was associated in her mind with any wider horizon than Shampuashuh street afforded. Anyhow, Mr. Caruthers' handsome face came be fore her; and a little, a very ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... following her like a snake as she moved languidly about, with her hair negligently caught up, and a tangled wisp straggling untidily down her back. His gaze travelled upwards from bow to bow, noticing those that hung only by a thread, but it did not go beyond her chin. He looked at her lean throat, at the obtrusive collarbone visible in the disarray of the upper part of her attire. He saw the thin arm and the bony hand clasping the child she carried, ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... realise on how slender a thread their political existence hung. They were overmastered by land still as ever, with the further difficulty of Athenian hostility, or quasi-hostility, now added. They resolved to collect bodies of mercenary ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... small capital would like to meet another similarly situated, with a view to the joint purchase of a reel of thread. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... they were normal traits. There occurs in man a strain that has not yet acquired those traits of inhibition that characterized the more highly developed civilized persons. The evidence for this is that, as far back as we go, we still trace back the black thread of ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... All the rest of the order are called Gonni. The habit is the same to the whole order, both Tirinanxes and Gonni. It is a yellow coat gathered together about their wast, and comes over their left shoulder, girt about with a belt of fine pack-thread. Their heads are shaved, and they go bare-headed and carry in their hands a round fan with a wooden handle, which is to keep ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... laughter. But his method is not only that of raillery. He is remorselessly logical. He can pursue the logical sequence of his case, and set it forth with a fusillade of perfectly relevant and illuminating instances and analogies. He never loses his thread like Mr. Chesterton; he never wanders off into vague rhetoric like Mr. Wells. He chases his enemies and his subject until he has subdued the first and set forth the second so that it shines with crystal clearness. ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... stone. Everything was transmuted by it into gold. The counting of guineas was the poor man's sole occupation from morning till night, and the numbers to which he attained were sometimes quite bewildering; but he invariably lost the thread at a certain point, and, with a weary sigh, began over again at the beginning. The bed curtains became golden tissue, the quilt golden filigree, the posts golden masts and yards and bowsprits, which now receded from him to immeasurable distance, and anon advanced, until he cried out ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... queen was sitting in the pink drawing-room, arrayed in her queenly robes, for she was quite recovered and expected to walk out in the evening. Everything in the room, except a vase of green and golden colored sponge-plant, and a plume of glass-thread, was of a pink color. Then there was a pretty rockery made of a pyramid of pumice, full of embossed rosettes of living sea-anemones of scarlet, orange, grey and black colors, which were trained to fold themselves ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... all things Oriental, like the life, the patterns, the stories, seemed to have no beginning and no end: it just went monotonously and indefatigably on till fate snipped its thread by calling us away to dinner. And so at last we went down into the dust of the streets refreshed by that vision of white youths dancing on the house-tops against the gold of a sunset that made them look—in spite of ankle-bracelets and painted eyes—almost as guileless ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... that this meeting could not fail of its due result. That Maria Vittoria had exacted some promise which held his King in Spain he was now aware. She would say what that promise was, the condition of their parting. She had come prepared to say it—and the thread of Wogan's reasonings was abruptly cut. It seemed to him that he heard something more than the night breeze through the trees,—a sound of feet upon the gravel path, ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... said Mowbray; "I thought I saw her thread her way through the crowd a little while since, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... depends on a frail silken thread, Which I even by kindness may cruelly sever, And I look to the moment of parting with dread, For I feel that in parting I lose thee forever. Sole being that cherish'd my poor troubled heart! Thou know'st all its secrets—each joy and each grief; And in sharing them all thou did'st ever impart ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... is strange—very strange,' said he at last, with a thoughtful frown. 'However, it is only one more snarl in the tangled thread of circumstances, and, with good luck, we ought to be able to get at the root of all this mystery soon. But, my young friend,' said he, bringing his gaze back from the wall and long line of books and centering it once more upon me, 'there is one more very important matter which ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... even suspended quiescent as organic molecules in the structure of the home, yet in feverish activity equaled only by battle, making ready for the great change of their foster offspring. I watched the very first thread of silk drawn between the larva and the outside world, and in an incredibly short time the cocoon was outlined in a tissue-thin, transparent aura, within which the tenant could be seen skilfully weaving ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... knives are prized, the dagger, bayadau or badau, is in even greater favor. It is worn on the front left-hand part of the body in ready reach of the right hand, and is never removed unless the owner is in the company of trusted relatives. A light thread, easily broken, holds the dagger in its sheath and the slightest disturbance is enough to cause the owner to ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... mountain-skeleton of the globe. Both the climate and the vegetation of Midian must have changed immensely if these huge features, many of them five miles broad, were ever full of water. In modern days, after the heaviest rains, a thin thread meanders down ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... fifth size, and comes very near to his Pieris nina. The wings are of a fine white colour, particularly the upper. These have their summit black, and a minute black point, near the middle. The under wings are without any spots, but are bordered behind by a cinereous thread. The underside of the upper wings have the costa and summit covered with spots and minute incontinuous lines of a yellowish colour. The underside of the lower wings are sulphureous, with very fine undulating or rather incontinuous lines of a ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... three daughters. No, none of them would do. Joan was idle, and Amy was conceited, and Frethesancia had a temper. Little Roese might have done, who lived with old Serena at the mill end; but old Serena could not spare her. At last, as Avice broke her thread for the fourth time, she pushed back the stool on which she was sitting, and rose with her determination taken, and spoke ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... stripes so energetically. Whatever their silent criticisms might be, however, Mrs. Lee was too much in earnest to be conscious of them, or, indeed, to care for anything but what she was saying. There was a moment's pause when she came to the end of her speech, and then the thread of talk was quietly taken up again where Sybil's ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... of the multitude often causes to rise in the breasts of those who have ettled their best to serve the ungrateful populace. However, I considered with myself that it would not do for me, after what I had done for the town and commonality, to go out of office like a knotless thread, and that, as a something was of right due to me, I would be committing an act of injustice to my family if I neglected the means of realizing the same. But it was a task of delicacy, and who could I prompt ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... dogs, and, on acquaintance, they always liked him. But when you meet a dog in some one else's wood, it is as well not to stop in order that you may get to understand each other. Mike began to thread his ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... on one side of the room. To each is given three or four buttons, a needle and thread, and a piece of cloth. They race to see which can sew the buttons in a straight line on the piece of cloth, ...
— School, Church, and Home Games • George O. Draper
... friend forthwith, then hastened downstairs to the kitchen. Van and Beth presently took breakfast together, while Elsa, with a borrowed needle and thread, was busied with some minor repairing of garments roughly used the day before. Other boarders and lodgers of the house had already eaten and gone, to resume their swirl in the maelstrom ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... up, and when she saw the King's son gazing in at her, she blushed red all over, cast down her eyes and span on. Whether the thread was quite as even as usual I really cannot say, but she went on spinning till the King's son had ridden off. Then she stepped to the window and opened the lattice, saying, 'The room is so hot,' but she looked after him as long as she could see the white plumes ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... necklaces and bracelets made of bits of wood or shells. Others adorned their necks with small red berries and pearls. Evidently they did not know how to pierce holes in them, for they notched them and joined them by a thread. They valued these ornaments so highly, that they refused to change them for English necklaces of glass. Their chief anxiety was to obtain knives ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... "Pampinea," an idyl in which the poet's fancy plays lightly and gracefully with the romance of life in Boccaccio's Florentine garden, and returns again to the beauty which inspired his dream of Italy, as he lay musing beside our northern sea. The thread of thought running through the poem is slight as the plot of dreams,—breaks, perhaps, if you take it up too abruptly; but how beautiful are the hues and the artificing of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... words in the light of all that has gone after, and to us they are familiar and almost thread-bare. But if we would appreciate their sublimity, we must think away nineteen centuries, and all Christendom, and recall these eleven poor men and their peasant Leader in the upper room. They were not very wise, nor very strong, and outside these four walls there was scarcely a creature ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... holding something in a pair of pliers in his left hand, and winding a thread of silk brought up from the mill round it with his right, "he hasn't been near us yet. Josh and I keep running against him in the woods, or up one of the river paths; but, as soon as he sees us, he turns his back and goes ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... you know; just a few acres, with a meager soil; in good years it produces a little oil and a barrel or two of wine. And that is all. I only kept back this morsel from the general ruin of my property—well, for sentimental reasons. One likes to feel that one is still tied—by a slender thread, it is true—to the land of one's ancestors. There is certainly no wealth to be obtained above ground. But it is quite possible that something might emerge from below, given the energy and the means to make systematic excavations. The whole country is so rich in remains of Hellenic life! ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... impressed with his opinion because the speaker himself had impressed me deeply. He was the best monocle juggler I had ever met. In his right eye he carried a monocle without a rim and without a ribbon or thread to save it, should it ever ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... serene, cheerful, holy smile, such as is rarely seen on human face, save when earth's dearest happiness is beginning to melt away, dimmed in the coming brightness of heaven. Her little thin hands lay crossed on her knee, one finger playing as she often did, with her wedding-ring, now worn to a mere thread ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... of the church had filled a box for the missionary's family, I made one more effort to spare something. All was poor and thread-bare. What should I do? At last I thought of my towels. I had six, of coarse brown linen, but little worn. They seemed a scanty supply for a family of seven; and yet I took one from the number, and, putting it into my pocket, hastened to the house where ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various |
