"Thread" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unless driven to it. He understood his farm work thoroughly, he could even mend the thrashing-machine at the manor-house, and he kept everything in his head, beginning with the rotation of crops on his land. Yet his mind lacked that fine thread which joins the project to the accomplishment. Instead of this the sense of obedience was very strongly developed in him. The squire, the priest, the Wojt, his wife were all sent from ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... had been suspecting that her money had been the chief inducement which led him to seek her hand, and now her worse suspicions were confirmed, and the last thread of ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... sewn together with a tuft of wool, black or white, at each corner. The square should be knitted in at least three colors, including white; in a quilt one yard and a half square, there will be 225 pieces, 113 of which should be white. Make the tufts as follows: wind four-thread fleecy about 12 times round a grooved wooden mesh, one inch in width: then slip a coarse thread in the groove, and tie the wool quite tight, but taking care that an end is left to it, which can be drawn through and fastened to ...
— The Ladies' Work-Table Book • Anonymous
... seine net occupied three pairs of hands. Of the women most were sorting and mixing eider feather and chopping straw to add to it. Looms were there, though not in present use, but three wheels whirred emulously, and the finest and swiftest thread of the three ran between the fingers of the house-mistress. Near her were some children, busy too, plaiting wicks for candles and lamps. Each group of workers had a lamp in its centre, and those farthest from the fire had live heat from two braziers filled with glowing wood embers, ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... the Guise are simpler types. The former is the ambitious villain of quality, chafing at the thought that there is but a thread betwixt him and a crown, and prepared to compass his ends by any means that fall short of the actual killing of the King. It is as a useful adherent of his faction that he elevates Bussy, and when he finds him favoured by Henry he ruthlessly strikes him down, ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... dressmaker. It was the most becoming gown she had ever owned, and Phebe was quite aware of the fact. She laid it on the bed and stood looking at it for a minute or two. Then she shut her lips resolutely, hung it up again, picked a loose thread or two from the plain blue gown she wore, and ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... Without assistance, we could expect to do little for the security of the ship, and our exertions were at first paralyzed by the momentary expectation of going down. Our cable had, of course, parted like pack-thread, at the first breath of the hurricane, or we should have been instantaneously overwhelmed. We scudded with frightful velocity before the sea, and the water made clear breaches over us. The frame-work of our stern was shattered excessively, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... thou thread, Thou thimble, Thou yard, three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail; Away thou rag, thou quantity, thou remnant; Or I shall so bemete thee with thy yard, As thou shalt think on prating ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... intellectual equipment. They graduate machine builders, but not educated machine tenders. Even the textile schools are largely seized by young men who expect to be superintendents of factories, designers, or manufacturers themselves, and the textile worker who actually "holds the thread" is seldom seen in them; indeed, in one of the largest schools women are not allowed, in spite of the fact that spinning and weaving have traditionally been woman's work, and that thousands of women are at present ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... room to room; goes to and fro; approaches and retires.... She asks a question and is answered; is asked something in return, and chirps a reply. It is delightful to chat with her when tired of serious talk; for this creature carries with her something of her skyey element. She is, as it were, a thread of gold interwoven with your sombre thoughts; you feel almost grateful to her for her kindness in not making herself invisible, when it would be so easy for her to be even impalpable; for the beautiful is a necessity of life. ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... That when awakened it will send A thrill of rapture wilder than E'er palpitated heart of man When flaming at its mightiest. And there's a fierceness in his ire— A maddened majesty that leaps Along his veins in blood of fire, Until the path his vision sweeps Spins out behind him like a thread Unraveled from the reel of time, As, wheeling on his course sublime, The ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... Sunday after Sunday he sat down and stood up with that small company, heard the voice of Mr. Torrance leaping like an ill-played clarionet from key to key, and had an opportunity to study his moth-eaten gown and the black thread mittens that he joined together in prayer, and lifted up with a reverent solemnity in the act of benediction. Hermiston pew was a little square box, dwarfish in proportion with the kirk itself, and enclosing a table not much bigger than ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the doctor, with a sad smile; "but not when the bullet, sword, or spear has done too much. The Emir's friend is very bad, and if we had left to-night and these native doctors had stayed, he would never have seen the light of another day; for his life hangs upon a thread that I am going to watch and ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... full possession of public power and the public funds holds only by a slender thread. Let the evicted and outraged majority dare, as subsequently at Lyons, Marseilles, and Toulon, to Return to the section assemblies and revoke the false mandate which they have arrogated to themselves ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... let go the leaf, and the flower-bud to let go the flower—but all to no practical avail, if there is a holding back now. "Love is the fulfilling of the law," and sacrifice is the very life-breath of love. May God shew us every witholding thread of self that needs breaking still, and may His own touch shrivel ...
— Parables of the Cross • I. Lilias Trotter
... roads belong chiefly to Mameluco, mulatto, and Indian families, each of which has its own small plantation. There are only a few planters with larger establishments, and these have seldom more than a dozen slaves. Besides the main roads, there are endless bypaths which thread the forest and communicate with isolated houses. Along these the traveller may wander day after day without leaving the shade, and everywhere meet with cheerful, simple, ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... a pair of pretty and delicate bracelets, made of gold and silver thread, worked with marvellous neatness. The other presented him a handsome purse of crimson satin very cleverly ornamented with the needle. The knight received these graceful gifts with warm thanks, saying that presents which came from hands so fair were more to him than ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... 189.] thus describes such a game among the Chinooks: "Their games are few. The one most generally played amongst them consists in holding in each hand a small stick, the thickness of a goose quill, and about an inch and one-half in length, one plain, the other distinguished by a little thread wound round it, the opposite party being required to guess in which hand the marked stick is to be found. A Chinook will play at this simple game for days and nights together, until he has gambled away everything he possesses, even to his wife." [Footnote: See also Overland, ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis
... before he had gone many steps, he was halted. There began to reach his ears a rich but slender strain of sound, a golden thread of melody. At first he thought that it was a 'cello or the lower notes of a violin, but presently he became aware that it was a woman singing in a half-voice without thought of what she sang—as women croon to a child, or over ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... remarkable novel. It has originality in subject and treatment. The hero is drawn with a master hand. The picture of the heroine is a revelation of innocence and beauty of the most exquisite English type. The love story which runs through the book, like a golden thread, is an idyl. Few novels are so well calculated to appeal to a large class of readers, comprising, as it does, food both for thought ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... proceed they ever multiply, and, like figures in arithmetick, the last stands for more than all that went before it. And, though I think no man can live well once, but he that could live twice, yet, for my own part, I would not live over my hours past, or begin again the thread of my days; not upon Cicero's ground,* because I have lived them well, but for fear I should live them worse. I find my growing judgment daily instruct me how to be better, but my untamed affections and confirmed vitiosity make ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... languors, the other equally worn in mind, if not in body. In the brief silence which followed,—a silence of unexpressed feeling,—a soft strain of organ-music came floating deliciously towards them,—a delicate thread of grave melody which wove itself in and out the airspaces, murmuring suggestions of tenderness and appeal. Angela smiled, and held up one ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... that he was, preserving his composure amid the overthrow of all that he had most at heart, seemed by his calmness to dominate time and circumstances. It was as though the murderer were running away at one end of an unbreakable thread of which Don Luis held the other, and as though Don Luis could stop his flight at any time by a mere movement of ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... stringing them on Pack-thread, a clean Paper being put between every Bottom, to hinder them from touching one another, and so hung up in a dry place. ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... extensive than any they had commanded before. The rolling country, with the sunset glory fading from it, lay like a panorama at their feet—shadowy woods melting into blue distance, streams glancing here and there into sight, fields rich with cultivation bounded by fences that looked like a spider's thread. To the left Claremont, seated above its terraces, made an imposing landmark. Behind it the moon was rising majestically in a cloudless sky. After they had been silent for some time, Clare turned and looked at his companion. "How beautiful ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... accomplished young woman of considerable refinement and of a highly strung nervous temperament, string flies with her needle on a piece of thread, and watch complacently their flutterings. Cruelty may remain latent till, by some accident. it is aroused, and then it will break forth in a devouring flame. It is the same with the passion for blood as with the passions of love ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... evidence, and to prove that, if he confines his observations to certain anthropologists, the censures of Mr. Max Mueller are justified. It is mainly for this reason that the arguments presently to follow are strung on the thread of Mr. Tylor's truly learned and accurate ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... most destructive of all. It is doubtful whether the retort of the eunuch Narses to the empress Sophia, when she recalled him from his government to ply, as she said, the spindle, that he would spin for her such a thread as in her life she would not disentangle, is authentic, but it undoubtedly presents historic truth. Whether or not Narses called the Lombards into Italy, their king Alboin came from Pannonia over the Carnian Alps into the plain which has ever since ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... thread of the Week is so bent out by the sides of the snuff that are about half an Inch or more, remov'd above the bottom, or lowest part of the flame, and that this part be wholly included in the flame; the Oyl (for the reason of filtration, which I have elsewhere rendred) being continualy ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... Cunaut, of Loretto, of Good Tidings, on the other side of the water St. Mary Over. Some vowed a pilgrimage to St. James, and others to the holy handkerchief at Chamberry, which three months after that burnt so well in the fire that they could not get one thread of it saved. Others sent up their vows to St. Cadouin, others to St. John d'Angely, and to St. Eutropius of Xaintes. Others again invoked St. Mesmes of Chinon, St. Martin of Candes, St. Clouaud of ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... some music?" he inquired of Heine, who was sitting up and begging, but Virginia put down her foot. "No, Charley," she said with a forbidding frown, "you go ask mother for a needle and thread." ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... another question, much more vital than emancipation in its relation to British home politics, that ran like a constant thread through the whole pattern of British public attitude toward America. It had always been so since the days of the American revolution and now was accentuated by the American war. This was the question of the future of democracy. Was its fate bound up with the result ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... clothed from the top to the bottom with wild-flowers and plants of every description. The traveller's joy had even gained a footing on the bridge itself. To add to the beauty, a tiny rivulet, which seemed to take its rise from some invisible source, flowed through the flowery ravine like a silver thread. ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... and was even managing to look smugly tolerant. Elshawe had thumbed the button on his minirecorder when the conversation had begun, and he was chuckling mentally at the thought of what was going down on the thin, magnetite-impregnated, plastic thread that was hissing past the ...
— By Proxy • Gordon Randall Garrett
... times, a feverish restlessness came upon him; he could not sleep, and he could not eat; he would then go out and walk for miles and miles, until he was thoroughly exhausted. It was a wonder that his mind did not give way altogether. His sanity hung upon a thread. ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... 30 s.; and in 1 hr. 10 m. reached the centre. Two bits of boiled cork, one of boiled thread, and two of coal-cinders taken from the fire, were placed, by the aid of an instrument which had been immersed in boiling water, on five glands; these superfluous precautions having been taken on account of M. Ziegler's statements. One of the particles ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... like the shock of a sudden blow. After that one gasp of amazement Philip made no sound. He spoke no word to Pierre. In a sudden lull of the wind sweeping over the cabin the ticking of his watch was like the beating of a tiny drum. Then, slowly, his eyes rose from the silken thread in his fingers and met Pierre's. Each knew what the other was thinking. If the hair had been black. If it had been brown. Even had it been of the coarse red of the blond Eskimo of the upper Mackenzie! But it was ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... suddenly. He heard the cocking of a revolver. But he did not look around. He merely thought an instant, quicker than lightning, then pulled out a spool of black thread with one hand, while with the other he switched off the light, and dived down on his stomach on the floor ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... Europe), and the student of French history will follow the career of all three with interest after the clue here given them. Margaret, bitter, vindictive, and designing, seems to have had one poetic thread in her life only, namely, her passion for her husband, whose beauty ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the latter part of the Old Stone Age and during the New Stone Age used the skins of animals for clothing. Later, after weaving had begun, grasses and fibres taken from plants in a rude way were plaited for making clothing. Subsequently these fibres were prepared, twisted into thread, and woven regularly into garments. The main source of supply came from reeds, rushes, wild flax, cotton, fibres of the century plant, the inner bark of trees, and other sources ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... long on its rude straight-backed benches and over its thread-bare turf sprawled unkempt women with sick babies from the shanties; squalid, noisy children from the rookeries; beggars in rags, and now and then some hopeless wayfarer—who for the moment had given ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... into that house. It was a solid and assertive thing of rude importance where it stood in the great plain, the river lying flat before it in its low banks like a gray thread through the summer green. There was a bold front to the house, and a turret with windows, standing like a lighthouse above the sea of meadows in which ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... accomplished her first voyage, and was sailing in triumphantly with a box of "tops and bottoms" from the ancient firm in Threadneedle Street, which has saved so many infants from the power that cuts the thread. After that, everything went as it should go, including this addition to the commercial strength of Britain, which the lady was enabled soon to talk of as "our ship," and to cite when any question rose of the latest London fashion. But even now, when a score of ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... and, outside, in the dim penumbra of things half real, of travellers' tales, lay Madrid, where the king lived and where politicians wrote in the newspapers,—and Francia—and all that was not Almorox.... In him I seemed to see the generations wax and wane, like the years, strung on the thread of labor, of unending sweat and strain of muscles against the earth. It was all so mellow, so strangely aloof from the modern world of feverish change, this life of the peasants of Almorox. Everywhere roots striking into the infinite past. For before the Revolution, before the Moors, ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... of a necessary connexion; and the number of impressions has in this case no more effect than if we confined ourselves to one only. But though this reasoning seems just and obvious; yet as it would be folly to despair too soon, we shall continue the thread of our discourse; and having found, that after the discovery of the constant conjunction of any objects, we always draw an inference from one object to another, we shall now examine the nature of that inference, and of the transition from the impression to the idea. Perhaps it ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... enthusiast thou art, my child. Yet it is not the rule of our maiden queen my foreboding spirit dreads; 'tis that on such a slender thread as her young life suspends the well-doing or the ruin of her kingdom. If she be permitted to live and reign over us, all may be well; 'tis on the event of her death ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... you, which is thus: Put your hook in at his mouth, and out at his gill; then, having drawn your hook two or three inches beyond or through his gill, put it again into his mouth, and the point and beard out at his tail; and then tie the hook and his tail about, very neatly, with a white thread, which will make it the apter to turn quick in the water; that done, pull back that part of your line which was slack when you did put your hook into the minnow the second time; I say, pull that part of your line back, so that it shall fasten the head, so that the body of the ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... hundred francs," he continued, "but thread by thread I gathered the whole history of the Clamerans, Gaston's love-affair, his flight, and the stumbling of the horse ridden by Louis. I found also that about a year ago Louis returned, sold the chateau to a ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... heels, and tail for over a year, with nothing else but the corn meal that Rufus trades meat with Silas for. I thought, honeybunch, when I saw you coming so stylish and beautiful with those none-such chickens that you must have been bringing a silk purse sewed with gold thread with you. I said to Silas as he put out the lamp last night, 'The good Lord may let His deliverance horses lag along the track, but He always drives them in on the home stretch for His own, of which Moseby Craddock is one.' 'Why, she's so fine she can't eat eggs outen chickens ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the pen. "And is that where he walks up and down while he's thinking?" she asked, pointing to a thread-bare ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... moral sense of right and all natural action of conscience were gone, there remained in the man an inheritance of traditional feeling, which even Matilde's influence could not make him wittingly violate any further,—a remnant of honour, a thread, as it were, by which his soul was still held above the level of total destruction. There was nothing, perhaps, involving himself alone, which he would have refused to do for Matilde's sake, under the pressure of her strong will. But what she required of him now ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... am counting on my father's death?" returned David. "I am on the track of a trade secret, the secret of making a sheet of paper as strong as Dutch paper, without a thread of cotton in it, and at a cost of fifty per cent less than ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... he cried, as we came to an end, first one and then the other carrying on the thread of the narration to the conclusion. "That's science; that is just the same as with a well-drilled regiment, which can beat a mob of fifty times its size. Well, I'm glad you won, and were such good pupils. Shows you remembered all I taught you. Now ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... generally put under the teacher's desk for punishment. It was a dark close, sultry spot, but when he was well seated, and had grown tired of looking at the triangle of black elastic in the teacher's "congress" shoe, and tired of wishing it was his instead of hers, he would tie one end of a bit of thread to the button of his gingham shirt, and, carrying it round his left ear several times, make believe he was Paganini languishing in prison and playing on a violin with ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... was at that time at work with her needle; and as she had by her several clues of thread, she took up one, and presenting it to prince Ahmed, said, "First take this clue of thread, I will tell you presently the use of it. In the second place, you must have two horses; one you must ride yourself, and the other you must lead, which must ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... art can dress; The feeling not, I grant, explore 135 So deep as the musician's lore— But clear as words can make revealing, And deep as words can follow feeling. But, ah! then comes his sorest spell Of toil—he must life's movement deg. tell! deg.140 The thread which binds it all in one, And not its separate parts alone. The movement he must tell of life, Its pain and pleasure, rest and strife; His eye must travel down, at full, 145 The long, unpausing spectacle; With faithful unrelaxing force Attend it from its primal source, From change to change ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... as well, the deeds Might punish of our suitors, whose excess Enormous, and whose bitter taunts I feel Continual, object of their subtle hate. But not for me such happiness the Gods Have twined into my thread; no, not for me Or for my father. Patience is our part. To whom Gerenian Nestor thus replied. Young friend! (since thou remind'st me of that theme) Fame here reports that num'rous suitors haunt 270 Thy palace ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... exquisitely polished, took at times the derision of a sneer. In his manners he was as composed and as free from gesture as an Englishman. His hair was of that red brown with which the Italian painters produce such marvellous effects of colour; and if here and there a silver thread gleamed through the locks, it was lost at once amidst their luxuriance. His eyes were light, and his complexion, though without much colour, was singularly transparent. His beauty, indeed, would have been rather womanly ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Emily. After one irrepressible grunt of surprise Captain Brisket listened without moving a muscle, but the changes on Mr. Duckett's face were so extraordinary that on several occasions the narrator faltered and lost the thread of his discourse. At such times Mr. Chalk took up the story, and once, when both seemed at a loss, a growling ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... weaves each thread effects only one crossing in one repeat of the weave, and the points of interlacing occur in a given rotation. A repeat in the foundation weaves comprises the same number of warp-threads as of picks or filling threads, and if this number is 8, for [Page 16] instance, the ...
— Theory Of Silk Weaving • Arnold Wolfensberger
... for although your Theological attainments are but slender after all, yet, you know your Bible well; and even if an absurdly wrong answer is given you, you know how to single out from the hank the golden thread of Truth, and to display it before the eyes of men and Angels. And let me tell you, by way of ending the subject, we should hear less about dull sermons, and inattentive congregations, and badly filled churches,—as well as about the astounding ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... hurry call was sent once for sheets, pillow cases and garments for the sick at Samaritan Hospital. The President of the Society quickly summoned the members. Merchants were visited and contributions of muslin and thread secured. Sewing machines were sent to the Lower Temple. An all-day sewing bee was held, those who could, came all day, others dropped in as time permitted, and by sunset more than three hundred pieces of work ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... motive in this attack. The same Dionysius severely criticises the style of Xenophon, who, he says, in attempting to elevate his style, shows himself incapable of supporting it. Polybius has been blamed for his frequent introduction of reflections which interrupt the thread of his narrative; and Sallust has been blamed by Cato for indulging his own private passions, and studiously concealing many of the glorious actions of Cicero. The Jewish historian, Josephus, is accused of not having designed his history for his own people so much as for the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the pattern of his waistcoat, nailed him beside his friend; there they both stood, gentlemen, jerking their arms and legs about in agony, like the toy-shop figures that are moved by a piece of pack-thread. My uncle always said, afterwards, that this was one of the surest means he knew of, for disposing of an enemy; but it was liable to one objection on the ground of expense, inasmuch as it involved the loss of a sword ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... evidence of this, petroleum in some of its forms entered largely into the ingredients used in embalming by the ancient Egyptians. These embalmed bodies remain perfect to this day. Even the cerements remain with every thread distinct and perfect as when they came from the loom, in days when Joseph ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... Scott's poem of Rokeby for the leading incidents of The Corsair, but the resemblance is not to me very obvious: besides, the whole style of the poem is so strikingly in his own manner, that even had he borrowed the plan, it was only as a thread to string his own original conceptions upon; the beauty and brilliancy of them could not be ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... then; it begins to look as if I had." It was apparent to Hillard that Sandford was not in his wife's confidence in all things. He also saw the wisdom of dropping the subject while at the table. To take up the thread of that romance again! He needed no wine to ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... and her little daughter on the last day of his life—come silently into the hall. She had seen him, moving softly, attracting no notice from them, pass the groups of ladies standing near the walls, and noiselessly thread his way through the ring of playing children, till he stood at the back of his own little girl. She had seen him, smiling still, and clasping his hands tenderly beneath the child's chin, pull her softly backwards, and lay her dead ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... white nerve-threads lie smoothly side by side, making small white cords. Each kind of message goes on its own thread, so that the messages need never get ...
— Child's Health Primer For Primary Classes • Jane Andrews
... a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely. Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee.... Until the day break, and the shadows flee ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... introduces the 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 ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... ideas. Then, to allow the ideas to link themselves in their own way, breaking the linkage continually and recommencing afresh until some line of thought has suggested itself that appears from a rapid and light glance to thread the chief topics together. After this the connections are brought step by step fully into consciousness, they are short-circuited here and extended there, as found advisable until a firm connection is ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... arrived at conclusions which seem to imply doubts of the accuracy of the experiment (62. &c.); it is therefore due to M. Ampere that I should attend to it more distinctly. When a disc of copper (says M. Ampere) was suspended by a silk thread and surrounded by a helix or spiral, and when the charge of a powerful voltaic battery was sent through the spiral, a strong magnet at the same time being presented to the copper disc, the latter turned at the moment to take a position of ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... spun within the doore, My thread brake off, I raised myne eyes; The level sun, like ruddy ore, Lay sinking in the barren skies, And dark against day's golden death She moved where Lindis wandereth, ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... random, but with as much solemnity as an oath comes to, I say to you that Ulysses shall return; and whenever that day shall be, then shall you give to me a cloak and a coat; but till then, I will not receive so much as a thread of a garment, but rather go naked; for no less than the gates of hell do I hate that man whom poverty can force to tell an untruth. Be Jove then witness to my words, that this very year, nay, ere this month be fully ended, your eyes shall behold Ulysses, ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... free from all misunderstanding as to the way in which she appealed to him; or rather, that he should misunderstand her had never entered into her mind. But the last morning came, and still she had never been able to take up the dropped thread of their talk, and she was without devices. She and Grandcourt were to leave at three o'clock. It was too irritating that after a walk in the grounds had been planned in Deronda's hearing, he did not present himself to join in it. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... seen. The strength of all hands soon brought the tack to the boom-end, and the sheet was trimmed down, and the preventer and the weather brace hauled taut to take off the strain. Every rope-yarn seemed stretched to the utmost, and every thread of canvas; and with this sail added to her, the ship sprang through the water like a thing possessed. The sail being nearly all forward, it lifted her out of the water, and she seemed actually to jump from sea to sea. From ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... resumed as follows:—"As I told you before, the whale is the staple of this island. You observe that his skin serves us as a house; from his bones we form all our implements—from his sinews, our thickest ropes down to our finest thread. The dress we wear is composed of the belly part of the skin, dressed with a sort of soap, composed of the alkali obtained from the sea-weed which abounds in the lake, and the oil of the whale. His blubber serves us for fuel and candle; his flesh for meat, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... mathematical studies. The weather was still cold, and she had pressed him to keep her company, and enjoy the warmth of her fire, which the early season rendered necessary. Not a word had she uttered lest it might interrupt him, when, as she drew forth the thread from her wheel, which had been idle but a few hours out of the twenty-four, Sabbath days excepted, since her arrival at her present abode, David looked up and inquired how many yards she could ...
— Janet McLaren - The Faithful Nurse • W.H.G. Kingston
... amoeba we merely perceive, was one and is now two. It is curious to note, therefore, that the amoeba is, in a sense, immortal— that the living nucleus of one of these minute creatures that we examine to-day under a microscope may have conceivably drawn, out an unbroken thread of life since the remotest epochs of the world's history. Although no sexual intercourse can be observed, there is reason to believe that a process of supposed "cannabalism," in which a larger amoeba may occasionally engulph a smaller one, is really a conjugative reproductive process, and followed ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... melody that wooed the slumberer to a delicious half-wakefulness, as dreamily, as tenderly, as the croon of rain on the roof soothes a child to sleep. Under the artist's cunning touch the instrument was both the accompaniment and the song; and Miss Betty, at first taking the music to be a wandering thread in the fabric of her own bright dreams, drifted gradually to consciousness to find herself smiling. Her eyes opened wide, but half closed again with the ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... say that Eve knit in Paradise. I only said I'd been knitting at something as old as Eve. I meant the thread of life. Here comes my husband to tell you how ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... me a hat," said Robinson to himself. "But how?" He had no straw, no thread and no needle. He looked around for a long time, but found nothing. The sun mounted even higher in the heavens, and shone hotter and hotter. He went to seek shelter at last in the deep shade of ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison
... 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. ...
— Harper's Young People, March 2, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... blushing and nervous manner that was, unfortunately, more likely to betray their cause than was Viviette's own more practised bearing. Throughout the meal Louis sat like a spider in the corner of his web, observing them narrowly, and at moments flinging out an artful thread here and there, with a view to their entanglement. But they underwent the ordeal marvellously well. Perhaps the actual tie between them, through being so much closer and of so much more practical a nature than even their critic supposed ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... day, May His devices with the heavens be guessed, His pilgrimage to thread the Milky Way Or His bestowals ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... ambuscades of the Indians, who, by constant practice, are dexterous in laying and executing them. And the slender line, near four miles long, which your army must make, may expose it to be attacked by surprise in its flanks, and to be cut like a thread into several pieces, which, from their distance, cannot come up in time to ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... reading, nor is it always accompanied by extensive knowledge. It is the natural and the necessary product of mental discipline, through which the above described act of "reiteration," like a golden thread, runs from beginning to end. It is the fire of intellect, kindled at first perhaps by classical, and mathematical studies; but which now, collecting force and fuel from every circumstance of life, ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... cylinder like a thread round a screw. If the cylinder is now removed, we shall have a tube like one of the spiral arms. The two projecting edges are not actually united, and a needle can be pushed in easily between them. They are indeed ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... bears two kinds of flowers,—male and female. The two are widely separated. The male flowers are on the tassel; the fine silk threads which surround the ear, and peep out from the end of the husks, are the female flowers. 9. Each grain on the cob is the starting point for a thread of silk; and, unless the thread receives some particle of the dust which falls from the tassel flowers, the kernel with which it is connected will not grow. 10. The many uses of Indian corn and its products are ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... nothing trouble his thoughts! He insisted on picking out on the piano of memory the song of the day passed, the melodious thread of the hours, from the first minute that he entered Luce's house, the slightest inflections of her voice and her gestures, the successive images which his eyes had hastily snapped up—a shadow under the eyelids, a wave of emotion that passed beneath the skin like a shiver ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... Ethical Wom. Conf., New York, arranges two State campns., scope of invitations, 753; lets. from Tourgee, Helen Webster, advice to Kan. wom, as to work for coming campn., prepares for N. Y. campn., 754; Wash. cons, run like thread through life, at Ann Arbor, hospitality of Mrs. Hall, 755; 25th annivers. at Toledo, in Baltimore, in Wash., 756; acknowl. present of silk flag from wom. of Wyo. and Col., birthday flowers, advantage of northern and southern ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... to retrace our steps and to pick up the thread which we dropped in a former chapter, the development, namely, of the vernacular eclogue in Italy. If in so doing we are forced to enter at greater length upon the discussion of individual works, we shall find ample excuse, not only in their intrinsic merit, but likewise ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... street corner and bought a bunch of roses, she thought she would get the children out of town as soon as possible. Her eye was next attracted by some exquisite laces. She wanted a few yards, and stopped to price them. They were thread, filmy as cobwebs; they were costly; and as she held them in her hand, debating the purchase, she thought of Quillie's request: the cost of the lace would more than meet the expense of sending little Julie away. ...
— Harper's Young People, June 22, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... They flocked to him with their troubles and their quarrels. The judgment of their overlord was final with his tenants. Clearly he had a strong sense of his responsibilities to them and to the state. A quaint flavor of old-world courtesy ran through the letters like a thread of gold. ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... As you could wish; I saw her brought sick home; The image of pale death, stampt on her fore-head. Let me adore this second Hecate, This great Commandress, of the fatal Sisters, That as she pleases, can cut short, or lengthen The thread ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (1 of 10) - The Custom of the Country • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... self abroad, and much out-vies The eastern bird in her self-sacrifice; Or Father Phoebus, who to th' world derives Such various and such multiformed lives, Took notice that brave Lovelace did inspire The universe with his Promethean fire, And snatcht him hence, before his thread was spun, En'ving that here should be another Sun. ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... elder servant girl of the Chen family was at the door purchasing thread, and while there, she of a sudden heard in the street shouts of runners clearing the way, and every one explain that the new magistrate had come to take up ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Oneida, and six gunboats. Porter had joined with the Octorara, Miami, six other steamers, and seventeen of the mortar schooners. The orders of the government were peremptory that the Mississippi should be cleared. The Confederates held the river by a single thread. The fall of Memphis and the ruin of the famous river-defence fleet left between St. Louis and the Gulf but a ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... certain man was so thin that he could jump through the eye of a needle. Another crept nimbly to a spider's web which was hanging in the air, and danced skillfully upon it until a spider came, which spun a thread round his neck and throttled him. A third was able to pierce a sunmote with his head and pass his whole body through it. A fourth was in the habit of riding an ant, but the ant threw him off and trampled him. In a work written ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... is never flustered and never distraite. She talks little, and rarely of herself, remembering that bores are persons who insist on talking about themselves. She does not break the thread of a conversation by irrelevant questions or confabulate in an undertone with the servants. No one of her guests receives more of her attention than another and none are neglected. She offers to each one who speaks the homage of her entire attention. ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... another, but he was only allowed to take the suit he wore to the front, and before long, what with marching and sandstorms and fighting, that suit became unrecognisable as a suit. Bit by bit it went. Tailors of the most amateur description plied their needles and thread upon it in vain. It went! and Tommy's distress occasionally knew no bounds. We hear of one man who at last marched into Ladysmith with two coat sleeves but no coat; of another with not a bit of khaki about him, but garments of one sort and another 'commandeered' as he went along. One ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... well? and there is more—this rhyme Is like the fair pearl-necklace of the Queen, That burst in dancing, and the pearls were spilt; Some lost, some stolen, some as relics kept. But nevermore the same two sister pearls Ran down the silken thread to kiss each other On her white neck—so is it with this rhyme: It lives dispersedly in many hands, And every minstrel sings it differently; Yet is there one true line, the pearl of pearls: "Man dreams of Fame while ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... mix with flour as stiff as can conveniently be handled. Add a little salt to flour. Divide dough into sheets, roll on bake-board, spread on cloth a short time and let dry, but not until too brittle to roll into long, narrow rolls. Cut this with a sharp knife into thin, thread-like slices, unroll, drop as many as wished into the stew-pan with the meat and cook about 10 or 15 minutes. Place the meat on a platter and serve the remainder in soup plates. The remaining noodles (not cooked) may be unrolled and dried ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... Shakspeare's plays harder to characterize. The name and the remembrances connected with it, prepare us for the representation of attachment no less faithful than fervent on the side of the youth, and of sudden and shameless inconstancy on the part of the lady. And this is, indeed, as the gold thread on which the scenes are strung, though often kept out of sight and out of mind by gems of greater value than itself. But as Shakspeare calls forth nothing from the mausoleum of history, or the catacombs of tradition, without giving, or eliciting, some permanent and general interest, and brings ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... quite as young as schoolboys do now. Oriel College was near the broad Christ Church meadows that led down to the river, and from there Walter could look across to the fields where the boys practiced their favorite sport of archery, to the silver thread of the little river as it wound in and out among the trees, and across it to the park where a ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... have given some startling proofs of his energy or of his penetration! But, after all, what had he accomplished? Was the mystery solved? Was his success more than problematical? When one thread is drawn out, the skein is not untangled. This night would undoubtedly decide his future as a detective, so he swore that if he could not conquer his vanity, he would, at least, compel himself to conceal it. Hence, it was in a very modest tone that he said to his companion: ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... returned to the city, sister Mary died of consumption, and father's health began to fail. I have preserved the spinning wheel on which mother converted flax yarn into thread, which she sold to aid in the support of the family, but soon the entire burden fell on her, for father's illness developed into consumption, from which ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... the farthest, Prone falls, shattering wide what lies in line of its downfall,— Thus was that wildling flung by Theseus and vanquisht of body, 110 Vainly tossing its horns and goring the wind to no purpose. Thence with abounding praise returned he, guiding his footsteps, Whiles did a fine drawn thread check steps in wander abounding, Lest when issuing forth of the winding maze labyrinthine Baffled become his track by inobservable error. 115 But for what cause should I, from early subject digressing, Tell of the daughter who the face of her sire unseeing, Eke her sister's ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... ye, Rome," he said, taking up the thread of talk that was broken at the cave, "when Uncle Gabe says he's afeard thar's trouble comm', hit's a-comm'; 'n' I want you to git me a Winchester. I'm a-gittin' big enough now. I kin shoot might' nigh as good as you, ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... austerely punish'd you, Your compensation makes amends; for I Have given you here a thread of mine own life, Or that for which I live; who once again I tender to thy hand: all thy vexations Were but my trials of thy love, and thou Hast strangely stood the test: here, afore Heaven, I ratify this my rich ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... something that would abate all this. She was searching her nurse's memory for some further sedative by which to counteract a first one gone wrong, when the thread of her medical meditation snapped, her attention fastened upon what Gerald was saying. Because she had a suspicion that it was about Violet he was talking. And she had from the first been curious about Violet and his feelings with regard to her. ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... stories, are well adapted to use in reading-classes at school. Of the seventeen stories herein presented, nine are from the "Golden Age," four from "Siegfried," and four from "Roland." They are, for the most part, episodes, complete in themselves, and connected only by a slender thread with the main narrative. Their intrinsic value is in no way diminished by being thus separated from their former setting, and each tale being independent of the others, they lend themselves more readily to the demands of ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... it is she who creates all the disturbance. If I get nearer to the wall she jams me up till I am as thin as a thread paper. If I put her inside and stay outside, she cuts me out as you do a cask, by the chime, till I ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... Albert Fleming, who, at the suggestion of Ruskin, had recently revived hand-spinning and hand-weaving in the North of England. I had always hated that obviously "property" spinning-wheel in the opera, and Margaret's unmarketable thread. My thread always broke, and at last I had to "fake" my spinning to a certain extent; but at least I worked my wheel right, and gave an impression that I could spin my pound of thread a day with ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... valley lay before them. High above their level and a mile away, the long thread-like spans of Hailey's great bridge stretched from pier to pier. To the right of the higher ground a fan of sidetracks spread, with lines of flat cars and gondolas loaded with stone, brush, piling and timbers, and in the foreground two hulking pile-drivers, their leads, like rabbits' ears laid ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... quite subdued and coy at first, so I took heart, never dreaming she'd wear her dirk in the house. But say! That woman was raised on raw beef. Before I could wink she had it out; it has an ivory hilt, and you could split a silk thread with it. I suppose she didn't want to spoil the parlor furniture with me, although I'd never have showed against that upholstery, or else she's in the habit of preparing herself for manslaughter by a system of vocal calisthenics. At any rate, we were having it hot and heavy, ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... I hate to see anything wasted," resumed Persis, after grace had been said. "If there's only an end of thread over, I can't abear to cast it away; I wind it on an old bobbin, thinking it'll ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... abruptly from the seat and laid her hand upon the parapet steadily, as if an unnatural strength had suddenly grown up in her. Inez went on speaking, confusing herself in the details she was trying to put together to make a plan, and losing the thread of her idea as she attempted to build up falsehoods, for she was truthful as their father was. But Dolores did ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... 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 the ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... silk skirt much spotted with camp grease. A three-cornered tear in the side had been sewed with long stitches and coarse white thread, and even Casey was outraged by the un-workmanlike job. She had on one of the silk shirts, which happened to be striped in many shades, none of which harmonized with the basic color of the skirt. She ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... left the wagon road dropped away down the steep side of the mountain. Bob's eye could follow it, at first a band, then a ribbon, finally a tiny white thread, as it wound and zigzagged, seeking its contours, until finally it ran out on the level and rested at the bridge end. Opposite, on the other mountain, he thought to make out here and there faint suggestions ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... the common fly reel. Three hundred feet of line are necessary, for the fish, if he is a large one, will sometimes determine upon a long flight, and it will not do to exhaust your line in his career. In that case, he will snap it like a pack-thread. An English bass rod is the best, and with such, and a large triple action reel, the largest fish of these ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... his mother's work-basket and got a spool of thread, then to the meal chest for a handful of corn. Sitting down on the door-step, he tied long strings of thread to each grain of corn, then climbed the fence, and commenced what was fun for him, but misery for the ...
— Harper's Young People, May 25, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the small, frittering cares of woman's life—the attention to buttons, trimmings, thread, and sewing-silk—may be an expression of their patriotism and their religion. A noble-hearted woman puts a noble meaning into even the commonplace details of life. The women of America can, if they choose, hold back their country from following in the wake ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... race was only a succession of individuals, each one of them new persons, and as such incapable of profiting by the experience of its predecessors except in the very limited number of cases where oral teaching, or, as in recent times, writing, was possible. The thread of life was, as I have elsewhere said, remorselessly shorn between each successive generation, and the importance of the physical and psychical connection between parents and offspring had been quite, or nearly ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... to be upon Thorns at this and the like impertinent Digressions, but let him alone and he'll come to himself; at which time I think fit to acquaint him, that when I digress, I am at that time writing to please my self, when I continue the Thread of the Story, I write to please him; supposing him a reasonable Man, I conclude him satisfied to allow me this liberty, and ...
— Incognita - or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd. A Novel • William Congreve
... self-complacency—Self-sufficiency, she had, but not self-righteousness. Then, most striking contra-distinction of all to the old-land culture, there was unconsciousness of self—face to sunlight, radiant of the joy of life, not anaemic and putrid of its own egoism. She didn't talk in phrases thread-bare from use. She had all the naked unashamed directness of the West that thinks in terms of life and speaks without gloze. She never side-stepped the facts of life that she might not wish to know. Yet her intrusion ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... somewhat servile, tone in her voice, and she looked scornfully at Minna Eddy. Then J. Rosenstein, who kept the principal dry-goods store in Banbridge, bore his testimony. His grievances were small, but none the less vital. His business dealings with the Carrolls had been limited to sundry spools of thread and kitchen towellings and buttons, but they were as lead in his estimate of wrong, although he had a grave, introspective expression, out of proportion to the seeming triviality of the matter in his mind. He held in one long hand ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... a bit more like him than she is like her mother," said Mrs. Douglass, biting off the end of her thread energetically. "Amy Ringgan was a sweet good woman as ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... Chinese and Indian navigators were conducted by the flight of birds and periodical winds; and the ocean might be securely traversed in square-built ships, which, instead of iron, were sewed together with the strong thread of the cocoanut. Ceylon, Serendib, or Taprobana, was divided between two hostile princes; one of whom possessed the mountains, the elephants, and the luminous carbuncle, and the other enjoyed the more solid riches of domestic industry, foreign trade, and the capacious harbor of Trinquemale, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... by a complete unity of argument. Though the thread of the argument is sometimes dropped for the sake of practical exhortation, it is soon ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... to the Yellowstone river region—wanted specially to see the National Park, and the geysers and the "hoodoo" or goblin land of that country; indeed, hesitated a little at Pueblo, the turning point—wanted to thread the Veta pass—wanted to go over the Santa Fe trail away southwestward to New Mexico—but turn'd and set my face eastward—leaving behind me whetting glimpse-tastes of southeastern Colorado, Pueblo, Bald mountain, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... then six. But it was always the same. No matter how many pumpkins were cooked, the stray baby would eat them all, and the rest of the children would have to go hungry. You see how small I am," said Mr. Thimblefinger, suddenly pausing in the thread of his story. "Well, the reason of it is that I was starved out by that pumpkin-eating baby. My brothers and sisters and myself were just as large and as healthy as any other children until that baby was found on the gate-post, and from that day we began to dwindle ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris
... grown old and grizzled, And full of useless wisdom, in her service. She's taught me much: for I've had time and to spare, Brooding among these God-forsaken fells, To turn life inside-out in my own mind; And study every thread of it, warp and weft. I'm far from the same woman who came here: And I'll take up my old life with a difference, Now she and you've got no more use for me: You've ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... range. The Indians call it Echo Cliffs. At the far end it drops off into the Colorado River. Lee's Ferry is there—about one hundred and sixty miles. That ragged black rent is the Grand Canyon. Looks like a thread, doesn't it? But Carley, it's some hole, believe me. Away to the left you see the tremendous wall rising and turning to come this way. That's the north wall of the Canyon. It ends at the great bluff—Greenland ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... by, when, amid chanting, and flare of torches, and roll of cannon, his sons wrapped him in his shroud of gold-thread, and lowered him into the tomb ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... is false to present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and will find the flaw when he may ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... synthesis. The almost inexhaustible amount of material, especially towards modern times, has often obliged me to limit myself to typical forerunners of the various epochs, although, at the same time, I have tried not to lose the thread of general development. By the addition of the chief phases of landscape, painting, and garden craft, I have aimed at giving completeness to the historical picture; but I hold that literature, especially poetry, as the most intimate medium ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... edge of the bed, at Ilusha's feet. Though he had perhaps prepared a free-and-easy opening for the conversation on his way, now he completely lost the thread of it. ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... provided me with needle, thimble and thread. She offered to mend the tear for me, but I had a horror of being ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... he fully realised why he was appointed, viz. "to catch the attention of the English people"; but he also appreciated the Khedive's "terrible anxiety to put down the slave-trade, which threatens his supremacy." With these introductory remarks, the main thread of Gordon's career may ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... "I could buy groceries, and bits o' tapes, and thread, and what I thought would sell, and I ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... brilliant Bishop Absalon, and probably set by him upon their task, proceed, like Geoffrey of Monmouth, by gathering and editing mythical matter. This they more or less embroider, and arrive in due course insensibly at actual history. Both, again, thread their stories upon a genealogy of kings in part legendary. Both write at the spur of patriotism, both to let Denmark linger in the race for light and learning, and desirous to save her glories, as other nations have saved ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... and they try to make it live forever, or to make something as like it as possible, that will last forever. They paint their statues, and inlay the eyes with jewels, and set real crowns on the heads; they finish, in their pictures, every thread of embroidery, and would fain, if they could, draw every leaf upon the trees. And their only verbal expression of conscious success is that they have made their ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... and carried him off with his two brothers, Ameer Khan and Jehangeer Khan. He had them beaten with sticks, and caused small iron spikes to be driven up under their nails, and their eyelids to be sewn up with needle and thread, and their beards to be burned, till he extorted from them a ransom of ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... it grew; Little by little, it sipped the dew; Downward it sent out a thread-like root; Up in the air sprung ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... reciprocal interchange of thought, to solve in common some problem, proceeding according to the necessary forms of reason. But in this we can make a distinction. One speaker may be superior to the rest, may hold in his own hand the thread of the conversation and may guide it himself; or, those who mingle in it may be perfectly equal in intellect and culture, and may each take part in the development with equal independence. In this latter case, this true reciprocity gives us the proper dramatic ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... written about the middle of the century, have but lately come to light.[A] In correspondence with this moral mutiny was the complete revolt from classic art-tradition: melody (at least in theory), the vital quality of musical form and the true process of a coherent thread, were cast to the ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... feet, and, taking us by the arm, steadies our tottering and clattering steps, as we pass through a low door and a warm ante-chamber into the first hall of the bath. The light, falling dimly through a cluster of bull's-eyes in the domed ceiling, shows, first, a silver thread of water, playing in a steamy atmosphere; next, some dark motionless objects, stretched out on a low central platform of marble. The attendant spreads a linen sheet in one of the vacant places, places a pillow at one end, ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... By a fast balm which thence did spring; Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread Our eyes upon ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... Worse," marked a distinct step in his development. It was less of a social satire and more of a social study. It was not merely a series of brilliant, exquisitely finished scenes, loosely strung together on a slender thread of narrative, but was a concise and well-constructed story, full of admirable portraits. The theme is akin to that of Daudet's "L'Evangeliste"; but Kielland, as it appears to me, has in this instance outdone his French confrere, as regards insight into the peculiar ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... example, were enabled to have so wide an effect upon their poorer fellow-creatures. He knew well how difficult it was for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. They had the highest possible authority for that. But Scripture never said that the camel,—which, as he explained it, was simply a thread larger than ordinary thread,—could not go through the needle's eye. The camel which succeeded, in spite of the difficulties attending its exalted position, would be peculiarly blessed. And he went on to suggest that the three ladies before him, one of whom was about to ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... visitors. The ascent is not very difficult, and the view from the summit is both grand and beautiful. The river is of course the most attractive feature in the landscape. Far to the north and south it stretches, like a silver, sinuous thread, gradually becoming narrower until it is lost in the distance. Owing to an optical illusion the river seems to ascend in both directions, and at the points where it is lost to view, seems on a level with the eye. It is one of the best examples of this species of optical ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... a step forward; the long, black rifle was raised with a stately sweep. The instant it reached a level a thread of flame burst forth, followed by a peculiarly clear, ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... and may be now appropriately left as they were found, as episodes, detached from the original story. To collect all these and arrange them in order would be an arduous labor; and, after all, such an arrangement would lack consistency and keeping, unless much of the thread necessary to present them in an English dress were supplied by alteration, and transposition. The portions above narrated present a beginning and an end, which could hardly be said of the loose and disjointed fragmentary tales referred to. How long Manabozho lived on earth ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... to us, as if by magic, the forms of two French gentlemen accompanied by a small party of soldiers, who come from the mouth of the bay, and carefully thread their way along the shore. It is a strange company of men. The leader is a native of Rouen, and he says that few of his companions are fit for anything but eating. He thought that his band comprised creatures of all sorts, like Noah's ark, but unlike the collection of ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... the neck whiter than snow, the eyes gray (vairs), the face white, the mouth beautiful, the nose well placed, the eyebrows brown, the forehead beautiful, the head curly and blonde; the gleam of gold thread was less bright than her ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... she took up the thread of her thought. This man Sikkem. If he were one of the Orrville gang, what was more likely than that he should have sent that threat? If he sent it, what more likely than that he was one of the gang of rustlers operating here? If he were one of them, then ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... and again I numbered the page and essayed to write. But I could not. I was rapidly becoming mired. I stonily refused to leave my desk, but sat staring at the wall, trying to get the thread of my narrative, ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... preserve the thread of these rather complicated events, it is necessary to transfer the scene for a short while to Western Europe, where at the moment the armies of Napoleon ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... I have reasons to believe, that if the secret correspondence of Bernard, Hutchinson, Gage, Howe, and Clinton could all be brought to light, the world would be equally surprised at the whole thread of it. The British administration and their servants have carried towards us from the beginning a system of duplicity, in the conduct of American affairs, that will appear infamous to the public whenever it shall ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... certainty the track of an intelligence which moves with such incessant rapidity, or even to realise with what spider-like swiftness and sagacity his building spirit leaps and lightens to and fro and backward and forward, as it lives along the animated line of its labour, springs from thread to thread, and darts from centre to circumference of the glittering and quivering web of living thought, woven from the inexhaustible stores of his perception, and kindled from the inexhaustible fire of his imagination. He never thinks but at full ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... and becomes free.[717] "Slavery and pawnship are, in the nature of the case, the same."[718] The Dyaks put their Eden on a cloud island. They have a myth that the daughters of the great Being let down seven times seven hundred cords of gold thread in order to lower mortals upon a mountain, but the mortals were overhasty and tried to lower themselves by bamboos and rattans. The god, angry at this, condemned them to slavery. The myth, therefore, accounts for a caste of slaves. Formerly also war captives and criminals ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... a letter of Demades's, formerly written by him to Antigonus in Asia, recommending him to come and possess himself of the empire of Greece and Macedon, now hanging, he said, (a scoff at Antipater,) "by an old and rotten thread." So when Cassander saw him come, he seized him; and first brought out the son and killed him so close before his face, that the blood ran all over his clothes and person, and then, after bitterly taunting and upbraiding him with his ingratitude ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough |
