"Spin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... beneath him, and up from it, with some sudden set of the wind, came in one fell sound the clang and clash of all its steeples, pouring into his ears, again and again, in a tuneless, grating, discordant, jerking, hideous vibration that made his ideas "spin round and round till they lost themselves in a whirl of vexation and giddiness, and dropped down dead." He had never before so suffered, nor did he again; but this was his description to me next day, and his excuse for having failed in a ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... (Cottage kitchen, with nets, oil-skins, spinning wheel, some new boards standing by the wall, etc. Cathleen, a girl of about twenty, finishes kneading cake, and puts it down in the pot-oven by the fire; then wipes her hands, and begins to spin at the wheel. NORA, a young girl, puts her head in at ...
— Riders to the Sea • J. M. Synge
... Ossaroo did not bespeak any very sanguine hope on his part. Still he was ready to counsel a trial of the scheme. They could try it without any great trouble. It would only need to spin some more rope from the hemp—of which they had plenty—attach it to the leg of the bearcoot, and give the bird its freedom. There was no question as to the direction the eagle would take. He had already had enough of the valley; and would no doubt make to get out of it at the very ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... Alexandria to enforce their orders upon Philometor, and sent Euergetes home to Cyrene. Philometor received the Roman ambassadors with all due honours; he sometimes gave them fair promises, and sometimes put them off till another day; and tried to spin out the time without saying either yes or no to the message from the senate. Euergetes sent to Alexandria to ask if they had gained their point; but though they threatened to return to Rome if they were not at once obeyed, Philometor, by his kind treatment and still kinder words, kept them ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... nation, and from the monarchs of foreign lands, for rescuing human lives. I chatted with the men of Deal whose profession it is to work in the storm, and succour ships in distress, and who have little to do but lounge on the beach and spin yarns when the weather is fine. I also listened to the thrilling yarns of Jarman until I felt a strong desire to go off with him to a wreck. This, however, was not possible. No amateur is allowed to go off in the Ramsgate boat on any ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... asked) spin out by these excessive methods a thread of such tenuity? Why go to such lengths for four months longer of fallacious solvency? I expect not to be believed, but I think the Government still hopes. A war-ship, under a hot-headed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... attended with a good deal of danger; for not only was there a likelihood of falls leading to broken legs, but broken necks also were an easy possibility by the chance of a slip upon the mossy edge of one or another of the many ledges, followed by a spin through the air ending suddenly upon the jagged rocks below. Indeed, so ticklish did I find my way that I began to think that the Indians had spoken no more than the simple truth in warning me against such dangers, and ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... belief that seven-year-old children will become beautiful by dancing in the flax. But many superstitions have clustered round the latter plant, it having in years gone by been a popular notion that it will only flower at the time of day on which it was originally sown. To spin on Saturday is said in Germany to bring ill fortune, and as a warning the following legend is among the household tales of the peasantry:—"Two old women, good friends, were the most industrious spinners in their village, ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... year's monotony. That which the dainty spirits sing thee, The lovely pictures they shall bring thee, Are more than magic's empty show. Thy scent will be to bliss invited; Thy palate then with taste delighted, Thy nerves of touch ecstatic glow! All unprepared, the charm I spin: We're here together, ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... the old ground, seems to me, tho' I may have dozed a little here and there. Have you been over the old business, and brought me over the water, by the nape of the neck; because, if you haven't—no, I see you have not, so here's to you, Nance, spin on;" and he took from his pocket a black bottle, and drank ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... Mr. Amundsen any the less because of his collection of old sagas which he used to spin out for hours on end. Whoppers, some of them were, but we, his whaling and sealing captains, we'd sit there and never let on, eating thin Norwegian bread and goats' cheese and dried chips of ptarmigan, with ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... grip of French and German. The truth is, unless a man can get the prestige and income of a Don and write donnish books, it's hardly worth while for him to make a Greek and Latin machine of himself and be able to spin you out pages of the Greek dramatists at any verse you'll give him as a cue. That's all very fine, but in practical life nobody does give you the cue for pages of Greek. In fact, it's a nicety of conversation which I would have you attend to—much quotation of any sort, ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... read it to me, noble sir?" said Teresa; "for though I can spin I can't read, not ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... landing; so pull in, lads," said Jack, giving a stroke with his oar that made the boat spin. In a few seconds we ran the boat into a little creek, where we made her fast to a projecting piece of coral, and running up the beach, entered the ranks of the penguins armed with our cudgels and our spear. We were greatly surprised to find that, ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... habits she had which, when new, charmed, but, after acquaintance, displeased her companions. She had by nature the same habit and power of excitement that is described in the spinning dervishes of the East. Like them, she would spin until all around her were giddy, while her own brain, instead of being disturbed, was excited to great action. Pausing, she would declaim verse of others or her own; act many parts, with strange catch-words and burdens that seemed to act with mystical power on her own fancy, sometimes stimulating ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... As new growths upon the oldest cedar or baobab do not merely spin themselves out of the wood already formed,—as they thrive and constitute themselves only by original conversation with sun, earth, and air,—that is, in the same way with any seed or sapling,—so generations of Moslems, Parsees, or Calvinists, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... first, no more. There is not a heart-beat in the whole grind. As to Willis—he failed egregiously, when he attempted to 'gild refined gold and paint the lily,' as he did in his so-called 'Sacred Poems.' He can spin a yarn pretty well, and coin a new word for a make-shift, amusingly, but save me from the foil-glitter of his ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... That she may give us edgeing keen, String us for battle, till as play The common strokes of fortune shower. Such meaning in a dagger-day Our wits may clasp to wax in power. Yea, feel us warmer at her breast, By spin of blood in lusty drill, Than when her honeyed hands caressed, And Pleasure, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... eye. He seemed born to please without being conscious of the power he possessed. It must be owned, and no one was more ready to confess it than himself, that his literary attainments were by no means of a high order. "We don't spin tops" is a favorite saying amongst artillery officers, indicating that they do not shirk their duty by frivolous pursuits; but it must be confessed that Servadac, being naturally idle, was very much ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... Fauver. He is trying this new chaser. She is the finest thing we have seen here, and he wants to give her a spin with a passenger up. Hop in ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... girl, you are right about that," Uncle John said heartily, "and now run and get your wraps, and we'll spin away to ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks
... for a little girl in the winter. Rose almost longed for the garden, even if weeds did grow apace. In the old country Mere Dubray had spun flax and wool, here there was none to spin. She had learned a little work from the Indian women, but she was severely plain. What need of fringes and bead work and laying feathers in rows to be stitched on with a sort of thread made of fine, tough grass? And as for cooking, one had to be economical and make everything ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... very grand house, and he married a young lady that had been delicately brought up. In her husband's house she found everything that was fine—fine tables and chairs, fine looking-glasses, and fine curtains; but then her husband expected her to be able to spin twelve hanks o' thread every day, besides attending to her house; and, to tell the even-down truth, the lady could not spin a bit. This made her husband glunchy with her, and, before a month had passed, ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... the board walk to study types. But types of what? Perhaps she was observing the lilies of the board walk whose raiment was so dazzling that Solomon would not have arrayed himself like one of these even though he could. They are true lilies for they toil not, neither do they spin, unless it be a fabulous yarn about some fair rivals, and for this lack of toil they lose the real meaning and significance of life. Everything about them is toil, not that grinding toil with no final goal to reach but that exhilarating joyful kind as seen in the waves, ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... cupful of water. Bring 1 cupful of water to the boiling point, dissolve the gelatine in it, and place in ice water to cool. Put the sugar to cook with 1/2 cupful of water, and cook until the sirup will spin a thread or until it will form a firm ball when tried in cold water. Beat the egg whites, pour the hot sirup gradually over them, and continue beating. Add the gelatine, which by this time should be commencing to solidify. Divide the mixture into three equal parts. To ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 4 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... to try on, And how to spin, I spies an ensign with a Bloody Lion, And bears away to leeward for the inn, Beats round the gable, And fetches up before the coach-horse stable: Well—there they stand, four kickers in a row. And so I just makes free to cut a brown 'un's cable. But riding isn't in ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... Rhode Island Consociation hypocrites! Oh, your holy twaddle stinks in the nostrils of God, and he commands me to lash you with my scorn, and his scorn, so long as ye gabble about the sin of slavery, and then bow down to me, and buy and spin cotton, and thus work for me as truly as my slaves! O ye fools and blind, fill ye up the measure of your folly, and blindness, and shame! And this ye are doing. Ye have, like the French infidels, made reason your goddess, and are exalting her above the Bible; and, in your unitarianism and neology ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... for the boy; but he dared not touch it, for if he did, he got a rap over the fingers. While his mother spun, he would sit for hours together looking at the buzzing spindle and the revolving wheel, and then he had his own thoughts. Oh! if he only durst spin that wheel! His father and mother slept; he looked at them, he looked at the wheel, and then by degrees a little naked foot was stuck out of bed, and then another naked foot, then there came two small legs, and, with a jump, he stood on the floor. He turned round once more, to see if his ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... and as I bailed, the edge of the cask lifted itself above the water. When it had risen some two inches, the shark, enraged at my escape, came to the surface, and turning on its side, bit at the tub so that I heard its teeth grate on the wood and iron bands, causing it to heel over and to spin round, shipping more water as it heeled. Now I must bail afresh, and had the fish renewed its onset, I should have been lost. But not finding wood and iron to its taste, it went away for a while, although I saw its fin ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... valiant efforts to learn to spin before I played Margaret. My instructor was Mr. 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 ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... said quickly. It was a lie, but he thought a pardonable one. The truth was just too complicated to spin out; he had ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... forth their changes, made the very air spin. Put 'em down. Put 'em down! Good old Times, Good old Times! Facts and Figures, Facts and Figures! Put 'em down, Put 'em down! If they said anything they said this, until the ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... course of romance writing, did not come to the rescue. As usual Beth lay on the sofa and Laurie sat in a low chair close by, amusing her with all sorts of gossip, for she depended on her weekly 'spin', and he never disappointed her. But that evening Jo fancied that Beth's eyes rested on the lively, dark face beside her with peculiar pleasure, and that she listened with intense interest to an account of some exciting ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... Alone, and to the presence of the man Whose hand hath slain so many of thy sons, Many and brave? an iron heart is thine! But sit thou on this seat; and in our hearts, Though filled with grief, let us that grief suppress; For woful lamentation nought avails. Such, is the thread the Gods for mortals spin, To live in woe, while they from cares are free. Two coffers lie beside the door of Jove, With gifts for man: one good, the other ill; To whom from each the Lord of lightning gives, Him sometimes evil, sometimes good befalls; To whom the ill alone, him foul disgrace ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... of them, as suffering drivers will testify. Casey Ryan, known wherever men of the open travel and spin their yarns, famous for his recklessly efficient driving of lurching stagecoaches in the old days, and for his soft heart and his happy-go-lucky ways; famous too as the man who invented ungodly predicaments from which he could extricate himself and be pleased if he kept his shirt on his back; Casey ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... four months before his death. A little later he wrote: "I spin my thread of life from week to week, rather than from year to year." Constant attacks of bleeding from the lungs sapped his little remaining strength, but did not altogether disable him from lecturing. He was amused by one of his friends proposing to ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... - Seven fine churches, And five old mills, Farms in the valley, And sheep on the hills; Old Man's Acre And Dead Man's Pool All left behind, As they danced through Wool. And Wool gone by, Like tops that seem To spin in sleep They danced in dream; Withy - Wellover - Wassop-Wo- Like an old clock Their heels did go. A league and a league And a league they went, And not one weary, And not one spent. And Io, and ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... the stained glass window of St. Joseph. The girl with the black eyes holds you tight, and you run... and run past the wild, wild towers... and trees in the gardens tugging at their feet and little frightened dolls shut up in the shops crying... and crying... because no one stops... you spin like a penny thrown out in the street. Then the man clutches her by the hair.... He always clutches her by the hair.... His eyes stick out like spears. You see her pulled-back face and her black, ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... over this result, and the Tower cannon proclaimed the happy reconciliation between Monk and the Government. But Monk's Commissioners had been too hasty, or had been outwitted; and Clarges, who arrived in London that day, had come too late to stop them and spin out the time. A pledge of both parties against Charles Stuart or any single-person Government was in the forefront of the Treaty; and the rest of the Articles simply admitted Monk and the officers of the Scottish Army to a share ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... "I used to spin and make soap. My last husband and I was married fifteen years and eight months and we never did buy a bar of soap. I used to be a good soap maker. And knit all ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... why? Because too frequently the family has but one producer. The wife, herself a consumer, produces more consumers. Daughters grow up around a man like lilies of the field, which toil not, neither do they spin. Every member of every family in the future will be a producer of some kind and in some degree. The only one who will have the right of exemption will be the mother, for a child can hardly be born with cheerful views of living whose mother's life ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... creatures the world has ever known. No picture was ever so perfect and beautiful as she. Her robes were lovelier than those of any other goddess. Sometimes they were of gold and scarlet, sometimes of purest white, and many times of modest green. She loved to spin, and no spider ever spun so fine a thread as she on her spinning wheel. She worked so faithfully that Woden changed the wheel into shining stars, and when you look up at Orion again remember that the Norse people called that ...
— Classic Myths • Retold by Mary Catherine Judd
... the Rovers saw the boat ahead spin around and the two men leap to their feet in alarm. But then the craft steadied itself, and a moment later shot into the shadows of the trees beside the old ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... not reduce his speed to take to the brush. The car beneath him flung clean off the ground as he swung to climb out of the grooves. It landed with all four wheels a-spin, but only struck on two. A sudden swerve, far out of the course, and the monster righted abruptly. Another sharp turn, and away it went again, crushing the brush and flinging up the sand in a track of its own that paralleled the road, but rougher though ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... hands in blindness spin No self-determined plan weaves in; The shuttle of the unseen powers Works out a ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... nobly distinguished themselves in the cause of humanity and America. On the other hand we were not ignorant that the labour and manufactures of Ireland, like those of the silkworm, were of little moment to herself, but served only to give luxury to those who neither toil nor spin. We perceived that if we continued our commerce with you, our agreement not to import from Britain must be fruitless. Compelled to behold thousands of our countrymen imprisoned; and men, women, and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... spider, that in the ante-chamber quietly dost spin thy web over the expectant's foot, spin my eyelids close in a sleep as still as the horse's pace! Patience? no, she was not with us in the carriage to Zaether. But to the inn, by the road side, close to the far-famed valley, I got at ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... in a glance of contempt—made safe by the darkness—at this partisan, and with the air of one who knows that he has an interesting yarn to spin, began at the beginning and worked slowly up for his effects. The expediency of brevity and point was then tersely pointed out to him by both listeners, the highly feminine trait of desiring the last ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... of sugar over the fire with half a cup of grape-juice, bring to a boil and cook until it will spin a thread from the tip of the spoon. Have ready the yolks of three eggs, beaten well, pour the grape-juice syrup upon it, and add two cups of whipped cream. Turn into a mold, pack in ice, salt ...
— Stevenson Memorial Cook Book • Various
... spun himself round with velocity in the opposite direction; continued to spin until his long cloak was all wound neatly about him; clapped his cap on his head, very much on one side (for it could not stand upright without going through the ceiling), gave an additional twist to his corkscrew moustaches, ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... acquaintance, Time, drops in, And while the running sands Their golden thread unheeded spin, He ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... place at an altitude of six thousand feet. My next impression was that I seemed to be in the centre of a whirling vortex, around which all creation revolved at an extraordinary speed, and realised that my trusty steed was indulging in a particularly violent "spinning nose dive." A "spin" at the best of times rather takes one's breath away, so, shutting the throttle, I endeavoured to come out of it in the usual way. To my surprise, the engine refused to slow down, or any of the controls to respond, except one, which only ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... the young one start up by miracle, and fly heavenward. Far otherwise! In that Fire-whirlwind, Creation and Destruction proceed together; ever as the ashes of the Old are blown about, do organic filaments of the New mysteriously spin themselves: and amid the rushing and the waving of the Whirlwind element come tones of a melodious Death-song, which end not but in tones of a more melodious Birth-song. Nay, look into the Fire-whirlwind with thy own eyes, and thou wilt see." Let us actually look, then: ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... now, while barley by the road Do hang upon the bough, O, A-pull'd by branches off the lwoad A-riden hwome to mow, O; While spiders roun' the flower-stalks Ha' cobwebs yet to spin, O, We'll cool ourzelves in out-door walks, When night's ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... great freedom. The mother is not over solicitous to preserve it from slight falls and other trifling accidents. A little practice soon enables the child to take care of itself, and experience acts the part of a nurse. As they advance in life, the girls are taught to spin cotton, and to beat corn, and are instructed in other domestic duties; and the boys are employed in the labours of the field. Both sexes, whether Bushreens or Kafirs, on attaining the age of puberty, are circumcised. This painful ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... try!" cried the Tinker. "Sly may he be, but sly am I, too. I would I had him here now, man to man!" And he made his heavy cudgel to spin again. "But what manner ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... rugs of the inveterate reader, the hurried tread and irascible eye of the carnivorous passenger, and the everlasting pipe of the ocean talker, who feels time before him and the world at his feet wherein to spin yarns—has any one not ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... did not mean to wilfully deceive them. Very probably he had his excuse ready. Malcolm could almost hear his words. "I said nothing about the Jacobis because I knew your prejudice, and I did not want to fluster you. I thought Mrs. Godfrey would spin her yarn, and I left it to her. It was not my fault if the Wallaces took to them, and that they were often up at Fettercairn." Some such words Cedric would say ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... claim, his knees began to smite together, and he felt so weak he could hardly drag one foot after the other. He threw down his pick; he began to tremble and spin around. The world seemed to be turning over and over, and he trying in vain to hold on to it. He jerked the pipe from his teeth, and throwing it down on the bank, he tumbled down too, and clutching at the grass with both hands tried hard, ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... Rachel serve: and I'll work the cost of my keep and more, you shall see. I can spin with the best, and weave too; you'll never come short of linen nor linsey while I'm with you—and Lettice can run about and save steps to us all. What think ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... the gods: But wait, at least, till Caesar's near approach Force us to yield. 'Twill never be too late To sue for chains, and own a conqueror. Why should Rome fall a moment ere her time? No—let us draw our term of freedom out In its full length, and spin it to the last: So shall we gain still one day's liberty. And, let me perish, but, in Cato's judgment, A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty, Is worth a whole eternity ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... this, and I feel as if I'd rather wait for a good wind, clap on all sail, and make a dash for it, going right ahead for the gunboat as if you meant to run her down, and when we got very close, give the wheel a spin and shoot by her. They'd think we were coming right on to her, and it might scare the crew so that they wouldn't be able to shoot straight till we got ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... Hindus, artists, and East-enders. That was Mr. Kipling's trick. He assumed the realistic manner as Jacob assumed the hairy hands of Esau. He compelled us to believe him by describing with elaborate detail the setting of his story. And, having once got us in the mood of belief, he proceeded to spin a yarn that as often as not was as unlike life as A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur. His characters are inventions, not portraits. Even the dialects they speak—dialects which used to be enthusiastically spoken of as masterly achievements of realism—are ludicrously false to ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... plays upon his pipe all the day long, the picture of peace and innocence, or prowls in the passes with a murderous long gun, if there are foreigners in the air. The women toil at carrying their scant supply of drinking-water from great distances during a part of the day, and in the evening they spin industriously by their firesides or upon their doorsteps, as the season will have it. It is an old life, the same to-day as a thousand years ago, and perhaps as it will be a thousand years hence. The men ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... They'll have the dream quality of 'You Win a Million' and the lottery-shows. They'll be things to dream about but never to think of doing anything about. We're going to make the series disappointingly short, in order to make it more convincingly factual. We won't spin it out for its entertainment-value until it ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the piskies and brownies, loved to come at night and help the sad and ill and poor, and those who were good and kind. They would come when folks were asleep, and tidy their kitchen for them, or chop their wood, and spin their flax. Sometimes, for the very poor, they would bake a batch of bread or cakes, and have all ready for them; and when the poor people came down in the morning, cold and weak and hungry, wondering how they would manage to get any food to eat, they would find ...
— Dick and Brownie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... worked shifts, below and on top, with her husband, when he'd be putting down a prospecting shaft without a mate, as he often had to do—because of her mainly. Old diggers said that it was lovely to see how she'd spin up a heavy green-hide bucket full of clay and 'tailings', and land and empty it with a twist of her wrist. Most men were afraid of her, and few diggers' wives were strong-minded enough to seek a second row with Mother Middleton. Her voice could be heard right across Golden Gully and ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... day, the eldest daughter got up very early to spin—in the twilight of the dawn it was—and she looked out, and there was the old woman coming from her house on the hill, with a shawl over her head and a tub in her arms. Oh, but she was a really wicked one! ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... follow. Hanno gives us facts, not speculations—the things which he has observed, not those of which he has dreamt; and he delivers his facts in the fewest possible words, and in the plainest possible way. He does not cultivate flowers of rhetoric; he does not unduly spin out his narrative. It is plain that he is especially bent on making his meaning clear, and he ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... solemn face of an unusually good-looking young man who wore his silk hat at a jaunty angle and whose every detail of attire suggested that he was of that singularly blessed class who toil not neither do they spin, Miss Mamie McCorkle, public telephone operator in the tallest-but-one skyscraper below the Fulton street dead line, expected to be asked to look up some number in the telephone book and be generously rewarded for the trifling ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... standing in the middle of the sidewalk, and which disappear at the first reasonable thought. I run into harmless passengers as if I would knock the breath of life out of them, and tangle our umbrellas together so fearfully that they spin round and round some time after their separation. O that umbrella of mine! Sometimes I hook it in the drooping branches of trees, and, losing my hold in the suddenness of the shock, have the gratification of feeling it tip up, and go down over my shoulder into the mud ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... chugging machine whizzed him off in the direction where, surrounded by cash, awaited the 8 per cent. expectations of Messrs. Proctor and Greenlee. Later still he descended with said cash upon the offices of Haynes, Forster & Company. And even later, after an exhilarating spin in the country, he arrived safe and blithesome at his well-appointed rooms in the Hotel Fulton, ready to remove with good soap and pure aqua the stains of mart and road before ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... out of his waistcoat and tried again. He had just succeeded in getting the thing to spin when Mr. Downing arrived. The sound of his footsteps disturbed Psmith and ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... forty million Germans should die, while he survives. It is ignorant, it is insincere, to put on a frown of offended virtue and to say: For shame, what are you thronging into the towns for? Go back to the land; plough, spin, weave, ply the blacksmith's hammer, as did our forefathers, who were the proper sort of people. And leave the people like us, who think and write poetry and brood and dream for you, a house embowered in vines—there ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... to whom Hercules was sold for three years for murdering Iphitus, and who so won his affection that he married her, and was content to spin her wool for her and wear the garments of a woman while she donned and wore ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... remembrance, that horror of death of which you sometimes spoke to me. I thought to myself: I shall lie thus in the dark, only this heart will be still, this blood will be cold, and there will be no dawn for me,—yet the world will spin on as before, and those who loved me will smile again. I feared death for the first time, because, for the first time, life is dear to me. It is the outcome of my great content; I cling to my happiness, and Death is my only enemy, the only power that could knock this cup of bliss out of my hands. ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... but that love should be of the party), she pulled a ring from one lithe finger, and looked down while the lad kissed it for a holy relic and put it in his bosom reverently,—pretending not to see. But, Ilaria, you knew well what gave colour to the faint and worn old words about Fior di spin giallo, or O Dea ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... grab in and turn a trick for the general good of all hands. But you can't dump your friends. You've got to stand by your own party first. You do anything else, and you'll simply get the reputation of being a kicker and an insurgent. And then you can't spin a thread. Your own party doesn't want you and the other side is afraid of you. Ideals are blasted good in their way, but in politics cut out the I and attend to the deals. It's the only way you'll ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... rapidity, and power of movement are always correlated with the number of these. The one before us could sweep across the field with majestic slowness, or dart with lightning swiftness and a swallow's grace. It could gyrate in a spiral, or spin on its axis in a rectilinear path like a rifled bullet. It could dart up or down, and begin, arrest, or change its motion with a grace and power which at once astonish and entrance. Fixing on one of these monads then, we followed it doggedly by a never-ceasing ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... now, and I'll take you and Ephy for a spin, and, incidentally, I'll teach you both how to ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... of the forest increased, moving about like so many fireflies in the night; the nauseous odours grew heavier, more persistent, and for a moment Helen felt ill; her head began to spin around at the thought of what she was going to see, but quickly she recovered herself and went on by the side of the girl who never faltered. Helen wondered at such ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... and I must begin to brush up and sober down, or I'll be the black sheep of the flock,—as if I wasn't always that. But you really are getting terrible good, Kittie; I've seen it for a long time and it makes me uncomfortable; spin around and be gay like ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... all of a sudden. "That's a hot one, ain't it?" he grins at Sampson. "Sure, old top, we'll give you a spin!" he says, jabbin' the floor board with his feet. "That's if this boiler will roll. Some of you guys will have to give the motor a little spin, if you want to go away from here. She's gone cold on me again! Gimme a cigarette, ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... it means anything that can swim," replied Jupp, quite in his element when talking of the sea, and always ready to spin a yarn or tell what he knew. "It might be made of spare spars, or boards, or anything that can float. When I was in the Neptune off Terra del Faygo I've seed the natives there coming off to us seated on a couple of branches of a tree ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... the opinion of fair ladies who dwell in ceiled houses in our older Eastern States and cities, who like lilies, neither toil nor spin, whose fair hands would gather close their silken apparel at the thought of touching the homelier garments of many a heroine of Kansas—whatever they may say in reference to this question, we, the women of the Spartan State, declare, we want ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... summer smocks on! Be clad no more in russet! All the flow'rs are fashion-plates and fabrics for your wear— Gold and silver gossamer, Webs, from every blossomer, Fragrant and so delicate (with neither seam nor gusset), Filmily you spin them, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various
... a running position upon one foot, with the other far behind me, in Atalanta's race; sometimes suspended by cords from the ceiling, with arms and legs in horribly uncomfortable positions, till everything seems to spin ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... Fido. They also rejoiced to see each other. The boys returned from a visit at Lesina's and carried with them all kinds of gifts. A water-gun, by which you could squirt the water to the top of the highest trees; singing tops which could spin almost a quarter of an hour. From Palko's mother they got a whole box full of prunes filled with nuts, which Ondrejko thought were better than figs ...
— The Three Comrades • Kristina Roy
... accident and sudden death. Contrast this ill-boding hand with the quick, skilful, quiet hand of a nurse whom I remember with affection because she took the best care of my teacher. I have clasped the hands of some rich people that spin not and toil not, and yet are not beautiful. Beneath their soft, smooth roundness what a ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... not, as a public, spin themselves any reasons or excuses for their hearty approval of Canada's engagement in the war. Her or their contributions of men and money to its fields of slaughter and waste appeared and appear to them natural, proper, inevitable. They applauded seriously ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... neatly in gold and silver, and make knifes, hatchets, reaping hooks, spades and shares to cut iron, &c. &c. Their potters make neat tobacco pipes, and pots to boil their food. Some authors say that weaving is their principal trade; this is done by the women and girls, who spin and weave very fine cotton cloth, which they dye blue or black.[A] F. Moor says, the Jalofs particularly make great quantities of the cotton cloth; their pieces are generally twenty-seven yards long, and about nine ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... one twentieth of an inch long and nearly as wide, they increased in length as they grew, but for many weeks lived in common on an irregular web, feeding together on the crushed flies or bugs thrown to them. But when one fourth of an inch in length, they showed a disposition to separate, and to spin each for herself a regular web, out of which all intruders were kept. And now it was found that all these webs were inclined at nearly the same angle, and were never exactly vertical; that, like the spider in the first web she made in the Botanical ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... pleasures, where, with tree o'ergrown, Ran stream, or bubbling fountain's wave did spin, On bark or rock, if yielding were the stone, The knife was straight at work, or ready pin. And there, without, in thousand places lone, And in as many places graved, within, Medoro and Angelica were traced, In ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... swear to you that you shall henceforth never more be the spider that dwells in that web! For you are a garden-spider, an abominable, dumpy, old garden-spider, for whom a web, such as Hodge is, is much too fine and much too elegant. Be quiet, therefore, old spider, and spin your net elsewhere! You shall not live in my net, but Tib—for, yes, I do know Tib. She is a lovely, charming child of fourteen, as quick and nimble as a kid, with lips red as the coral which you wear on your fat pudding of a neck, with eyes which shine yet brighter ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... wild wings that ever would be flying! Oh, my heart's a meadow-lark that ever would be free! Well it is that I must spin until the light be dying; Well it is the little wheel must ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... what he said was no objectionable as to the matter; but he drawled in his manner to such a pitch, that I thought he would have broken out into an even-down song, as I sometimes think of yourself when you spin out the last word in reading out the line in a warm summer afternoon. In the hymn by himself, he did better; he was, however, sometimes like to lose the tune, but the people gave him great encouragement when he got back ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... "Just a spin will do you good, sweet thing," said Matthew, as I settled down close enough to his shoulder to talk and not interrupt the powerful engine. "I want you to myself for a small moment away from your live stock, human ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... tumaranpoque women, if they have children, serve half of the month in spinning and weaving cotton, which their masters supply; and during the other half of the month they work for themselves. The tumataban women spin only one hank of cotton each month for their masters, who furnish to them the cotton in the boll. Only the ayueys receive food and clothing from their masters; to the others the masters give nothing. When these slaves die the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various
... and maybe no. It's no muckle that that comes till. I wadna spin sae weel gin it warna that the Almichty pat some sicht into the pints o' my fingers, 'cause there was nane left i' my een. An' gin ye mak ither thrippence a week oot o' that, ye'll be turnin' the wather ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... parade at the moment, knew very well that it was an officer's cape, and that Randall McLean had carefully wrapped it about Nellie Bayard lest the keen wind from the west, blowing freely over the ridges, should chill the young girl after her long spin across the prairie and ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... very often. But I look about at other people, and then realize how my mother's slaved for twenty years and how my father's been tied down, and I've come to the conclusion that while there may have been a time when a woman could keep a house, tend a garden, sew and spin and raise twelve children, things are different now; life is more complicated. You owe your husband something, you owe yourself something. I want to get on, to study and travel, to be a companion to my husband. I don't want to be ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... called the croupier, and instantly the little ball began to spin. All eyes followed it. Round and round it went—Aileen as keen an observer as any. Her face was flushed, her ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... was Mrs. Vanderpool—she toiled not, neither did she spin, and yet! If all these folk were like poor, stupid, docile Jennie it would be simpler, but what earthly sense was there in trying do to anything with a girl like Zora, so stupid in some matters, so startlingly bright in others, and so stubborn ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... regular Merry-Go-Round," said the Spinning Wheel. "I just make believe I'm one up here in the attic. Time was when I used to spin yarn for the grandmother of Mr. Dunn. But now all yarn is spun in factories by machinery, and spinning wheels are out of fashion. So I am up here in the dust, and it makes the time pass more quickly to pretend I ...
— The Story of a Stuffed Elephant • Laura Lee Hope
... of Debby, I'm sure," said Uncle Squeaky. "We'll be very fine in our downy beds. I will ask Lady Spider to spin us some silk draperies for the windows, Granny. She will do anything we ask. The woodland folk all love Dr. Whiskers. And no wonder. Never a bit of reward has he taken for all the wonderful cures he has made. We'll have a jolly ...
— Grand-Daddy Whiskers, M.D. • Nellie M. Leonard
... given by men of my class being a lecture. I am a bit of an amateur conjurer, and I thoroughly believe were I to appear on the platform on a bicycle or on an acrobat's globe, and keep three balls in the air with one hand and spin a plate on a stick with the other, and at the same time retail some stories, the notice in the Press on the following morning would begin: "Mr. Harry Furniss gave an instructive lecture last night on subjects ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... made him a "good man on the round stuff" and in spite of his weight he had no trouble running around on the floating logs, even the small ones. It was said that Paul could spin a log till the bark came off and then run ashore on the bubbles. He once threw a peavy handle into the Mississippi at St. Louis and standing on it, poled up to Brainerd, Minnesota. Paul was a "white water bucko" and rode water ...
— The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan • W.B. Laughead
... nothing better to do with the rest of the afternoon, Nevill thought, than to take a spin in the motor, which they did, the chauffeur at the wheel, as Nevill confessed himself of too lazy a turn of mind to care for driving his own car. While Stephen waited outside, he called at Djenan el Hadj (an old Arab house at a little distance from the town, buried deep in a beautiful garden), ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... spinning-wheel's forbid In vain in all the country-side the spindles sharp are hid; For in a lonely turret high, and up a winding stair, There lives an ancient woman who still turns her wheel with care. The Princess found her out one day, and tried to learn to spin; Alas! the spindle pricked her hand—the ...
— The Sleeping Beauty Picture Book - Containing The Sleeping Beauty; Bluebeard; The Baby's Own Alaphabet • Anonymous
... An eighth braced figure stooping to a wheel, Body to body in the stifling gloom, The sob and gasp of breath against an air Empty and damp and fetid as a tomb. With them I seemed to reel Beneath the spin and heel When combers took them fair, Bruising their bodies, Lifting black water where Their feet ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... Corvatsch was still six thousand feet above her head. All at once, Helen felt subdued. The fancy seized her that the carriage was rumbling over the roof of the world. In a word, she was yielding to the exhilaration of high altitudes, and her brain was ready to spin ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... a pair of strong hooks at the posterior end of its soft defenceless abdomen. Their food appears for the most part to be of a vegetable nature. Some species, however, are alleged to be carnivorous, and a North American form of the genus Hydropsyche is said to spin around the mouth of its burrow a silken net for the capture of small animal organisms living in the water. Before passing into the pupal stage, the larva partially closes the orifice of the tube with silk or pieces of stone loosely spun together and pervious to water. Through this temporary ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... imitation. The bird does not have to be taught to build its nest or to fly, nor the beaver to build its dam or its house, nor the otter or the seal to swim, nor the young of mammals to suckle, nor the spider to spin its web, nor the grub to weave its cocoon. Nature does not trust these things to chance; they are too vital. The things that an animal acquires by imitation are of secondary importance in its life. As soon as the calf, or the lamb, or the colt can get ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... When these have fed their accustomed time, and are about to change into the pupa state, they, by an instinct given them, attack the vital part of the caterpillar (a most wonderful economy in nature, that this process should be delayed until they have no more occasion for food.) They then spin themselves minute cases within the body of the caterpillar; and instead of a butterfly coming forth (which, if a female, would have probably laid six hundred eggs, thus producing as many caterpillars, whose food would be the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... on the lake is first-rate, Alves, and I skated up the shore to see if I could get you for a spin." ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... about the ocean. In fact, there are some things you don't know, and, if they wanted to, some of the old sailors could spin you yarns that would make your hair ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster
... You're working for me. Listen. I've got a yarn to spin. The man that took the money—or one of them—was short, and slim, and clean-shaved, and he didn't wear a puncher hat. You weren't scared of him because he was a coward. You tried to get him to play square and he talked to ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs |
