"Spindle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wantonly, to swell your treasure? Whence o'er the heart his empire free? The elements of Life how conquers he? Is't not his heart's accord, urged outward far and dim, To wind the world in unison with him? When on the spindle, spun to endless distance, By Nature's listless hand the thread is twirled, And the discordant tones of all existence In sullen jangle are together hurled, Who, then, the changeless orders of creation Divides, and kindles into rhythmic dance? Who brings the One to join the general ordination, Where ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... parts being plaited together. This is thrown high and descends spirally, twisting so rapidly throughout its course that it appears to be a solid disc. This is also used as a windmill, being affixed to a spindle. Children run with the toy against the wind and find similar ecstasy to those of whites ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... FLOWERS.—An important rule in preserving cut flowers is never to cram the vase with flowers. Many will last if only they have a large mass of water in the vase and not too many stalks to feed on the water and pollute it. Vases that can hold a large quantity of water are to be preferred to the spindle-shaped trumpets that are often used. Flat dishes covered with wet sand are also useful for short-stalked or heavy-headed flowers; even partially-withered blooms will revive when placed on this cool moist substance. Moss, though prettier ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various
... in Italy, were bound to the cart by cords, which were fast in front, but which wound upon a heavy spindle at the back. The spindle had three holes in it, in which staves were thrust as levers, to turn it and hold the ropes taut. Two of the staves were tightly pressed against the load, while the third stood nearly upright ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... calculated to produce fire by friction, is set to work with the most furious earnestness by the unfortunate sufferer, and all who wish well to his cause. Relieving each other by turns, they drive on with such persevering diligence, that at length the spindle of the wheel, ignited by excessive friction, emits 'forlorn fire' in abundance, which, by the application of tow, or some other combustible material, is widely extended over the whole neighbourhood. Communicating the fire to the tow, the tow communicates it to a candle, ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... start our program with the potter's wheel, the oldest of pottery modeling devices," said Mr. Marwood. "It is a very simple contrivance, you see—just a round piece of board set horizontally on top of a revolving spindle. As the disc turns the potter shapes the clay with his fingers, building it up to the desired height and moulding it to conform to the profile, or pattern, he keeps beside him. This profile is of wood or steel, and gives the elevation of the object in actual size. ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... trees, on grasses, spinach, docks and nettles, which are all fertilised through the agency of the wind. A similar line of argument holds good with fruits; that a ripe strawberry or cherry is as pleasing to the eye as to the palate—that the gaily-coloured fruit of the spindle-wood tree and the scarlet berries of the holly are beautiful objects—will be admitted by everyone. But this beauty serves merely as a guide to birds and beasts, in order that the fruit may be devoured ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... do, had it taken to itself a couple of pieces of tobacco pipes as vehicles of locomotion. He was dressed in a black coat and waistcoat, white cravat and high collar to his shirt, blue cotton net pantaloons and Hessian boots, both fitting so tight, that it appeared as if he was proud of his spindle shanks. His hat was broad-brimmed and low, and he carried a stout black cane with a gold top in his right hand, almost always raising the gold top to his nose when he spoke, just as we see doctors represented at a consultation in the caricature prints. But if his figure was ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... thousand guineas to this fund, has a history so remarkable as to be worth relating across the Atlantic. Seven years ago he was a journeyman mechanic. Having invented and patented some kind of a crank or spindle used in the cotton manufacture, and needing capital to start himself in the business of making them, he made it a matter of earnest prayer that he might be directed to some one able and willing to assist him. In a singular and unexpected manner he fell in with ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... quadrants must be only changed for reversing. In arranging the independent cut-off on the Joy gear, it is only necessary to increase the length of the vibrating link beyond the point of attachment for the main valve spindle connection to obtain a point from which motion may be taken to actuate the cut-off valve; even then the cost of the Joy gear for both cylinders is but little more than for a single ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... panelled simply in woods, furnished with the old Sturtevant mahogany, came upon Bertram Chester like a stage setting as he entered with Mrs. Tiffany. Upstage, burned a driftwood fire in a low hearth of rough bricks; Judge Tiffany sat there, in a spindle-backed chair, reading. Across a space broken only by a painting, a Japanese print or so, and more spindle-backed chairs, Eleanor and Kate had grouped themselves by the piano. Eleanor, turning the leaves on the music-rack, looked over her shoulder at him. She was in pink that day; the tint of her ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... be angry. "Dog take the teacher, the old spindle-legs! If I'd known he was going to raise such a ruction in our quiet and peaceful neighborhood, I never would have brought ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... out, the crone who had first spoken, said: 'We have nothing more to do but to mix a drop of our blood into his blood.' And she scratched her arm with the sharp point of a spindle, which she had made the nurse bring to her, and let a drop of blood, grey as the mist, fall upon the lips of the child; and passed out into the darkness. Then the others passed out in silence one by one; and all the while the child had not opened ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats
... was wearing on, beguiled by the young girls as best it might be, with the spindle and distaff, and incessant chatter and laugh, save when they joined their voices in some popular chant. Signora Martina was delivering fresh flax to the spinners; Marietta, the maid, was busy about the fire, in provident forethought for supper; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... in the Evening we had much rain, with some very heavy Claps of Thunder, one of which carried away a Dutch Indiaman's Main Mast by the Deck, and split it, the Maintopmast and Topgallantmast all to shivers. She had had an Iron Spindle at the Maintopgallant Mast head which had first attracted the Lightning. The ship lay about 2 Cable lengths from us, and we were struck with the Thunder at the same time, and in all probability we should have shared ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... dwindle: The clank of chain and crane, The whir of crank and spindle Bewilder heart and brain; The ends of our endeavour Are merely wealth and fame, Yet in the still Forever We're one and all the same; Delaying, still delaying, We watch the fading west: Come! let us go a-maying, Nor ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... quiet dame Who plies with' rock and spindle The patient flax, how great a flame Yon little spark shall kindle! The lurid morning shall reveal A fire no king can smother Where British flint and Boston steel Have clashed against each other! Old charters shrivel in its track, His Worship's bench ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... are surprised at the candidate for the duchy who was put forward by the rebels. William was a Norman born and bred; his rival was in every sense a Frenchman. This was William's cousin Guy of Burgundy, whose connexion with the ducal house was only by the spindle-side. But his descent was of uncontested legitimacy, which gave him an excuse for claiming the duchy in opposition to the bastard grandson of the tanner. By William he had been enriched with great possessions, among which was the island fortress of Brionne in the Risle. The ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... Hallowed, and huntress holy as whom I serve, Here in your sight and eyeshot of these men Stand, girt as they toward hunting, and my shafts Drawn; wherefore all ye stand up on my side, If I be pure and all ye righteous gods, Lest one revile me, a woman, yet no wife, That bear a spear for spindle, and this bow strung For a web woven; and with pure lips salute Heaven, and the face of all the gods, and dawn Filling with maiden flames and maiden flowers The starless fold o' the stars, and making sweet ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... threaded part is turned by a small hand wheel attached to the upper end. When this hand wheel is turned to the left, or up, as far as it will go, opening the valve, a rubber disc is compressed inside of the valve body and this disc serves to prevent leakage of the gas around the spindle. ...
— Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting • Harold P. Manly
... are constantly used for various purposes, but the greater part is manufactured into spun-yarn. For this purpose every vessel is furnished with a "spun-yarn winch;" which is very simple, consisting of a wheel and spindle. This may be heard constantly going on deck in pleasant weather; and we had employment, during a great part of the time, for three hands in drawing and knotting yarns, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... upstairs for her afternoon siesta, and soon fell asleep on the cool chintz lounge, in her shaded room, where the old-fashioned furniture, high bedstead, spindle-legged chairs, and antique toilet-table, had remained unchanged from her youth, when the oval mirror reflected back a merry, rosy girl-face, instead ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... looked at a Crimean bitch which, though blind and fast nearing her end, had, two years ago, been a truly magnificent dog. At all events, so said Nozdrev. Next came another bitch—also blind; then an inspection of the water-mill, which lacked the spindle-socket wherein the upper stone ought to have been revolving—"fluttering," to use the Russian peasant's quaint expression. "But never mind," said Nozdrev. "Let us proceed to the blacksmith's shop." So to the blacksmith's shop the party proceeded, and when the said shop had been viewed, ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... squire of Don Quixote de la Mancha; "a little squat fellow, with a tun belly and spindle shanks" (pt. I. ii. 1). He rides an ass called Dapple. His sound common sense is an excellent foil to the knight's craze. Sancho is very fond of eating and drinking, is always asking the knight when he is to be put in ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... wheel was cracked clean through, as if some one had struck it with the head of an axe, and one of the pallets of the spindle was stuck fast in the crack. He could knock it out easily enough, but when the crack came around again, the pallet would catch and the clock would stop once more. It was ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... that would soon make you another man," said Solomon, glancing at Fleetword's slender and spindle shanks; "there's nourishment ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... just at that moment, the thirteenth fairy, who had not been invited, burst into the room. She pushed the good fairy aside and, before anyone could stop her, she cried out in a loud angry voice, "The princess shall prick her finger with a spindle, on her fifteenth birthday, and shall die!" In a moment all was excitement. The jealous old fairy rushed from the palace, but the people dashed after her. "Drive the wicked witch from the kingdom! Burn every spindle in ...
— A Kindergarten Story Book • Jane L. Hoxie
... pound of cotton into a thread two hundred and fifty miles long, beating Manchester by ninety miles, has no wheel, unless you so call a ball of clay, of the size of a pea, stuck fast on one end of her spindle, by means of which she twists it between her thumb and finger. But this wonderful mechanical feat costs her many months of labor, to say nothing of previous training; while the Manchester factory-girl, aided by the multiplying power of the wheel, easily ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... the cord of a man's existence, you will generally find the blackest hank in it twined by a woman's hand, but it is not less common to trace the golden thread to the same spindle. ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... commonest form of muscle that we see is the red, lean meat of beef, mutton, or pork; and this will give us a good idea of how our own muscles look. All muscles, whatever their size or shape, are made up of little spindle-shaped or strap-shaped cells, or wriggling "body-cells" arranged in bands or strings. The size of a given muscle depends upon the number ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... fix um." At the same time he produced two pieces of soft wood from some hiding place in his garments. One of these, known as the "spindle," was a stick about two feet long by three-quarters of an inch in diameter and having a rounded point. The other, called the "hearth," was flat, about eighteen inches in length, half an inch thick, and three inches wide. On its upper surface, close to one edge, were several slight cavities, each ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... chief elements of attraction. Sometimes a naked savage might be seen going about with a second-hand dress-coat put on the wrong way, and buttoned up the back. Another would content himself with a red silk handkerchief tied round his head or shoulders. A third would thrust his spindle-shanks through the arms of a sleeved vest, and button the body round his loins; while a fourth, like the one now under consideration, would parade about in a ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... taking up the slack of this belt by mounting the spindle of the outer coned drum in bearings adjustable along a circular path struck from the axis of the lower feed roller as a center, thus insuring a uniform engagement between the teeth of the small pinion and those of the spur wheel with which the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... suddenly rested, for the first time, upwards of twenty years ago, in the study of S. T. Coleridge—looking, as I said before, light as a Mercury to eyes familiar with the British build; but, with reference to the lengthy model of you Yankees, who spindle up so tall and narrow, already rather bulky and columnar. Note, however, that of all this array of personal features, as I have here described them, I then saw nothing at all, my attention being altogether occupied with Mr. Wilson's ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... sent to the mills to be turned into rolls. Then, day after day, for weeks, the noise of the spinning-wheel was heard, accompanied by the steady beat of the girls' feet, as they walked forward and backward drawing out and twisting the thread and running it on the spindle. This was work that required some skill, for on the fineness and evenness of the thread the character of the fabric largely depended. Finally, the yarn was carried to the weavers to ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... plant whose seed is much more beautiful than its flower. By the way, I have two, for the Spindle Tree is in seed, which has a quite insignificant blossom. But the plant I mean is a wild peony, which I dug up in a brake on the slopes of Helikon. It is a single white whose flower lasts, perhaps, three days. It makes a large seed-pod, which burst a ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... require the fisherman on pain of death to furnish a large hall with a carpet in a single piece. The fisherman's wife sends him to the well of Shoubrah where he exclaims, "O such-and-such-a-one, thy sister so-and-so salutes thee, and asks thee to send her the spindle which she forgot when she was with thee yesterday, for we want to furnish a room with it." The fisherman drives a nail into the floor at one end of the room, fixes the thread on the spindle to it, and draws out a wonderful carpet. Then the wazir demands a little boy eight ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... warrior's god. The great goddesses, too, Frigga and Freyja, were thoroughly old-fashioned domestic divinities. They help women in their greatest need, they spin themselves, they teach the maids to spin, and punish them if the wool remains upon their spindle. They are kind, and good, and bright, for Holda, Bertha, are the epithets given to them. And so, too, this mythology which, in its aspect to the stranger and the external world, was so ruthless and terrible, ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... He then covered up all the rest of the open part of the box with shingles, and asked James and Rollo to hold them on. Then he carefully lifted up the cover of the trap, and made a rattling in the back part of it with the spindle. This drove the squirrel through out of the trap into ...
— Rollo at Play - Safe Amusements • Jacob Abbott
... of the small angle irons used for supporting shelves, and sold at about a penny each. These are screwed on to the board 2 inches from what may be considered to be the rear edge, and are so spaced as to leave room for a washer on each spindle between the roller and the ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... a sort of afterwaft and lingering perfume of the coquetry of the Incroyable—with an indescribable finical something in the folds of the garments, a certain air of stiffness and correctness in the demeanor that smacked of the school of David, that recalled Jacob's spindle-legged furniture. ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... spindle-shanked little critter, with spectacles and a soft, polite way of speakin' that made you want to build a fire under him to see if he could swear like a Christian. He had a big head with consider'ble hair on the top of it ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... "Hasten, Spindle, and Holly and Misletoe, for before the coldest hour that precedes the dawn has passed over the earth your little sisters must all be back in ...
— The Dumpy Books for Children; - No. 7. A Flower Book • Eden Coybee
... her home in a sheltered dale among the hills. The birch trees were breaking out into fresh buds, the young lambs gambolled on the flowery knolls, and the air was musical with the songs of birds. Thora was considered the fairest woman in all Thrandheim. Her hair was as fair as the flax upon her spindle, and - her eyes were as blue as the clear sky above her head. Her heart was lightsome, too; for she had won the love of the great Earl Hakon—Hakon, the conqueror of the vikings of Jomsburg, the proud ruler of all Norway. It was he who had given her the gold ring that was now upon her ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... think they had. There's that Lokodi with four others. He himself plays the heroic parts; a spindle-shanked, barber's apprentice sort of fellow, takes the aged father parts; and there's a matron, well advanced in years, who acts the young missies. They are now making ready to give a representation this evening. When your honours are all dining in the ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... thin, spindle shaped, like those of very young girls, were encircled with a kind of metal ornament, and bracelets of glass beads; her hair was twisted into little cords; on her breast hung a green paste idol, identified by her whip of seven ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... was not, whereupon Mr. Harum hitched himself up onto a high office stool, with his heels on the spindle, and leaned sideways upon the desk, while John stood facing him with his ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... carrying water, poised upon her head, and she was leading a horse by means of a bridle hung over her arm. Her hands, being thus not required either for the horse or for the vessel, were employed in spinning, as she walked along, by means of a distaff and spindle. ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... matter, chromatin), Cytosoma, Nuclear membrane, Protoplasm of the cell-body and Nuclear sap. B. Mother-star, the loops beginning to split lengthways (nuclear membrane gone), with Star-like appearance in cytoplasm, Centrosoma (sphere of attraction), Nuclear spindle (achromin, colourless matter) and Nuclear loops (chromatin, coloured matter). C. The two daughter-stars, produced by the breaking of the loops of the mother-star (moving away), with Upper daughter-crown, ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... formed in my own imagination an idea different and superior to what I saw. This beautiful figure has repose, simplicity, nature, and grace, but I felt a want—the want of some internal sentiment: for instance, if, instead of watching the rotation of her spindle with such industrious attention, the Filatrice had looked careless, or absent, or pensive, or disconsolate, (like Faust's Margaret at her spinning-wheel,) she would have been more interesting—but not perhaps what the ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... the reformers were as great sticklers for medals as the "papelins." Of Pope John VIII., an effeminate voluptuary, we have a medal with his portrait, inscribed Pope Joan! and another of Innocent X., dressed as a woman holding a spindle; the reverse, his famous mistress, Donna Olympia, dressed as a Pope, with the tiara on her head, and the keys of St. Peter in ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... attractive mass of twisting and twining growths, with distinct glossy foliage in summer and brilliant scarlet fruit in autumn. The flowers are inconspicuous, the chief beauty of the shrub being the show of fruit, which resembles somewhat those of the Spindle Tree (Euonymus), and to which it is nearly allied. A native of North America, it grows from 12 feet to 15 feet high, and is useful in this country for covering arches or tree stems, or for allowing to run about at will on a mound ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... where and wot am I? A spindle-shank'd stripling, As blue-gilled old Tory ex-Colonels protest? Or a 'ero, as pictured by young RUDYARD KIPLING, Six foot in my socks, forty-inch round the chest? I'm blowed if I know arter all the discussion. But if I'm the cove as they're going to trust, To give good account of yer Frenchy ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 29, 1890 • Various
... early, unfashionable dinner. It is full of old-time furniture, such as connoisseurs are searching after now—dark polished tables with great claws and little claws; high presses and cupboards brass bound and with numberless narrow drawers; spindle-legged chairs, with their worn embroidered backs and seats; a tall thin bookcase; a haircloth sofa with a griffin at either end mounting savage guard over an erect pillow; a thick hearth-rug; and two easy-chairs with cushioned arms and two little old ladies, the one ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... streets like crooked lanes, where old women, who all through the summer months, Sundays excepted, give their feet an air-bath, may be seen sitting on the doorsteps clutching with one bony hand the distaff and drowsily turning the spindle ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... or barn. But many of us can remember the first Jerseys, and what a reproach their wizened bodies and piebald hides were in any herd. It was admitted that their milk was yellow and wonderfully rich in butter fat; but they were so homely, so spindle-legged, so brindled along the withers, so pale-yellow down the sides, so foolishly white in the flanks, down the fore legs and about the jowls, yet so black-kneed and wildly touched about the eyes, that ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... elspezi. Spendthrift malsxparulo. Sphere sfero. Spherical sfera. Sphinx sfinkso. Spice spico. Spider araneo. Spider's web araneajxo. Spike najlego. Spile ligna najlo. Spill (liquid) disversxi. Spill (corn, etc.) dissxuti. Spin sxpini. Spinage spinaco. Spinal spina. Spindle akso. Spine spino. Spinning-wheel radsxpinilo. Spinning-top turnludilo. Spinster sxpinistino (frauxlino). Spiral helikforma. Spire pregxeja turo, sonorilejo. Spirit (soul) spirito. Spirit (energy) energio. Spirit ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... glowing ashes and red-hot iron was on the ground. At a little distance lay a flat iron disc, called the "platform"; with a pole in the centre through which ran a spindle. On this metal plate lay a new cast wheel, and the wright with a bar screwed a nut so as to hold the cart-wheel down firmly ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... for her dreamy poetical nature. Then turning in at the high narrow doorway, whose threshold Mrs. Eccles, the housekeeper, had long ago given her free leave to cross, she would stroll through the deserted rooms, touching the queer spindle-legged furniture with gentle reverent fingers, gazing absorbedly at the dark rows of family portraits, and speculating always to herself what they had been like, these dead and gone Kynastons, who had once lived and laughed, and sorrowed and ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... she said, 'she has been sorely used, and has suffered much. It is a piteous thing when our little imperial fiefs go to the spindle side!' ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of their friends, and the bride, taken with apparent force from the arms of her mother, as the Sabine women were taken in the days of Romulus, was conducted to her new home carrying a distaff and a spindle, emblems of the industry that was thought necessary in the household work that she was to perform or direct. Strong men lifted her over the threshold, lest her foot should trip upon it, and her husband saluted her ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... from the spindle-legged sofa where she had been sitting, and touched one of the outstretched hands with rather extraordinary limpness. She murmured ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... Zealanders, having once possessed so simple and convenient an art as that of the potter, had lost every trace of it; and that the same tribes, having once had so simple a means of saving labour as the spindle or small stick weighted at one end for spinning, had given it up and gone back to twisting threads with the hand. In fact, it was necessary to suppose that one of the main occupations of man from "the beginning" had been the forgetting of simple methods, processes, and implements ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... ran from the axle of the wheel across the well, and on the spindle was a drum to take the rope. There was some clutch or fastening which could be fixed or loosed at will to make the drum turn with the tread-wheel, or let it run free, and a footbreak to lower the bucket fast or slow, ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... beneath the eaves Of his old cottage, as it chanced that day, Employ'd in winter's work. Upon the stone His Wife sate near him, teasing matted wool, While, from the twin cards tooth'd with glittering wire, He fed the spindle of his youngest child, Who turn'd her large round wheel in the open air With back and forward steps. Towards the field In which the parish chapel stood alone, Girt round with a bare ring of mossy wall, While half an hour went by, the Priest had sent Many a long look of ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... with the ship well armed, to go as far as he could, and to try and make some booty, that should be so new and so splendid that it would be a sign of his good-will to serve the Lord who had made him. So they sailed on straight to Cape Verde, and beyond that to the Cape of Masts (or Spindle Palms), their farthest of the year before, but they did not turn back here, in spite of unfriendly natives and unknown shores. Still coasting along, they found tracks of men, and a little farther on ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... homely bedchamber, garnished in a scanty way with chairs, whose spindle-shanks bespoke their age, and other furniture of very little worth; but clean and neatly kept. Reclining in an easy-chair before the fire, pale and weak from waste of blood, was Edward Chester, the young gentleman who had been the first ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... a name. Knave in your teeth, Mr. Sheridan! 'tis both a shame and a sin; And the Dean, my master, is an honester man than you and all your kin: He has more goodness in his little finger than you have in your whole body: My master is a personable man, and not a spindle-shank hoddy doddy. And now, whereby I find you would fain make an excuse, Because my master, one day, in anger, call'd you a goose: Which, and I am sure I have been his servant four years since October, And he never call'd me worse than sweet-heart, drunk or sober: Not that I know his reverence ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... the gods devise some mischief, conceal it not from me in ruth and pity; and how that mortals may not escape the doom that Fate speeds from her spindle, O soothsayer Euerides, I am teaching thee, that thyself ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... a ladder. Hither ascended a cantonnier when the new road was made up the valley, and here he found chipped flints of primeval man, a polished celt, a scrap of Samian ware, and in a niche at the side sealed up with stalactite, a tiny earthenware pitcher 2-1/2 inches high, a leaden spindle-whorl, some shells, and a toy sheep-bell. Here a little shepherdess during the stormy times, when the Routiers ravaged the country, had her refuge while she watched her flock of goats, and here made her ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... have of round worlds and spindle-shaped worlds, and worlds shaped like a wheel; worlds like titanic pruning hooks; worlds linked together by streaming filaments; solitary worlds, and worlds in hordes: tremendous worlds and tiny ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... the Holy Virgin's vestments, her spindle, drops of her milk, the cradle in which the Saviour had lain, a tooth from his adolescent jaw, a hair of his beard, a particle of the bread used in the Last Supper, and a portion of the royal purple worn by him before Pilate. Naturally clerical ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... the Guests; for with this Table every one helps himself, by turning any Dish he likes before him, without interrupting any body. You must have first, a large Table with an hole in the Middle, of an Inch Diameter, wherein should be fix'd a Socket of Brass well turn'd, to admit of a Spindle of Brass, that will turn easily in it. The Table I speak of, may be, I suppose, five or six Foot diameter; and then have another Table-board made just so large, that as it is to act on the Centre of the first ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... girt with leather and bone,[10] and his dame come from her mirror without a painted face. And I saw them of the Nerli, and them of the Vecchio,[11] contented with the uncovered skin,[12] and their dames with the spindle and the distaff. O fortunate women! Every one was sure of her burial place;[13] and as yet no one was deserted in her bed for France.[14] One over the cradle kept her careful watch, and, comforting, she used the idiom ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... should have valve bodies, caps and yokes of steel castings. Spindles should be of some non-corrosive metal, such as "monel metal". Seat rings should be removable of the same non-corrosive metal as should the spindle seats and plug faces. ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... first love, nor even his first wife. For in November, 1836, he had married Wilhelmina Planer, the leading actress of the theatre in Magdeburg where he was musical director of opera. Her father was a spindle-maker. It is said that her desire to earn money for the household, rather than the impetus of a well-defined histrionic gift, led her to go on the stage; but, once on the stage, she discovered that she had unquestionable ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... glad to come home again. It stands to reason," she said confidently. "The very sight of Andrew will be a cordial of gladness to him; for he will know, as soon as he sees the face of him, that the brother will mean the sister and the wedding ring. If you get the spindle and distaff ready, my lass, God is sure to send the flax; and by the same token, if you get your plenishing made and marked, and your bride-clothes finished, God ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... are heard from all sides, and loud above all rings the regular Io Talasse—whatever that may have meant, for no man now knows, and almost certainly no one knew then. In the midst of the procession Marcia, followed by bearers of her spindle and distaff, is being led by two pretty boys, while a third carries a torch; Silius meanwhile is scattering nuts or walnuts, or confetti made like them, to the crowd. Arrived on the Caelian, the bride is once more seized and lifted over the threshold; ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... victors. Dost know why that monkey grew hoarse? Yesterday he wanted to equal our Paris in dancing, and danced for us the adventures of Leda, during which he sweated and caught cold. He was as wet and slippery as an eel freshly taken from water. He changed masks one after another, whirled like a spindle, waved his hands like a drunken sailor, till disgust seized me while looking at that great stomach and those slim legs. Paris taught him during two weeks; but imagine to thyself Ahenobarbus as Leda or as the ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... lakes in the moonlight when the white mist rose from the marshes and spread all over their surface—endlessly as it seemed. He promised me to plan out a garden, and there being several fine trees about the kiln and on the border of the road—oaks, elders, elms, and spindle trees—he said he would contrive to keep them all, so as to have shade from the beginning, and to give the new garden an appearance of ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... know do as I have said; and for those maidens from the Hyperboreans, who died in Delos, both the girls and the boys of the Delians cut off their hair: the former before marriage cut off a lock and having wound it round a spindle lay it upon the tomb (now the tomb is on the left hand as one goes into the temple of Artemis, and over it grows an olive-tree), and all the boys of the Delians wind some of their hair about a green shoot of some tree, and they also place it ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... cotton or wool long as they could make them with their fingers, and then twisting the stuff together into larger and longer threads. As they could do this better if they had the end fastened to something, they got the notion of using a stick or some sort of spool or spindle to wind the thread up on as they made it. They would go walking round with a mass of material under one arm and this crude spindle with the thread on it under the other. The book said that even now in certain foreign countries there were peasants who did this. It was during the ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... wood wandered the much-confused knight, recognizing, step by step, the path of the night before. The turf hut was before him—the door was open—and in the doorway sat the maiden herself, spinning, the distaff by her side, the spindle dancing on the ground, and the pilgrim's hat no longer hiding her beauteous brow and wealth of dark braided hair. But, intolerable sight, seven or eight of last night's loungers were dispersed hither and thither ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the aged fairy. Shaking her head, in token of spite rather than of infirmity, she declared that the princess should prick her hand with a spindle, and die of it. A shudder ran through the company at this terrible gift. All ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... I saw in a corner of the staircase a spinning-wheel of the pattern known throughout Europe. I was told that it had not been used for many years. The distaff and spindle which are to be seen on Egyptian monuments are still employed by thousands of French, peasant-women, but the wheel invented in the sixteenth century is rarely used now, unless it be by Martha ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... Michael Scot, Practis'd in ev'ry slight of magic wile. "Guido Bonatti see: Asdente mark, Who now were willing, he had tended still The thread and cordwain; and too late repents. "See next the wretches, who the needle left, The shuttle and the spindle, and became Diviners: baneful witcheries they wrought With images and herbs. But onward now: For now doth Cain with fork of thorns confine On either hemisphere, touching the wave Beneath the towers of ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... considereth a field, and | buyeth it: with the fruit of her hands she planeth a vineyard. | She girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms. | She perceiveth that her merchandise is good: her candle goeth | not out by night. She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her | hands hold the distaff. She stretcheth out her hand to the | poor; yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy. She is | not afraid of the snow for her household; for all her household | are clothed with ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... feet her black, white and yellow slaves were busy with needle, shuttle and spindle, vying with each other as they worked at the garments for the expected infant. Laeta stretched out her hand and took a little cap which an old slave laughingly offered her. She placed it on her closed ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... from knee to ankle. In lieu of hats they had small variegated shawls, made on hand looms, folded so as to make a pointed bonnet over the head and protect the neck and shoulders from sun and wind. Each woman was busily spinning with a hand spindle, but carried her baby and its gear and blankets in a hammock or sling attached to a tump-line that went over her head. These sling carry-alls were neatly woven of soft wool and decorated with attractive patterns. ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... basic shredding systems. One is the hammermill—a grinding chamber containing a rotating spindle with steel tines or hammers attached that repeatedly beats and tears materials into smaller and smaller pieces until they fall out through a bottom screen. Hammermills will flail almost anything to pieces without becoming dulled. Soft, green materials are beaten to shreds; hard, dry, ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... think much of the sheep's flesh. We ran them down with dogs. They'd often run up trees, and we'd shoot them. Then there were rabbits that we caught, mostly in snares. For musk-rats, we'd put a parsnip or an apple on the spindle of a box trap. When we snared a rabbit, I always wanted to find it caught around the neck and strangled to death. If they got half through the snare and were caught around the body, or by the hind legs, they'd live ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weathercock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... rooms was furniture belonging to many a different age. Carpets and chair-cushions worked in tent stitch and cross stitch and old-fashioned harpsichord; gaudy white and gold furniture of the Louis Quatorze time, mixed with the spindle-legged tables of ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... mitigating their sense of labour, by the usual rude song: {50} one man imitating the profession of a shoemaker; another, that of a tanner. Now you may see a girl with a distaff, drawing out the thread, and winding it again on the spindle; another walking, and arranging the threads for the web; another, as it were, throwing the shuttle, and seeming to weave. On being brought into the church, and led up to the altar with their oblations, you will be astonished to see them suddenly awakened, and coming to themselves. ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... red-brick house which he built (also, doubtless, with Madame's Louis d'ors) we, his successors, had lived and died ever since. His portrait, together with the portraits of his wife, son, and grandson, hung on the dining-room walls; and of the quaint old spindle-legged chairs and tables that had adorned our best rooms from time immemorial, some were supposed to date as far back as the first founding ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... pipe toward your left," directed the professor. "Do you see a small horizontal wheel standing on it, with the spindle running ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... before the porch; saw the new stone wall inclosing it ablaze with nasturtiums, the brilliant loveliness of the old and long neglected garden beyond; saw the ancient house in all its quaint and charming simplicity bereft of bow-window, spindle, and gingerbread fretwork,—saw the white front of it, the green shutters, the big, thick chimneys, the sunlight sparkling on small square panes, and on the glass of ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... (Takes a large ring made of a ram's horn. From the ring hangs a loop of rope, in which he puts his foot. He draws the skin through the ring and keeps pulling it back and forth. Halla sits down, turning her spindle. They are silent.) ...
— Modern Icelandic Plays - Eyvind of the Hills; The Hraun Farm • Jhann Sigurjnsson
... "Black spindle-legs curled up to meet red-gimleted black faces, donkeys headless and legless, or sieves of shrapnel; camels with necks writhed back on to their humps, rotting already in pools of blood and bile-yellow ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... by a witch and an apostate.[1652] It was reported that, in the English camp, was a captain with fifteen hundred men-at-arms, clothed in white, bearing a white standard, on which was embroidered a distaff whence was suspended a spindle; and on the streamer of the banner was worked in fine letters of gold: "Ores, vienne la Belle!"[1653] By these words the men-at-arms wished to proclaim that if they were to meet the Maid of the Armagnacs she would find her ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... held ten harvests, spacious cellars for the wine-vats and corresponding wine-presses; now the master keeps flocks of peacocks, and causes his doors to be inlaid with African cypress-wood.—Formerly the housewife turned the spindle with the hand and kept at the same time the pot on the hearth in her eye, that the pottage might not be singed; now," it is said in another satire, "the daughter begs her father for a pound of precious stones, and the wife her ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... turn coming next, her head shaking more with spite than with age, she said that the Princess should pierce her hand with a spindle and die of the wound. This terrible gift made the whole company ...
— The Tales of Mother Goose - As First Collected by Charles Perrault in 1696 • Charles Perrault
... time stops and the thread is broken, foolish people sometimes point to certain spots in the robe and say, "Oh, why did he not leave that out!" not knowing that every action of man is a sequence from off Fate's spindle. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... The Beauty of Sleeping Wood, as it comes to us from Perrault's hands, is the story of a maiden who was cursed by an offended fairy to pierce her hand with a spindle and to die of it—a curse afterwards mitigated into a sleep of a hundred years. Every effort was made by the king, her father, to avert the doom, but in vain; and for a whole century the princess and all her court ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... that in the Craig cottage. It was pretty and comfortable, with lamps that diffused a cheerful, mellow glow over the lower half of the room and left the upper in pleasantly mysterious gloom. There was much old-fashioned furniture—such as the spindle-legged card table at which Miss Mullett and the Doctor were deeply absorbed in cribbage—but enough comfortable modern chairs had been provided to render martyrdom unnecessary. The four windows were hung with bright creton and muslin, and the dull-green carpet neither stared one ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... be cast on a half-inch hollow spindle, to allow the gas to pass freely from the core; the fuze-hole would then be sufficiently large to admit the gauge for thickness before the shells ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... pasture is wrinkled with frost. Half the joy, for instance, of shooting, in which I frankly confess I take a childish delight, is the quiet tramping over the clean-cut stubble, the distant view of field and wood, the long, quiet wait at the covert-end, where the spindle-wood hangs out her quaint rosy berries, and the rabbits come scampering up the copse, as the far-off tapping of the beaters draws near in the frosty air. The delights of the country-side grow upon me every month and every year. I love to stroll in ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... those spindle-legs yonder," was Peggy's amused answer. "They will be running at large for a long time yet. I don't even begin training them until they are a year old—at least not in anything but loving and obeying me. But most of ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... auld wife, and weel mat she be, That busks her fause rock wi' the lint o' the lee (lie), Whirling her spindle and twisting the twine, Wynds aye the richt ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... lead or be led, be venerated or supervised. When the spot has been reached that she, or her urgent advisers, may regard as favourable, she arches her back, bends forward, and introduces the extremity of her long spindle-shaped abdomen into one of the cells; the-little eager heads of her escort meanwhile forming a passionate circle around her, watching her with their enormous black eyes, supporting her, caressing her wings, and waving their feverish antennae as though to encourage, incite, or congratulate. ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... CRAWSHAW. A textbook on the science and art of wood-turning. Contains 25 full-page plates of working drawings covering spindle, face-plate, and chuck turning. It is a clear, practical and suggestive book on wood-turning, and a valuable textbook for ...
— Bird Houses Boys Can Build • Albert F. Siepert
... head...looked like a weathercock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... morning while they were at work as usual, and Nora's hand was pausing on her spindle, and her eyes were fixed upon the narrow path leading through the ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... called a Maxwell disc, and is nothing more than a circle of firm cardboard, pierced with a central hole to fit the spindle of a rotary motor, and with a radial slit from rim to centre, so that another disc may be slid over the first to cover any desired fraction of its surface. Let us paint one of these discs with Venetian red and the other with viridian and cobalt, the first pair in the list of pigments ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... is not washed until it is sheared. At the present time it is combed with hand cards purchased from the Americans. In spinning, the simplest form of the spindle—a slender stick thrust through the center of a round wooden disk—is used. The Mexicans on the Rio Grande use spinning-wheels, and although the Navajos have often seen these wheels, have had abundant opportunities for buying and stealing them, and possess, I think, sufficient ...
— Navajo weavers • Washington Matthews
... enough to flower by fall. Or the seedlings may be planted out in the border when danger of frost is over, and taken up in the fall before frost; these plants will bloom all winter. About one half of the newer growth should be cut off when they are taken up, as they are very liable to spindle up when grown in the house. When grown from cuttings, young wood should be used, which, after being well rooted, may be treated in the ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... a malignant tumor after the type of embryonal tissue, and consists of several varieties, such as the round cell, spindle cell, giant cell, alveolar, and melanosarcoma. They grow by preference in connective tissue and are quite vascular. Sarcomas appear either as single or multiple nodules, varying in size from a hempseed to a hazelnut, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... a pre-War publication of the United States Department of Commerce it was stated that the cost of cotton mills per spindle is in England 32s., in the United States 44s., in Germany 52s., ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... rebel blood in me too, Mr Deasy said. On the spindle side. But I am descended from sir John Blackwood who voted for the union. We are all Irish, all ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... as light as any feather He rolled its dainty wheels, Humming and whirring like a spindle After ...
— The Nursery, April 1878, Vol. XXIII. No. 4 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... is recited, the "heaven-startling" Kami, having girdled herself with moss, crowned her head with a wreath of spindle-tree leaves and gathered a bouquet of bamboo grass, mounts upon a hollow wooden vessel and dances, stamping so that the wood resounds and reciting the ten numerals repeatedly. Then the "eight-hundred myriad" Kami laugh in unison, so ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... strips of bark. The South Sea Islanders made short gowns of plaited rushes, and the New Zealanders wore rude garments from strings made of native flax. These early products were made by the process of working the fibres by hand into a string or thread. The use of a simple spindle, composed of a stone like a large button, with a stick run through a hole in the centre, facilitated the making of thread and the construction of rude looms. It was but a step from these to the spinning-wheels and looms of the ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... considerably in size, shape, and quality. Some are short and blunt at the tips, others are long and cylindrical, either crooked or straight, while others are medium in size and spindle-shaped. Some varieties, which are known as yams, cook moist and sugary, while others, which are simply called sweet potatoes, cook dry and mealy. The kind to select depends entirely on the individual ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 2 - Volume 2: Milk, Butter and Cheese; Eggs; Vegetables • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... his head well thrown back, and bearing a huge silver tray. On it were a decanter, two little queer-shaped glasses, and a plate of very thin seed cakes. He deposited this on a spindle-legged table, which he drew up in front of his mistress, and, with another glance, which he intended to be very withering, cast upon Rachel, but which she didn't see ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... cabbages, and whatever came in their way; for they are not very particular about their diet, you know. Well, we set a trap for them. It was a flat stone set up on one end, with a figure four. We scattered corn all about the trap, and placed a few barrels on the end of the spindle under the stone. The first night these midnight robbers ate up all the corn around the trap, but did not touch a morsel under it. This they repeated several nights in succession; and all at once, there was not the trace of a rat ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... in the chamber and hear the tread of the girl as she ran it, walking to and fro and drawing out and winding up the yarn. The white rolls, ten inches or more long and the thickness of one's finger, would lie in a pile on the beam of the wheel and one by one would be attached to the spindle and drawn out into yarn of the right size. Each new roll was welded on to the end of the one that went before it so that the yarn did not show the juncture. But now for more than sixty years the music of the spinning wheel has not been heard ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... of thine, Wayland," he said, "has a fair neck to have been born in a smithy, and a pretty taper hand to have been used for twirling a spindle—faith, I'll believe in your relationship when the crow's egg is hatched ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... 826).—Carbonous, black, cylindrical, 2-3 cm. long, 3-4 mm. thick. Apex truncate, excavate. Perithecia linear, near apex of stroma. Asci (teste Montagne) linear, 8 spored. Spores (pale) spindle shape, dark, 6-7 x ...
— Synopsis of Some Genera of the Large Pyrenomycetes - Camilla, Thamnomyces, Engleromyces • C. G. Lloyd
... we going?" asked Jeanne, at ten o'clock, putting on her gloves, while Carlino, who had given Noemi an end of his interminable muffler to hold, the other being fastened behind his neck, revolved like a spindle on its axis, until his neck was bigger in circumference than his head. "And am I really to be the ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... abandon and renounce it from this time forward, even as much as at present. With this, as he endeavoured to make an escape out of the room, the old crone did anticipate his flight and make him stop. The way how she prevented him was this: whilst in her hand she held the spindle, she flung out to a back-yard close by her lodge, where, after she had peeled off the barks of an old sycamore three several times, she very summarily, upon eight leaves which dropped from thence, wrote with ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... anticipated, in short, up to its own high and difficult standards. And along had come a ruck of stuff that was dark and dingy and old-fashioned; awkward articles with a vast dull expanse of mahogany, ending in clumsy claw feet; spindle-legged tables inlaid with white wood; old-fashioned mirrors in scarred gilt frames; awkward-looking highboys and the plainest of sofas and lounges. The chief sideboard boasted not the tiniest bit of brass; even the handles ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... nakedness, lay sprawling, as if to be crushed by the hoofs of the first passing horse. Occasionally, indeed, when such a consummation seemed inevitable, a watchful old grandam, with her close cap, distaff, and spindle, rushed like a sibyl in frenzy out of one of these miserable cells, dashed into the middle of the path, and snatching up her own charge from among the sunburnt loiterers, saluted him with a sound cuff, and transported him back to his dungeon, the little white-headed varlet screaming all the ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... consulted as an hermaphrodite. Asa Gray speaks of the flowers of the American species as perfect, whilst those in the allied genus Celastrus are said to be "polygamo- dioecious." If a number of bushes of our spindle-tree be examined, about half will be found to have stamens equal in length to the pistil, with well-developed anthers; the pistil being likewise to all appearance well developed. The other half have a perfect pistil, with the stamens short, bearing rudimentary anthers destitute of pollen; ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... by the boys a box-trap. It is in the form of a box, and the back part runs up high, to a point. The lid of the box has a string fastened to it, which string is carried up, over the high point, and thence down, and is fastened to an apparatus connected with the spindle. ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott
... father sang me these words in hewing the handle of his ax; anciently my mother taught me these words as she turned her spindle. In that time I was only a child, a little child at the breast,—a useless little being creeping upon the floor at the feet of its nurse, its cheek bedaubed with milk. And there are other words ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... street struck me as peculiarly quiet. There were Japs at balconies of low two-storied doll-houses, silhouetted against lamplight which shone through their red fans and pink kimonos, and other shabby houses with spindle-shanked darker natives, in white draperies, also some larger people dimly seen, on long chairs, who my friend said, were probably French—European at least. One or two groups of rather orderly sailors, and a soldier or two, were all the people on the street, and the only sound was "Come eer', ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... out of the line, and can see that society is composed of transient material; but society itself is an abiding thing. So we can study a particular bit of ore or wool or leather or a particular hammer or spindle or sewing machine, and in those cases we shall be studying capital goods and finding how perishable they are; but we shall also see that a stock of them always abides as the capital of economic society. We can cease to look at individual ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... the New England mills was extraordinary. James Montgomery, an English cotton manufacturer, visited the Lowell mills two years before Dickens and wrote after his inspection of them that they produced "a greater quantity of yarn and cloth from each spindle and loom (in a given time) than was produced by any other factories, without exception in the world." Long before that time, of course, the basic type of loom had changed from that originally introduced, and many New England inventors had been ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... said Fernand, eager to get the fighter out of view of the rest of the little crowd. He drew Ronicky and Jerry Smith into a little apartment which opened off the hall. It was furnished with an almost feminine delicacy of style, with wide-seated, spindle-legged Louis XV. chairs and a couch covered with rich brocade. The desk was a work of Boulle. A small tapestry of the Gobelins made a ragged glow of color on the wall. Frederic Fernand had recreated an atmosphere two ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... has seen one of the pretty foot-wheels for spinning flax thread for linen, which may yet be found in the attics of many of our farmhouses, as well as in some of our parlors, where, with a bunch of flax wound around and tied to the spindle, they have within a few years been placed as a relic ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... are mentioned in the above extract, Scotland and poetry owe a deep debt of gratitude. But here again, although men, and men of learning, have borne their part in the salvage, it is to the 'spindle side,' and to simple country ears and memories, that the main acknowledgment is due for saving what it would have been a calamity to lose. What may almost be described as the 'classical text' of some of the finest of ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... well, Algar and I have ever been opposed, both in camp and in council; and I am not the man who can sell my love, though I may stifle my anger. Earl Harold needs no bride to bring spearmen to his back at his need; and his lordships he will guard with the shield of a man, not the spindle of a woman." ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... be the nearest heir, would get the money, slaves, etc., but the nearest male kin would get the land.[330] Only if male kin were lacking to the fifth degree—an improbable contingency—did alodial inheritance "pass from the lance to the spindle."[331] In respect to all other things a daughter was co-heir with a son to the estate of a father or mother. According to the Salic and Ripuarian law this would be one ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... This was sometimes done on the old high wheel, which was whirled around by hand and then allowed to come to rest while another section of the cotton, wool, or flax was drawn from the carded mass by hand, then whirled again, twisting this thread and winding it up on the spindle, and so on. Or it was done by the low wheel, which was kept whirling continuously by the use of a treadle worked by the foot, while the material was being drawn out all the time by the two hands, and twisted and wound continuously by the horseshoe-shaped device known as the "flyer." When the ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... beating, is spun in a primitive fashion. Almost every woman one meets upon the road, no matter what burden of babies or goods she carries, has a hank of the fibre thrown over her shoulder, and keeps her little spindle whirling, spinning the strong thread as she walks. Her spindle consists of a slender stick thrust through a whorl of baked pottery. Such whorls are no longer made, but the ancient ones, called by the Aztec name malacates, are picked up in the fields and reapplied to their old use. Usually the ixtli ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... is adorned with a beautiful red flower named Bolcamaria. The markets or sleeping-places are well supplied with provisions by great numbers of women, every one of whom is seen spinning cotton with a spindle and distaff, exactly like those which were in use among the ancient Egyptians. A woman is scarcely ever seen going to the fields, though with a pot on her head, a child on her back, and the hoe over ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... that's why I fetched it up," Webb went on, blandly, "an" me nor no other farmer would poke fun at you about it, but it is different in town. Jest let a spindle-legged counter-jumper at a store with his hair parted in the middle git a joke on a country feller, an' the whole town will take a hand in it. Oh, I know, for they've shore had me on ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... of the Vulcan reared up and bent back over the main deck. In the same instant, out of the cauldron sea, an enormous cigar-shaped object was flung end-over-end, as a child flings a spindle. There was one flashing glimpse of conning tower, smashed plates. Then a clap of surging air that seemed as solid as oak picked Madden up as if he had been thistledown. He felt himself whirling through space. Somehow, he caught a glimpse of ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... for this application it would be necessary to pass the cutter through the ring in line with the gear axis. This would require a special or, at least, radically modified gear-cutting machine with a cutter arbor shorter than the inside diameter of the gear. Into this short space the spindle bearings and means of driving the spindle would have to be crowded, along with the cutter. Hopkins faced a problem similar to this in cutting the ring gear for his watch, except that the brass gear ...
— The Auburndale Watch Company - First American Attempt Toward the Dollar Watch • Edwin A. Battison
... supply the wants of the whole country. That seemed perfectly possible, considering how limited is the demand in this respect; but, on our homeward journey, we passed a drove of upwards of two hundred long- backed, spindle-legged colts, going up to Katmandu, and that did not seem exactly corroborative ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... meat to her household, and their task to the maidens. She considereth a field and buyeth it; with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard.... She perceiveth that her merchandise is profitable. Her lamp goeth not out by night. She layeth her hands to the distaff, and her hands hold the spindle.... She maketh for herself carpets of tapestry.... She maketh linen garments and selleth them; and ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... her dainty feet, and a French hairdresser stood behind her chair putting the finishing touches to the imposing fabric of powder, flower, and feather upon her head. A little hand-mirror, framed in carved ivory inlaid with coral, and a fan, lay on a tiny spindle-legged table close in front of her, together with a buff-coloured cup of chocolate. At a somewhat larger table Mrs. Loveday, her woman, was dispensing the chocolate, whilst a little negro boy, in a fantastic Oriental costume, waited to carry the ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the ground, And turn me thrice around, around, around. As pea-cods once I pluck'd, I chanc'd to see One that was closely fill'd with three times three, Which, when I crop't, I safely home convey'd, And o'er the door the spell in secret laid, My wheel I turn'd, and sung a ballad new, While from the spindle I the fleeces drew; The latch mov'd up, when who should first come in, But in his proper person—Lubberkin. I broke my yarn, surpris'd the sight to see, Sure sign that he would break his word with me. Eftsoons I joined it with my wonted slight, So may his love again ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... her aunt in the long parlor, playing Patience. She was sitting in a straight-backed chair,—for Mrs. Dale scorned the weakness of a rocking-chair,—before a spindle-legged table, covered with green baize and with a cherry-wood rim inlaid with mother-of-pearl and ivory. On it were thirteen groups of cards, arranged with geometrical exactness at intervals ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... polished stairs to an upper hall where stood a tall clock and a spindle-legged table with a vast jar of pot-pourri. A door opened, framing Jacqueline, dressed in white, and wearing her mother's wedding veil. "I knew your step," she said. "Oh, Unity, you ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... in a low voice and after a long pause; and the sound of her voice so startled the handmaids, that every spindle stopped for a moment and then plied with renewed activity; "Grandam, what troubles you—are you not thinking of the great Earl and his fair sons, now outlawed far over the ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of more than one grid, provided the size of the carbide decomposed is suited to the generator, and provided the mesh of the grid is suited to the size of the carbide. A great improvement, however, is made if the grid is carried on a horizontal spindle in such a way that it can be rocked periodically in order to assist in freeing the lumps of carbide from the adhering particles of lime. As an alternative to the movable grid, or even as an adjunct thereto, an agitator scraping the conical sides ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... the legends of Tigernach, and the bards of Ulster, rapt into visions of the future:—'When a king of Erin shall flee at the voice of a woman, then shall the distaff and spindle conquer whom the sword and buckler shall not subdue.' That woman is yon heretic queen. A usurper, an intruder on our birthright. Never were the O'Neales conquered but by woman! I have lingered here when the war-cry hath rung from the shores of my country. Again the shout ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... tablet doth include Poverty with Sanctitude. Past midnight this poor Maid hath spun, And yet the work is not half done, Which must supply from earning scant A feeble bed-rid parent's want. Her sleep-charged eyes exemption ask, And Holy hands take up the task: Unseen the rock and spindle ply, And do her earthly drudgery. Sleep, saintly poor one, sleep, sleep on; And, waking, find thy labours done. Perchance she knows it by her dreams; Her eye hath caught the golden gleams, Angelic presence testifying, That round her every where ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Wainamoinen, From the forge of Ilmarinen, From the sword of Kaukomieli, From the bow of Youkahainen, From the pastures of the Northland, From the meads of Kalevala. These my dear old father sang me When at work with knife and hatchet These my tender mother taught me When she twirled the flying spindle, When a child upon the matting By her feet I rolled and tumbled. Incantations were not wanting Over Sampo and o'er Louhi, Sampo growing old in singing, Louhi ceasing her enchantment. In the songs died wise Wipunen, At the games died Lemminkainen. There are many other legends, Incantations ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... and as to a wheel-barrow, I fancied I could make; all but the wheel, but that I had no notion of, neither did I know how to go about it; besides, I had no possible way to make the iron gudgeons for the spindle or axis of the wheel to run in, so I gave it over; and so for carrying away the earth which I dug out of the cave, I made me a thing like a hod which the labourers carry mortar in, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... explained, by means of an admirable series of illustrations projected upon a screen by the oxyhydrogen lantern, the life history of the organism to which he had referred, exhibiting it first as a translucent, elliptic, spindle-shaped body, with six long and delicate flagella, the various positions in which the five specimens were drawn giving a very good idea of its ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... influence from his lucent seat. I meant she should be courteous, facile, sweet, Hating that solemn vice of greatness, pride: I meant each softest virtue there should meet, Fit in that softer bosom to reside. Only a learned and a manly soul I purposed her, that should, with even powers, The rock, the spindle, and the shears, control, Of Destiny, and spin her own free hours. Such when I meant to feign, and wished to see, My Muse bade, BEDFORD write, and ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... there all the year round. And boys of molten gold stood each on a polished altar, and held torches in their hands, to give light all night to the guests. And round the house sat fifty maid-servants, some grinding the meal in the mill, some turning the spindle, some weaving at the loom, while their hands twinkled as they passed the shuttle, ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley |
