"Thread" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with a triumphant smile she forced the Englishwoman's small, delicate feet—hardened, it is true, by many hundreds of miles of rough travelling, but shapely still—into a little pair of embroidered silver slippers. Turkish slippers! glistening with silver thread and crystal beads, turned up at the pointed toes, and finished by two silver tufted tassels, that peeped out incongruously from under the straight folds of ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... reported it to the king. He ordered them to look for some long earthworms on the island, and when they found one they brought it to the king. He ordered the people to bring the worm to a fire, and bake it before it, so that it should be thirsty. Then he ordered a thread to be tied round the tail of the worm, and to let it loose. The worm crept away immediately, while thread wound off from the clew as the worm took it away; and the people followed the worm until it sought downwards in the earth. There the king ordered them to dig for water, which they ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... great variety of them, and they all were of the same curious character. Besides the bonnet-bush, there were plants loaded down with little pinafores, and shrubs with small shoes growing all over them, like peas, and delicate vines of thread with button-blossoms on them, and, what particularly pleased Dorothy, a row of pots marked "FROCK FLOWERS," and each containing a stalk with a crisp little frock growing on it, like a ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl
... where it was hatched, thinking of its wings and never flying. His experience was of that pitiable kind which shrinks from pity, and fears most of all that it should be known: it was that proud narrow sensitiveness which has not mass enough to spare for transformation into sympathy, and quivers thread-like in small currents of self-preoccupation or at best of an egoistic scrupulosity. And Mr. Casaubon had many scruples: he was capable of a severe self-restraint; he was resolute in being a man of honor according to the code; he would ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... blew, and she thinned to a thread: "One puff more's enough To blow her to snuff! One good puff more where the last was bred, And glimmer, glimmer, glum, will ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... present day an idea of the meaning of these things, it is almost useless to print them straight as they are in the MS. Even as I have written them out, inserting nothing whatever except the names of the speakers in a bracket, you will perhaps not catch much of the thread. You may remember that at Trinity even now it takes two people to say what is substantially the same ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... thread of the Little Vermilion crept between low banks lined with half-grown fir and spruce, and clumps of wild cherry, through which the sunlight sifted to the ground in innumerable flecks of light and shadow. ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... time, therefore, during all those long days, even before Guy returned to England. She knew his life hung by a slender thread, which Sir Gilbert Gildersleeve might cut short at any moment. But her anxiety was as nothing compared to Sir Gilbert's own. That unhappy man, a moral coward at heart, in spite of all his blustering, lay writhing in his own room now, very ill, ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... Messrs. Nalder Brothers. It is only a little over one-thousandth of an inch in diameter. Ordinary spun glass, a most beautiful material, is about one-thousandth of an inch in diameter, and this would appear to be an ideal torsion thread (Fig. 3). Owing to its fineness, its torsion would be extremely small, and the more so because glass is more easily deformed than metals. Owing to its very great strength, it can carry heavier loads than would be expected of it. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... be a slenderer, more insignificant thread,' she says, 'in human history, than this consciousness of a girl, busy with her small inferences of the way in which she could make her life pleasant? in a time too, when ideas were with fresh vigour making armies of themselves, and the ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... A thread from the distaff of Omphale may be stronger than the club of Hercules. Here is an inconstant Romeo escaped from his Juliet, and yet unable to shake off the magnetic spell which must haunt him to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... altars inlaid with gold and jewels,—like our Pala d'Oro that cometh not forth of our treasury save on days of festa; finest statues of ivory and silver; great carven columns wrought like our columns of Acre—but vaster and of that same fineness of workmanship: and such broideries of golden thread and great pearls for draperies and altar-cloths, as one may scarce dream of! And in their market-places, strewn with the spoils of the East are faces and voices of every clime and a very babel of tongues; more—far ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... young man! thy thread of life is broken, Human skill can bring no aid to thee. There thou hast my chain—a ghastly token— And this lock of thine I take with me. Soon must thou decay, Soon wilt thou be gray, Dark although ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... was generally to be found spinning at her muckle wheel, retiring and advancing to the music of its cheerful hum, the while her spun thread was rapidly coiled up on the spindle. The others, as they busied themselves in their household duties, or brightened up the delf and pewter, and set it out on the shelf to its best advantage, would join in some plaintive Scotch ballad, with such good taste ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... itself, and this was the reason why his conversation was peculiarly rich in words that are so evidently the inspiration of the moment; yet, in spite of such seeming freedom in the treatment of the subject, the final end was not lost sight of. Schiller always held with firmness the thread which was bound to lead thither, and, if the conversation was not interrupted by any mishap, he was not prone to bring it to a close until he had reached ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... was the other day relating several strange stories that he had picked up no body knows where, of a certain great man; and upon my staring at him, as one that was surprised to hear such things in the country, which had never been so much as whispered in the town, Will stopped short in the thread of his discourse, and after dinner asked my friend Sir ROGER in his ear if he was sure that I ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... and slip out of it. The top button caught fast in its buttonhole, the coat being new and its buttonholes being stiff. He gave a sharp tug at the rebellious cloth, and the button, which probably had been insecurely sewed on in the first place, came away from its thread fastenings and lodged in the fingers of his right hand. Mechanically he dropped it into a side pocket of the overcoat and a moment later, with the garment turned inside out so that only its silk lining showed, and held under his arm, he ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... fine As if invited out to dine. And then not knowing what to do, They looked their cedar closet through And found their gray coats growing thin: So sat them down some yarn to spin, Soon, through a chink to their surprise, A cat looked in with hungry eyes— "Shall I come in and cut your thread?" "Oh, thank you, no!" ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... is she who creates all the disturbance. If I get nearer to the wall she jams me up till I am as thin as a thread-paper. If I put her inside and stay outside, she cuts me out as you do a cask, by the chine, till I ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... heard that she had been superseded in the king's affections, and it was said she tried all available means to discover the whereabouts of the Fair Rosamond, but without success, until she contrived to fasten a thread of silk to one of the king's spurs, which she afterwards followed in the maze in the castle grounds to the point where it had broken off at the secret entrance. She waited for her opportunity, and when the king was away she had the trap-door forced open, and, taking a large ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... know it. "Everything will fall once, and the tailor directly." The robbers had placed him upon the cliff and demanded that if he would be liberated from them, his ransom should be that he should sew a suit of clothes up there; and he tried it; but at the first stitch, as he drew the thread out, he became giddy and fell down into the gushing water, and thus the rock got the name of 'The Tailor's Cliff.' One day the robbers caught a young girl, and she betrayed them, for she kindled a fire in the cavern. The smoke was seen, the caverns discovered, ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... first of all; it was, oh! to tread that sunlit grassy brink once more, and to watch the merry tadpoles swarm, and the green frog takes its header like a little man, and the water-rat swim to his hole among the roots of the willow, and the horse-leech thread his undulating way between the water-lily stems; and to dream fondly of the delightful, irrevocable past, on the very spot of all where I and ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... amount of proficiency in the Biological Sciences will be convertible into, even the most modest, bread and cheese. And I believe that the case is as bad, or perhaps worse, with other branches of Science. In this respect Britain, whose immense wealth and prosperity hang upon the thread of Applied Science, is far behind France, ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... and feathering them from the dead flamingo. As soon as my work was completed, the boys crowded round me, all begging to try the bow and arrows. I begged them to be patient, and asked my wife to supply me with a ball of thick strong thread. The enchanted bag did not fail us; the very ball I wanted appeared at her summons. This, my little ones declared, must be magic; but I explained to them, that prudence, foresight, and presence of mind in danger, such as their good mother had displayed, ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... and a rash drink, or perhaps a tainted fruit—who knew? Not he, who had not even strength left to grudge the evil thing its victory—just enough to know that there were many lying here with him, that he was sore with frenzied dreaming; just enough to watch that thread of river and be able to remember faintly ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... his friends and at once raises their souls to the seventh heaven, where they shall go about in peace, shielded by (literally, "covered with") the red war club of success, and never to be knocked about by the blows of the enemy. "Breaking the soul in two" is equivalent to snapping the thread of life, the soul being regarded as an intangible something having length, like a rod or a string. This formula, like others written down by the same shaman, contains several evident inconsistencies both as to grammar and mythology, due to the fact that A'wanita is extremely ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... that thin thread of a whisper surely didn't belong to him. He tried again and achieved a sort of croak. Something moved behind him and there was an answering rattle ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... minister suggested. And David's eyes shone with silent joy. With anxious deliberation he picked out an apple from the silver wire basket on the sideboard; and when they went into the study, he presented a thread to Mrs. Richie. ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... said Nancy Wentworth, with a twitch of her thread; "why don't we scrub the pews? There's nothing in the Orthodox creed to ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... took away. And so I ceased to wish for anybody, but learned to put on my clothes and tie my strings and button, and do what Aunt Lois told me. I can wipe cups and saucers and make my bed and sweep my room and weed in the garden, and sew, and spin a little, but I cannot make very even thread yet. And to knit—I have knit a pair of stockings, Patty. Aunt Lois said those I brought ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... another department assigned to him besides catching the fish; and one that took up more of his time: since the baiting of the hooks, and looking after them, required only his occasional attention. Spinning the thread by which the skins were to be sewed together, was a much more delicate operation: since in these both strength and fineness were absolutely necessary. But as Caspar had said, Ossaroo was an adept with the distaff; and several large skeins of ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... incision with the scalpel, a glance with a lens, and their secret is betrayed. The eyes are a mockery. Externally they are organs of vision—the front of the eye is perfect; behind, there is nothing but a mass of ruins. The optic nerve is a shrunken, atrophied and insensate thread. These animals have organs of vision, and yet they have no vision. They have eyes, but they ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... Some thread of association brought his little sister's open book and pointed finger on the sudden before Winthrop, and for a moment he ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... dawn he, with much care and trouble, removed the hinges from the door. The casing and bolts prevented his opening it wide, so he chipped away the woodwork, till at length he was able to slip through, taking with him his linen ropes, which he had wound on two pieces of wood like two great reels of thread. ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... lit a torch at a sepulchral lamp, Which shot a thread of light amid the gloom; And feebly burning 'gainst the rolling damp, I bore it through the ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... Jacques, mon pauvre ami, tu n'as pas de chance, hein?" There was no help for it; it was the only thing he had that rhymed. "Imagine la joie des petites polonaises internees!" she urged, taking the necessary action. "J'y mets mon pantalon," piped a disconsolate little thread of voice. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 23, 1917 • Various
... from the shop looking as stout and trim as you please, and half an hour after I've got to work they split up the fingers and thumbs like ripe horse-chestnut shells, and I find myself with five dangling rags round my wrist, and a rotten white thread draggling after me through the wood, or tickling my nose, as if Ariadne and Arachne had lost their wits together. I go home, invoking the universe against sewing-machines; and beg the charity of a sound stitch or two from any of the maids who know their ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... Shiffney. But she was resolved to see more of Miss Fleet at whatever cost. Recently she had been conscious of a tiny something, not much more than a thread, dividing her from her mother. Since her mother knew that she had made up her face on Claude Heath's account, she had often felt self-conscious at home. Knowing that, her mother, of course, knew more. If Charmian had told the truth she would not have minded the fact that it was known. ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... those amiable amphibians in the mere below—they carried my thought back to other frog-concerts, dimly remembered, in some other lands—and gazing through the green network of branches upon that sun-scorched garden, where now a silvery thread of water began to attract my attention as it ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... cunning; he can read The inside of the earth, and spell the stars; He knows the policies of foreign lands; Can string you names of districts, cities, towns, 320 The whole world over, tight as beads of dew Upon a gossamer thread; he sifts, he weighs; All things are put to question; he must live Knowing that he grows wiser every day Or else not live at all, and seeing too 325 Each little drop of wisdom as it falls Into the dimpling cistern of his heart: For this ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... Berlin (Wicomico County) High-School commencement: "By woman was Eden lost and man cursed. If you trust her, give up all hopes of heaven. She can not love, because she is too selfish. She may have a fancy, but that is fleeting. Her smiles are deceit; her vows are traced in sand. She is a thread of candor with a web of wiles. Her charity is hypocrisy; she is deception every way—hair, teeth, complexion, heart, tongue, and all. Oh, I hate you, ye ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... of importance on the list is sewing machines. In the tests I have been able to make on this class of work I have obtained some singular results. One item of importance is the fact that the single thread machines, which are lightest running, consume the most power in operating. Paradoxical as this may seem, it is easily explained. As a rule this class of machine is used on light work, such as shirts, ladies' underwear, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... sat and worked; for I did a good deal of needle-work now, although I had never been fond of it as a girl. The constant recurrence of similar motions of the fingers, one stitch just the same as another in countless repetition, varied only by the bother when the thread grew short and would slip out of the eye of the needle, and yet not short enough to be exchanged with still more bother for one too long, had been so wearisome to me in former days, that I spent half my pocket-money in getting the needle-work done ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... highly delighted. The hair, which had excited the admiration of the travellers, was made up in the shape of a hussar's helmet, and very ingeniously traced on the top. Irregular figures were likewise braided on each side of the head, and a band of worked thread, dyed in indigo, encircled it below the natural hair, which seemed, by its tightness and closeness, to have been glued fast to the skin. This young Jenna woman was by far the most interesting, both ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... reader has observed that he seemed to like dates already marked by prestige or good luck; thus he had convened Congress for July 4, and had ordered the general advance of the armies for February 22; it was an indication of the curious thread of superstition which ran through his strange nature,—a remnant of his youth and the mysterious influence of the wilderness. But worse than a superstitious postponement arrived before nightfall on Saturday. A dispatch from Lincoln to McClellan, dated ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... a regard for my scruples would have moved me to a tender and profound gratitude; but nobody understands Halicarnassus except myself. He is a dark lane, full of crooks and turns,—a labyrinth which nobody can thread without the clew. That clew I hold. I know him. I can walk right through him in the darkest night without any lantern. He is fully aware of it. He knows that it is utterly futile for him to attempt to deceive me, and yet, with the infatuation ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... Guy Darrell resumed the thread of solitary life at Fawley with a calm which was deeper in its gloom than it had been before. The experiment of return to the social world had failed. The resolutions which had induced the experiment were finally renounced. Five years nearer to death, and the last hope that ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of the beast. Afterwards you will replace all these intestinal things in the body of the flea, who will be anxious to get them back again. Being by this means baptised, the soul of the creature has become Catholic. Immediately you will get a needle and thread and sew up the belly of the flea with great care, with such regard and attention as is due to a fellow Christian; you will even pray for it—a kindness to which you will see it is sensible by its genuflections and the attentive glances which it will bestow upon you. In short, it will ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... to it, flushed and fitfully, to do something with his interests and bring them to some settlement. It procrastinates, disappoints, tries, tortures him; wears out his sanguine hopes and patience, thread by thread; but he still looks to it, and hankers after it, and finds his whole world treacherous and hollow. Well, well, well! ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... clothes-pins, and every other article used in washing; and in the same, or another, place, are kept every convenience for ironing. In the sewing department, a trunk, with suitable partitions, is provided, in which are placed, each in its proper place, white thread of all sizes, colored thread, yarns for mending, colored and black sewing-silks and twist, tapes and bobbins of all sizes, white and colored welting-cords, silk braids and cords, needles of all sizes, papers of pins, remnants of linen and colored cambric, a supply of ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... Mother Nicneven's," answered the maid; "and she is witch enough to rein the horned devil, with a red silk thread for a bridle, and a rowan-tree switch ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... the investment. The quilt would be such a precious reminder of Johnny's boyhood some day, when he had put away childish things. Every stitch would be dear to her, because of the little stubby fingers that worked so patiently to set them, despite the needle pricks and knotted thread. ...
— The Quilt that Jack Built; How He Won the Bicycle • Annie Fellows Johnston
... condensation will be necessary) will be indicated both by touching in the briefest manner the salient points and by the references in the margin; the latter, which I have endeavoured to give as exhaustively as possible, are brought out by italics in the text. The thread of the narrative then, so far as it can be extracted from the genuine writings of Justin, will be much as ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... I lost the thread for a moment. True. The Terran Empire has one small blind spot in otherwise sane policy, ignoring that nonhuman and human have lived placidly here for millennia: they placidly assumed that humans were everywhere the dominant race, ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... It is of the essence of the procedure of measurement that the yard measure remains unaltered as it is transferred from one position to another. Some objects can palpably alter as they move—for example, an elastic thread; but a yard measure does not alter if made of the proper material. What is this but a judgment of congruence applied to the train of successive positions of the yard measure? We know that it does not alter because we judge it to be congruent to itself in various positions. ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... me, vaguely, that such a "housewife" would be useful, in case my clothes got torn, so I stuffed it into my satchel with the other things. I saw that it contained a few small sail-needles (of the kind so excellent as egg-borers) as well as some of the strong fine sail-twine, each thread of which will support a weight of fifty pounds. I put the housewife into my store with a vague feeling of being rich in the world's goods, with such a little treasury of necessaries; I had really no thought of what that chance impulse was to ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... bankers, shopkeepers and workers are all strongly organized in gilds. It has cotton mills for spinning and weaving, besides many handlooms, and factories for ginning and pressing cotton. Other industries include the manufacture of gold and silver thread, silk brocades, pottery, paper and shoes. The prosperity of Ahmedabad, says a native proverb, hangs on three threads—silk, gold and cotton; and though its manufactures are on a smaller scale than formerly, they are still moderately flourishing. The military cantonment, 3 m. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... now, indeed, there is evidence that he was incommoded again, and that more pressingly. To this matter I will return in a moment, but I digress to put in a document which, rightly or wrongly, I believe to have a bearing on the thread of the story. ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... holding the rod as before. Then going through some small strange motions with it —whether indispensable to the magnetizing of the steel, or merely intended to augment the awe of the crew, is uncertain —he called for linen thread; and moving to the binnacle, slipped out the two reversed needles there, and horizontally suspended the sail-needle by its middle, over one of the compass-cards. At first, the steel went round and round, quivering and vibrating at either ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... the road. That was easy work, but when he turned off and began to thread his way up the fell-side by what was obviously no more than a sheep-track, Spargo's troubles began. It seemed to him that he was walking as in a nightmare; all that he saw was magnified and heightened; the darkening sky above; the faint outlines of the ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... uninteresting—on inspecting them at close quarters, they were seen to be not painted but embroidered in colored silks. There hung a melon, the outside of the fruit represented by yellow, green, and brown satin, the stalk by gold thread, the little cracks and roughnesses by gray silk applique, the whole thing fearful and absurd in its exuberance. And wherever one went or stood, sat down or laid one's hand, there wandered a huge wreath of flowers in ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... the Cape of Terracina. But their attention was arrested by an object which was much nearer than this. Through that gray Campagna,—whose gray hue, the result of waste and barrenness, seemed also to mark its hoary age,—through this there ran a silver thread, with many a winding to and fro, now coming full into view, and gleaming in the sun, now retreating, till it ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... planets and clustering constellations that gradually burst into beauty, or gathered into light. At length, somewhat exhausted, he descended into the vale. The scanty rill of Siloah[45] looked like a thread of silver winding in the moonlight. Some houseless wretches were slumbering under the arch of its fountain. Several isolated tombs of considerable size[46] rose at the base of Olivet, and the largest of these Alroy entered. Proceeding through a narrow passage, he entered a small square ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... removed easily from the finger, take a string or thread and draw one end through between the ring and the flesh. Coil the other end of the string around the finger covering the part from the ring to and over the finger joint. Uncoil the string by taking the end placed through the ring and at ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... their gains and losses at the Corne d'Abondance. The Chevalier, who straggled in last, alone caught the impressive tableau at the other end of the salon; the two Jesuits and the Indian, their faces en silhouette, a thread of reflected fire following the line of their profiles, and the white head of the marquis. When the young priest turned and the light from the chandelier fell full upon his face, the Chevalier started. So did Brother Jacques, though he quickly assumed a disquieting calm as he returned ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... pangs repentant bid thee wake to weep, But halcyon peace protects thy downy sleep, And sanguine Hope, through every storm of life, Shoots her bright beams, and calms the internal strife. Yet e'en round childhood's heart, a thoughtless shrine, Affection's little thread will ever twine; And though but frail may seem each tender tie, The soul foregoes them but with many a sigh. Thus, when the long expected moment came, When forced to leave the gentle-hearted dame, Reluctant throbbings rose within my breast, ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... herself near Sulla who was very handsome and of good family; she was a daughter of Messala, and sister of the orator Hortensius: her name was Valeria,[297] and she had lately separated from her husband. This woman, going behind Sulla, placed her hand upon him, and pulling a thread out of his dress, returned to her place. As Sulla looked on her with some surprise, she said, No mischief, Imperator;[298] I also wish to have a bit of your good fortune. Sulla was not displeased at her words, and it was soon plain that he had conceived a passion for the woman; for he privately ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... girls. A mission school for the daughters of the Dakota tribes is most interestingly described. The strange ideas and beliefs of these wild people are woven into the thread of the story, which tells how a little white girl was brought up as an Indian child, educated at a mission school, and was ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... branch of a tree from which the nest will hang, the birds proceed to collect material. Each completed nest contains many yards of fibre not much thicker than stout thread. Such material is not found in quantity in nature. The bayas have, therefore, to manufacture it. This is easily done. The building weaver-bird betakes itself to a clump of elephant-grass, and, perching on one of the blades, makes ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... abstraction of thought, scarcely distinguished from the silence; the fragrant herbs; and the unnumbered and nameless flowers which formed my couch,—were all calculated to make me pursue uninterruptedly the thread of contemplation which I had, in the less voluptuous and harsher solitude of the closet, first woven from the web of austerest thought. I say pursue, for it was too luxurious and sensual a retirement for the conception of a rigid and severe train of reflection; ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... slipping along a thread. Isabelle did not formulate any plan of bedevilment for the Captain, but she watched for ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... very brilliant collection of literature. There was an old Greek Testament and the Eton Latin Grammar; a French pamphlet on the cavalry sword-exercise; an odd volume of Tom Jones with one half of its stiff leather cover hanging to it by a thread; Byron's Don Juan, printed in a murderous type, which must have been invented for the special advantage of oculists and opticians; and a fat book in a faded ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... convenience, since this is to be no sociological screed, I shall frame together the different events into a comprehensive story. For there is a certain thread of continuity and happening that runs through all the dreams. There is my friendship with Lop-Ear, for instance. Also, there is the enmity of Red-Eye, and the love of the Swift One. Taking it all in all, a fairly coherent and interesting story I ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... he said. 'The God of day is the father of poetry, medicine, music: our best friend. See him there! My Jenny will spin a thread from us to him over the millions of miles, with one touch of the chords, as quick as he shoots a beam on us. Ay! on her wretched tinkler called a piano, which tries at the whole orchestra and murders every instrument in the attempt. But it's convenient, like our modern civilization—a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... had graves that covered more of glory Than ever taxed the lips of ancient story; And in our dream we wove the thread Of principles for which had bled And suffered long our own immortal dead, In the ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... confidence, there is no reason why he should not attempt stitching a wound, providing the patient is willing, and a surgeon cannot be obtained within twenty-four hours. In this case a rather stout, common sewing needle or needles are threaded with black or white thread, preferably of silk, and, together with a pair of scissors and a clean towel, are boiled in the same utensil with the cotton and the nail brush. After the operator has scrubbed his hands and cleansed the wound, he places the ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... torches in his hand, and was lowered into the shaft by a rope. Next came my turn, and down I went, hanging to the cord like a spider to its thread, and the hole was very deep. At length I found myself standing by the side of Guatemoc at the foot of the shaft, round which, as I saw by the light of the torch he carried, an edging of dried bricks was built up to the height of a man above our heads. Resting on this ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... so far into the future, we may illustrate the course which thought has hitherto run by likening it to a web woven of three different threads—the black thread of magic, the red thread of religion, and the white thread of science, if under science we may include those simple truths, drawn from observation of nature, of which men in all ages have possessed a store. Could ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... absorbing, but we can all sit hard on him and perhaps put him in his place," responded Letitia Cockrell, as she drew a fine thread through a ruffle she was making to adorn some part of the person of one of Nell's progeny. "I do not believe in ever allowing a man to take more than his share of ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the Dame's great arm-chair. She was slowly, with dim eyes, threading a needle for the tiny maiden standing before her, clutching in her hot little hand the unhemmed duster on which she was to learn to sew. The thread approached the needle's eye; it was nearly in, when the arm-chair gave a very little shake, apparently of its own accord; the old lady missed her aim, and the needle and the thread were as far apart as ever, while the small imp sitting quiet at her ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... amid brown tresses there gleamed a silvery thread, Life pages, past and present I wonderingly then read. I saw a blithsome maiden, a child serenely fair, A woman heavey laden now lifts her first ...
— Poems - A Message of Hope • Mary Alice Walton
... and square as a die, Some one who's steadfast in joy or in sorrow, Some one who's dearer each day that goes by. Fortune is fickle and hope is deceiving, Comradeship ends and life changes all through, There's only one thread that runs all through the weaving, Fair to me, square to me—Some ...
— Some One Like You • James W. Foley
... left of it but some charred wood, the place was still home to them. As Fetuao moved forlornly about, picking up a few trifles that had been dropped or thrown away by the invaders—a comb, a spool of thread, a flatiron, a book or two with the covers scorched off—she lifted up a grimy rag and tossed it, with a little gesture of disdain, at her husband's feet. He spread it out and saw that it was the consul's flag, the flag he had flown above his house with such confidence ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... What a maze Of complication and entanglement! Each thread combining with the other threads Fulfills its office in the labyrinth; Each link concatenates the other links Which constitute the vast and endless chain Of human life, and human destiny,— The strange phantasmagoria ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... little from the straight line of advance. In such a play, even the old institution of the "underplot" is not inadmissible; though the underplot ought scarcely to be a "plot," but only some very slight thread of interest, involving no strain on the attention.[2] It may almost be called an established practice, on the English stage, to let the dalliance of a pair of boy-and-girl lovers relieve the main interest of a more or less serious comedy; and there ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... wild and rugged mountains, far from the world's great life, humble and homely, it was still the only place on earth where the orphaned lad had felt that he had any natural right to be. And now, even this slender thread had been rudely severed by ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... child-actor of Queen Elizabeth's time, little Salathiel Pavy, who constantly played the part of an old man. The verses relate that he acted the part so naturally that the fates mistook him for an old man and cut off his thread of life in his tender years. Now you, Elsie dear, concerned with make-believe—fiction—as you will constantly be in your study for the stage, eager, of course, to use every moment and occasion, with one subject dominating your thoughts, will need ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... always carried in his pocket; it was Arthur's present, bought with his pocket-money when he was a fair-haired lad of eleven, and when he had profited so well by Adam's lessons in carpentering and turning as to embarrass every female in the house with gifts of superfluous thread-reels and round boxes. Adam had quite a pride in the little squire in those early days, and the feeling had only become slightly modified as the fair-haired lad had grown into the whiskered young man. Adam, I confess, was very susceptible to the influence ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... songs that wove (As they burnish'd hunting blade and rifle) A golden thread with a cobweb trifle— Loud of the chase, ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... said with a scowl, "and when I'm old enough to do as I please, I'll never touch a needle and thread." ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley
... a worm wheel the cuts must be taken in a sloping direction, the slope and pitch depending on the slope and pitch of the worm thread, which, though more difficult, may also be cut with ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... connected by a maze of passages into which it was difficult to find entrance; and the Cretan, built by Daedalus, at the instance of Minos, to imprison the Minotaur, out of which one who entered could not find his way out again unless by means of a skein of thread. It was by means of this, provided him by ARIADNE, PERSEUS (q. v.) found his way out after slaying the MINOTAUR ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... answered, "in the first place, there is not a thread of evidence to connect you or me with any one of these places, or with Huntley's office. In the second place, I am not letting Lois slip out of my fingers. She will be of age in three weeks' time, and on her birthday ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... saw too truly, that that pale visitant from the spirit land, that comes to us but once, was dealing with his child. The mother and grandmother, who had watched over her so unweariedly, soon reached the bed; but the brittle thread of life was snapped, and the pure spirit had passed away, with the pale messenger, to the spirit land. There were no loud lamentations. The mother pressed her cheeks between ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... mouth, great care is required by reason of the wind cutting down the creeks and gullies with practically no warning. What a halo of tragedy lies over the dreaded Manacles! and what wonderful escapes some fortunate vessels have had. The author once saw a schooner of five hundred tons thread the narrow channels of the needle-pointed rocks in safety, but the feat was regarded by his companion, an old sailor of Falmouth, as little short of a miracle. As a matter of fact captains who get their ships among the Manacles are so anxious ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... Now Clytie's reveries at that moment were pleasant, if the brightness of her eyes and the freshened color on her cheeks were any sign, and, as she had not seen the master since then, she naturally expected to take up the thread of romance where it had been dropped. But it required all her feminine tact to conceal her embarrassment at his ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... one's tongue—for how many years has this venerable war-god blinked in the noonday sun!" "Crowds gathered about the newspaper bulletins, recalling the feverish scenes that occurred when the President's life was thought to be hanging by a thread. 'Wouldn't it be too bad,' said one, 'if, after all—no, I won't allow myself to think of it.'" "Was there ever—but I scorn to boast." "You are—no, I'll not ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... spool-thread and tape in a dry- goods store at Ogdensburg, on the St. Lawrence River, State of New York. He Rallied Round the Flag, Boys, and HAILED Columbia every time she passed that way. One day a regiment returning from the war Came Marching Along, ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... and speak comfort to that grief Which they themselves not feel; but tasting it, Their counsel turns to passion, which before Would give preceptial medicine to rage, Fetter strong madness in a silken thread, Charm ache with air, and agony with words: No, no; 'tis all men's office to speak patience To those that wring under the load of sorrow; But no man's virtue, nor sufficiency, To be so moral, when he shall ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... occupation. And as she picked she prayed to the fir-branch that she might never be lazy, but always quick and active at work. During her seclusion, too, she had to make miniatures of all the articles that Indian women make, or used to make, such as baskets, mats, ropes, and thread. This she did in order that afterwards she might be able to make the real things properly. Four large fir-branches also were placed in front of the hut, so that when she went out or in, she had to step over them. The branches were renewed every morning and the old ones thrown away into the ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... little lady, whom I have the pleasure of seeing for the fiftieth time, since I see you passing every morning, noon and evening—precisely. Immured in my apartment for political reasons, I am reduced to this species of amusement; and this hook attached to this thread contained a grain of wheat. It floated far up, and some cormorant devoured it; then the wind ceasing, it had the misfortune to strike ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... meaning of the wolf at the door. "All we've got left is this house—this house and—and—our hands," thought Ellen. She saw before her her father's poor, worn hands, her mother's thin, tired hands, jerking the thread in and out of those shameful wrappers; then she looked at her own, as yet untouched by toil, as white and small and fair as flowers. She thought of the four years before her at college, four years before she could earn anything—and in the mean time? She looked at the pile of her ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... it, too, knew that the merest thread of courage and self-respect kept them apart. His arms strained at his sides. Forcing his voice to an impersonal, level tone, he ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler |
