"Needle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her hand upon my face and heard her speak to me so tenderly I cannot think of it, even now, without thanking God for good women. I clung to her hand, clung with the energy of one drowning, while I suffered the merciful torture of the probe, the knife and the needle. And when it was all over and the lantern lights grew pale in the dawn I ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... sat sewing near my berth in the state-room in which I found myself; a fan, lying on a small table at her side, betokened in what manner she had divided her attentions—between her needle and her helpless charge. I thought, indeed, that I had felt its soft plumes glide gently across my face in the very moment of my awakening, in the first amazement of which I but dimly comprehended the ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... accepted, went to fetch her daughters, the which were very fair, good, and well educated, and had afforded the good knight much pastime during his illness, for right well could they sing and play on the lute and spinet, and right well work with the needle. They were brought before the good knight, who, whilst they were attiring themselves, had caused the ducats to be placed in three lots, two of a thousand each, and the other of five hundred. They, having arrived, would have fallen ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... account of the way in which some melodramatist of repute behaved on a first night. He walked up and down the Embankment while his play was being performed, mopping his fevered brow and groaning in agony. Someone had found the melodramatist on one occasion, sitting at the foot of Cleopatra's Needle, howling into his handkerchief.... John, however, had no terrors whatever when he entered the theatre, and he told himself that the melodramatist was either an extremely emotional man or a very considerable liar. There was a moderate number of people ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... very mischievous; he even played a cruel trick on Nox while he was asleep. As he sat near to him he kept lightly pricking the dog's lips with a fine needle. The dog would half wake up, shake his head, rub his lips with his paws, and then drop ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the bottom of the mould arrange pitted olives or pim-olas an inch apart. Dip figures, cut from slices of royal custard, or from cooked carrot or turnip, into liquid aspic, and place them on the sides of the mould, to which they will adhere; dip large-sized capers (a larding-needle or skewer is of assistance in this work) in aspic and with them ornament the mould; then fill with aspic and set aside to become fixed. When ready to serve, dip the mould in hot water and invert on a serving-dish. Cut the meat from two two-pound lobsters into small cubes. ...
— Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing-Dish Dainties - With Fifty Illustrations of Original Dishes • Janet McKenzie Hill
... the Whim he returned with his lens, while from the mate he had borrowed a caliper, a two-foot rule and a sail needle. ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... immediately, for there was real hope now, where there had been none before. Maybe he'd be back in his home-town of Harwich again. Maybe he'd see the old machine-shop, there. And the trees greening out in Spring. Maybe he'd be seeing Betty Moore in Hurley, soon.... Ned relaxed, as a tiny hypo-needle bit into ...
— The Eternal Wall • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... third was garbed in a loose raiment of sheepskin, with the wool inside. Yet a fourth was arrayed in a dark-red tunic fastened by a belt of leather with silver ornamentations inlaid in wrought-iron. Suspended to the belt were a needle-case, tinder-pouch and steel, a bullet-pouch and bag, and a pretty dagger with a sheath of ebony, steel, and silver filigree. In their belts the Jogpas, in common with the majority of Tibetan men, wore a sword in front. Whether the coat was ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... that to complete his madness. He was about to cast himself beside her when a pain, vicious and sharp as the stab of a red hot needle struck him just ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... pocket compass, showed him the direction of the sea-coast. In that direction I determined to go until we should come out somewhere. He looked in stupid wonder for a moment at the little brass box with its trembling needle, and then cried out despairingly, "Oh, Barin! How does the come-pass know anything about these accursed mountains? The come-pass never has been over this road before. I've travelled here all my life, and, God forgive ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... acting as the infantry of the force. Moving along the summits of the hills in four lines of widely extended companies, they marched to within sight of Frederickstadt before they returned. Imagine exaggerated Pyramids of Cheops; imagine each block of stone carved by stress of weather into a thousand needle-points and ankle-twisting crevices; plant a dense growth of mimosa and other thorny scrub in every cranny and interstice. Take a dozen such pyramids, and do your morning constitutional over them, after the scrappiest of breakfasts at 5 a.m., and you will find twelve ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... earnestly. "We must get out at last. It all seemed so easy as we come up; but without that Spanish chap, and now that it seems to be all turned upside down like, as we are coming back'ards, it's like looking for a needle in a bottle of hay. You see, me and my messmates have turned it all over in our heads, and it always comes to this, that that storm either made us take a wrong turning, or else that that Spaniard took us into a tangle of ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... none that man has ever penned in their fascination. The lights, as I have already intimated, display astonishing colors, particularly shades of red and green, as they flit from place to place in the sky. The discovery that the magnetic needle is affected by the Aurora, quivering and darting about in a state of extraordinary excitement when the lights are playing in the sky, only added to the mystery of the phenomenon until its electro-magnetic nature had been established. This became evident as soon as it was known that the focus of the ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... monastery was suppressed among the smaller houses in 1536. Traces of the moat and the foundations are still to be seen in Priory Close. The ancient fairs survived to the end of the 19th century. in 1830 the needle-manufacture employed nearly a ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... definition of Masonry, 854-m. Balance, the symbol of the male and female person, 757-m. Balance, the symbol of the person into whose form the Sephiroth were changed, 757-m. Balance; the root above is represented by the needle of the, 798-m. Balance; the Royal Secret is what the Sohar calls the Mystery of the, 858-l. Balance used to explain the Ternary, 769-l. Balder killed by Lok, Evil Principle, in the Mysteries of the Druids, 430-m. Balder, torn to ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... works religious petticoats; for flowers She'll make church-histories. Her needle doth So sanctify my cushionets; besides My smock-sleeves have such holy embroideries, And are so learned, that I fear in time All my apparel will be quoted by Some pure instructor. Yesterday I went To see a lady that has ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... other side. If the original gipsy proprietor could have seen his van leaping and tossing like a ship in a heavy sea, with the frantic driver shouting and yelling at his bullocks while he accelerated their gallop by a sharp application of the needle-pointed driving prick, he would have considered it the last moment of his movable home. I did the same; but, to my astonishment, the vehicle, after bounding madly about, simply turned the insane driver head over heels into the river's bed, and ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... pilgrims assume a special dress, consisting of two seamless wrappers, one round the waist and the other over the shoulders. Sandals of wood may also be worn. Formerly the pilgrim would take with him a little compass in which the needle in the shape of a dove pointed continually towards Mecca in the west. On arrival at Mecca he performs the legal ablutions, proceeds to the sacred mosque, kisses the black stone, and encompasses the Kaaba seven times. The Kaaba or 'Cube' is a large stone building and the black stone is let into one ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... apparent frivolity. She is twenty years old. The elder woman is dressed in the all-white of a full-fledged nurse. Miss Howard wears the grey-blue uniform of one still in training. The record finishes. Murray sighs with relief, but makes no move to get up and stop the grinding needle. Miss Howard hurries across to the machine. Miss Gilpin goes ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... in, and was somewhat astonished to find the aunt seated between two worthy Capuchins, who were talking small talk to her while she worked at her needle. At a little distance three young ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Eels there, you will not fail of a Bite, of as large as can be had, but pull not too hard lest you spoyl all. The second is called Bobbing, which is thus done: Take some large well scoured Lobs, and with a Needle, run some strong twisted Silk through them, from end to end, so many as are enough to wrap about a Board near a dozen times; tye them fast with the two ends of the Silk to hang in so many Hanks; then fasten all to a strong Cord, and a handful above the ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... Mrs. Jones. "Do let's try it. Just wait, I'll get a needle in a minute. I'll tell Clarisse that Santa Claus sewed it himself. The child believes in ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... spoken to all in a style of his own, yet a style which finds itself the style of everybody, in a style that is at once new and antique, and is the contemporary of all the ages." Without doubt Sainte-Beuve has here touched the classical quality in literature as with a needle, for that book is a classic to be placed beside Homer and Virgil and Dante and Shakespeare—among the immortals—which has wisdom which we cannot find elsewhere, and whose form has risen above the limitation of any single age. ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... was made actually and wonderfully useful in the compass. Who discovered the compass nobody knows. It was probably invented by the Chinese and brought to Europe through the Arabs. Anyhow, some genius found out that a small needle brought in contact with the so-called lodestone, or magnetic ore, absorbs the qualities of the lodestone, and when placed on a pivot will always point to ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... conception of the way savages provide for the wants of their lives. Time was with them, as with us, of little importance. It was no loss of time to them, nor to us, to spend a large portion of the waking hours of a week in fabricating a needle out of a bone, where a civilized man could purchase a much better one with the product of three minutes' labor. I do not think any red Indian of the plains exceeded us in the patience with which we worked away at these ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... metaphysical discussions of this sect we are reminded of European mediaeval scholasticism, especially of that discussion as to how many angels could dance on the point of a cambric needle without jostling each other. It says, "Even at the point of one grain of dust, of immeasurable and unlimited worlds, there are innumerable Buddhas, who are constantly preaching the Ke-gon ki[o] (sutra) throughout ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... slackened, to such a degree that, at times, one might have thought that he was no longer advancing at all. The vacillation of his head and the fixity of his eyeballs suggested the thought of the magnetic needle seeking the pole. Whatever time he spent on arriving, he was obliged to arrive at last; he reached the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire; then he halted, he trembled, he thrust his head with a sort of melancholy timidity ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... left Truckee till I returned. The mountains, which rise abruptly from the margin, are covered with dense pine forests, through which, here and there, strange forms of bare grey rock, castellated, or needle-like, protrude themselves. On the opposite side, at a height of about 6,000 feet, a grey, ascending line, from which rumbling, incoherent sounds occasionally proceeded, is seen through the pines. This is one of the snow-sheds of the Pacific Railroad, which shuts ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... judge one another by tokens that escape the obtuseness of masculine perceptions!" said Zenobia. "There is no proof which you would be likely to appreciate, except the needle marks on the tip of her forefinger. Then, my supposition perfectly accounts for her paleness, her nervousness, and her wretched fragility. Poor thing! She has been stifled with the heat of a salamander stove, ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... small cells in the wall, which might once have been used as burial places for the dead, and on the walls themselves were hundreds of figures or letters cut in the rock, in very thin lines, as if engraved with a needle. We could not decipher any of them, as they appeared more like Egyptian hieroglyphics than letters of our alphabet, and the only figure we could distinguish was one which had the appearance of a ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... propitiatory wonder. He has with him, so fortunately, "a round ivory double-compass dial." This, with a genial manner, he would present to Opechancanough. The savages gaze, cannot touch through the glass the moving needle, grunt their admiration. Smith proceeds, with gestures and what Indian words he knows, to deliver a scientific lecture. Talking is best anyhow, will give them less time in which to think of those men he shot. ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... dots of stitches that held them to their delicate bindings; the hems and tucks, true to a thread, and dotted with the same fairy needle dimples (no machine-work, but all real, dainty finger-craft); the bits of ruffling peeping out from the folds, with their edges in almost invisible whip-hems; and here and there a finishing of lovely, lace-like crochet, done at odd minutes, and for "visiting work,"—there ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... says "the scenery of Meteora (Mt. Pindus in Albania) is of a very singular kind. The end of a range of rocky hills seems to have been broken off by some earthquake, or washed away by the Deluge, leaving only a series of twenty or thirty tall, thin, smooth, needle-like rocks, many hundred feet in height; some like gigantic tusks, some shaped like sugar- loaves, and some like vast stalagmites. These rocks are surrounded by a beautiful grassy plain, on three sides of which grow groups of detached trees, like those of an English ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... will overthrow the mind into a new state of equilibrium when the process of preparation and incubation has proceeded far enough. It is like the proverbial last straw added to the camel's burden, or that touch of a needle which makes the salt in a supersaturated fluid suddenly begin to ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... one would ever think, without knowing you, that you were so and so.' Now if I send all my idle questions to Colburn's Magazine, with other Gothic literature, and take to standing up in a perpendicular personality like the angel on the schoolman's needle, in my letters to come, without further leaning to the left or the right—why the end would be that you would take to 'running after the butterflies,' for change of air and exercise. And then ... oh ... then, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... other? No, Patty, I never forget that, day or night. 'Tis that makes me willing to bear any burden father chooses to put upon us.—Now the bread is set, but I don't believe I have the courage to put a needle into your tender flesh, ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... weird sisters' concoction in Macbeth. The pacuna is composed of a very delicate thin reed, perfectly smooth inside and out, which is encased in a stouter one. The arrows are from nine to ten inches long, formed of the leaf of a species of palm, hard and brittle, and pointed as sharp as a needle. At the butt-end some wild cotton is twisted round, to fit the tube. About an inch of the pointed end is poisoned. Quivers are made to hold five or six hundred of these darts. The slightest wound causes certain death within a few minutes, as the poison mixes ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... into the seemingly impassable thicket, the other horses following. After they had traveled for ten or fifteen yards, the undergrowth thinned until they were going on pine-needle- covered ground as soft as moss. The silent forest with its sentinel pines, spreading a canopy overhead, seemed like another world from the bright glare of the ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... Pageant, the Masque, we work our way to the Play itself. The first beginnings of the modern Drama must here be passed over: there were the rough and unformed comedies such as 'Gammer Gurton's Needle,' performed in a college hall: or the tragedy played on boards spread over a waggon in the courtyard of an inn. Let us suppose that we are past the beginnings and are in Shakespeare's time—i.e. the end of Queen Elizabeth and the ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... naturally would not appeal to Judah Halevi. Prophecy is the prerogative of Israel and of Palestine. The philosophers have nothing to do with it. A mere philosopher has no more chance of entering the kingdom of prophecy than a camel of passing through the eye of a needle.[B] Have the philosophers ever produced prophets? And yet, if their explanation is correct, their ranks should abound in them. Prophecy is a supernatural power, and the influence comes from God. The prophet is a higher ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... little princess, sticking the needle into her work as if to testify that the interest and fascination of the story prevented her from going ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... till 1586. Now, as Nero's Circus was situate on the very ground where St. Peter's now stands, and the base of this obelisk covered the actual site where the vestry now is, it looked like a gigantic needle shooting up from the middle of truncated columns, walls of unequal height, and ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... himsel! pawn his needle—gin it had been worth the pawning, they'd ha' ta'en it. An' yet there's a command in Deuteronomy, Ye shall na tak the millstone in pledge, for it's a man's life; nor yet keep his raiment ower night, but gie it the puir body back, that he may sleep in his ain claes, an' ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... the visible sign through which the appeal came. I have seen him lean, spell-bound, from our windows on a blue summer night, thrilled by the presence out there of Cleopatra's Needle, the pagan symbol flaunting its slenderness against river and sky, while in the distance the dome of St. Paul's, the Christian symbol, hung a phantom upon the heavens. His pleasure in the friendship ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... expected them to behave, including herself. She found Lionel always ready to accept her advances with open-hearted cordiality, but she had to make the advances. She had not meant to do this. Her idea had been to be a magnet, and magnets keep quite still; needles do all the moving. But this particular needle (except that it didn't appear at all soft) might have ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... puzzled, it must be confessed. Suddenly it occurred to me to try how far one could look into the contents of the paper, supposing the end of the envelope to be open. I tried it, and lo! enough can be easily read to make out that No. 2 is a repetition of No. 1. The needle had missed taking up all the ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... afternoon, and our week's work was nearly over. On Monday the great fancy fair was to be held, and the side-table in Miss Grantley's pleasant parlour was covered with samples of all kinds of needle-work, in lace, wool, crewel, applique, and on linen, satin, velvet, silk, and cloth. There were handscreens, water-colour sketches, embroidery, bead-work, and all kinds of dainty knick-knacks, and we still had the finishing touches ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... prisoner below had now been removed from the vat. He had been laid on a table and one of the priests was advancing upon the body with a long shining needle in his hand. He pointed the needle very carefully at a ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... mostly young fathers proud of their first offspring, remind me always of a very learned friend of mine, who presented to the Royal Society most laborious pages containing his lifelong observations on certain deviations of the magnetic needle, and who had forgotten that in making these observations he always had a pair of steel spectacles on his nose. However, I have nothing to say against these observations, nor against their more or less successful interpretations. ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... Set myself doun on a mat on one Side of the fire, and a magnet which was in the top of my ink Stand the port fire cought and burned vehemently, which changed the Colour of the fire; with the Magnit I turned the Needle of the Compas about very briskly; which astonished and alarmed these nativs and they laid Several parsles of Wappato at my feet, & begged of me to take out the bad fire; to this I consented; at this moment the match being exhausted was of course extinguished and I put up the magnet &c. this measure ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... or rather produced, by closing the lips and sending the sound through the nose, either forcibly and suddenly with a quick taper, or the reverse with a quick, short swell; or beginning gently, no bigger than a knitting-needle, and slowly swelling to a certain degree, then suddenly flaring, like the mouth of a dinner-horn. In short, varying according to the feeling or thought to be expressed. Perhaps in the ebony lingo there is no word so frequently used, and in senses so various, as U-gooh. Rendered into English, ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... the break-wind. This was necessary in order to get some idea of local disturbances. Also, it gave us some vague idea as to the direction in which lay the South Magnetic Pole. For instance, at the eighty-three-and-three-quarter-mile camp, the needle showed the Pole to be 18 degrees east of true south, while at our lunch camp that day, six miles farther on, it was given as 50 degrees east of south. The dip was so great that our prismatic compass would not set closer than about 15 degrees, but ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... loud and suddenly that Therese, being already nervous, pricked her finger with her needle till the blood came; a mishap which decided her to lay aside ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... compass of you, t'other day, but it's no good. It points north, east, south or west, just as it happens." "Ah, but you don't understand. You see the needle points this way. Now turn the compass around this way—see?—there you are. That's north." "Yes, but if I know where north is, what in time do I want ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... and by the indiscreet offer of resigning the sceptre to the second of his sons, he subscribed his own condemnation, and sacrificed the life of his own innocent favorite. The mangled bodies of the boy and his mother were exposed to the people; the eyes of Hormouz were pierced with a hot needle; and the punishment of the father was succeeded by the coronation of his eldest son. Chosroes had ascended the throne without guilt, and his piety strove to alleviate the misery of the abdicated monarch; from the dungeon ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... over the hand-basin, he opened the leather-covered case. Its velvet-lined compartments held a hypodermic syringe and needle, and a glass phial of twenty-four one-thirtieth ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... in different layers of the air," the Forecaster answered, "in the upper air, eight or ten miles up, where the faintest cirrus clouds are, they are not flakes at all, but tiny needle-like crystals, called spicules. In the depth of the Arctic winter, near the North Pole and especially on the Greenland ice-cap—one of the coldest regions of the world—the wind is full of these spicules, which one can't ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... the ruled surface of the sheet by the automatic registering-needle was irregular, showing the ups and downs of the current, rising sharply from sundown and gradually declining after nine o'clock, as the lights went out. Somewhere between eleven and twelve o'clock, however, the irregular fall ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." Substitute wealthy for rich. Is the meaning exactly the same? Is Goldsmith's description of the village preacher—"passing rich with forty pounds a year"—as effective ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... play of nature); Tasso looked round with an ultra-sensitive temperament, and an ambition which required encouragement, and his poem is that of tenderness. Every thing inclines to this point in his circle, with the tremulousness of the needle. Love is its all in all, even to the design of the religious war which is to rescue the sepulchre of the God of Charity from the hands of the unloving. His heroes are all in love, at least those on the right side; his leader, Godfrey, notwithstanding ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... she gave a long, ear-piercing shriek that seemed to go through the roof like a fine-pointed needle. Holland and the baby joined in, each trying to make a louder noise than the other. Their eyes were tightly shut, their mouths wide open, and their faces ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... trust herself with this temptation, she would descend into the castle again, and go to her own rooms, and try to interest herself in a little needle-work, a little writing, a talk with ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... last spool of thread," said Mrs. Snooks, "and I haven't a needle to my name. Henney dropped my thimble down the well last week, and as for buttons, the only ones I own are on the children's clothes. But if you want any of them things, Mr. Wylie, you'll find a right good assortment at Dowd's. ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... Riley perfessed religion; old Mrs. Blithers sold her place to Cap'n Spooner; the youngest Waters girl run away with a music teacher; the court-house burned up last March; your uncle Wiley was elected constable; Matilda Hoskins died from runnin' a needle in her hand, and Tom Beedle is courtin' Sallie Lathrop—they say he don't miss a night but what he's settin' on ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... And Britta nodded her curly head sagaciously. "There was a girl from Hammerfest who went to Christiania to seek service—she was handy at her needle, and a fine spinner, and a great lady took her right away from Norway to London. And the lady bought her spinning-wheel for a curiosity she said,—and put it in the corner of a large parlor, and used to show it to her ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... formerly busied herself in teaching her, in putting the needle into her hand, and guiding her little fingers. Now she almost always left this task to the servants. She lived in a state of gloomy preoccupation which did not escape the domestics' notice. Josefina also was ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... foliage of these ancient conifers seem to be less rare in our Scotch deposits than in those of England of the same age. My collection contains fossil sprigs, with the slim needle-like leaves attached, of what seem to be from six to seven different species; and it is worthy of notice, that they resemble in the group rather the coniferae of the southern than those of the northern hemisphere. One sprig in my collection seems scarcely distinguishable ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... so roused my sympathies that, with surprise, I exclaimed: "Why do you not buy a new stove?" To my unassisted common sense that seemed the most practical thing to do. "Why," she replied, "I have never purchased a darning needle, to put the case strongly, without consulting Mr. S., and he does not think a new stove necessary." "What, pray," said I, "does he know about stoves, sitting in his easy-chair in Washington? If he had a dull old knife with broken blades, he would soon get a new one with which to sharpen his pens ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... man, or even the naval officer, in those days of sailing ships and simple weapons was much less sharply marked than it has since become. Skill in seamanship, from the use of the marlinespike and the sail-needle up to the full equipping of a ship and the handling of her under canvas, was in either service the prime essential. In both alike, cannon and small arms were carried; and the ship's company, in the peaceful trader as well as in the ship of war, expected to repel ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... I came along. Nobody here now; but she'll be coming directly, up from the ground or down from the sky, or through a hole in the sunset. Do you remember how she caught her little gown on that fence-rail?" He bent over, and seemed to address his violin. "Sat down and took out her needle and thread, and mended it as neat as any woman; and then ran her butterfly hands over me, and found the hole in my coat, and called me careless boy, and mended that. Yes, yes; Rosin remembers every place where he saw his girl. ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... make clothes of skins as soon as we get enough," said Hector.—"Louis, I think you can manufacture a bone needle; we can pierce the hole with the strong thorns, or a little round bone bodkin that can ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... Miko with a heat-cylinder no longer than a finger. Its needle-beam played upon Snap's naked chest. I could see the gruesome little trail of smoke rising; and as Snap twisted and jerked, there on his flesh was the red and blistered trail ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... favorite's triumph. Alas! we all reckoned without taking King William, the Crown Prince, the Fed Prince, von Moltke, and von Bismarck into our account. We never fancied, on that bright July morning, that Krupp of Essen's cannon and the needle-gun were soon to give laws to Paris. But inter arma silent artes as well as leges. Nearer and deadlier tragedies than those of Corneille and Racine were soon to be enacted; and the poor players ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... island on the 8th of October, and continued my course to the south to the latitude of 40 degrees or 41 degrees, having a strong north- west wind; and finding the needle vary 23, 24, and 25 degrees to the 22nd of October, I sailed from that time to the 29th to the east, inclining a little to the south, till I arrived in the latitude of 45 degrees 47 minutes south, and in the longitude ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... you go and play, Bunny?" said Miss Kerr looking up from her work. "I do not like to see you tumbling about there with such a cross look on your face. Go and get a book—or will you have a needle and thread and try to do ...
— Naughty Miss Bunny - A Story for Little Children • Clara Mulholland
... not show their face. With grace like gold, as with fine painting, he Will have this house within enriched be; Fig-leaves nor rags, must here keep out no cold, This builder covers all with cloth of gold, Of needle-work prick'd more than once or twice (The oft'ner prick'd, still of the higher price) Wrought by his SON, put on her by his merit, Applied by ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... clutch closed upon his arm. He was whirled backwards into a chair. For a moment he was too dazed to grasp what had happened. He saw zu Pfeiffer's face. The sentries over his moustaches quivered like a row of fixed bayonets. The eyes seemed needle points. Then the fact of the assault penetrated beyond the unprecedented incident of finding his wife's photograph in another man's room. The ugly line about the mouth hardened. ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... work!" She hastened to her table, on which was to be seen a beautiful silk embroidery just finished by the queen. Among the threads she selected one that was of the same color as the dress, and hastily threaded her needle. "Now I will finish my work before any one surprises me," whispered Louisa. She was so assiduously employed that she did not notice that the opposite door, softly opening, had admitted the king. He stood still for a moment and looked ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... crossed the Channel to London, I believed that we had one more "formula" story. I was fortified against unproved allegations by thirteen years of newspaper and magazine investigation and by professional experience in social work. A few months previously I had investigated the "poison needle" stories of how a girl, rendered insensible by a drug, was borne away in a taxicab to a house of ill fame. The cases proved to be victims of hysteria. At another time, I had looked up certain incidents of "white slavery," where young and ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... Ike, looking wise, "is what we musicians call the—the—get there, Eli. You know when a girl is singing, and gets away up on a high note, and keeps getting it down finer all the time, until it is not much bigger than a cambric needle, and she draws in a whole lot of air, and just fools with that wee bit of a note, and draws it out fine like a silk thread, and keeps letting go of it a little at a time until it seems as though it was a mile long, and the audience stops talking ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... camphor. The colour is due to the poison circulating between the body and the outer skin. The white sunlight does not show up this symptom. But there is another test." Lighting a candle, he took a long steel kanzashi needle and heated it to redness. Holding the cold end by his head towel he grasped the arm of Kwaiba. The latter drew back, afraid. "Nay, it will give no pain," said Isuke. He thrust the hot length of the needle several inches under the skin. As far ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... her eyes in wonderment. She stared at Marcella, forgetting the sock she had just slipped over her left hand, and the darning needle in her right. ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had been traced with no discernible attempt at disguise, but was quite strange to him. The pen employed had been one of those needle-pointed nibs so popular in France; the hand was that of an educated Frenchman. The import of the ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... vertically, and cut out of one solid piece of metal. I subjoin a sketch of it, with the dimensions. It may be made of whatever metal you think proper. There is no harm in having iron about it, because we seldom require to use the needle. My reason for wanting this improvement is, that the legs get loose so quickly from the wearing away of brass, and that the many small surfaces in contact are too disproportionate to their length. Strength and durability are of far more consequence than ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... which they tend the sick, or gather round The dying; and a slender, steady beam Comes from the little chamber, in the roof Where, with a feverous crimson on her cheek, The solitary damsel, dying, too, Plies the quick needle till the stars grow pale. There, close beside the haunts of revel, stand The blank, unlighted windows, where the poor, In hunger and in darkness, wake till morn. There, drowsily, on the half-conscious ear Of the dull ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... I hear of wonderful bargains in fabrics, and of miracles performed with needle and thread; but I am in doubt. I hold my pen poised in vain when I would add to Dulcie's life some of those joys that belong to woman by virtue of all the unwritten, sacred, natural, inactive ordinances ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... covering their wigwams. Their mode of fabricating this is very primitive and simple. Seated on the ground, with the rushes laid side by side, and fastened at each extremity, they pass their shuttle, a long flat needle made of bone, to which is attached a piece of cordage formed of the bark of a tree, through each rush, thus confining it very closely, and making a fine substantial mat. These mats are seldom more than five or six feet in length, as a greater ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... one of the most important things you'd be called on to do. You'd never get anywhere if you weren't quick with your needle and thread. And then there'd be hair-dressing. You have to know something about that. I don't say that you must be a professional; but for the simpler occasions—after that there's packing. That's something we often ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... she went and sat down on the floor before an easy-chair, through a rent in the old covering of which the hair was escaping, and drawing from her pocket a needle and a skein of worsted, she set to work to mend it. For three days past she had been waiting for an hour's time to do this piece ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... for Hamelin! There came into many a burgher's pate A text which says that heaven's gate Opes to the rich at as easy rate As the needle's eye takes a camel in! 260 The Mayor sent East, West, North, and South, To offer the Piper, by word of mouth, Wherever it was men's lot to find him, Silver and gold to his heart's content, If he'd only ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... obtained for money, from sugar-candy to potted anchovies; from East India pickles to Bass's pale ale; from ankle jack boots to a pair of stays; from a baby's cap to a cradle; and every apparatus for mining, from a pick to a needle. But the confusion—the din—the medley—what a scene for a shop walker! Here lies a pair of herrings dripping into a bag of sugar, or a box of raisins; there a gay-looking bundle of ribbons beneath two tumblers, and a half-finished bottle of ale. Cheese and ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... turmoil in the ether which creates the magnetic area explains why the magnetized needle of a compass unfailingly points north and south. This one simple fact is a certain proof of its existence. And once granting a magnetic field to be there it is less difficult to understand how wireless waves are produced in this congenial medium and find their way ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... find a short way through to the Pacific Ocean. Captain Smith led the expedition. The Indians attacked them, killed three of the men, and took the captain prisoner. To amuse the Indians, Smith showed them his pocket compass. When the savages saw that the needle always pointed toward the north they were greatly astonished, and instead of killing their prisoner they decided to take him to their chief. This chief was named Powhatan.[4] He was a tall, grim-looking old man, and he hated the settlers at Jamestown, ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery
... him, might even have been induced to softer sentiments; but I doubt if Dredge even noticed the change. As for his ex-goddess, he seemed to regard her as a motherly household divinity, the guardian genius of the darning needle; but on Professor Lanfear he looked with a deepening reverence. If the rest of the family had diminished in his eyes, its head had grown ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... Needle-bush, n. name applied to two Australian trees, Hakea leucoptera, R. Br., N.O. Proteaceae; called also Pin-bush and Water-tree (q.v.) and Beefwood; Acacia rigens, Cunn., N.O. Leguminosae (called also Nealie). Both trees have ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... a bed in the corner, quivered, and vanished. We approached the bed and examined it—a half-tester, such as is commonly found in attics devoted to servants. On the drawers that stood near it we perceived an old faded silk kerchief, with the needle still left in a rent half repaired. The kerchief was covered with dust; probably it had belonged to the old woman who had last died in that house, and this might have been her sleeping room. I had sufficient curiosity to open the drawers: there were a few odds and ends of female ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... This gives a dark rich looking mold that is not too acid and preserves the individuality of the fruit. If you wish to use some of the cranberries in lieu of Maraschino cherries, take up some of the most perfect berries before they have cooked too tender, using a darning needle or clean hat pin to impale them. Spread on an oiled plate and set in warming oven or a sunny ...
— Good Things to Eat as Suggested by Rufus • Rufus Estes
... all the nurses speculating, Mr. Lee. I mean we're wondering just what Dr. Lakin, he's the anesthesiologist, is going to use for you when you won't have any brain for the anesthesia to work on." She stopped, the needle poised above Lee's arm, realizing the inaptness of her remark. "Oh. I ...
— Am I Still There? • James R. Hall
... West Point, and so she did not meet him; but upon the death of her husband, soon afterward, she had returned to the home of her girlhood, and established herself in modest, but respectable quarters, to earn a livelihood for the little Virginia and herself by the use of her skillful needle. ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... room, from whence she brought a little stand containing a work-basket and the lamp. She placed it just in front of her grandpapa's chair, and between Guly and Wilkins. With a smile she seated herself at it, and began to embroider a strip of insertion; nimbly plying her needle among the slender vines and tendrils ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... wish Dot could have joined us sometimes as we built our famous brick castles, or worked in Flurry's little garden, where she grew all sorts of wonderful things. When I was tired or lazy I used to bring out my needle-work to the seat under the cedar, and tell Flurry stories, or talk to her as she dressed her dolls; she was very good and tractable, and never teased me to play when ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... "Chirp-chirp, chirp-chirp, chirp-chirp," and then out danced Dewlove and Beambright from their hiding-places. The cunning little fairy lived under the moss at the foot of the oak-tree; he was no bigger than a cambric needle,—but he had two eyes, and in this respect he had quite the advantage of the needle. As for the elf-prince, his home was in the tiny, dark subterranean passage which the mole used to live in; he was plump as a cupid, and his hair was long and curly, although if you force me to it I must ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... wealthy young lawyer to Jesus, and paused at the reply of the Lord; she repeated the words, "How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God. For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye than for a rich man to enter into the ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... have elapsed and we find our hero Jocelyn tenderly playing with a golden-haired prattler, his beloved son and heir, while his beautiful spouse Yolande busied with her needle, smiles through ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... attendant perils with a hearty delight, if you will train up the right spirit in them. Better the worst night that ever darkened off Hatteras, than the consumption-laden atmosphere of the starving journeyman-tailor's garret, the slow inhalation of pulverized steel with which the needle-maker draws his every breath! The sea's work makes a man, and leaves him with his duty nobly done, a man at the last. Courage, loyal obedience, patient endurance, the abnegation of selfishness,—these are the lessons the sea teaches. Why must the shore make such diabolical haste and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... ruby-crowned wren, or kinglet,—the same liquid bubble and cadence which characterize the wren-songs generally, but much finer and more delicate than the song of any other variety known to me; beginning in a fine, round, needle-like note, and rising into a full, sustained warble, [SYMBOL DELETED] a strain, on whole, remarkably exquisite and pleasing, the singer being all the while as busy as a bee, catching some kind of insects. It is certainly on of our most beautiful ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... wires and ran them to the library above, where he installed an annunciator, the needle of which would indicate when the trap was sprung and the picture taken. Fascinated, the two girls watched. Eva was almost fainting with grief at the terrible fate that had overtaken her father. Even in his sickness, at least she had had him. But now he was gone—to what she could only ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... projecting his face over his swarthy shoulders. Guido Bonatti, too, was there, astrologer of Forli; and Ardente, shoemaker of Parma, who now wishes he had stuck to his last; and the wretched women who quit the needle and the distaff to wreak their malice with herbs and images. Such was the punishment of those who, desiring to see too far before them, now looked only behind them, and walked the reverse way of ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... his bed of sails under repair, at which the Captain had been plying his needle while the weather remained clear, and glanced over his shoulder toward the ship's dinghy towing astern. The rope that held it was made fast round the rail a few feet away from him. The boat itself was clumsy, shaped like a walnut, of a preposterous strength ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... all troopers lately afield in search of 'Tonio were again at Almy, discomfited, disheartened. "Hunting for a needle in a haystack without a magnet," said Turner, "is no more fruitless than scouting for Apaches in these mountains without Apache scouts. There is only one way," said he, "to capture 'Tonio. 'Set a thief to catch a thief; set an Indian to catch an ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... pieces all articles of furniture in which it would have been possible to make a deposit in the manner you mention. A letter may be compressed into a thin spiral roll, not differing much in shape or bulk from a large knitting-needle, and in this form it might be inserted into the rung of a chair, for example. You did not take to pieces all ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... as it appeared, but the bay was a shameless hypocrite. For under one shoulder it hid a range of reefs, and, at a spot where the shadows of the cliff never reached it, and the sun played with a grim kind of joy, a long needle of rock ran up at an angle under the water, waiting to pierce irresistibly the adventurous ship that, in some mad moment, should creep ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... theirs in the window, so that they might still see some of the blue sky, as she expressed it, she looked across the Court towards Lizzie Stevens' home. Yes, there she was, Pollie could see, busy plying her needle, and there were the violets also, in a broken jam jar close by her as she sat at work; and raising her pale face towards them, as though they were old friends returned to her, she caught sight of little Pollie arranging her bouquet in the window; so with a bright smile ...
— Little Pollie - A Bunch of Violets • Gertrude P. Dyer
... there sixty female Anti-Slavery Societies in operation. These are doing just what the English women did, telling the story of the colored man's wrongs, praying for his deliverance, and presenting his kneeling image constantly before the public eye on bags and needle-books, card-racks, pen-wipers, pin-cushions, &c. Even the children of the north are inscribing on their handy work, "May the points of our needles prick the slaveholder's conscience." Some of the reports of these Societies exhibit ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... nobody could find their way. I can't, sir. You're always going where you don't want, and turning up somewhere else. I feel like the needle in the bottle of hay, sir, and give ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... vapours of sulphurous, sulphuric, and hydrochloric acids. If recent, a jelly-like material may be seen by the aid of a magnifying-glass lying between the fibres. If old, a cinnabar-red streak is seen on drawing a needle across ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... Susan Bay said when she put a darnin' needle into the armchair cushion, and I sed, said I, 'twas a ticklesome thing and might do hurt. She did it once too often. Her old man ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... straight north in an undeviating line. She recollected that the point from which she had lost her way had lain northeast of Cariboo Meadows. Even if they had swung in a circle, they could scarcely be pointing for the town in that direction. For another hour Bill held to the northern line as a needle holds to the pole. A swift rush of ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... dots filling up geometrical figures of the various kinds. The laws of formation of the various figured numbers were established. In this investigation the gnomon played an important part. Originally meaning the upright needle of a sun-dial, the term was next used for a figure like a carpenter's square, and then was applied to a figure of that shape put round two sides of a square and making up a larger square. The arithmetical application of the term was similar. If we represent a unit ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... mi thimel or needle an threead; Sit daan like a gooid little child as tha art; Wol aw wipe up this mess, an side th' butter an breead, Then aw'll gie thi a penny to buy thi ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... thought that I wouldn't come again," replied Susan, as sharp as a needle. Then instantly repenting a little, she explained: "You are welcome to me, Will, and you know that as well as I do, but I want you to come some other evening, if it is all ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... purpose, brush off the balance pans with a soft camel's hair brush. Then note (1) whether the balance is level; (2) that the mechanism for raising and lowering the beams works smoothly; (3) that the pan-arrests touch the pans when the beam is lowered; and (4) that the needle swings equal distances on either side of the zero-point when set in motion without any load on the pans. If the latter condition is not fulfilled, the balance should be adjusted by means of the adjusting screw at the end of the beam unless ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot
... longed to rise above it. Her mind had attained to a premature development while feeding almost exclusively on its own thoughts,—for she had never been fond of books, though there were many around her. Her sole occupations had been the school, the needle, and assisting her mother in the management of their flower-garden. For this last she had a decided taste, and they had concealed the time-worn character of the old house they occupied by covering it with a luxuriance of floral wealth, so tastefully arranged, and so profuse and gorgeous, that travellers ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... Mrs. Libby, inarticulately. She held between her lips some ravellings and bits of thread, and she was sitting by the open window, laboriously pushing her needle through a piece of heavy ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... 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
... artery should never be raised from its bed, it is generally advisable to pass the needle only so far as just to permit the eye to be seen past the vessel. The ligature should then be seized by a pair of forceps and gently pulled through, the needle being cautiously withdrawn. When catgut is used, it is better to pass the unarmed needle ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... she had one great defect; which was, that she could not write, nor read writing; that part of her education having been neglected when she was young; but for discretion, fidelity, obligingness, she was not to be out-done by any body. So commented her likewise for her skill at the needle. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... took the jump together! You didn't push me over the edge of things," he said, as their feet touched the pine needle slope. ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... the woman. "You go to him when we camp, and say Mrs Corp'ral Beane's dooty and she's got a needle and silk ready, and may she ...
— Our Soldier Boy • George Manville Fenn
... This is high ground, and Ampfield Wood extends along it to the borders of Hursley Park. It is chiefly of oak, fir, and beech, and on the southern side are the fine arcades of beechwood that Mr. Keble used to call Hursley Cathedral. From one point in the wood long sight can distinguish a sort of needle which is the spire of Salisbury Cathedral. The wood is very old, probably primeval, as it is guarded in the oldest notices of the Manor of Merdon, and it contains a flora of its own, in which may be mentioned ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... throbbing arteries of Holborn and Fleet Street, the river soothed his nerves and lent tranquillity to his mind. Following the Embankment, which was shrouded in heavy darkness, he reached the spot where Cleopatra's Needle, which once looked on the majesty of ancient Egypt, stands, a sentinel of incongruity, on the edge of London's river. Giving way to a momentary whim, Selwyn paused, and finding a spot that was sheltered from the sleet, sat down and leaned against ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... fortification on one side. I have given to its creation and growth my entire strength from the very beginning. And if you point to a single moment when I have not steered by this direction of the compass-needle, you may perhaps prove that I have erred, but you cannot prove that I have for one moment lost sight of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... rather than himself; and at others, against the enemies of his country. Guided by the inexplicable instinct of forest skill, he could conduct the wanderer in the woods from point to point through the wilderness, as the needle guides the mariner upon the ocean. So endowed, others equally illiterate, and less gifted, naturally, and from instinct, arranged themselves under his banner, and fearlessly ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... laboring oar. The sail, at length, arose and spread its wings to the wind. Still he had no power to direct his course when the lofty promontory sunk from sight, or the orbs above him were lost in clouds. But the secret of the magnet is, at length, revealed to him, and his needle now settles, with a fixedness which love has stolen as the symbol of its ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... then, thought it becoming to affect a taste for science, went in coaches and six to visit the Gresham curiosities, and broke forth into cries of delight at finding that a magnet really attracted a needle, and that a microscope really made a fly loom as large ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the afternoon when he was nearing the station—just, in fact, before he left the wood-trail for the rutted, frontier road—that his mind was caught as sharply as a cloth by a needle, by the light sound of following steps. In the solitude of that trail which his feet alone had worn, the sound brought him to a stop with a sense of terror and suspense. His mind leaped to Hugh, and for the first time in his loyal life Pete remembered, and ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... enter upon the heritage of No Thing;—and you find yourself heir to the Universe, to wonder, to magic. You do with all your complicated egoity as the camel did with his cameltiness before he could enter the needle's eye; then—heigh presto!—it is the Elixir of Life you have drunk; it is freedom you have attained of the roaming-place of Dragons!—It amounts, truly, to the same thing as Aryan Theosophy; but where the latter travels through and illuminates immense realms of thought and metaphysic, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... pulled out the silver needle from which hung a drop of Holy Oil. In the midst of such a scramble, with the whole train waiting—many people now thrusting their heads out of the carriage windows in surprise at the delay in starting—he could not think of following ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... off. In the midst of riches I am poorer than when I lived with you; for I have nothing to give away. When I found that the great accomplishments they taught me would not procure me the power of doing the smallest good, I had recourse to my needle, of which happily you had taught me the use. I send several pairs of stockings of my own making for you and my mamma Margaret, a cap for Domingo, and one of my red handkerchiefs for Mary. I also send with this packet some kernels, and seeds of various kinds of ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... litter of half-burned matches near the barrel and Ned bent over and gathered them up. As he did so something bright lying on the ground, caught his eye. It was a gold rivet, or wire, not more than an inch long and about as thick as a knitting needle. ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson
... waterways, and above its ridges there rose the forbidding crags of a black butte whose shoulders ran down to and confined the silvery river. Across the river and to the south the land was even rougher, rising in sheer precipices, above the crests of which towered a mighty needle of rock, standing out against the sky like a cathedral spire, yet of a greater dignity and magnificence—purple with the regal ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... students, who was the supervisor of the Negro schools of an entire county, when she returned from her summer school work proceeded to vivify her dead schools by introducing the making of wash-boards, trash baskets, baskets made of weeping-willow, and pine needle work in its various forms. The registration soared at once, the indifferent Negro parents became interested, and before long the parents of white children complained to the county superintendent that the colored children were being taught more than ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... courage, and stepping up to a young man who seemed of less consequence than the others, and who was more frequently standing by himself, I begged of him, in a low tone, to tell me who the obliging gentleman was in the gray cloak. "That man who looks like a piece of thread just escaped from a tailor's needle?" "Yes; he who is standing alone yonder." "I do not know," was the reply; and to avoid, as it seemed, any further conversation with me, he turned away, and spoke of some ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... sir," I replied. "I am a pretty good hand with a sail-needle. The Oulton fishermen used to teach me the stitches. I can do herring-bone stitch. I can even put a cringle ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... approaching the period of young womanhood, felt that it was a duty incumbent upon her to be more reserved than her sister, and rarely took part in the conversation, unless she was directly addressed, ceased plying her needle, and replied, smiling, ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... 'short-sighted,' curiously forced in by Lena, was like a shock of the very image of Nagen's needle features thrust against Anna's eyes; the spasm of revulsion in her frame was too quick for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... I got the needle at an angle of ninety degrees, and once more began counting. My heart was beginning to beat quickly by this time, and I felt myself trembling with excitement. The course was now more easily followed. True, the growth was as thick as ever, but no rhododendrons blocked my passage. Beating down ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... in altitude by means of 1,319 barometric observations, and seventeen by means of the theodolite and spirit level. One hundred and ninety-two observations have been made for determining the variation of the magnetic needle at three ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... one brought him garments of gold and silk inwoven; one fetched him slippers like the sun's beam in brightness; others stood together in clusters, and with lutes and wood-instruments, low-toned, singing odes to him; and lo! one took a needle and threaded it, and gave the thread into the hands of Shibli Bagarag, and with the point of the needle she pricked certain letters on his right wrist, and afterwards pricked the same letters on a door in the wall. Then ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... came the snow, and with good reason we began to fear that we should be unable to retrace our steps. As long as we had sufficient light Alick's compass guided us, and we had taken the last glance at it, and were scarcely able to distinguish in what direction the needle pointed, when we caught sight of the tent, and heard Pat's voice shouting ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... shore?" asked the little old man, becoming still more frightened, and screwing up his eyes as tailors do when they wish to thread a needle. "I have been looking in every direction and I see nothing but ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... with their goings and comings; or like the equinoxes, that in March and September shut about us with friendly curtains of rain for days, in which so much can be done in the big up-stairs room with a cheerful fire, that is devoted to the rites and mysteries of scissors and needle. We were always glad, I remember, when our dress-making week fell in ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... girl, with a lively sense of her own importance and a chronic taste for a grievance. She had married well, as every one thought, but in these days her husband had lost his health and Delia was obliged to put her shoulder to the wheel. She sewed well, but there was a sigh every time her needle went into the cloth, and a groan when it ...
— "Some Say" - Neighbours in Cyrus • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards |
