"Thread" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with this boy!" exclaimed my sister, pointing me out with her needle and thread, and shaking her head at me. "Answer him one question, and he'll ask you a dozen directly. Hulks are prison-ships, right 'cross th' meshes." We always used that name ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... sugar yet and you dare order it. And you can get me some thread and then stop at Granny Hogendobler's and ask her to come out to-morrow and help with the strawberry jelly. I got so much to make and it comes good to Granny if she gets away for a ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... head fell, and her glance would have made any one shiver who had seen it; but her eyes were on her reel of thread. ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... nice, Tom," said Mrs. Fenelby, biting off her thread, but not looking up. Mr. Fenelby turned back to his blankbook. He dipped his pen in the ...
— The Cheerful Smugglers • Ellis Parker Butler
... never woven One honest thread of life within his song; As Offenbach is to divine Beethoven So Byron is to Shelley (THIS is strong!), And on Parnassus' peak, divinely cloven, He may not stand, or stands by cruel wrong; For Byron's rank ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... eyes, though in every cheek the colour paled at the words of the mistress. The spindles revolved, the thread shot, and again there was silence more freezing ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the Desire to "Live" Selfish? Contemplation Chelas and Lay Chelas Ancient Opinions upon Psychic Bodies The Nilgiri Sannyasis Witchcraft on the Nilgiris Shamanism and Witchcraft Amongst the Kolarian Tribes Mahatmas and Chelas The Brahmanical Thread Reading in a Sealed Envelope The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac The ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... time when you will relate your own adventures; for seeing how judiciously you correct the faults into which I fall in my narrative, I may well expect that your own will be delivered in a manner equally instructive and delightful. But to take up the broken thread of my story, I say that in those hours of silence and solitude, it occurred to me among other things, that there could be no truth in what I had heard tell of the life of shepherds—of those, at least, about whom my master's lady used to read, when I went to her house, in certain books, all ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... opponents, and once or twice he had been knocked out himself; but the Chicken had fought so pluckily up to the last round that the Bruiser had put forth more of his tremendous strength than he had bargained for, and now the man's life hung on a thread. ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... spot of the universe, peopled by two only, and those two so indistinguishably blended, as it were, that they would appear as one to the casual observer. So I practiced repression, though the wall of my reserve is worn to the thinness of thread-paper, and I tried to keep my mind on the droning minor canon, and not to look at her, ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... often led to difficulties, as the slightest interruption in my work made me lose the thread of my rough draft, and I had to start from the beginning before I could recall it ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... "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, and the robbers imprisoned and ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... colors and patterns of her dresses? You never remarked anything curious about her ornaments? Well! I don't believe you men know, half the time, whether a lady wears a ninepenny collar or a thread-lace cape worth a thousand dollars. I don't believe you know a silk dress from a bombazine one. I don't believe you can tell whether a woman is in black or in colors, unless you happen to know she is a widow. Elsie Venner has a strange taste in dress, let me tell you. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... Through his efforts, and with the invaluable aid of such other workers as Remak, Purkinje, Henle, Muller, and the rest, all the mystery as to the general characteristics of nerve tracts was cleared away. It came to be known that in its essentials a nerve tract is a tenuous fibre or thread of protoplasm stretching between two terminal points in the organism, one of such termini being usually a cell of the brain or spinal cord, the other a distribution-point at or near the periphery—for example, in a muscle or in the skin. Such a fibril may ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... needle, and a very long thread, or you will have to be continually taking fresh. This work is sometimes done with crewel wool, and in rather a different way, see Fig. 4; but it is not so neat and pretty, in my opinion, as that done with cotton, and is more extravagant, since the wool must be used ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... war on the crown, and the seditious nobles ignobly yielded their functions merely to register royal decrees,—these contests, rivalries, cabals, and follies, ending however in the more solid foundations of absolute royal authority, are not to be here discussed, especially as nobody can thread that political labyrinth; and we begin, therefore, not with the technical reign of the great King, but with his actual government, which took place on the death of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... 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!" they ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... door, and began raising the flags again, looking for another bed for the corpse on his back. He took up three or four flags and put them aside, and then he dug the clay. He was not long digging until he laid bare an old woman without a thread upon her but her shirt. She was more lively than the first corpse, for he had scarcely taken any of the clay away from about her, when she sat up and began to cry, "Ho, you bodach (clown)! Ha, you bodach! Where has he been that he ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... brief or precise answer. We find traces of Darwinism almost everywhere. Sociological systems differing widely from each other have laid claim to its authority; while, on the other hand, its influence has often made itself felt only in combination with other influences. The Darwinian thread is worked into a hundred patterns ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... been suspecting that her money had been the chief inducement which led him to seek her hand, and now her worse suspicions were confirmed, and the last thread of confidence ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... the previous struggle. In the band that went round the low crown, a ribbon was knotted; a piece of that same ribbon which Philip had chosen out, with such tender hope, to give to Sylvia for the Corneys' party on new year's eve. He knew every delicate thread that made up the briar-rose pattern; and a spasm of hatred towards Kinraid contracted his heart. He had been almost relenting into pity for the man captured before his eyes; now he ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the mills' tall smokestacks loomed in sight. The logs thickened until it was with difficulty that Captain Marsh could thread his way among them at all. Shortly Orde, standing by the wheel in the pilot-house, could see down the stretches of the river a ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... a livid face blazoned by the red nose of a tippler and lighted by two gleaming vulture eyes, allowed his gray hair to hang loose under a three-cornered hat, wore breeches with straps that extended beyond the buckles, cotton stockings of mottled thread knitted by his niece, whom he always called "the little Saillard," stout shoes with silver buckles, and a surtout coat of mixed colors. He looked very much like those verger-beadle-bell-ringing-grave-digging-parish-clerks who are taken to be caricatures until we see them ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... "levitating" small objects from the table—by placing the medium's hands on either side of them. Sometimes the object would be raised from Dr. Ochorowicz's hand instead—while he was holding it. Of course the natural supposition is that a thread or hair of some sort was employed, but this possibility was eliminated in a number ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... A GOLDEN thread has run throughout the history of the world, consecutive and continuous, the work of the best men in successive ages. From point to point it still runs, and when near you feel it as the clear and bright and searchingly irresistible light which Truth throws ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... would not be impregnated unless the entire trees were bathed for days in the fertilizing cloud, in which only one out of many millions of floating particles can ever hit the mark. The mosquito is able to procreate without ever satisfying its ravenous appetite for blood. To swell its grey thread-like abdomen to a coral bead is a delight to the insect, but not necessary to its existence, like food and water to ours; it is the great prize in the lottery of life, which few can ever succeed in drawing. In a hot summer, when one has ridden perhaps for half a day over a low-lying ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... Jack's father really so very, very rich?" asked Anna, whose thoughts had been wandering from the thread of those ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... on Mr. Schwarz, taking up the thread of his remarks without noticing Von Barwig's apology, "you'd know that Van Praag and those fellows up at Harmony Hall are ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... not, lest thou break my thread.— "Take me to Argos, brother, ere I die, Back from the Friendless Peoples and the high Altar of Her whose ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides
... frequent periods woo th' inspiring Band Before thy days their summer-course have run, While, with clos'd shears, the fatal Sisters stand, Nor aim to cut the brilliant thread ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... enterprise which is woman's weak point; and he tilled those wide powers of masterly execution which they possess unknown to grandpapa Cant and grandmamma Precedent. As this clear head had foreseen, his women came out artisans. The eye that could thread a needle proved accurate enough for anything. Their supple, taper fingers soon learned to pick up type and place it quite as quick as even the stiff digits of the male, all one size from knuckle to nail. The same with watch-making and other trades reputed masculine; ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... There was a thin thread of white that ran across the dun-colored range and reached that half-ball and then ended. It was a highway. Joe realized that the half-globe was the Shed, the monstrous building made for the construction of the Space Platform. It was ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... either side of the head and having another roll placed across it; in other cases a ridged roof seems to rest upon the hair, a roof with the sides rolling upward and fastened at the top with a frail thread; while a third type of head-dress is of the skull-cap order, from which is suspended two ties quite twenty inches long and eight inches wide, which are doubled back midway and fastened again to the top of the skull-cap. The unmarried woman who adopts this coiffe ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... picture-books, sprawls about doing nothing, smokes my best cigarettes, hums tunes which she has picked up from barrel-organs, bends over me to see what I am writing, munching her eternal sweetmeats in my ear, and laughs at me when I tell her she has irremediably broken the thread of my ideas. Of course I might be brutal and turn her out. But somehow I forget to do so, until I realise—too late—the havoc she has ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... provided, for some reason or other, eight small glass cups, into which he placed the legs of the two tables, and in a business-like manner he set out on the large stand a piece of white paper, a pencil, and a spool of black thread. It is characteristic of Miss Jeremy, and of her own ignorance of the methods employed in professional seances, that she was as much interested and ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... have that now, it would bear disinfecting; but the Irish heath-bells that told of autumn days at Killey Marey must go, and that brief note to me that had been treasured up—yes, and the quaint old housewife, with D. L. (his aunt's maiden initials), whence his needles and thread used to come for his mending work. An old, worn pencil-case kept for his mother's sake—for Alice was on the seal—was the only thing I could rescue; but next there came an envelope with "My will" scrawled on it. Mr. Yolland thought I ought to open it, to see who had authority ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... turned round either to right or left, whichever may be the easier for his rider. When we find ourselves in such a tight corner we must, for our own safety as well as for that of our neighbours, exercise a certain amount of force in controlling our horses. The "silken thread" method of handling, which is, or should be, employed at any other time, stands us in poor stead in the face of this difficulty. There are horses which will neither slacken speed nor turn for their riders, and a runaway in the hunting field is by no means rare. If any lady ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... the screw has been dispensed with, and a rack and pinion have been substituted. Some of the best in use consist of a vertical iron rack, which is occasionally forced upward by the teeth of a pinion: a geer wheel on the same axle with the pinion being driven by the thread of a horizontal screw, to the head of which is attached a crank. By a machine of this construction, properly proportioned, one man may raise about twenty tons weight. Vertical screws, turned by levers, have been frequently used for the purpose of ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... moonlight climbing was very difficult at first, for we had to thread our way along a plain which was literally covered with glacier boulders, and the innumerable brooks which we crossed were frozen solid. However, our march brought us to the base of the great mountain, which, rising high against the east, shut out the coming daylight, and kept us in profound shadow. ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... Goodell afterwards, that she "jest looked in from the next room, at that, and if ever a woman felt cheap—all over—and as if she hadn't a right to her own toes and fingers, and as if every thread and stitch on her turned mean, all at once—it was Mrs. Gimp, ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Network (formerly Automatic Voice Network or Autovon); basic general-purpose, switched voice network of the Defense Communications System (US Department of Defense). Eutelsat-European Telecommunications Satellite Organization (Paris). fiber-optic cable-a multichannel communications cable using a thread of optical glass fibers as a transmission medium in which the signal (voice, video, etc.) is in the form of a coded pulse of light. HF-high-frequency; any radio frequency in the 3,000- to 30,000-kHz range. Inmarsat-International ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... of the God He who, in evil times, Warned by an inward voice, Heeds not the darkness and the dread, Biding by his rule and choice, Feeling only the fiery thread Leading over heroic ground, Walled with mortal terror round, To the aim which him allures, And the sweet heaven his deed secures. Peril around, all else appalling, Cannon in front and leaden rain Him duly through ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... believe I've got hold of the end of the thread at last! The senator is with us, working in the dark, as he always does. And that Hathaway business: that was one of his smooth little side-moves—his or Mrs. Honoria's. He didn't want Evan to get in too deep in the righteousness puddle, and he took ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... fact that the work had been so unexpectedly interrupted was one which filled him with joy, and gave rise to the best hopes. The only offset to all this was his own captivity, but that was a very serious one. Besides, he knew that his life hung upon a thread. Before the next day Girasole would certainly discover all, and in that case he was a doomed man. But his nature was of a kind that could not borrow trouble, and so the fact of the immediate safety of Hawbury was of far more importance, and attracted far more of his thoughts, than his own ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... launch across the river to see the new orange grove, and the children were left alone save for old Uncle Pomp who was hoeing in the truck patch, something happened that made quite a scare. Hetty went into mamma's room for a spool of white thread, and when she came out there was a frightened ...
— Dew Drops Vol. 37. No. 17, April 26, 1914 • Various
... his mind. He saw the cities along the shores of the great Lake; he saw their internal condition, the weakness of the social fabric, the misery of the bondsmen. The uncertain action of the League, the only thread which bound the world together; the threatening aspect of the Cymry and the Irish; the dread north, the vast northern forests, from which at any time invading hosts might descend on the fertile south—it all went ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... keep 'em babies forever!" My Mother tried not to look at my Father's eyes. She looked at his feet instead. When she looked at his feet instead she saw that there were holes in his slippers. She seemed very glad. She ran and got a big needle. And a big thread. My Father had to sit ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... becoming constantly more manifest that between the different departments of human inquiry there are mutual dependences and complicated interrelations, which enable us, by the truths of one science, to thread ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... axe, and hatchet, and if the log canoe is in anticipation he will also require the other tools mentioned on page 259 an oilstone being carried in order to keep the various tools in good repair; an auger, saw, and some large nails are also to be desired, and a small parcel containing needles, thread, pins, scissors, etc., will be found indispensable. "Cleanliness is next to Godliness," and there are no more luxurious necessities in camp life than a piece of soap and a clean towel. For light it is advisable to carry a supply of candles, or a lantern with a can of oil. The latter ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... us, as if by magic, the forms of two French gentlemen accompanied by a small party of soldiers, who come from the mouth of the bay, and carefully thread their way along the shore. It is a strange company of men. The leader is a native of Rouen, and he says that few of his companions are fit for anything but eating. He thought that his band comprised creatures of all sorts, like Noah's ark, but unlike the collection of the ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... of shimmering water sending slanting shafts of silver against the rocky base of the opposite Palisades, and, in the dim distance, the softly undulating Jersey hills meeting the sky line in a wavy gray thread indistinctly ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... if you interrupt in that way I shall lose the thread of my narrative. It is at your desire I recount to you the story of my past life; and how much wiser would you be if I were to compress it into a sentence like this for instance: 'Lord William came to our house in the autumn, and left us ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... part to be thoroughly enjoyed; but it will live in their memories for many a day, and as time goes on, will clear itself from the bewilderment, till it become one of the precious days that make gems on the thread of life. ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had cast an anxious glance over the wide sweep below and beyond, seeing nothing but timber and hills, with the silver thread of a creek winding serpent-wise through the green. But of habitation or trail there was never a sign. And it was after ten o'clock. They were over four ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... small, imperceptible scales, and their organs of vegetation are reduced to a stem and filiform branches that have obtained for them the names of Cheveux de Venus (Venus' Hair) and Cheveux du Diable (devil's hair) in French, and gold thread in English. Because of their destructive nature they have likewise been called by the unpoetic name of hellweed; and, for the reason that they embrace their host plants so closely, they have been called love ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... this year of loss or gain? Who knoweth? What of boon or bane? Life's thread may bright or dark be ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... you guess that the things we're seeing now will haunt us through the years; Heaven and hell rolled into one, glory and blood and tears; Life's pattern picked with a scarlet thread, where once we wove with a gray, To remind us all how we played our part in the shock ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... a reason additional to its economy why this practice should not die out. The tearing up into strips of old garments, and the tacking of their ends together with needle and thread is work eminently suited for children, and one in which they take great pride, as it gives them a share in the creation of a ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... guard of the Muscovites, when his terrified guards had dispersed, had mounted his followers, and hearing shots, was leading his cavalry into the firing line, himself at their head, with his steel raised aloft. At once Rykov cried, "Platoon fire!" A fiery thread flew along over the locks, and from the black levelled barrels three hundred bullets whistled. Three riders fell wounded, and one lay dead. The Count's steed fell, and the Count with it; with a cry the Warden ran to the rescue, for he saw that the yagers had aimed at the last ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... rich, sweet, and exquisitely beautiful. A thin thread of blue water, laughing, babbling, brawling, whooping, leaping, gliding, and stealing down from the mountains; great boulders worn smooth and ploughed hollow by the wash of ages; wet moss and lichen on the channel walls; deep, cool dubbs; tiny reefs; little cascades ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... an invalid thenceforth; probably it was only the existence of her child that saved her life. An affection of the heart in course of time declared itself, but, though her existence was believed to hang on a thread, she lived on and on, lived to see Beatrice grow to womanhood. She kept a small house in London, but spent the greater part of the year at home or foreign health-resorts. Her relatives had supposed that she would return to her own country, but Mrs. Redwing had tastes which lacked gratification ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... It was thousands of ages before the people commenced making laws for themselves, and strange as it may appear, most of these laws were vastly superior to the ghost article. Through the web and woof of human legislation began to run and shine and glitter the golden thread ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... know, and will not betray! Sanctuary! Thou seekest sanctuary, and thou shalt have it if I can aid thee; but no time is to be lost. Rush on as if thy life hung on a single thread. Turn to the right, pass the Stadium, wind quickly around the hill Pion, and thou shalt see the Temple bathed in glorious light, and close to it the sacred grove; but I fear the hour has passed to gain access, and ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... Redman, Who deals with dead men, Once cut up a fellow whose spirit had fled, man, Who (the fellow) perchance Had indulged in that dance Performed at the end of a hempen thread, man; And the cut-up one, (A sort of a gun!) Like Banquo, though he was dead, wasn't done, Insisted in very positive tones That he'd be ground to calcined manure, Or any other evil endure, Before he'd give up his right to his bones! And then, through knocks, the resolute dead man Gave his bones ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... not think of it until to-day and have mentioned it to both the Chancellor and Zimmermann, who have received it cordially, and who join me in the belief that it may be the first thread to bridge ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... chaos of the conflict of these vast and draughty Titans, it is for me to thread my precarious way. The bit of life that is I will exult over them. The bit of life that is I, in so far as it succeeds in baffling them or in bitting them to its service, will imagine that it is godlike. It is good to ride the tempest and feel godlike. I dare to assert that ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... is past, and yet it hath not sprung, The fruit is dead, and yet the leaves are green, My youth is past, and yet I am but young, I saw the world, and yet I was not seen; My thread is cut, and yet it is not spun, And now I live, and now my ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... came to her as the minutest memory of that wonderful yesterday rose to her mind, and the vow she had made to honor and obey seemed to have been too easily repented. She looked upon her hand, and the little, thin, pathetic thread of gold reaffirmed her memory of the wedding-ring, and at the next suggestion a blush coursed through her being like a redbird in the apple-blossoms: perhaps he had stolen from her chamber stealthily as he came, while she, drowned in deep ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... fire," as it was now called, were chiefly investigated by Dufay. To refine on the primitive experiment let us replace the shreds by a pithball hung from a support by a silk thread, as in figure 2. If we rub the glass rod vigorously with a silk handkerchief and hold it near, the ball will fly toward the rod. Similarly we may rub a stick of sealing wax, a bar of sulphur, indeed, a great ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... distinguished from wool by putting the suspected thread or fabric into cold concentrated hydrochloric acid. If silk is present it will ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... his eyes toward the horizon. What appeared like a thread in comparison with the vastness of space around them wavered above a small black speck. Bert watched it with eager eyes. At this moment Harry stopped in his walk as he approached the starboard side, and placing his arms on the rail looked out over the sea in the direction ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... seen across the sun; but all the golden ripples of it had become plumes, so that it had changed into two bright wings like those of a vulture, which wrapped round her to her knees. She had a weaver's shuttle hanging over her shoulder, by the thread of it, and in her left hand, arrows, ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... remembered, too, that all over the world there is a regard for things red, this colour having been once held sacred to Thor, and Grimm suggests that it was on this account the robin acquired its sacred character. Similarly, the Highland women tie a piece of red worsted thread round their cows' tails previous to turning them out to grass for the first time in spring, for, in accordance with ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... moment when only one thin thread still held me to the civilized world when an official ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... pains to be entertaining, dealing with men in preference to measures—and only the most conspicuous, the most interesting men.... Of these outstanding figures there are full length portraits—biographies, indeed, in ample detail strung on a long thread of politics, while very many minor characters have thumb-nail sketches. Few of the good anecdotes available, it would seem, have escaped Mr. Alexander, and good stories do not suffer at his hands."—The ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... I have noticed that the nut-trees have moved somewhat nearer together, and that the tablet and the fountain seem likewise to approach each other. Probably, when all is brought together again, the door, too, will once more be visible; and I will do my best to take up the thread of the adventure. Whether I shall be able to tell you what further happens, or whether I shall be expressly forbidden to do so, I ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... what else can be expected, such as fish and wild fowl: Of the latter, we killed in this excursion, three dozen. After a very hard row, against both wind and rain, we got on board about nine o'clock at night, without a dry thread ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... like one dead. At first they often thought she was dead, but at last they got used to it, and only consulted the almanac to find the moment when she would begin to revive, which, of course, was with the first appearance of the silver thread of the crescent moon. Then she would move her lips, and they would give her a little nourishment; and she would grow better and better and better, until for a few days she was splendidly well. When well, she was always merriest out in the moonlight; but even when near her worst, she ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... years, why can't an ant live a hundred?" Sarah asked the black crow who sat on a branch and stared at her. "Only, I haven't any paper or pencil or thread to tie it on ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... young gentleman with pink cheeks who sings tenor. Far worse. The irresistible man, as we know him, is often a man who is doing a man's work in the world, and doing it well. He is frequently a man of character, but through that character runs this strange, irritating thread of conceit, which blinds our eyes to whatever of real worth may be within, because of his ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... still contemporary with the introduction of Venetian lace, a Pillow lace was being made in Flanders, the origin of which is not as yet discovered. It is possible that the fine flax thread grown and manufactured there may, at the time of weaving, have suggested a looser and more ornamental material, but that remains a matter of conjecture. There must, however, have been an interchange of examples, as about this time Pillow-made lace appeared in Italy, and led to the making of the ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... doubt whether my wakefulness had not been part of my dream, and I had not dreamed the whole of my supposed adventures. There was no sign of a lady's presence left in the room.—How could there have been?—But throwing the plaid which covered me aside, my hand was caught by a single thread of something so fine that I could not see it till the light grew strong. I wound it round and round my finger, and doubted ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... folded." Similarly, the association of ideas is passive, and in consequence is a kind of passion. The association of ideas is the fact that thought passes along the same path it has already traversed, and follows in its labyrinth the thread which interlinks its thoughts, and this thread is the traces which thoughts have left in the brain. In abandoning ourselves to the association of ideas, we are passive and we yield ourselves freely to a passion. That is so true that current speech itself recognizes ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... not obtain any materials for writing, I invented, in order to note daily occurrences, a diary of a peculiar kind. If any thing pleasant occurred, I tied a knot in a white thread, which I pulled out of my shirt. When any thing unpleasant happened to us, I tied a knot in a black silken thread, from my cravat. If any thing note-worthy took place, either pleasant or the reverse, I tied together the ends of a green ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... stand any nonsense of that sort, and the sparrow ought to have known it. But it kept looking round flower-pots at Faithful and chirruping at him sideways, and didn't realise that its life hung by a thread. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 1, 1916 • Various
... than to remove evils from a man, and to lead him to heaven. That this is their joy, see Luke, XV, 7. Scarcely any man believes that the Lord has such a care for man, and this continually, from the first thread of his life to the last, and on ...
— The Gist of Swedenborg • Emanuel Swedenborg
... that evening. Next morning when the sun was shining brightly, and the clear church bells were ringing, and sedate people in their best clothes enlivened the pathway near at hand and dotted the distant thread of road, there was a pleasant Sabbath peacefulness on everything, which it was good to feel. It would have been the better for an old church; better still for some old graves; but as it was, a wholesome ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... her bosom the white silk bag which her own hands had made on the farewell night at Combe-Raven. It drew together at the mouth with delicate silken strings. The first thing she took out, on opening it, was a lock of Frank's hair, tied with a morsel of silver thread; the next was a sheet of paper containing the extracts which she had copied from her father's will and her father's letter; the last was a closely-folded packet of bank-notes, to the value of nearly two hundred pounds—the ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... their respiration with the extreme of slyness. The idea went to his vitals with a shock, and he faced about suddenly as if to defend his life. Then, for the first time, he became aware of a light about the level of his eyes and at some distance in the interior of the house—a vertical thread of light, widening toward the bottom, such as might escape between two wings of ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... the spalpeen, the whole of E Troop, at the Ring o' Bells, an' whin he shwaggers in like he was a Dhraghoon an' a sodger, ye'll up an' say 'Threes about' an' act accordin' subsequint, an' learn the baste not to desthroy an' insult his betthers of the Ould Second. Thread on the tail ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... on sleeping together for the first time tie their waists together with string or thread, and the thread gets broken in the night, the first man who puts his arm round the waist of either will have the first name of the man whom that girl will marry, whether that man is the one or not. ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... accomplished by thy mighty genius in our behalf, the pen falls powerless from my despairing hand, and I can merely point to thee as the potent champion of our down-trodden rights! Instead of dwelling in dull obscurity, victims to the caprice of men; mending their thread-bare clothing and scolding servants—base, unwomanly pursuits!—instead of listening in silence to the storms of political debate; instead of remaining within the shadow of our own roofs, and gathering around the domestic hearth the thornless roses of existence; rendering home a haven of ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... loved," came in the deep tones of Aquilina's voice. "She never went a hundred leagues to drink in one look and a denial with untold raptures. She has not hung her own life on a thread, nor tried to stab more than one man to save her sovereign lord, her king, her divinity.... Love, for ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... in fancy, half in fact, the thread of an occult idea runs through this weird theme. You cannot, even at the end, be quite sure whether the author has been making fun of you or not. Perhaps, if the truth were told, he could not quite tell you himself. The tale all hangs about one of a group of friends who lives for years ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... white robe cut rather low, with her hair loose hanging to her waist, but carefully combed and held outspread by what appeared to be a bent piece of ivory about a foot and a half long, to which it was fastened by a thread of gold." ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... most astonishing to me about that experience was how a submerged submarine can thread its way through a mine field. For though the water is luminous and translucent one can hardly make out the black hull of the boat under the turret and a mine would have to be on top of you before you could see it. The men who watch for mines must have ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... pale-faced woman with a profusion of fair hair. Rachel always remembered that scene. The hot tent with its flaps turned up to let in whatever air there might be. Her mother in a blue dressing-gown, dingy with wear and travel, from which one of the ribbon bows hung by a thread, her face turned to the canvas and weeping silently. The gaunt form of her father with his fanatical, saint-like face, pale beneath its tan, his high forehead over which fell one grizzled lock, his thin, set lips and far-away grey eyes, taking off his surplice ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... the garden, sitting with her work in Miss Jane's arbour. There was so much work to be done, and poor old Penny cried so bitterly over the black stuff that her damp needle and thread didn't get on very fast, and Angel took it quietly away from her and carried it out of doors. Penny had a sort of idea that there was something wrong in sewing at mourning dresses in the garden, but Angel thought it didn't matter. Betty felt ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... monopolized her. Anne Marie Louise d'Orleans, Souveraine de Dombes, Princesse Dauphine d'Auvergne, Duchesse de Montpensier, is forgotten, or rather was never remembered; but the great name of MADEMOISELLE, La Grande Mademoiselle, gleams like a golden thread shot through and through that gorgeous tapestry of crimson and purple which records for us the age ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... It had been determined to land Hurry at the precise point where he is represented, in the commencement of our tale, as having embarked, not only as a place little likely to be watched by the Hurons, but because he was sufficiently familiar with the signs of the woods, at that spot, to thread his way through them in the dark. Thither, then, the light craft proceeded, being urged as diligently and as swiftly as two vigorous and skilful canoemen could force their little vessel through, or rather over, ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... Kitty. 'You've tried all ways, I presume. But I notice that just now you seem to prefer the ear as a medium. Wouldn't she be splendid in the "Thread of Destiny," Stuart?' ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... his own hand, he laboured unceasingly. Money came fast—more money than he had ever hoped for. Fame came also, in a fashion, and many genial societies were open to him. But Annette was not a person to be defrauded of anything she conceived to be a right, and he soon found upon how slight a thread domestic content might hang. Invitations to Mr. Paul Armstrong were plentiful, but of Mrs. Paul Armstrong his world had no knowledge outside the jolly bachelor contingent which overflowed house and table upon Sundays. When these single invitations came Annette ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... prosperity incrusts their hearts and increases their carnality; nestling in their worldly comforts, they forget they are the creatures of a day, that an endless eternity lies before them, and only the feeble uncertain thread of life between them and that curse under which they were born. Not so the child of God; all things work together for his good—all things; his standing is not in himself; his footsteps are directed by infinite wisdom: he is kept by ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... testing is to dip a pair of ordinary forceps in the balsam, which may be stirred a little to secure uniformity. The forceps are introduced with the jaws in contact, and, as soon as withdrawn, the jaws are allowed to spring apart, thus drawing out a balsam thread. In a few moments the thread is cold, and if the forceps be compressed, this thread ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... to his isolation. His mind was broadening and deepening, and he felt that it was so. Many things that had before seemed a puzzle to him now became plain. He was compelled, despite his youth, to meditate upon life, and he resolved that when he took up its thread again among his kind he would put his new knowledge ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... were then adorned at the collar and in front with gold-thread embroidery, such as is shown in some of Clouet's portraits. In M. de Laborde's Comptes des Batiments du Roi au XVIeme Siecle (vol. ii.) mention is made of "a shirt with gold work," "a shirt with ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... impatient had we become by dint of that faint glimmer of hope. We were going to try to build a raft, on which we were going to try to embark on the stream, by which we were going to try to find our way out of the mountain. The prospect made us positively hilarious, so slender is the thread by which hope ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... all human affairs! how fleeting are riches! how brittle the invisible thread on which all earthly comforts are suspended! Peace in a moment can take an immeasurable flight; health can lose its rosy cheeks; and life will vanish like a vapor at the appearance of the sun! In one fatal day our prospects ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... the Imperial Court to sanction the succession of Iemochi was evidenced by a long delay in the transmission of the necessary Imperial document. During that interval, the feudatories of Mito and Echizen had a memorable interview with the premier, Ii, whose life seemed at that time to hang by a thread, but who, nevertheless, advanced unflinchingly towards his goal. The three feudatories offered to compromise; in other words, they declared their willingness to subscribe the commercial convention provided that Keiki was appointed shogun; the important fact ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... already provided themselves with their old solace of knitting for the slow-passing days at sea, and all settled down for the long voyage. All through the story of their three years of wandering among the islands of the South Seas runs the thread of the wife's devotion; of how she took upon herself the fatiguing details of preparations for the voyages, searching for ships and arranging for supplies; of how she walked across an island to get horses and wagon to move the sick man to a more comfortable place; of how ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... she had cut off the downy part of several feathers, and had laid them together in a little heap. Then she took a fine thread, and tied this little tuft of down to the end of it. Then she took up the thread by the other end, and handed ...
— Rollo's Philosophy. [Air] • Jacob Abbott
... never relaxes its deadly grasp. But,' said he, raising himself to a sitting posture, 'but I will not die, I must live. One fixed purpose, one great aim sustains me, and I feel that till I have accomplished this, the thread of life, frail as I know it is, strained as I feel it oft to be, still, still I have a firm presentiment it ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... merited snub, Francois could not at once catch up the thread of his ideas; but he was still less able to do so when Max said ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... Whatsoever loseth the grace and clearness, converts into a riddle; the obscurity is marked, but not the value. That perisheth, and is passed by, like the pearl in the fable. Our style should be like a skein of silk, to be carried and found by the right thread, not ravelled and perplexed; then all is a knot, a heap. There are words that do as much raise a style as others can depress it. Superlation and over-muchness amplifies; it may be above faith, but never above a mean. It was ridiculous in Cestius, ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... al-Budur, to take rest beside her, and he saw her joyous exceedingly at the glory and grandeur wherein she was; then, after reposing awhile he returned to his palace. Now Alaeddin was wont every day to thread the city-streets with his Mamelukes riding a-van and a-rear of him showering rightwards and leftwards gold upon the folk; and all the world, stranger and neighbour, far and near, were fulfilled of his love for the excess of his liberality ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... on thy knees, and pray to Heaven for pardon—make up thy dread account—repine not at the days yet thine to wash the black spot from thy soul. For, while I speak, I foresee too well that her days are numbered, and with her thread of life is entwined thine own. Within twelve hours from her last moment, we shall meet again: but now I am as ice and stone,—thou canst not move me. Her closing life shall not be darkened by the aspect of blood—by the thought of the sacrifice it demands. ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... foot-bridge, stretching like a thread, united one bank to the other. Three miles below was a suspension-bridge, across which a train was crawling from the Canadian to the ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... On the present occasion I shall chiefly follow that written by Captain Woods Rogers, taking occasionally explanatory circumstances and descriptions from Captain Cooke: But as they agree pretty well in their relations, I do not think it necessary to break the thread of the discourse, but shall proceed as near as may be in the words ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... hate. After the painful news had been told, he sat in silence; he had not spirit or inclination to tell his mother and sister anything about the dinner; they hardly cared to ask it. Apparently the mingled thread in the web of their life was so curiously twisted together that there could be no joy without a sorrow coming close upon it. Tom was dejected by the thought that his exemplary effort must always be baffled ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... almost morning; I would have thee gone, And yet no further than a wanton's bird; Who lets it hop a little from her hand, And with a silk thread plucks it back again, So ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... dog,—such amateurish bungling he disdained and swore against,—but in the good old-fashioned way of stalking with a rifle. And when he brought his bunch of birds to market, his admirers pointed with pride to the marks of his wondrous skill. Here was a bird with the head hanging by a thread of skin; there one with its neck broken; there a furrow along the top of the head; and here—perfect work!—a partridge with both eyes gone, showing the ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... principle illegal at Rome unless expressly authorized by the State. — IGITUR: the construction of the sentence is broken by the introduction of the parenthesis, and a fresh start is made with epulabar igitur. Igitur is often thus used, like our 'well then', to pick up the broken thread of a sentence. So often sed or ergo. — FERVOR: Cf. Hor. Od. 1, 16, 22 me quoque pectoris temptavit in dulci iuventa fervor. — AETATIS, QUA PROGREDIENTE: 'belonging to that time of life, but as life advances'. The ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... by seniority. I have had an immense loss in the death of the Earl of Glencairn—the patron from whom all my fame and fortune took its rise. Independent of my grateful attachment to him, which was indeed so strong that it pervaded my very soul, and was entwined with the thread of my existence; so soon as the prince's friends had got in, (and every dog, you know, has his day) my getting forward in the excise would have been an easier business than otherwise it will be. Though this was a consummation devoutly to be ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... in their hands. This meant frequent councils among the three, a vast amount of careful work, of crafty intrigue, of untiring diplomacy, and, although his candidacy had not as yet been more than whispered, the purple robe of power was daily being woven, thread ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... knowest, is dearer to me than life, do Thou bless and hallow our bond of love and friendship; watch over us in all our outgoings and incomings for good: and may the tie that unites our hearts be strong and indissoluble as the thread of man's immortal life!... ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... pity you hav'n't something worse to complain of than a button off your shirt. If you'd some wives, you would, I know. I'm sure I'm never without a needle and thread in my hand; what with you and the children, I'm made a perfect slave of. And what's my thanks? Why, if once in your life a button's off your shirt—what do you cry "oh" at? I say once, Mr. Caudle; or twice, or three times, at most. I'm sure, Caudle, no man's buttons in the world ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... scarcely any banks, as the water flowed over a wide and shallow channel. On previous nights, when the moon was shining into the valley, as we sat around our camp fire, we had noticed the stream winding like a silver thread through the dark-green herbage. Now, to our extreme wonder, instead of the narrow line, a broad sheet of water glistened before us! It seemed to cover a space of several hundred yards in extent, reaching far up the glade ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... the observance." So that when he sat down, and my turn came, the audience, instead of being convinced, was fairly rabid. I was very young at that time, and fearfully nervous; added to which I was never much of a speaker, and, if interrupted at all, usually lost the thread of my argument. ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... the city, and the 78th Highlanders were pushed forward on the Cawnpore road to the Residency, to cover the passage of the troops and baggage, etcetera; while the remainder turned short to the right, and began to thread the narrow lane ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... determination, and for another hour he struggled on, till, feeling utterly exhausted, he seated himself at the edge of the precipice at a point where he could divide the bushes and look down. Here, only a few yards away, he saw that there was a broad shelf some fifty feet below, and along it a mere thread of water trickled to a lower edge and disappeared, leaving among the stones amidst which it had meandered patch after patch of richest green, showing its ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... wing-feathers, to show what fate had fallen upon the mother. Those birds had died also, and she had wept and given them Christian burial, and had afterwards spent hours every day with her little rifle hunting the destroyer of that small home. She remembered the incident now as a small thread in the ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... she watched the youngling of the flock, in the cradle by her side. The goodwife, in linsey-woolsey short gown and red petticoat, steps lightly back and forth in calf pumps beside the great wheel, or poises gracefully to give a final twist to the long-drawn thread of wool or tow. The continuous buzz of the flax wheels, harmonizing with the spasmodic hum of the big wheel, shows that the girls are preparing a stock of linen against their wedding day. Less active, and more fitful, rattles the quill-wheel, where the younger children ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... covered her pride with her ironical smile. Mrs. Weatherbee was the only one who did not look at Banks. Her inscrutable face was turned to the valley. She might never have heard of Hollis Tisdale or, indeed, of David. But Elizabeth, who had kept the thread of both conversations, said: "You were right. There was a coroner's inquest that vindicated Mr. Tisdale at ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... must be made of the best pack-thread, and for taking Great Fowl, the Meshes must be large, two Inches at least from point to point, the larger the better; (provided the Fowle creep not through;) two Fathom deep, and six in Length, is the best and ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... Phorkys, where there was a grotto sacred to the nymphs, and it was shaded at the entrance by an olive-tree. Stone vases stood around in the grotto, and there bees had stored up honey. The nymphs spun their fine thread from stone spindles there, and wove their sea-purple robes. Springs of cool water flowed through the grotto, and there was an entrance for mortals and one which was kept holy ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... of furs that had been heaped one on top of the other, and tied together with thread from an unraveled woolen mitten. "This was my body," he said coolly. "Furs. The cell must be a storeroom for them—lucky for us. I was standing with a rock in my hand near the door, when I cried out for water.... We shall ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... attempt," said Paul, stopping in his short walk on the sand, and examining the murky vault over head. "Midnight is near; and by two o'clock the tide will be entirely up. It is a dark night to thread these narrow channels in, and to go out upon the ocean, too, in so frail a bark! ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... from some titanic past it seems As if a thread divine of memory runs; Born ere the Mighty One began his dreams, Or yet were stars ...
— By Still Waters - Lyrical Poems Old and New • George William Russell
... narrative of narratives. I will continue it as I have opportunity; and that so dexterously, that, if I break off twenty times, thou shalt not discern where I piece my thread. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... hand, which was lying on the table, between her own and lifted it to her lips. He felt her soft young fingers even through the lisle-thread gloves that encased them, and the warm moisture of her lips upon his skin. He felt himself flushing—but was unable to break the silence or change his position. The next moment she had scuttled back with her chair to her ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... Octorara, Miami, six other steamers, and seventeen of the mortar schooners. The orders of the government were peremptory that the Mississippi should be cleared. The Confederates held the river by a single thread. The fall of Memphis and the ruin of the famous river-defence fleet left between St. Louis and the Gulf but a solitary obstruction. ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... of this simple story Keats made a long poem of four books or parts. Into it he wove many other stories, his imagination leading him through strange and wondrous scenery. The poem is not perfect—it is rambling and disconnected—the story of Endymion being but the finest thread to hold a string of beads ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... century ago than of late. I have heard them speak of an immense number being taken in one day by a shepherd at East Dean, near Beachy Head. I think they said he took nearly a hundred dozen, so many that they could not thread them on crow-quills in the usual manner, but he took off his round frock and made a sack of it to put them into, and his wife did the same with her petticoat. This must have happened when there was a great flight. Their numbers now are so decreased that ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... chamber. He rose quietly and went with them; the procession set out, and at about three arrived at the Place de Greve; where the stake was ready. "Berquin had a gown of velvet, garments of satin and damask, and hosen of gold thread," says the Bourgeois de Paris. "'Alas!' said some as they saw him pass, 'he is of noble lineage, a mighty great scholar, expert in science and subtile withal, and nevertheless he hath gone out of his senses.'" We borrow the account of his actual death from a letter of Erasmus, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... seen the church spires of Haarlem, and its long canal, which like a silver thread ties it to Amsterdam. To the east the towers of Utrecht are visible, and to the north glitter in the morning sun the red roofs of Zaandam ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... live forever, or to make something as like it as possible, that will last forever. They paint their statues, and inlay the eyes with jewels, and set real crowns on the heads; they finish, in their pictures, every thread of embroidery, and would fain, if they could, draw every leaf upon the trees. And their only verbal expression of conscious success is that they have made their work ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... strangely, mechanically, like a sleep-walker. "What a dream! Ye gods, what a dream!" He stretched his limbs yawning and laughed aloud; then he paled suddenly. Was it a dream; or no—impossible. On the sleeve of his black velvet jacket something glistened and sparkled, a thread as of gold, fine and slender like silk, invisible almost as the fibrous strings of ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... a good one at a ramble" said Tom, "and not a bad one in a spree, but I cannot help thinking you are rambling out of your road; you seem to have lost the thread of your subject, and, having been disappointed with love and friendship, you are just going to sit down ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... until they begin to change colour, then place them on a piece of paper and put on one side to cool; place a thick layer of forcemeat between two slices of potato in the form of a sandwich, tie with white thread, and re-fry until the potato becomes a golden brown. Remove the thread, and serve with ...
— New Vegetarian Dishes • Mrs. Bowdich
... the caps which had dropped on the table with the one he had found upstairs. They were the same size. He tried the solitary cap on the nipple, and found that it fitted perfectly. As he did so, he saw something resembling a thread of yellow wool caught in the twisted steel of the hammer. It was a minute fragment, so small as to be hardly noticeable. Colwyn was quite unable to determine what it was, but its presence there puzzled him considerably, and he was at a loss to understand how it had got ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... with a brave smile, "Sister, I am going. This is in answer to prayer, for I do not want to linger on and endanger all of your lives." This attack was followed by pleurisy, and for ten days of severe suffering her life hung by a very slender thread. A fellow-worker wrote at this time: "She is bright and happy, although fully expecting to go. She has been so enthusiastic in her work, and always so cheerful, that she has often gone beyond her strength. I think that she has been failing ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton
... the Chinese refused their ratification to Chung How's treaty, they expressed their desire for another pacific settlement, which would give them more complete satisfaction. The Marquis Tseng was accordingly instructed to take up the thread of negotiation, and to proceed to the Russian capital as Embassador and Minister Plenipotentiary. Some delay ensued, as it was held to be doubtful whether Russia would consent to the reopening of the question. ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... the smallest creature is of vital importance to you. In the loneliness of the prison cell you learn solidarity. And one day when he is sitting reading, the spider, in its busy efforts to carry its thread past him, drops down and uses his shoulder as a temporary attachment. Never before has such confidence been shown him notwithstanding everything; the little insect knew how a hardened criminal should ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... BEATING IN THE CORD, when the child comes into the world, it may at once be separated from the mother. This is to be effected by first tying the navel-string with common sewing thread (three or four times doubled), about two inches from the body of the child, and again two inches from the former ligature, and then dividing the cord with a pair of scissors between the two. And now the means for its restoration ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... loosened, take the turkey by the neck, give it a pull, and the skeleton will come out entire from the flesh, as easily as you draw your hand out of a glove. The flesh will then be a shapeless mass. With a needle and thread mend or sew up any holes that may be found in ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie
... novel, "Skipper Worse," marked a distinct step in his development. It was less of a social satire and more of a social study. It was not merely a series of brilliant, exquisitely finished scenes, loosely strung together on a slender thread of narrative, but was a concise and well-constructed story, full of admirable portraits. The theme is akin to that of Daudet's "L'Evangeliste"; but Kielland, as it appears to me, has in this instance outdone his French confrere, as regards insight into the peculiar character and poetry ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... opened, and Roxy came in. She had been walking fast, and her color was high. Heman stole one glance at her, under cover of the saluting voices. She was forty years old, yet her hair had not one silver thread, and at that instant of happy animation, she looked strikingly like her elder sister, to whom Heman used to give lozenges when they were boy and girl together, and who died in India. Then Roxy took her place, and Heman bent over his bass-viol. The rehearsal began. Heman ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... aloft by the sustaining blast, This little golden thread Dilates into a column high and vast, A form of fear ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... considerable space, especially to the years 871, 878, and 885. The whole has gained a certain roundness and fulness, because the events—nearly all of them episodes in the ever-recurring conflict with the Danes—are taken in their connection, and the thread dropped in one year is resumed in the next. Not only is the style in itself concise; it has a sort of nervous severity and pithy rigor. The construction is often antiquated, and suggests at times the freedom of poetry; though ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... approach perilous. The bank was high and steep. We had to plunge our daggers into the ground to avoid sliding into the river. We cut steps, fastened a line to the front of the canoe, and hauled it up. Our lives hung upon a thread, as one false step might have hurled us into eternity. However, we cleared the bank before dark. The men had to ascend the immense hills with ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... boys were at liberty full two hours before him. The latter generally stayed out as long as light and hunger permitted. Mr. Audley continually stumbled on them playing at marbles, racing headlong in teams of pack-thread harness with their fellows, upsetting the nerves of quiet folk—staring contentedly at such shows as required no outlay, or discontentedly at the outside of those that demanded the pennies they never had. They were thorough little street-boys; and all that he could do for them was to enforce ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... you need is a needle and thread," said the Shaggy Man. "But do not worry, my dear; those holes do not look badly, ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... through that palace wide, Observing al the future lives around: When those already woven he had spied Upon the fatal wheel for finish wound, He a fair fleece discerned that far outvied Fine gold, whose wondrous lustre jewels ground, Could these into a thread be drawn by art, Would never equal by ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto |
