"Ell" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "We—ell, yes. N-n-n-no. Yes and no. That's it. You want me to tell the truth, don't you? Some of it does, and some of it doesn't. Some of it, I guess, will take me a long time to get used to. It's terribly different from what we expected—I, in particular. ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... expects to see him known. So that it now behoves his valour flame More clear than light, or they, to censure prone, — Errs he a finger's breadth — an inch — will swell His fault, and of that inch will make an ell. ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... "Aw, t'ell with your Kodak!" Bob snorted. "Can't yuh carry this layout in your head? I've got a picture gallery in mine that I wouldn't trade for a farm; I don't need no Kodak in mine, thankye. You just let this here view soak into your system, Bud, where ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... pink and brown ice-cream, for them when they were very little children, winked and nodded as they all came in together, and made a jocose remark about "handsome couples"; then she trundled off to get the ice-cream, leaving them in the saloon. This "saloon" was an ell of the toll-house; it opened on a little garden, from which a flight of rickety steps led down to a float where half a dozen skiffs were tied up, waiting to be hired. In warm weather, when the garden was blazing with fragrant color, Mrs. Todd ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... Time, of one's life, and hence, unurged by Time, I cannot allow one to take up one's residence here. I take note of the acts of righteousness (or otherwise) that one does in the world. Do thou, O learned Brahmana of great splendour return immediately to thy abode. 'I ell me what also is in thy mind and what I can do for thee, O thou ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... for your love, and buy for your money. A delicate ballad o' the ferret and the coney. A preservative again' the punk's evil. Another goose-green starch, and the devil. A dozen of divine points, and the godly garter The fairing of good counsel, of an ell and three-quarters. What is't you buy? The windmill blown down by the witche's fart, Or Saint George, that, O! did ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain
... minute, and save the precious child, and oh, dear me, what should she do, and all the rest of it. I went down mad enough, I can tell you; found the child's eyes looking like a ploughed field. 'What have you been doing to this child, Phffibe?' 'We-ell, Doctor, his eyes has been kind o' bad along back, the last week. I did cal'late to send for you before; but one o' the neighbors was in, and she said to put molasses and tobacco-juice in them.' 'Thunder and turf!' says I. 'What sa-ay?' says Phoebe. ''N' then old Mis' ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... them, cases of books. At the far end of the room, toward the rear of the house, was another door. Duvall stole over to it, listened carefully, then slowly opened it and looked within. The room proved to be the doctor's private office, and he saw at once that it was built in a sort of ell, and could not be entered except through the room in which he stood. There was a door, it is true, in the right-hand wall, which had once given entrance to the hall, but against this a heavy instrument case, with ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... "We-e-ell," Miss Sessions deemed it necessary to qualify her statement to this fiery and exact young questioner. "You have to want the right thing, of course, John. You have to want ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... inseparable quid in his cheek, and slyly drawled out, "W-ell, if ye must, ye must! I a'n't a-goin' ter stand in the way of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... qualities of his neighbours. The only things he saw in perfection were stupidity and canting. 'Prose they only know in graces, prayers, etc., and the value of these they estimate, as they do their plaiding webs, by the ell. As for the Muses, they have as much an idea of a rhinoceros as of a poet.' He was, in fact, ungracious towards his neighbours, not that they were boorish or uninformed folk, but simply because, though living at Ellisland ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... thus the dire return received, And saved the man for whom her bosom grieved. So much emotion William seemed to feel, No grace he gave, but all performed with zeal; Retaliated ev'ry way so well, He measure gave for measure:—ell for ell. How true the adage, that revenge is sweet! The plan he followed clearly was discrete; For since he wished his honour to repair:— Of any ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... hit. W'ell said, Helen—well said, I say. Crusoe, you villain, hold up your head, ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... windows in Philip's study partly open. But that did not prove anything, although a man might have crawled in and out again through that window from an ell of the parsonage, the roof of which ran near enough to the window so that an active person could gain entrance that way. The whole affair remained more or less a mystery to Philip. However, the letters and the knife were real. He took them down town next day to the office of the evening ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... that is first founded upon this great, immutable law of love and service, and that then becomes supremely self-centred,—supremely self-centred that it may become all the more supremely unself-centred; in other words, the life that looks v/ell to self, that there may be the ever greater self, in order that there may ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... the knight replies, "I know not who is to pay the penalty. But whoever may object or disapprove, I intend to lie upon this bed and repose there at my ease." Then he at once disrobed in the bed, which was long and raised half an ell above the other two, and was covered with a yellow cloth of silk and a coverlet with gilded stars. The furs were not of skinned vair but of sable; the covering he had on him would have been fitting for a king. The mattress was not made of straw or rushes or of old mats. ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... printer, "think you you can fill one of these news sheets in a few days! Where indeed if you search the whole realm will you find talk enough in a single week to fill out this great sheet half an ell wide!" ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... I argued. But the fact is, I stayed because I couldn't go away. Of course, it was an abominable position, but I assure you it felt like heaven when it didn't feel like 'ell." ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... his own smart shadow in the streets, Better than e'er the fairest she he meets; Much specious lore, but little understood, (Veneering oft outshines the solid wood), His solid sense, by inches you must tell, But mete his cunning by the Scottish ell! A man of fashion too, he made his tour, Learn'd "vive la bagatelle et vive l'amour;" So travell'd monkeys their grimace improve, Polish their grin—nay, sigh for ladies' love! His meddling vanity, a busy fiend, Still making work his selfish craft ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... and Venetia are nothing more than an outspread sheet of deep Alpine mud. Well, there is nothing so good for incredulity, don't you know, as capping the climax. If a man will not swallow an inch of fact, the best remedy is to make him gulp down an ell of it. And, indeed, the Lombard plain is but an insignificant mud flat compared with the vast alluvial plains of Asiatic and American rivers. The alluvium of the Euphrates, of the Mississippi, of the Hoang Ho, of the ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... 'is wife died, he wouldn't let me 'ave my own way about the moniment at all. 'Put 'er down,' sez 'e—'Put 'er down as the Dearly-Beloved Wife of Samuel Timbs.' 'Now, Timbs,' sez I—'don't ye go foolin' with 'ell-fire! Ye know she wor'nt yer Dearly Beloved, forbye that she used to throw wet dish-clouts at yer 'ed, screechin' at ye for all she was wuth, an' there ain't no Dearly Beloved in that. Why do ye want to put a lie ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... "Give an ell of blue cloth to those fellows, and hang a bit of iron at their waists," he said to himself, "and they'll think there's but one way to kill people." Then, after walking up and down awhile very slowly, he exclaimed suddenly, "Yes, the time has come, that woman shall ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... on visiting England was very indignant at the representation of his countrymen on the London stage: he describes how, "Two actors came in, one dressed in the English manner very decently, and the other with black eye-brows, a riband an ell long under his chin, a big peruke immoderately powdered, and his nose all bedaubed with snuff. What Englishman could not know a Frenchman by this ridiculous picture?... But when it was found that the man thus equipped, being also laced down every seam of his coat, ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... to fire, and one of the old ladies on the other side of the crypt suddenly threw down her knitting and began confessing her sins. "Ow, I shall go to 'ell," she shouted dramatically. "I bin sich a wicked ol' woman. I nearly done in me first ol' man by biffin' the chopper at 'is nob, and Lawd, the lies I bin an' ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... old Norwegian ell was less than the present ell; and Thorlasius reckons, in a note on this chapter, that Harold's stature would be about four Danish ells; viz. about eight feet."—Laing's note to the text. Allowing for the exaggeration of the chronicler, ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... boarding with anyone but Jerry Longworthy she would have gone at once but Jerry Longworthy was very apt to forget that she preferred work to love. If she went to his back yard he would be sure to think that her coming was an inch and proceed to make an ell out of it. It would be far wiser to stay away. So she shook her head. "Not now, Mary Rose," she said gently. ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... We-ell, I s'pose I'd have to rescue a girl. It seems they always do that. But it would be nicer, I think, to rescue some real rich man. He'd say: "My noble preserver! How can I sufficiently reward you?" and take out his pocketbook. And wouldn't say: "Take back your proffered gold," and make ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... her, in the first place, that the thing itself was unlawful; that it was also unsafe, and could only lead to mischief. To use{114} his own words, further, he said, "if you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell;" "he should know nothing but the will of his master, and learn to obey it." "if you teach that nigger—speaking of myself—how to read the bible, there will be no keeping him;" "it would forever unfit him for the duties of a slave;" and "as to himself, learning would do him no ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... death, and the numberless mock suns that appeared in different places, or of that strange rain, when a sulphureous matter, like starch in appearance, fell from the air (item, a snow-white pike was caught at Colzow in Wellin, seven quarters long, and half an ell broad, with red round eyes, and red fins), a stranger wonder than all was seen at Wolgast; for suddenly, during a review held there, one of the soldier's muskets went off without a finger being laid on it, and the ball went right through the princely Pomeranian standard ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... "We-ell, he did say the best way for me to avoid all possibility of being involved in the thing was not to talk ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... it t'ell, Gord!" exclaimed an individual, with a long, drooping nose, a jaw which hung loosely on a corded, bare throat; "it ain't three weeks ago but you got a suit, and it ain't the one you ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... carefully inspected, and a special apartment connected with the kitchen, finished in hardwood, handsomely decorated, and hung with rich tapestries, was provided for the cook, in the vain hope that she might be induced permanently to occupy her position. The Queen Anne wing and Elizabethan ell were constructed, the latter to provide bowling-alleys and smoking-rooms for the probable cousins of possible culinary queens, and many there were who accepted the office with alacrity, throwing it up with still greater alacrity before the usual fortnight passed. Then the Bangletops ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... now, as I know of, but few that remain of the remnant of the giants; and though they boast as if they were higher than Aga, yet these pillars are higher than they. These pillars are the highest; you may equal them; and an inch above is worth an ell below. The height therefore of these pillars is, to show us what high dignity God did put upon those of his saints whom he did call to be apostles of the Lamb: for their office and call thereto is the highest in the church of God. These men, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... stand it! Blow you to 'ell they do! Look at me! I'm slathered in blood! I can't stand it! They ain't no man can ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... a bench excitedly, gesticulating with a bottle in his hand.] Listen 'ere, Comrades! Yank 'ere is right. 'E says this 'ere stinkin' ship is our 'ome. And 'e says as 'ome is 'ell. And 'e's right! This is 'ell. We lives in 'ell, Comrades—and right enough we'll die in it. [Raging.] And who's ter blame, I arsks yer? We ain't. We wasn't born this rotten way. All men is born free and ekal. That's in the bleedin' Bible, maties. But what d'they care for the Bible—them ...
— The Hairy Ape • Eugene O'Neill
... to him from one in such a state, than long service so said as folk usually say it in health. The martyrs in their agony made no long prayers aloud, but one inch of such a prayer, so prayed in that pain, was worth a whole ell or more, even of their own prayers, ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... as the merchants of the town that are all too much on the hunt for the bawbees and the world to sit down and commune with themselves, or if you were so old as my brothers there and so hardened, I would be the last to say my thoughts ever stirred an ell-length out of the customary track of breakfast, beds, dinner and supper. Do not think I do not love and reverence my brothers, mind you!" she added almost fiercely, rubbing with her lustre apron the table there was nothing to rub from save its polish. "Oh! they ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... dug out of the ground; which had been particularly noted to be plain and level, and ploughed just before; but where it was now found to have made a great fissure, or cleft, an ell wide, whilst it singed the earth on ...
— Remarks Concerning Stones Said to Have Fallen from the Clouds, Both in These Days, and in Antient Times • Edward King
... when the freak takes our Monsieurs to appear like so many farces or Jack Puddings on the stage, all the world should alter shape and play the pantomimes with them. Methinks a French tailor, with an ell in his hand, looks like the enchantress Circe over the companions of Ulysses, and changes them into as many forms.... Something I would indulge to youth; something to age and humor. But what have we to do with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... house became empty, I arranged it to look as nearly as I could as that other might have done. I used to sit here sometimes and pretend that my shadows were real. You will laugh at me, but I even have in my desk plans for an addition, an ell, containing a ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... a scuffle; they will send the bailiff to his ell, and Frank to the dungeon," whispered Skeleton to the Cripple, "we ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... issued forth with his whole force and marches towards us as our scouts report. Wherefore let us determine to play the men. So soon as they be out of the town we will enter and measure with the long ell." By these words he meant that the soldiers would speedily have a chance to use their pikes as yard sticks to measure out their share of the booty. False prophet was the duke that time! When the daylight grew stronger, the upright spears ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... gave a shilling as I live, Which, sure, was mighty well; But to some people if you give An inch—they'll take an ell. ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald
... proverb that if you give some men an inch they will take an ell, I induced the Governor to let me pursue my study of Italian. First he allowed me a Grammar, then a Conversation Book, then a Dictionary, then a Prose Reading Book, and then a Poetical Anthology. These volumes, being an addition to ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... find 'ow bloody well mistyken you are. Strike me blind if this ayn't gratitude for yer! 'Ere you come, a pore mis'rable specimen of 'uman scum, an' I tykes yer into my galley an' treats yer 'ansom, an' this is wot I get for it. Nex' time you can go to 'ell, say I, an' I've a good mind ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... west? Blimy! Where th' 'ell's that? 'Ere! Give us it in points! None o' yer bloomin' degrees ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... "What t'ell they got agin him? Ain't he the biggest man in this country to-day? Didn't he lick Spain and England both at Pensacola and didn't he finish the Red Coats ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... spontaneity, the most antipathetic. Indeed, he felt his wit, like Romeo's, to be of cheveril; and his conviction that it needed only the pull of circumstance to stretch it "from an inch narrow to an ell broad" expressed but the very wooing ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... with macron [a,] a with ogonek (tail) ['c] c with acute accent [vc] c with caron [-e] e with macron [ve] e with caron [e,] e with ogonek [)e] e with breve [-i] i with macron [)i] i with breve [/l] ell with stroke ['m] m with acute accent ['n] n with acute accent [vn] n with caron [-o] o with macron [vr] r with caron [.r] r with dot over ['s] s with acute accent [vs] s with caron [-u] u with macron ['z] z with ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... as it was called, a large white house with a piazza in front and a long, low ell, stood in the midst of the primitive little settlement, and was a favorite retreat of the lumbermen whenever they had the good fortune to get out of the woods, as well as the stopping-place of the overseers ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... passed over the interval of Milton's life immediately subsequent to the completion of the poem in 1663. The first incident of any importance is his migration to Chalfont St. Giles, near Beaconsfield, in Buckinghamshire, about July, 1665, to escape the plague then devastating London. Ell wood, whose family lived in the neighbourhood of Chalfont, had at his request taken for him "a pretty box" in that village; and we are, says Professor Masson, "to imagine Milton's house in Artillery Walk shuttered up, and a coach and a large waggon brought to the door, and the blind man helped ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... directly over the basement kitchen, jutted in an ell off the rear of the house so that from the back parlor it was not difficult to precede the immediate overhead response to that bell. A black-faced genii of the bowl and weal, in a very dubiously white-duck coat thrust on hurriedly over clothing ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... I lay with my bouncing Nell, I gave her an Inch, and she took an Ell: But I think in this Case it was damnable hard, When I gave her an Inch, she'd want more than ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
... bloomin' 'arf-quid I'd 'a' seen you blowed fust 'fore I'd answer. Not even when you arsked me sarcastic like if I'd like you to arsk the Superintendent if you might arsk me questions. Without offence did I tell yer to go to 'ell?" ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... "We-ell, I suppose I can do it," agreed Heckler at last. "There's nothing in the job, but I can remember that I used to be a boy myself. We'll call it a ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... approximate measures which satisfied men's needs in ruder ages, but they furnished also the standard measures required in later times. One instance occurs in our own history. To remedy the irregularities then prevailing, Henry I. commanded that the ulna, or ancient ell, which answers to the modern yard, should be made of the exact length of his ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... dottel of his pipe on the back of the hairy fist. 'They say 'Ell's 'otter than that,' said he, as Mulvaney swore aloud. 'You be warned so. Look yonder!'—he pointed across the river to a ruined temple—'Me an' you an' 'im'—he indicated me by a jerk of his head—'was there one day ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... hold enough to marry then. What the 'ell would you do with a woman in the 'ouse if you couldn't corner 'er? I tell 'e, women 'ave to 'ave a master, and no man better tackle that job until 'e can be sure 'e can make 'er walk ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... necessitates meals at odd hours, silence and rest at impossible times of the day, a general Spartan behavior so utterly inconsistent with my nature, that if you were to give me a happy inch, I should take an ell, and frightfully disappoint you in public. I don't want to do that, if I can help it, and so I will be good in ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... shipmate was talking again. "Hi 'eard 'im sy in the Knitting Swede's 'ow 'e was shipping in this ship just to ryse 'ell." ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... 'em—go to 'ell!" said Henry Withers of the Sick Horse Depot, and left the lower deck of the Osiris in a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... hospitality; whereupon the linen-draper, utterly forgetful of all party rancour, nobly responded to the appeal, and telling his wife to conduct his lordship upstairs, jumped over the counter, with his ell in his hand, and placing himself with half-a-dozen of his assistants at the door of his boutique, manfully confronted the mob, telling them that he would allow himself to be torn to a thousand pieces ere he would permit them to injure a hair of his lordship's head: what ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... sweeping the floor of the room. "They were a bit 'ot, but nothin' much to write 'ome about. Not like a picture in the papers, none of them wasn't. Not much stickin' of men. You just ops out of your trench and rush and roar, like 'ell. The Germans fire and then run off, and it's ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... There's a braggotty worm with a speckled throat, Nine double is he; Now from nine double to eight double And from eight double to seven double-ell." ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... rather abruptly at a side door of the dark-red pile of building which boasted the illuminated tower-clock and a jutting ell with barred windows. ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... Barante. Those magnificent silks and velvets, that cloth of gold and damask, that Flanders lace, and those carpets from Arras which were found heaped up in chests, were cut in pieces and distributed by the ell, like common canvas in a village shop. The duke's large diamond which he wore round his neck, and which had once upon a time glittered in the crown of the Great Mogul, was found on the road, inside a little box set with fine pearls. The man who picked it up kept the box and threw away ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... window and flashed his light about, to find that a very few feet below was an ell roof, and he just caught a glimpse of the fugitive letting himself over the edge, probably to drop into a yard below and so make ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... sunrise, and the diligent sprinkling of milk for the benefit of the Spirits of the Air. The flesh is eaten, but the skeleton with a part of the fat is burnt on a turf altar erected on four pillars of an ell and a half high, and the skin, with the head and feet, is then hung up in the way practised by the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... fashion. Behold, what doth he but turn round with such a look about the long lip of him as my Lord of Buckingham might have if his scullion made free with him. His aunt, the Duchess of Savoy, is a merry dame, and a wise! She and our King can talk by the ell, but as for the Emperor, he speaketh to none willingly save Queen Katharine, who is of his own stiff Spanish humour, and he hath eyes for none save Queen Mary, who would have been his empress had high folk held to their word. And with so ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... picking up coins behind the severe and disdainful figure of science whose giant strides have widened for us the horizon of the universe by some few inches—stand ready, almost eager, to appeal to the sword as soon as the globe of the earth has shrunk beneath our growing numbers by another ell or so. And democracy, which has elected to pin its faith to the supremacy of material interests, will have to fight their battles to the bitter end, on a mere pittance—unless, indeed, some statesman ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... misinterpret each stray word, you for each inch take an ell. Lightly all laws and ties trammel me, I am ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... long, with a piazza, and a long corridor ran through the whole building. All this announced an inn. The windows in the part of the house assigned to guests were dark. In the others, situated opposite the piazza, and not higher than half-an-ell from the ground, which was covered with straw and hay and all kinds of rubbish, the lights of Sabbath shone forth ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... the luck to have taken up that rod, then 'tis twenty to one he should not have broken my line by running to the rod's end, as you suffered him. I would have held him within the bent of my rod, unless he had been fellow to the great Trout that is near an ell long, which was of such a length and depth, that he had his picture drawn, and now is to be seen at mine host Rickabie's, at the George in Ware, and it may be, by giving that very great Trout the rod, ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... had already decided, from small signs of assurance, that this Western child was bold. "Give her an inch, and she'll take an ell," she had said to ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... that he would do so, and never again be summoned for a similar offence. He left the Court and returned to his cure, and as soon as he came there, he called the draper and the tailor, and he had a gown made which trailed three quarters of an ell on the ground; for he told the tailor how he had been reproved for wearing a short gown, and ordered to wear a ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... "We-ell," said the school chaplain slowly, "I don't know what Corkran's appreciation of your style may be, but young McTurk reads Ruskin ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... mad's 'ell an' quit me," said Breede. "Only st'nogfer ever found gimme minute's peace. Dunno why—talk aw ri'. He un'stan's me; res' drive ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... difficult not to think of the goodness of a shore life. As the close of each watch came round the same spirit of discontent prompted the question of the relief, officer or man. On the poop it was, "Well, Mister! How's her head now? Any sign of a slant?" On the foredeck, "'Ere! Wot th' 'ell 'ave ye bin doin' with 'er? Got th' bloomin' anchor ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... as the Moors; and the women as having "handsome limbs, slender arms, pretty hands, and when they sing they have a pleasant tange in their voices. The men shaved their hair on the right side, the women acting as barbers, and left the hair full length on the left side, with a lock an ell long." A Puritan divine—"New England's Plantation, 1630"—says of the Indians about him, "their hair is generally black, and cut before like our gentlewomen, and one lock longer than the rest, much like to our gentlemen, which fashion I think came ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the head of a civet-cat; the forepaws are very short, about the length of a finger, on which the animal has five small nails or fingers, resembling those of a monkey's forepaw. Its two hind-legs, on the contrary, are upwards of half an ell in length, and it walks on these only, on the flat of the heavy part of the leg, so that it does not run fast. Its tail is very long, like that of a long-tailed monkey; if it eats, it sits on its hind-legs, and clutches its food with its forepaws, ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... hall: It has a "Hungarian Orchestra"—a fact which is proved by the red and green jackets, the tyrolese caps, and by the printed sign which says, "This is a Hungarian Orchestra." I knew that they were Hungarians the night I saw them, because I distinctly heard one of them say, "what t'ell do we play next boys?" The reference to William Tell was obvious. After every four tunes the Orchestra are given a tall stein of beer, and they all stand up and drink it, shouting "Hoch!" or "Ha!" or "Hoo!" or something of the sort. This is ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... expect nothing," said Ezekiel. "You can get old Mrs. Crowley to come and do the heavy work, and I guess you can get along. You allus said you liked her, she was such a nice washer and ironer. She can have the little room over the ell, and I'll give you a dollar a week extra for your trouble. Do you think ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... lay you two to one, in fives or fifties if you like, that you knew before you axed, and that Thunderbolt don't win the Riddlesworth." "Really," said Mr. Jorrocks, "I'm not a betting man." "Then, wot the 'ell business have you at Newmarket?" was all the answer he got. Disgusted with such inhospitable impertinence, Mr. Jorrocks turned on his heel and walked away. Before the "White Hart" Inn was a smartish pony phaeton, in charge of a stunted stable ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... the outraged Maria stood up in arms, and as the phrase is, gave the Campaigner as good as she got. Go! wouldn't she go? Pay her her wages, and let her go out of that ell upon hearth, was Maria's prayer. "It isn't you, sir," she said, turning to Clive. "You are good enough, and works hard enough to git the guineas which you give out to pay that doctor; and she don't pay him—and ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... grew on his back, sir, was six yards and an ell, And it was sent to Derby to toll the market bell, The bell, the bell, the bell, And it was sent to Derby ...
— The Only True Mother Goose Melodies - Without Addition or Abridgement • Munroe and Francis
... "We-ell that is even a more roundabout relationship than that between Aunt Alvirah Boggs and me. Poor old soul, she is nobody's relation, as she often ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... "We—ell, I suppose so," he admitted hesitatingly. "But you can't just subpoena a woman like that without any warning and put her on the stand and make her testify. It would be ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... glance at grandmother, who took me by both hands and looked earnestly in my face. I feared that she would kiss me before the others and durst not look at her. "Yes," I heard her say, in a low voice, "it is Edmund's own boy." She led the way into the house, through the long wood-shed and ell. Supper was waiting; and after a hasty wash at a long sink in the wood-shed, I followed grandfather through the kitchen to the room beyond it, where the large round table was spread. The family all came in and sat down. I still felt very strange to the place; ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... which time she was fourteen years old: it was fairy tale. These earliest recollections went back to herself as a very tiny child living with her mother and grandmother in a big white house with green window-shutters, in Lexington—so big that she knew only the two or three rooms in one ell. Her mother wore mourning for her father, and was always drawing her to her bosom and leaving tears on her face or lilylike hands. One day—she could not remember very well—but the house had been darkened and the servants never for a ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... girlhood that died," insisted Patty stoutly, "The outside is as fresh as the paint on Uncle Barty's new ell. You've got the loveliest eyes and hair in Riverboro, and you know it; besides, Ivory Boynton would tell you so if you didn't. Come and bore my ears, there's ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Nivernois hat can compare, Bag-wig and laced ruffles, and black solitaire, And what can a man of true fashion denote, Like an ell of good riband ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 533, Saturday, February 11, 1832. • Various
... loathing on this system of corruption and exclusion. To their remonstrances Cosimo replied in four memorable sayings: 'Better the State spoiled than the State not ours.' 'Governments cannot be carried on with paternosters.' 'An ell of scarlet makes a burgher.' 'I aim at finite ends.' These maxims represent the whole man,—first, in his egotism, eager to gain Florence for his family, at any risk of her ruin; secondly, in his cynical acceptance of base means to selfish ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Street. Passers-by turned to stare, but otherwise she was unrecognized. There was a new five-and-ten-cent store, and Finley Brothers had added an ell. High Street was paved. She made a foray down into the little side street where she had spent those queerly remote first seventeen years of her life. How dim her aunt seemed! The little unpainted frame house was gone. There was a lumber yard ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... she returned, still at her task. Then she rose, holding a bulb in her hands, and said: "It's a funny kind of relation. Her father and mother egging her on—and you know that kind of a man; give him an inch and he'll take an ell. I wonder how far he has got." She took the bulb to a pile near the rear of the house. "Those are the nice big yellow ones I'm saving for Mrs. Barclay. But I'm sure of one thing, Molly has no notion of marrying Brownwell." She continued: "Molly is still in love with Bob. She was over here ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... continue to the twenty-ninth day of September in the year one thousand seven hundred and sixty-seven, an act passed in the twelfth year of queen Anne, for encouraging the making of sail-cloth, by a duty of one penny per ell laid upon all foreign-made sails and sail-cloth imported; and a bounty in the same proportion granted upon all home-made sail-cloth and canvass fit for or made into sails, and exported; another act was passed, for continuing certain laws relating to the additional number of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... am na wnaeth pechawd cnawdol ond unwaith a hynny drwy brovedigaeth yn yr amser yr ennillawdd ev * * o verch Brangor yr hon a vu ymerodres yn Constinobl, or honn y doeth y genhedlaeth vwyav o'r byd, ac o genhedlaeth Joseph o Arimathea y hanoeddyn ell tri, ac o lin Davydd brophwyd mal y tystiolaetha Ystoria ...
— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin
... ever go back, no matter wot 'appens. Not even if he sends for and forgives 'er, I believe. She's stood it this long, she'll stick it out. Mr. Portman got married right enough and I understand he's 'ad a 'ell of a time of it ever since. Married a reg'lar ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... cottage, containing four rooms, and a kitchen in the ell part. There was a plot of about a quarter of an acre connected with it. Everything about it was ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... wh at th at sh ell ch ild wh en th is sh y ch air wh y th ese sh ore ch ill wh ere th ose sh ine ch erry wh ich th ere sh ow ch ildren th en th eir sh e ch urch th ey th ey sh all ch ase ...
— How to Teach Phonics • Lida M. Williams
... in ourselves—me an' you—an' glom all the salvage for ourselves. T'ell with Scraggs an' the Maggie an' that new mate an' engineer. I'm off'n ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... "We-ell," said the dog and rubbed himself. "They're that sort of chaps, you know, that one really never has time to ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... the chamber, crossed the sitting room, and went into the ell-kitchen with his shoes in his hand. When he opened the back door he faced the west, but even the sky at that point of the compass showed the glow of the false dawn. Down in the cove the night mist wrapped the shipping about in an almost opaque veil. Only ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... magnificent! Noblemen then wore costumes weighted with embroidery. At Lyons, material was sometimes sold for as much as six hundred francs an ell. One ought to read the by-laws and regulations of the Guild of Master Workmen, where it is laid down that 'The embroiderers of the King have always the right to summon, by armed force if necessary, the workmen of other masters.' . . . And then we had coats of arms, too! Azure, ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... together—virtuously; and one bitter winter's night a cousin Mary—she's married now and gone—gave what they call a candy-pulling in those days in the West, and they took the saucers of hot candy outside of the house into the snow, under a sort of old bower that came from the eaves—it was a sort of an ell then, all covered with vines—to cool this hot candy in the snow, and they were all sitting there. In the mean time we were gone to bed. We were not invited to attend this party; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... buck-wheat. They make a good quantity of Mecca ginger, and procure plenty of frankinsence from Bista[220]. They reduce their buck-wheat to meal on a piece of marble, about the size of the stone on which colours are ground by painters, on which another stone about half an ell long and like a rolling pin or roller is made to work so as to bruise the corn. Immediately after this it is made into a paste and baked into thin cakes. This is their bread, which must be made fresh every day, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... delighted to meet him. It was good for sore eyes—who'd a-thought of his turning up there!" Splendidly inflated Martin was when he spoke of "his servants." This thing was entertaining until he grew presumptuous. If you are polite to some people they are familiar, and want to take an ell for every inch you have conceded. And then you have to tell them to keep their place. But Martin, with the instincts of his race, saw in time when it was coming to that. What a misery it must be for a coloured gentleman of ambition ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... old men at these places, but no one else. Everyone is at the front. The houses generally have wounded soldiers in them, and these play croquet with a nurse on the lawn, or smoke in the sun. None of them want to go back to fight. They seem tired, and talk of the trenches as "proper 'ell." ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... old boy, throwing his head back, and swaying with the fullness of his mirth. "What an 'ell of a joke." Mac, too, chuckled as he sat in ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... was music and 'appiness everywhere. She told 'er he was thinking of 'er every day and every hour and watching and waiting for the day she would come to 'im. Now wasn't that worth fifty cents of any woman's money? And the man may be in 'ell for all ...
— The Thirteenth Chair • Bayard Veiller
... hornet's nest when they come here this time, though, they sure did!" Tom stood in the door, looking into the darkening room and at the figure sprawled across the bed. "He-ell's a-goin' to pop now!" he said again, in slow words ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... How many wars would have been prevented, how many thrones would be standing, dynasties flourishing—commonwealths brawling round a bema, or fitting out galleys for corn and cotton—if an inch or two more of apology had been added to the proffered ell! But then that plagy, jealous, suspicious, old vinegar-faced Honor, and her partner Pride—as penny-wise and pound-foolish a she-skinflint as herself—have the monopoly of the article. And what with the time ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... the house goes back in a surprising brick ell that is not seen from the street. The exterior presents the appearance of a story-and-a-half cottage. Two windows, with their uncommon blinds, break the wood-shingled roof. The blinds' slats are wide and heavy, ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... thyself by God's ell-wand of the Fifth Commandment, and judge if it were honouring thine ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt |
