"Reel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was brought to him he took her into a room which was quite full of straw, gave her a spinning-wheel and a reel, and said, "Now set to work, and if by to-morrow morning early you have not spun this straw into gold during the night, you must die." Thereupon he himself locked up the room, and left her in it ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... willingly submit to the great law until the end of all things. What they appoint for this hour is for it alone, not for the next one. Everything in the vast universe is connected with them. Whoever should delay their course a moment would make the earth reel. Night would become day, the rivers would return to their sources. People would walk on their heads instead of their feet, joy would be transformed to sorrow and power to servitude. Therefore, child, the full moon has a different effect from the waxing or waning one during the other twenty-nine ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... unconscious that he inhabited the same hemisphere with her, was standing up for the reel in Pierre Menard's house. The last carriage had driven to the tall flight of entrance steps, discharged its load, and parted with its horses to the huge stone stable under the house. The mingling languages of an English and French society sounded all around her. The ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Church does not have any hold on them. They are growing up to disregard the duties of good citizenship. They are walking down the broad avenue of destruction, and what is this town doing to prevent it? I have seen young men from what are called the best homes in this town reel in and out of gilded temples of evil, oaths on their lips and passion in their looks, and the cry of my soul has gone up to Almighty God that the Church and the Home might combine their mighty force to drive the whisky demon out of our municipal life so that we might ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... gamefish which swarmed in the depths. Rarely did such an evening pass without a long fight with a leaping pampano or a sea bass: with thirty or forty pounds of desperate muscle at the other end of a hundred-yard line, the song of reel was sweet. One night he brought in an eighty-pound barracuda but usually the larger fish cost him line, leader ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... silk," one length must be cut first, then other strands laid on it,—as many as are needed to form the thickness required. They should be carefully laid in the same direction as they leave the reel or card. If placed carelessly backwards and forwards, they are sure to fray, and will not work evenly together. With silk still more than with crewel, it is necessary to thread all the strands through the needle together, ...
— Handbook of Embroidery • L. Higgin
... I saw her reel against the side of the window, every trace of color deserting her face, her eyes staring down into the darkness. She gasped for breath, yet answered, before a thought ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... it reel, he's play'd it jig, And the baith alternative; And he's danced Sir Hew to the Asses' Brigg, That's ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... kiss him, and he did go. But as she was still lingering in the room, putting away a book, or a reel of thread, and then sitting down to think what the morrow would bring forth, the doctor again came into the room in his dressing-gown, and ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... love is pledged to Ireland's fight; My love would die for Ireland's weal, To win her back her ancient right, And make her foemen reel. Oh! close I'll clasp him to my breast When homeward from the war he comes; The fires shall light the mountain's crest, The valley peal with drums. Twinkle, twinkle, pretty spindle; let the white wool drift and dwindle. Oh! we weave a damask doublet for my love's coat of steel. ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... do! It's what the English call the Virginia Reel. But why do you ask? I thought we were talking about your reading. I don't see how you could get an old file of a daily newspaper, but if it amuses you! Is it ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... her forehead, he askd her what kinde of clooths she had on, answered she had two homespun coats, one tuct up rounde her ye other down. The next day she namd a person calling her goody Clauson, & sd there she is sitting on a reel, & again sd she saw her sit on ye pommel of a chair, saying Ime sure you are a witch, elce you coulde not sit so & sd she saw this person before namd at times for a week together. One time she sd she saw her and describd her whole attire, her [master]? went immediately & saw ye woman namd exactly ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... forth, David had associated himself with two or three of the numerous Highland loungers who always graced the gates of the castle with their presence, and was capering and dancing full merrily in the doubles and full career of a Scotch foursome reel, to the music of his own whistling. In this double capacity of dancer and musician he continued, until an idle piper, who observed his zeal, obeyed the unanimous call of seid suas (i.e. blow up), and relieved him from the latter ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... that the matters themselves will be handled amiss and bungled. But if one can only keep the mind off, or distract it by work, or beguile it by a book, a walk, a talk, how easily the thread spins off the reel, how quietly one comes to harbour on the Saturday evening, with ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... used to say, 'Come here, Lugenia.' She and me would work together. She wanted me to reel for her. Ain't you never seen these reels? They turn like a spinning-wheel, but it is made indifferent. You turn till the thing pops, then you tie it; then it's ready to go to the loom. It is in hanks after it leaves the reel and it is ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... that helmsman bold? The captain saw him reel, His nerveless hands released their task, He sank beside the wheel. The wave received his lifeless corse, Blackened with smoke and fire. God rest him! Never hero had A nobler ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... something—anything. Tell Lazette that as a town it's forty miles behind Dry Bottom. That will stir up public spirit and boom our subscription list. You see, Potter, civic pride is a big asset to a newspaper. We'll start a row right off the reel. Furthermore, we're going to have some telegraph news. I'll make ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... cast there was a splash and a sudden silvery gleam, and a tightening of the line. Then the reel clinked furiously, a bright shape flashed through the froth of the eddy, and went down, after which the line ripped athwart the surface of the pool. Weston, who whipped up the net, ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... the vessel reel, When, to the battery's deadly peal, The crashing broadside makes reply'? Or else, as at the glorious Nile, Hold grappling ships, that strive the ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... reel life as against real life! We are not shown how she yearns for the activities of her old career; we are not shown the feeling she constantly has that she is too good for housekeeping. If she has been fortunate enough to ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... and spreading small branches, brush, and armfuls of a dry, brittle shrub. But all three ceased from their exertions to watch Wemple as he shot the car backward down the V and up. The car seemed first to stand on one end, then on the other, and to reel drunkenly and to threaten to turn over into the sump-hole when its right front wheel fell into the air where the road had ceased to be. But the hind wheels bit and climbed the grade ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... reeling in his line, hooked the drop-fly into the reel-guide, shifted his creel, buttoned on the landing-net, and quietly turned around and inspected ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... droning sound Of waves that filled the watery round, She heard a distant shout and din— The levees of the upper land Had crumbled like a wall of sand, And the wild floods were pouring in! She saw the straining dyke give way— The quaking trestle reel and sway. Yet hold together, bravely, still! She saw the rushing waters drown The piers, while ever sucking down ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... sing just as well as the original? and is it not true that "almost any man you please could reel it off for days together"? Anything will do that speaks of forgetting people, and of being forsaken, and about the sunset, and the ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... means this? Wherefore dost thou start? Know'st thou that man?" Poor Lamia answer'd not. He gaz'd into her eyes, and not a jot Own'd they the lovelorn piteous appeal: More, more he gaz'd: his human senses reel: Some hungry spell that loveliness absorbs; There was no recognition in those orbs. 260 "Lamia!" he cried—and no soft-toned reply. The many heard, and the loud revelry Grew hush; the stately music no more breathes; The ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... of drawers, with a small looking-glass, ornamented by a sprig of asparagus, a dresser of rough pine shelves on the right of the fireplace, and a cupboard on the left, a half-dozen chip-bottomed chairs, a spinning-wheel, and a reel and jack, completed ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... him. Major Stokes joined me and we soon found a deep pool just at the edge of camp. His fishing tackle was very much like mine, so when we saw Captain Martin coming toward us with elegant jointed rod, shining new reel, and a camp stool, we felt rather crestfallen. Captain Martin passed on and seated himself comfortably on the bank just below us, but Major Stokes and I went down the bank to the edge of the pool where we were compelled to ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... thus fulfilled, his followers began to reel; they seemed dismayed at the fate of their chief, beheld their companions drop like the leaves in autumn, and suddenly halted in the midst of their career. The Imperialists, observing the confusion of the enemy, redoubled their fire; and, raising a dreadful shout, advanced in order to improve ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... remarked Mrs. Hodgkins, "but hearin' the things I've got ter tell will interest ye, an' make ye feel reel perky. Ye needn't feel ye've got ter talk, fer I kin talk 'nough ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... hastily from the restraining clutch of Gladys, who, following her closely, saw her reel backward as if in shrinking affright from a shadowy figure standing in ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... large mouth, and did she not lack half a score or a dozen front teeth she might pass and make a figure among the fairest. I say nothing of her lips, for they are so thin that, were it the fashion to reel lips, one might make a skein of them; but, being of a different color from what is usual in lips, they have a marvellous appearance, for they are streaked with blue, green, and orange-tawny. Pardon me, good my lord governor, if I paint so minutely the parts of her who is about to become ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... In fancy he could see himself swaying, writhing, reeling, battered about by those heavy fists, but always with his hands on the thick neck, squeezing out its life. He could feel, absolutely feel, the last reel and stagger of that great bulk crashing down, dragging him with it, till it lay upturned, still. He covered his eyes with his hands. . . . Thank God! The ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... itself?—though that shall soon be humming and whizzing too. This is but the whirling centre of the ever-spreading wheel of force that has begun to turn at New Zion. Coalchester will spin soon, and then the disappointed fields around it, then the neighbouring towns would join the reel, and so on and on, faster and faster, madder and madder, till even London itself moves, and the world that changes its axis at the will of any strong spirit will whirl its immeasurable velocities around the ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... or drum; which will be turned round by a steam engine on deck, and thus wind up the cable, while the ELBA slowly steams ahead. The cable is not wound round and round the drum as your silk is wound on its reel, but on the contrary never goes round more than six times, going off at one side as it comes on at the other, and going down into the hold of the ELBA to be coiled along in ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... would be foremost To lead such dire attack; But those behind cried, "Forward!" And those before cried, "Back!" And backward now and forward Wavers the deep array; And on the tossing sea of steel To and frow the standards reel; And the ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... returned to the ward to attend to other (and generally less entertaining) duties until such time as it was proper to repair to the Clean Linen Store. The staff of the Clean Linen Store, a huge department whose system of book-keeping is enough to make the brain reel (for here sheets, etc., are dealt with not in dozens but in thousands), had in the interim received your chit from their colleagues of the Dirty Linen Store. These latter, rashly or otherwise, had guaranteed its accuracy by initialing it. Accordingly, in the ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... such as Dionysus and Aphrodite love. Hence the song they sing is an invitation to Aphrodite and the Loves to join in their dance and revel; while the other (I should have said that they have two songs) contains instructions to the dancers: 'Forward, lads: foot it lightly: reel it bravely' (i.e. dance actively). It is the same with the chain dance, which is performed by men and girls together, dancing alternately, so as to suggest the alternating beads of a necklace. A youth leads off the dance: his active steps are such as will hereafter be of use to him ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... despite all legislative restrictions. At last Columbia with one hand on her head, and the other on her heart, began to reel on her throne, and Abraham Lincoln seized his pen and signed the proclamation, "Universal Emancipation." Then the whole world said: "It's forever settled." So the liquor question will be settled as was the slavery question, ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... came leaping upon the tortured girl in the stand, Cynthe rose to her feet. She expected to hear the girl stammer and blurt out something that would give them a chance to ask her further questions. But when she saw the girl reel and quiver in pain, when she saw her gasp for breath and self-control, when she saw the hunted agony in her eyes, a great light broke in upon the heart of Cynthe Cardinal. Here was not a pale girl of the convent who could not know what ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... ae straik that Forbes strack, He garrt Macdonell reel, An' the neist ae straik that Forbes strack, The ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various
... Joe went on, "but I don't mind. I like it. And I'm not so foolish as to think that I'm going to go in, right off the reel, and become the star pitcher of the team. I guess I'll have to sit back, and warm the bench for quite a considerable time before I'm called on to pull the game ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... prison walls Suddenly seemed to reel, And the sky above my head became Like a casque of scorching steel; And, though I was a soul in pain, My pain I could ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... the animal in most cases falling as if it had received a blow on the head. It may stagger and reel some time before going down. After falling, there are convulsive movements of the legs or the animal sinks into insensibility. There may be remissions in the severity of the symptoms, but the pressure from the continued ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... May," "When I was a Shoemaker," "Do, do, pity my Case," "As we go round the Mulberry Bush," "Who'll be the Binder?" "Oats, Pease, Beans, and Barley grows." Mr. Newell includes in this category, also, that well-known dance, the "Virginia Reel," which he interprets as an imitation of weaving, something akin to the "Hemp-dressers' Dance," of the time of ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... as to catch the gale Round veered the flapping sail, Death! was the helmsman's hail Death without quarter! Mid-ships with iron keel Struck we her ribs of steel; Down her black hulk did reel ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... experience, ten months wedded, disappointedly awakened, enlivened by the hour, kindled by a novel figure of man, fretful for a dash of imprudence. This Mrs. Radnor should be the one to second her very innocent turn for a galopade; her own position allowed of any little diverting jig or reel, or plunge in a bath—she required it, for the domestic Jacob Blathenoy was a dry chip: proved such, without a day's variation during the whole of the ten wedded months. Nataly gratified her spoken wish. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... fifth day she seemed to want something else. Prompted by a kindred feeling, one of the loafers suggested that "She wants another round." His guess was right, and having got it, that abandoned old Bear began to reel, but she was quite good-natured about it, and at length lay down under a table, where her loud snores proclaimed to all that she was asleep—beastly drunk, and asleep—just like one of the lords ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... reel of dental floss from his waistcoat pocket and, breaking off a piece, twanged it smartly between two and two of his resonant ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... set her reel jack in the corner, and untie and drop the paper blinds before the two windows, and light the tallow ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... her wistfully in pity for the little weak figure that would reel beneath the blow of ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... and miserably fair in recounting Jennie's attractions as contrasted with her own. She, Dorothea, could, at demand, which was seldom, reel off pages of poetry; Jennie could sing—to appreciative audiences. Dorothea could swim and dive; Jennie had curly hair. Plainly, Jennie had all the best of it. It remained only for Dorothea not to forget the courtesy due a guest and, above all, oh, above everything, not to show the ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... searching for the "cells" or the "centres" which control the creative faculty. Some stolid German will discover these cells somewhere in the occipital lobes, another German will agree with him, a third will disagree, and a Russian will glance through the article about the cells and reel off an essay about it to the Syeverny Vyestnik. The Vyestnik Evropi will criticize the essay, and for three years there will be in Russia an epidemic of nonsense which will give money and popularity to blockheads and do ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... Sercombe's English ears—began his invitation to the dance, and in a few moments the floor was, in a tumult of reels. The girls, unacquainted with their own country's dances, preferred looking on, and after watching reel and strathspey for some time, altogether declined attempting either. But by and by it was the turn of the clanspeople to look on while the lady of the house and her sons danced a quadrille or two with their visitors; after which the chief and his brother pairing with the two elder girls, the ladies ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... like a telegraph instrument, with its insistant clickety click-click-click, only it is a hundred times as loud. Indeed I have been told by French officers that it has sometimes been used as a telegraph instrument, so accurately can its operator reel out its hundred and sixty ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... bands, inserted through the covers." Professor Lewis Patton's list of the contents of the microfilms in the Duke University Library (Library Notes, No. 27, April, 1953) describes them as vellum bound, the back cover of the Mathilda notebook being missing. Lord Abinger's notebooks are on Reel 11. The Bodleian notebook is catalogued as MSS. Shelley d. 1, the Shelley-Rolls fragments as MSS. Shelley adds ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... Dick and I parted company. By three o'clock I came again to the River, far up, halfway to the Big Falls. Deuce watched me gravely. With the first click of the reel he retired to the brush away from the back cast, there to remain until the pool was fished and ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... driven and controlled by means of two fine steel wires wound on reels in the torpedo, the reels being geared to the propeller shafts. The wires are led to corresponding reels on shore, and these are rapidly revolved by means of an engine. A brake on each shore reel controls the torpedo. The speed of all these torpedoes is about 19 knots, and their ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... way, but when the doctor comes round he assumes a convincing air of semi-convalescence, and refers darkly to his old wound. The doctor is not in the least taken in, but is indulgent, and not too curious. As soon as his back is turned, Jock is executing a reel in the middle of ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... nothing. His ears could discern evidences of movement, and he heard guttural voices calling at a distance, but to the vision all was black. The distance those faint sounds appeared away made his head reel, and he shrank cowering back against the girl's body, closing his eyes and sinking ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... didn't tell you. Miss Forrester is to come to the Park. She is not coming because Mr Harbottle is dead. That's only a coincidence. We are not going to be married quite at once,—straight off the reel, you know. I shall have to go to Winchester for that. But now that old Harbottle has gone, I'll get the day fixed; you see if I don't. But I must really be off, Miss Lawrie. Mr Hall will be terribly vexed if I don't find Gordon, and there's ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... fathoms already, Captain, but, judging from the rate the reel goes at, we are still some distance ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... true, he is my father; but when nature Is dead in him, why should it live in me? What have I done that I am banished Rome, The world's delight, and my soul's joy, Lucretia, And sent to reel with midnight beasts in Almain! I cannot, will not, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... barbarous men Were slain by hundreds to each ten Of the King's brave well-armoured folk, No wonder if their charges broke To nothing, on the walls of steel, And back the baffled hordes must reel. So stood throughout a summer day Scarce touched the King's most fair array, Yet as it drew to even-tide The foe still surged on every side, As hopeless hunger-bitten men, About his folk grown wearied then. Therewith the King beheld that crowd Howling ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... Horn was a south-easterly one, which brought the wind nicely over the starboard quarter, and the breeze was of just the right strength to enable us to show the whole of our starboard flight of studding-sails to it, and to handsomely reel off our eleven knots per hour by the log. Under these circumstances we were not long in running the island out of sight; and with its disappearance below the horizon I hoped that my troubles— except, of course, such as ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... sword, dressing the buckler high to guard his head. The giant struck with all his strength upon the shield, so that the mountain rang like an anvil. The stroke was stark, and Arthur stood mazed at the blow, but he was hardy and strong, and did not reel. When the king came to himself, and marked the shield shattered on his arm, he was marvellously wroth. He raised his sword and struck full at the giant's brow. The blow was shrewd, and would have brought ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... and a tail like a comet. Her impish eyes expressed an alarm that was more than half simulated, and the task of manoeuvring her into position beside the mounting block, was comparable only to an endeavour to extract a kitten from under a bed with the lure of a reel of cotton. An apple took the place of the reel of cotton, and its consumption afforded Christian just time enough to settle herself in her saddle. Since the days of Harry the Residue Christian had ridden many and various horses, ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... his benefit. He vouchsafed some remark to the effect that fighting duels was the natural amusement of young gentlemen, and that if one of them killed another there was at least one fool the less in society; after which he looked about him for some young beauty to whom he might reel off a score of compliments. He knew all the time that he was making a great effort, that he felt unaccountably ill, and that he wished he had taken his wife's advice and stayed quietly at home. But at the end of the evening he chanced to overhear a remark that Valdarno was making to Casalverde, ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... at ease; Be not offended, love! was often said; To frantick rage the sight her sposo led, Who, beating in his hat, was on the move To sally forth, his wrath to let them prove, To thrash his wife, and force her spark to feel his nervous arm could quickly make him reel. ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... Lord shall one day seek far and wearily for a prophet, and seek in vain. The word rendered 'wander,' which is used in the other description of people seeking for water in a literal drought (iv. 8), means 'reel,' and gives the picture of men faint and dizzy with thirst, yet staggering on in vain quest for a spring. They seek everywhere, from the Dead Sea on the east to the Mediterranean on the west, and then up to the north, and so round ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... happy groom about Upon their shoulders; how the bride Was kissed a hunderd times beside The one I give her,—tel she cried And laughed untel she like to died! I might go on and tell you all About the supper—and the BALL.— You'd ought to see me twist my heel Through jest one old Furginny reel Afore you die! er tromp the strings Of some old fiddle tel she sings Some old cowtillion, don't you know, That putts ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... foam-licked rock. It swung to and fro a moment, then slid on again towards the still black stretch behind the stone, tightened there suddenly, and ran, tense and straight, upstream again, while the reel ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... bright, and with such an attraction I expected something heavy. My float was a large-sized pike-float for live bait, and this civilized sign had been only a few minutes in the wild waters of the Atbara, when, bob! and away it went! I had a very large reel, with nearly three hundred yards of line that had been specially made for monsters; down went the top of my rod, as though a grindstone was suspended on it, and, as I recovered its position, away went the line, and the reel revolved, not with the sudden dash of a spirited fish, but with the steady ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... the storm-tried tree, But, wrestling for the mastery, He bowed and straightened, writhed and shook, And firmer of the rock he took A tightening clutch with grip of steel, Nor once the storm-fiend made him reel; And when his weary foe passed by, Still towered he proudly to ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... Barlow felt himself reel at this sudden confirmation of his fears—the blow. The cry "Kurban" that he had heard on the bridge was ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... out simultaneously. The sore-stricken leviathan stopped, shuddered and reeled, smitten to death. For a few moments she floundered and wallowed in the vast masses of foaming water that rose up round her—and when they sank she took a mighty sideward reel and followed them. ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... parlour for informal dancing, and wound up the party with an old-fashioned Virginia reel, which was led by Mr. and ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... collections of the 'British Poets.' And really, if you will insist on odious comparisons, they were not so very much below the verses of an amiable prime minister known to us all. Yet, because they wanted vital stamina, not only they fell, but, in falling, they caused the earl to reel much more than any commoner would have done. Now, on the other hand, a kinsman of Lord Carlisle, viz., Lord Byron, because he brought real genius and power to the effort, found a vast auxiliary ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... was made at this point by the bursting into the room of Jarman, who upon perceiving Mrs. Peedles, at once gave vent to a hoot, supposed to be expressive of Scottish joy, and without a moment's hesitation commenced to dance a reel. ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... only plays mothers, and you know what that means in moving pictures. Ever see a moving-picture mother that had a chance to be happy for more than the first ten feet of film? You certainly got to cry to hold down that job. Ain't she always jolted quick in the first reel by the husband getting all ruined up in Wall Street, or the child getting stole, or the daughter that's just budding into womanhood running off with a polished shoe-drummer with city ways, or the only son robbing a bank, or husband taking up with a lady adventuress that lives across the hall ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... water, and if the paving has moved, it cannot be done without raising the plug-box; but this is, however, the easiest mode of using firecocks, and where there is a considerable pressure of water, if the watchmen or the police are supplied with a hose-reel and branch-pipe, they can, in enclosed premises, direct a jet on the fire while the engines are being prepared, and if they cannot reach the fire, they will have water ready for the engine ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... class of men have suffered more from the evils of intemperance than our brave sailors, fishermen, and rivermen. Foreigners tell our missionaries to convert our drunken sailors abroad, and when they wish to personify an Englishman, they mockingly reel about like a drunken man. And what lives have been lost through the intemperance of captains and crews! The 'St. George,' with 550 men: 'The Kent,' 'East Indiaman,' with most of her passengers and crew: 'The Ajax,' ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... caught in Walden pickerel, one weighing seven pounds—to say nothing of another which carried off a reel with great velocity, which the fisherman safely set down at eight pounds because he did not see him—perch and pouts, some of each weighing over two pounds, shiners, chivins or roach (Leuciscus pulchellus), a very few breams, and a couple of eels, ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... watching, were lying over their horses' necks. Arizona was the first to shoot. Again his gun belched a death-dealing shot. Tresler saw one figure reel and fall with a groan. Then his own gun was heard. His aim was less effective, and only brought a volley in reply from the raiders. That volley was the signal for the real battle to begin. The ambush of the two defenders was located, and the rustlers divided, and came ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... her image—does it make your brain reel round? But all of this is over. Well, friend—various signs (I found Too late on rumination) then ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... the fire escape, he ran to the window, fastened the straps about his waist and climbed out of the window. He pulled the string that was to unreel the rope and let him down. Down, down, he went expecting every moment to feel the fierce heat about him. He seemed to be half way down when the reel ceased to work and he hung there suspended in mid air awaiting an awful death. He gave a despairing jerk when down he went within three feet of the pavement with a sudden stop that took his breath away. A crowd of people ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... champions. Hope of every kind deserted her. Resolving to die by herself in some lonely spot, she got down from her chariot to horse, and fled out of the field. Rinaldo saw the flight; and though one of the knights that remained to her struck him such a blow as made him reel in his saddle, he despatched the man with another like a thunderbolt, and then galloped after ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... pale, penetrable, fleecy wreaths in the heaven, to give light upon the earth, which move together, hand in hand, company by company, troop by troop, so measured in their unity of motion, that the whole heaven seems to roll with them, and the earth to reel under them. Ask Claude, or his brethren, for that. And then wait yet for one hour until the east again becomes purple,[52] and the heaving mountains, rolling against it in darkness, like waves of a wild sea, are drowned one by one ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... invitation to a crossroads tavern, frequented by poor whites and enlisted men, or when the nights were warm, to a moonlit sward, on which he would invite his audience to a reel which left all breathless. While there was a rollicking element in the strains of his fiddle which a deacon could not resist, he, with the intuition of genius, adapted himself to the class before him. In the parlor, he called off the ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... business to his son Allan, and go into parliament himsel'—goodness kens they need some douce, sensible men there. Hear to the fiddles! I feel them in the soles o' my feet! I never could sit still when 'Moneymusk' was tingling in my ear chambers. Come awa', factor, and let us hae a reel thegither!" ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... made him reel backward. Was the entire American army marching away from camp, leaving him behind who was bound to ...
— A Little Dusky Hero • Harriet T. Comstock
... after the noontide is the Niblung host embayed, And betwixt the sheltering nesses the ocean-wind is laid: No whit they brook delaying: but their noblest and their best Toss up the shaven oar-blades, and toil and mock at rest: Full swift they skim the swan-mead till the tall masts quake and reel, And the oaken sea-burgs quiver from bulwark unto keel. It is Gunnar goes the foremost with the tiller in his hand, And beside him standeth Knefrud and laughs on Atli's land: And so fair are the dragons driven, that by ending of the day On the beach by the ebb left naked ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... with arching foot, with eyes upraised, with clasped adoring hands—waiting, watching, trembling, praying, for the trumpet's call to rise from dust for ever!—Ah, vision too fearful of shuddering humanity on the brink of abysses! vision that didst start back—that didst reel away—like a shrivelling scroll from before the wrath of fire racing on the wings of the wind! Epilepsy so brief of horror—wherefore is it that thou canst not die? Passing so suddenly into darkness, wherefore is it that still thou sheddest ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... essentially varied; for I cannot resist the belief, that the boy who learned to read and write as he did, who taught his fellow slaves these precious acquirements as he did, who plotted for their mutual escape as he did, would, when a man at bay, strike a blow which would make slavery reel and stagger. Furthermore, blows and insults he bore, at the moment, without resentment; deep but suppressed emotion rendered him insensible to their sting; but it was afterward, when the memory of them went seething through his brain, breeding a fiery indignation ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... "you don't mean to say you are going to read it right off the reel, like that, when we have been bothering ourselves with it so long, and ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr
... make our swords our gods (Hab. i. 11, 16). The Church has always been prone to hero-worship, and to the idolatry of its organisation, its methods, or its theology. Augustine did so and so; Luther smote the 'whited wall' (the Pope) a blow that made him reel; the Pilgrim Fathers carried a slip of the plant of religious liberty in a tiny pot across the Atlantic, and watered it with tears till it has grown a great tree; the Wesleys revived a formal Church,—let us sing hallelujahs to these great names! By all means; but do not let us forget ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... sun's a star, too close to be seen properly; the earth's a star, too close to be seen at all... too many pebbles on the beach; ought all to be put in rings; too many blades of grass to study... feathers on a bird make the brain reel; wait till the big bag is unpacked... may all be put ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... worst. Carrington was not the first man who had thought her perfect. To hear this word suddenly used again, which had never been uttered to her before except by lips now dead and gone, made her brain reel. She seemed to hear her husband once more telling her that she was perfect. Yet against this torture, she had a better defence. She had long since hardened herself to bear these recollections, and ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... down over his coat. His beard had been prepared in holy land, and was patriarchal. He never shaved and rarely trimmed it. It was glossy, soft, clean, and altogether not unprepossessing. It was such that ladies might desire to reel it off and work it into their patterns in lieu of floss silk. His complexion was fair and almost pink; he was small in height and slender in limb, but well-made; and his voice was ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... something about books into which my stories have been pressed. I was always given to telling tales, but of course my great time was when Lord Morris and I would sit trying to cap one another. If he were ever too idle to remember an anecdote of his own, he would reel off one of mine: as for his own fund of stories and humour ever approaching exhaustion, that was not to be thought of. He was far and away the wittiest man I ever met, and if I do not quote one of his tales on this page it is because ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... libbaty to divulj the reel names of the 2 Eroes of the igstrawny Tail which I am abowt to relait to those unlightnd paytrons of letarature and true connyshures of merrit—the great Brittish public—But I pledj my varacity that this singlar story of rewmantic love, absobbing pashn, and likewise of GENTEEL ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... so powerful and straight to its mark (which was a jaw), that Big Tom's breath went—as his toes tipped up, and he began to reel backward, fanning the ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... my senses reel, So horror stricken at heart I feel; Thinking how like a fast stream we range Nearer and nearer to that dread change, When the body becomes so stark and cold, And man doth crumble away ...
— Mollie Charane - and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise
... wastrels, the failures, the general riff-raff of civilization who drifted into crime.... Strange that men of brains had never realized its extraordinary opportunities.... I played with the idea.... What a magnificent field—what unlimited possibilities! It made my brain reel.... ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... wheel, They themselves make the Reel, 20 And their Music's a prey which they seize; It plays not for them,—what matter! 'tis their's; And if they had care it has scattered their cares, While they dance, crying, ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... you to let your lawyers 'tend to this, Dick, and for you not to poke your nose into this neck of the woods. But you had to come, and right hot off the reel you hand one to this Pesky fellow, or whatever you call him. Didn't I tell you that you can't bat these greasers over the head the way you can the Poles in ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... it. I learned a lovely Highland schottische, too; and after I had seen others dancing the reels (ought I to say foursomes or eightsomes?) I tried those too, and got on well, everybody said. But the reel is a dance you can dance only with your own hair. Mine, which I had pinned up very neatly, came down. And one of the girls had a curl come off. Luckily she didn't seem to care. She said that accidents would happen ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... for suppers in a New York night-house was too cruel and unendurable. I lost courage to pursue my cold, calm, reasonable deductions, a kind of hallucination came upon me—a mental picture of the hideous scene— and I felt my reason reel. With a great effort I turned to the portrait of my father, gazed at it long, and spoke to him as if he could have heard me, aloud, in abject entreaty. "Help ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... had become tangled and beaten down by wind and rain. In 1831, he produced his first practicable machine, making every part of it himself by hand. Its three essential features have never been changed—a vibrating cutting-blade, a reel to bring the grain within reach of the blade, and a platform to receive the falling grain. ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... they cannot lift their heads nor feel the light air breathe through them; but if they drink in only the glad supply they need, they stand erect, they shoot apace, and reach maturity of fruitage. So we, too, if we drench our throats with over-copious draughts, (50) ere long may find our legs begin to reel and our thoughts begin to falter; (51) we shall scarce be able to draw breath, much less to speak a word in season. But if (to borrow language from the mint of Gorgias (52)), if only the attendants will bedew us with a frequent mizzle ...
— The Symposium • Xenophon |
