"Thread" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thou mayst pass every night &c: To Brig o' Dread thou comest at last and Christ &c: [fol. 114 verso] no brader than a thread. ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... capital fallacies of the author. To break the thread of my discourse as little as possible, I have thrown into the margin many instances, though God knows far from the whole of his inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and want of common care. I think myself ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... think yourself but one among the many threads which make up the texture of the doublet. You should aim at being like men in general—just as your thread has no ambition either to be anything distinguished compared with the other threads. But I desire to be the purple—that small and shining part which makes the rest seem fair and beautiful. Why then do you bid ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... extinguished. Then I remembered with a shudder that I should have to pass through the whole vast length of the building in order to gain an exit. It was an all but hopeless task in the profound darkness to thread my way through the labyrinth of halls and corridors, of tumble-down stairs, of bat-haunted vaults, of purposeless angles and involutions; but I proceeded with something of a blind obstinacy, groping my ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... was, that, as Albinia surmised, Mr. Kendal could not recal the finale of their interview, and having lost the thread of the rigmarole, did not know to what his silence had been supposed to assent. Next, Algernon conquered his uncle by representing Lucy as on the road to an atrophy, and persuading him that he should be much safer on the Continent with a wife than without one: and though the two ladies ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... quickly) 274. [start riding] embark, board, set out, hit the road, get going, get underway. peg on, jog on, wag on, shuffle on; stir one's stumps; bend one's steps, bend one's course; make one's way, find one's way, wend one's way, pick one's way, pick one's way, thread one's way, plow one's way; slide, glide, coast, skim, skate; march in procession, file on, defile. go to, repair to, resort to, hie to, betake oneself to. Adj. traveling &c. v.; ambulatory, itinerant, peripatetic, roving, rambling, gadding, discursive, vagrant, migratory, monadic; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... grouping of pillars and arches, forming a complete unity that must have taxed the brain of the architect to its greatest extent. But greater as work of intellect is this digest of all theological richness for one thousand years, in which the thread of discourse is never lost sight of, but winds through a labyrinth of important discussions and digressions, all bearing on the fundamental truths which Paul declared ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... the diameter, the line passing through its centre, and the history of every other nation is represented by a chord marking off a smaller segment of the circle. The history of the Jewish people is like an axis crossing the history of mankind from one of its poles to the other. As an unbroken thread it runs through the ancient civilization of Egypt and Mesopotamia, down to the present-day culture of France and Germany. Its divisions are ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... that they might rejoice together; but Amile said, Dame! let [15] the children sleep. And it was already the hour of Tierce. And going in alone to the children to weep over them, he found them at play in the bed; only, in the place of the sword-cuts about their throats was as it were a thread of crimson. And he took them in his arms and carried them to his wife and said, Rejoice greatly, for thy children whom I had slain by the commandment of the angel are alive, and by their ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... minds of all people, through the apertures of time, with new threads of knowledge like a garland of flowers, be pleased to accept this my thread of Eastern thought, offered, though it be small, with ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... songs she sang, Pursing her lips to fit the tiny pipe, They trickled from me like a slender spring That strings frail wood-growths on its crystal thread, Nor dreams of glassing cities, bearing ships. She sang, and bore me through the April world Matching the birds, doubling the insect-hum In the meadows, under the low-moving airs, And breathings of the scarce-articulate air When it makes mouths ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... other. She sat down on an old sofa; he remained standing. And in the midst of a little conversation about Mrs Orgreave's indisposition, and the absence of the members of the family (she said she had refused an invitation to go with Janet and Alicia to Hillport), she broke the thread, and remarked— ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... preponderating reasons was that, although he felt himself competent to the higher duties of the office, there was, for what he conceived "a proper management of the Treasury, a necessity for a mass of mechanical labor connected with details, forms, calculating, etc., which having lost sight of the thread and routine, he could not think of again learning and going through." He was aware that there was "much confusion due to the changes of office and the state of the currency, and thought that an active young man could alone reinstate ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... by trees, and none saw their beauty but the sun by day, and the moon by night, and the eyes of the stars. The old woman kept the girls hard at work, from morning till night, spinning gold flax into yarn, and when one distaff was empty another was given them, so they had no rest. The thread had to be fine and even, and when done was locked up in a secret chamber by the old woman, who twice or thrice every summer went a journey. Before she went she gave out work for each day of her absence, ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... Divels, that Grandmas affright their children withal, but only the pleasant and well grounded discourses of the Learned as an object adequate to thy wise understanding." An outline was offered, but it was nothing more than a thread upon which to hang good stories. They were tales of a distant past. There were witches once, of course there were, but that was in the good old days. Such was ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... linen cloth dyed a deep rich purple hue. Then came several pieces of a heavy, rich kind of brocade; then a quantity of thin filmy muslin, fine as if woven of a cobweb, and exquisitely embroidered with a beautiful and intricate design in very fine gold thread. The brocades had been greatly admired by Sibylla, but these embroidered muslins ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... smoothness, facility, pleasing quality. Nevertheless, there came an end to the popularity of Haendel. A most shabby pasticcio called the "Beggar's Opera," was the immediate cause of his downfall. This queer compilation was made up of old ballad tunes, with hastily improvised words, and the merest thread of a story, and included some tunes of Haendel's own. This being produced at an opposition house, took the town. The result was that Haendel was bankrupted for the second time, owing more ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... them. He's the correspondent of the New York Eye. What's worse, they don't do anything. Here it is the third of August, and not a ball has been given—just little things among themselves that you can't get at. It's enough to drive a fellow to drink. I've faked till my poor imagination is worn to a thread; the papers have to have news. But I've done one big thing this summer,—a corking beat. Did you notice half-way down the avenue a new house surrounded by a big stone wall? That's the new Belhaven house. ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... single form, however, but as a moving stream of impressions, paid out of the volume in a slender thread as we turn the pages—that is how the book reaches us; or in another image it is a procession that passes before us as we sit to watch. It is hard to think of this lapse and flow, this sequence of figures and scenes, which must be taken in a settled order, one after another, ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... charmed with the story of love which forms the thread of the tale, and then impressed with the wealth of detail concerning those times. The picture of the manifold sufferings of the people, is never overdrawn, but painted faithfully and honestly by one who spared neither time nor labor in his efforts ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... and wild cotton is put round it for about an inch and a half. It requires considerable practice to put on this cotton well. It must just be large enough to fit the hollow of the tube and taper off to nothing downwards. They tie it on with a thread of the silk- grass to prevent ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... tribute ordained of tribes From age to age, Eochaid's right, on them With equal right devolving. Slow they moved In mantle now of crimson, now of blue, Clasped with huge torque of silver or of gold Just where across the snowy shirt there strayed Tendril of purple thread. With jewelled fronts Beauteous in pride 'mid light of winsome smiles, Over the rushes green with slender foot In silver slipper hid, the ladies passed, Answering with eyes not lips the whispered praise, Or loud the bride extolling—"When was seen ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... the duchess is on the eve of striking a blow for her crown," answered Maurice. "And how are we to make the pass, which is probably filled with soldiers? If only we could find a boat! Ah! what would your Highness call this?" He pointed to a thread-like line of ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... can be established with sufficient exactitude by holding a very thin object right in front of the prism and marking with a stretched thread the direction which leads from the object to its shadow on the screen. The colour-producing edge must then be introduced from either side so that it just ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... volume of sound produced by these voices, as well as by the accompaniment of two pianos and a snare-drum, the voice of Hamilton Gregory, soaring flute-like toward heaven, seemed to dart through the interstices of "rests", to thread its slender way along infinitesimal crevices of silence. One might have supposed that the booming bass, the eager chattering soprano, the tenor with its thin crust of upper layers, and the throaty fillings of the alto, could have left no vantage points for an obligato. ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... he dons a blue-slop, called the Newark frock, which is finely gathered in a square piece of puckerment on the back and breast, on the shoulders and at the wrists; is adorned also, in those parts, with flourishes of white thread, and as invariably has a little white heart stitched in at the bottom of the slit at the neck. A man would not think himself a man, if he had not one of those slops, which are the first things that he sees at a market or a fair, hung aloft ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... state of education, the impediments thrown in his way by the ignorance, the prejudices, the contempt, the carelessness, the indifference of his contemporaries. From the twentieth chapter to the close of the volume he pursues the thread of the Opus Majus, supplying what he had there omitted, correcting and explaining what had been less clearly or correctly expressed in that or in the Opus Minus. In Chapter LII. he apologizes for diverging ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... I believe she owns half the stocks! Zounds! Thomas, she could pay the national debt as easily as I could my washerwoman! She has a lapdog that eats out of gold,—she feeds her parrot with small pearls,—and all her thread-papers ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... little boots were lifted from their corner behind the door, and down sat Margot on the floor, school-girl fashion, and began to thread the laces in and out, and tie them securely into place. Then the deerstalker cap was pinned on top of the chestnut locks, and the straps of the grey cape crossed over the white flannel blouse. Now she was ready, and the ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Susan would come, I'm sure," cried Mary, a little girl whose lap was full of primroses. "She will give me some thread to tie up my nosegays, and she will show me where the fresh violets grow, and she has promised to give me a great bunch of her cowslips to wear to-morrow. I wish ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... afraid to catechize before the congregation: for although your Theological attainments are but slender after all, yet, you know your Bible well; and even if an absurdly wrong answer is given you, you know how to single out from the hank the golden thread of Truth, and to display it before the eyes of men and Angels. And let me tell you, by way of ending the subject, we should hear less about dull sermons, and inattentive congregations, and badly filled churches,—as well as about the astounding ignorance ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... quarter of an hour the storm was as violent, and the thunder and lightning as terrific as on the day before. All outdoor labour was again suspended. Mrs. Seagrave, Juno, and Caroline took their work, for there was plenty to do with the needle and thread, and Ready soon found employment for the rest. William and Mr. Seagrave unlaid some thick rope, that Ready might make smaller and more useful rope with the yarns. Ready took up his sailing needles, and worked eyelet-holes in the canvas screens (which they had put up in a ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... strange metal, thread by thread, To stand out from my lady's head, Not moving much to tangle me. Beata ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... frightened of nothing—I open my cupboards, and look under my bed; I listen—I listen—to what? How strange it is that a simple feeling of discomfort, impeded or heightened circulation, perhaps the irritation of a nervous thread, a slight congestion, a small disturbance in the imperfect and delicate functions of our living machinery, can turn the most lighthearted of men into a melancholy one, and make a coward of the bravest! Then, I go to ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... possess great advantages for the learner, since it is the producing of the pencil lines that really proves the study, the inking in being merely a curtailed repetition of the pencilling. Similarly when the drawing of a piece, such, for example, as a fully developed screw thread, is shown fully developed from end to end, even though the pencil lines were all shown, yet the process of construction will be less clear than if the process of development be shown gradually along the drawing. Thus beginning at an end ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... life that is the reality and the mystery. Life is vastly different from mere chemic matter fluxing in high modes of notion. Life persists. Life is the thread of fire that persists through all the modes of matter. I know. I am life. I have lived ten thousand generations. I have lived millions of years. I have possessed many bodies. I, the possessor of these many bodies, ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... harbour with great eclat, amidst the booming of a hundred cannon. Interpreters put off to meet them and escorted them to the landing-stage, where the District Governor waited to receive them. The Sultan wore a gorgeous turban, a royal sarong worked in thread of gold, and shoes with similar adornments. On landing, the old prince, trembling from top to toe, with despairing glance clutched the arm of the Governor for protection. Never before had he seen the great city of Zamboanga; he was overcome and terrified by its ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... 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
... our opinion that the novel should hark back to its origin and be as a story that is told by mouth to group of listeners, here we momentarily break the thread. ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... boat and arranged his seat in the stern, I prepared my rod and line. The rod is a bamboo, weighing seven ounces, which has to be spliced with a winding of silk thread every time it is used. This is a tedious process; but, by fastening the joints in this way, a uniform spring is secured in the rod. No one devoted to high art would think of using a socket joint. My line ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... a queer little cry of mingled distaste and appreciation, and Anthony hesitated, lost the thread of his discourse, ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... and eaten. And then he ran along one of the ropes to make a closer inspection, but felt a smart sudden burn on the soles of his feet, accompanied by a paralyzing shock, wherefore he let go and swung himself to the earth by a thread of his own spinning, and advised all to hurry at once to camp, lest the monster should appear and get as much interested in the savants as they were in him and his works. So they departed with speed, making notes about the gigantic web as they went. And that evening the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... plateful of walnuts and dried figs. He cracked a walnut and peeled it slowly, still busy with his thoughts. For a while these thoughts were all in a far past; but by-and-by a stray thread carried him down to the year 'fifty-seven— and snapped suddenly. His thoughts always broke off suddenly at the year 'fifty-seven—the Mutiny year. In that year he had won his Victoria Cross and, along with it, ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... does not correspond with the price per cut in any way?- No. Of course the finer the worsted the finer the thread is. ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... these four years contains the names of the most widely known American combinations, a few of which are here given with the years of their formation: 1898, American Thread, National Biscuit; 1899, Amalgamated Copper, American Woolen, Royal Baking Powder, Standard Oil of N.J., American Hide and Leather, United Shoe Machinery, American Window Glass; 1900, Crucible Steel, American Bridge; 1901, United States Steel ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... circumstances would allow. Thirty-four years have now elapsed. His opponents, in his own country or out of it, are at liberty to reiterate that he was born under a lucky star; that he merely took up the thread of German unification where the Frankfort Parliament of 1849 had let it drop; that anybody could have utilized such mighty armaments as those of Prussia with the same effect; that, given total disregard of principle or moral ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... hair stand on end, and possessed of the effulgence of the Sun or the Moon, guarding the entrance. Round his loins was a tiger-skin dripping with blood, and he had a black deer for his upper garment. He had for his sacred thread a large snake. His arms were long and massive and held many kinds of uplifted weapons. He had for his angadas a large snake wound round his upper arm. His mouth seemed to blaze with flames of fire. His teeth made his face terrible ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... subtleties which were beyond our intelligence." An example is the dispute whether "Grace is to the body what good sense is to the mind," or "Grace is to the body what delicacy is to the mind" should be the ultimate form of a maxim. They sometimes drew the spider's thread so fine that ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... sleeping in the sunlight among your pigs, and be giving your young time to improbable sculpture and stagnant water, when there is such a fine adventure awaiting you, and when the Norns are foretelling such high things about you as they spin the thread ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... not complain. The truth was that, despite the dark thread of sober purpose which ran through those tolerably purple hours, he was being excellently entertained. Not by this sad business of scampering from one place of dubious fame to another; not by any reckless sense of rejuvenation to be distilled from the ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... its volcano is extinct And flowers conceal its lava. Percival Was older than his consort, twenty years; Yet were they fitly mated; though, with her, Time had dealt very gently, leaving face And rounded form still youthful, and unmarred By one uncomely outline; hardly mingling A thread of silver in her chestnut hair That affluent needed no deceiving braid. Framed for maternity the matron seemed: Thrice had she been a mother; but the children, The first six winters of her union brought, A boy and girl, were lost to her ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... open beneath them. His speech was full of the most delicious humor; rather a biting humor at times, as we read it now, but it did not seem so in the way he spoke it. It was like a wedding feast: laughter and applause were so frequent that the wonder is that the speaker was able to keep the thread of his discourse. Among a dozen witty passages, he said, "Now I would like to have a law that one-third of our able men should not be eligible for the presidency. Then every third man could be depended on to tell the truth. Listen to Mr. Seward on the prairies; what ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... breathing, sometimes broken by a short groan, and the uneasy tossing of his head on the pillow.... Strange fancies came over Bersenyev. He found himself in the room of a man whose life was hanging on a thread, the man whom, as he knew, Elena loved.... He remembered that night when Shubin had overtaken him and declared that she loved him, him, Bersenyev! And now.... 'What am I to do now?' he asked himself. 'Let ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... invested with the sacred thread, and having concluded his studies, becomes of the ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... old dispensation of Indian supremacy it supplied the natives their principal means of support. Its sap was variously prepared and served as milk, honey, vinegar, beer and brandy. From its tough fiber were made thread, rope, cloth, shoes and paper. The strong flower stalk was used in building houses and the broad leaves ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... like plain, for there is throughout scarcely any inequality higher than my staff, was once covered with well—cultivated fields and happy homes; but now, alas! with brushwood from six to ten feet high,—in truth, by one sea of jungle, through which you have to thread your difficult way along narrow, hot, sandy bridle—paths, (with the sand flies and musquittoes flaying you alive,) which every now and then lead you to some old ruinous court—yard, with the ground strewed ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... articles of instruction for the better conduct of the dyeing business. In an age when unscrupulous English merchants were hurting the market with poorly woven fabrics, French weavers were given careful orders about the quality of the thread, the breadth of the cloth, and the fineness of the weave. It is said that in 1787 the regulations for French manufactures filled eight volumes in quarto; and other governments, while less thorough, were equally convinced of the wisdom ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... was on the occasion of this removal that Jane, then just sixteen years old, presented to Mary Lloyd an interesting specimen of her own needlework—still existing. It is a very small bag, containing a yet smaller rolled-up housewife furnished with minikin needles and fine thread. In the housewife is a tiny pocket, and in the pocket is enclosed a slip of paper, on which, written as with a crow-quill, ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... group, parcel out, allot, distribute, deal; cast the parts, assign the parts; dispose of, assign places to; assort, sort; sift, riddle; put to rights, set to rights, put into shape, put in trim, put in array; apportion. class, classify; divide; file, string together, thread; register &c. (record) 551; catalogue, tabulate, index, graduate, digest, grade. methodize, regulate, systematize, coordinate, organize, settle, fix. unravel, disentangle, ravel, card; disembroil[obs3]; feaze[obs3]. Adj. arranged &c. v.; embattled, in battle array; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... embroidered cloth of gold, and bears a cape of heavier gold thread, sewn with gems. His chest and sleeves are covered with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and pearls. His horse has the fleurs de lys embroidered on saddle and harness. Before him march the Swiss guard under ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... described, and a long hooked nose that supported a huge pair of spectacles such as with many near-sighted people seems to have become a part of their individuality. His nervous system was remarkably developed, and his body might not inaptly be compared to one of the Rhumkorff's bobbins of which the thread, several hundred yards in length, is permeated throughout by electric fluid. But whatever he was, his life, if possible, must be preserved. When he had been partially divested of his clothing, his heart was found to be still beating, though very feebly. Asserting that while there was life ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... murmured. "Well, well! and life too will be over soon. And why should I go on scalding my face like this? Cry about one thing in life, cry about all; one thread runs through the whole piece. And yet we ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... as it was cold; they had begun tearing the skin at the neck and had opened it down to the breast-bone. Caleb took this bird, too, and by and by, sitting down to examine it, he thought he would try to mend the torn skin with the needle and thread he always carried inside his cap. He succeeded in stitching it neatly up, and putting back the feathers in their place the rent was quite concealed. That evening he took the two birds to a man in the village who made a livelihood by collecting bones, rags, ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... of nature's overwhelming instincts, they must be denied the strongest desire of life. The sorrowful mother of drowned kittens mourns under the caressing hand that robbed her; the tumbling puppies are gone and their mother finds no comfort, the little hen bird frets over a scattered thread or feather, vainly striving to build a useless nest; the little yellow-feathered lover shrills his heart out for ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... out has really in one only particular been departed from, but, in the process of its evolution, the thread has considerably stretched. The Clotho of its destiny has spun a longer web than had been foreseen by the writer. On coming to closer quarters with his subject, materials multiplied beyond his expectations, and but for the pruning knife, the result ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... He's my ain meenister." (She has a pillow in her mouth now, but though she is shaking it as a terrier would a rat, and drawing on the linen slip at the same time, she is still intelligible between the jerks). "Susanna says his sermon is like claith made o' soond 'oo [wool] wi' a guid twined thread, an' wairpit an' weftit wi' doctrine. Susanna kens her Bible weel, but she's never gaed forrit." (To 'gang forrit' is to take the communion). "Dr. F? I ca' him the greetin' doctor! He's aye dingin' the ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... already a hundred windles were turning, loaded with flax, girls and youths, with nimble fingers, were winding thread as fine as hair. ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... have desired to take up the thread of that tradition, nine centuries old; and the story of his own foundation of the town has become legendary and epic. One popular description represents him as snatching a halberd from one of his soldiers, cutting two strips ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... until the line of the extension became a vanishing thread in the distance, and then was content to let the glass sweep the vastnesses beyond. When she spoke it was ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... hardships and baleful uncertainties, had its occasional brighter thread. The American boys feel especially grateful to Mr. Merle V. Arnold, of. Lincoln, Nebraska, the American Y. M. C. A. man who had been captured by the Red Guards a few days preceding their capture. He was able to do things for them when they reached Moscow. ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... which the fine thread is spun are very different. Caterpillars use it chiefly as a means of providing a warm covering while in the chrysalis stage: so also do some beetles. The spider uses its silk to build cunning traps for unwary flies. The ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... their immobility, had crept out of the stone wall which they were standing near, and lay flashing its keen eyes at them, and running out its tongue, a forked thread of tremulous scarlet. Maxwell brought his heel down upon its head as he spoke, and ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... the cardinal, echoing the queen's last words with a sort of irony; "no, no! don't break that thread," he ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... his window could from time to time catch the smell of eucalyptus trees coming to him in long aromatic breaths mingled with the odour of wet grass and fresh paint. Somewhere he heard a hummingbird singing, a tiny tweedling thread of song, while farther off two roosters were crowing back and forth at each other with strained and ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... Whose presence seemed the sweet income And womanly atmosphere of home,— Called up her girlhood memories, The huskings and the apple-bees, The sleigh-rides and the summer sails, Weaving through all the poor details And homespun warp of circumstance A golden woof-thread of romance. For well she kept her genial mood And simple faith of maidenhood; Before her still a cloud-land lay, The mirage loomed across her way; The morning dew, that dried so soon With others, glistened at her noon; Through ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... like a farmer feeling the crop with his hand one side, and opening it with his walking-stick the other. It rolls the wavelets carelessly as marbles to the shore; the red cattle redden the pool and stand in their own colour. The green caterpillar swings as he spins his thread and lengthens his cable to the tide of air, descending from the tree; before he can slip it the whitethroat takes him. With a thrust the wind hurls the swift fifty miles faster on his way; it ruffles back the black velvet of the mole peeping forth from his burrow. Apple bloom and crab-apple ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... ascending under his guidance and anon he is away over the floe tracking the silk thread which held it. Such a task completed, he is away to exercise his pony, and later out again with the dogs, the last typically self-suggested, because for the moment there is no one else to care for these animals.... He is for ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... manufacture, though originating in the secretion of a tiny caterpillar, is perhaps equally extraordinary. Hundreds of thousands of pounds weight of this slender thread, no thicker than the filaments spun by a spider, give employment to millions of workers throughout the world. Silk, and the many textures wrought from this beautiful material, had long been known in the East; but ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... Western ways. In his dress he combined very effectively both Chinese and occidental symbols of mourning, his white coat-sleeve being adorned with a band of black crape, while in the long black queue he wore braided the white mourning thread of China. He expected to be at home for some months, and during that time, so he told me, it would be unsuitable for him to engage in ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... of the country believes the old thread-bare lie that Negro men rape white women. If Southern white men are not careful, they will overreach themselves and public sentiment will have a reaction; a conclusion will then be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation ...
— Southern Horrors - Lynch Law in All Its Phases • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... thought proper to break the thread of our intercourse, I should not to-day be obliged to take up the arrears of our confidence; as it is, my dear boy, you must now take your part in my past history and listen ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... 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.
... very rarely lonely. "My time is melted away in almost perpetual concerts," she told her sister. "I do not presume to judge, but I'll assure you I am a very hearty as well as an humble admirer. I have taken my little thread satin beauty into the house with me; she is allowed by Bononcini to have the finest voice he ever heard in England. He and Mrs. Robinson and Senesino lodge in this village, and sup often with me: and this easy indolent life would make me the happiest in ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... arms as if he listened. Like all those of his species, his vestigial ears were hidden deep in his fur and no longer served any real purpose; the mind touch served him in their stead. Dalgard caught his thought, though what had aroused his companion was too rare a thread to trouble his less ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... but first come Continental tours, and the moody longing for Eastern travel; your native downs and moors can hold you no longer; with larger stride you burst away from these slips and patches of free-land,—you thread your way through the crowds of Europe, and at last, on the banks of the Jordan, you joyfully know that you are upon the very frontier ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... she fought against the conclusion with all her might, she did not succeed in driving it from her thoughts: and through it all there was a vein of uncertainty, that slender thread of hope that after all she might be the prey of some awful delusion, which a word from someone who really ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... sole of his foot outwards and assumes one of the postures in which abstraction is practised. As he meditates he appears lovelier than ever. His eyes flash. The four arms of Vishnu spring from his body. He wears his crown, his sacred thread and garland of flowers. As he sits, glorious and beautiful, the same hunter, who earlier had salvaged the iron spike from the fish, chances to pass by. His arrow is tipped with a piece of the iron and mistaking Krishna's foot for ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... cadaverous looking personage, near the foot of the table, taking up the thread of the conversation where it had been broken off,—"and then, among other oddities, we had a patient, once upon a time, who very pertinaciously maintained himself to be a Cordova cheese, and went about, with a knife in his hand, soliciting ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... breakfast and helped her grandmother to find her way to the rocker. Mandy had been sent to the store for some thread with which to make a new uniform for one of the boys. Jennie resolved to turn her energies to practical account now. No more flaunting of tiny flags in the faces of brave, dignified young officers ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... this thread of thought no further. Janice wondered then—and she wondered afterward—if this unexplained anxiety connected Hopewell Drugg with the dances ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... was proclaimed emperor of this fine territory. Here I resume the thread of my history, (though it will be but for a moment,) in order that I may follow it to its end. In process of time, the black troops, containing the Negroes in question, were disbanded, except such as were retained for the peace-establishment of the army. ...
— Thoughts On The Necessity Of Improving The Condition Of The Slaves • Thomas Clarkson
... 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 by the wrong-doing ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... thousand men, including four thousand Arabs, the best soldiers in the Dekhan; he had also thirty-six guns. The battle lasted from six o'clock in the evening of the 26th of November until noon the next day. For many hours the English were in sore peril; their fate seemed to hang upon a thread. The Arabs were beginning to close round the Residency, when a happy stroke of British daring changed the fortunes of the day. Captain Fitzgerald, who commanded the Bengal cavalry, was posted in the Residency ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... should emigrate to Colorado and help to crush the beetle." Later on in life I was the victim of a cruel hoax, carried out with triumphant ingenuity by a confirmed practical joker, who with the aid of a thread caused what appeared to be a gigantic blackbeetle to perform strange and unholy evolutions in my sitting-room. Worst of all, I was victimised by the presence of a blackbeetle in a plate of clear soup served me at my club. I backed my bill, but it was too late, for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 22, 1920 • Various
... exclusively to them; she had taken part in social life, as was natural for so young and well-to-do a widow; and now her son was twenty-one years old and she lacked not many days of forty. But she was still beautiful. There was not a gray thread in her heavy dark-blonde hair, not a wrinkle round her large, courageous eyes, and her figure was slender with well-balanced fullness. The strong, fine lines of her features were accentuated by the darker more deeply colored complexion which the years had given her; the smile of her widely sweeping ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... and glowing, the smoke having given way to clear flame, but there was still a faint thread rising, and unless the Malays took it for steam from one of the hot springs they might land there to see, and if they did, though nothing was visible from a distance, the trampled sand and litter of the camp, ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... great words of the Holy Scriptures. It is woven through the Old Testament and the New like a golden thread. It inheres and abides in the ...
— What Peace Means • Henry van Dyke
... are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely. Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee.... Until the day break, and the shadows flee ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... creep back into them again; a little shiny white weasel is visible for a moment, lifting its clever little head and forepaws in the air, peering and sniffing; and the single sunbeam that enters through some hidden chink is so perfectly like a gold thread that one would like to wind it around one's finger ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... the Daughter of Minos King of Crete. She fell in Love with Theseus, and with a Clew of Thread helped him out of the Labyrinth into which he went to kill the Minotaur. He afterwards basely deserted the poor Lady, of which our Poet will ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding
... betwixt Morton's first appearance as a competitor for the popinjay and his final departure for Holland hardly two months elapsed. Years, however, glided away ere we find it possible to resume the thread of our narrative, and Time must be held to have galloped over the interval. Craving, therefore, the privilege of my cast, I entreat the reader's attention to the continuation of the narrative, as it starts from a new era, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... and its difficulties. Stuart's efforts to cross Australia from south to north, and the expeditions made by others with a like object, will occupy the undivided attention of the reader so much, that in order not to lose the thread of the narrative of this peculiar and marked epoch in Australian history, it may be better to here notice an important journey undertaken in Western Australia, although slightly ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... in its weaving caught up the thread of G. Selden's rudimentary existence and drawn it, with the young man himself, across the sea, used curiously the thread in question, in the forming of the design of its huge web. As wool and coarse linen are sometimes interwoven with rich silk for decorative ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... good luck. By chance it turned out well; there were ten thousand chances of ignominious failure. Had we failed would we have been guests of honor? No! We would have been stoned from Graustark. You don't know how thin the thread was that held your fate. It makes me shudder to think of the crime our act might have been. Ah, had I but known you were the Princess, no chances should have been taken," he ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... therefore, my own thread of personal narration. On the next morning after my arrival in Oxford, I assembled a small council of friends to assist me in determining at which of the various separate societies I should enter, and whether as a "commoner," or as a "gentleman commoner." ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... might have been a maze whose path Chicory was trying to thread, and the lion some faithful attendant beast, watchfully following in his very steps. But though Jack's body was as it were enchained, his mind was in a fearful state of activity; and not only did he follow as if fascinated every step, but his thoughts even ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... general, chronological, by which the condition of different countries at any given period is readily compared. By the use of different types in printing, a notable convenience is afforded the reader. For instance, the general thread of narrative is carried on through the coarser type, while in another type one may read of contemporary literature, art, science, etc. In fact, the record of these subjects is one of the valuable features of the work. The typography is excellent,—a ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... looked in. There were the rows of shiny heads, fair, brown, and black; there were the long sable back and chopped-hay locks of the curate; but where a queen-like figure had of old been wont to preside, she beheld a tallow face, with sandy hair under the most precise of net caps, and a straight thread-paper shape in scanty gray stuff and ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge |
