"Thread" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to another brief mission undertaken by a priest, the same Father writes as follows: "God adorns and enriches this Tobigon [42] people with so many heavenly gifts that I do not dare depart hence, and break the thread of our most happy progress. The church is filled with people morning and evening; no one is anxious about food, although they may not have it, or may have to bring it from a distance. All their care is to be Christians, and to be initiated in baptism. In these fifteen days in which ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various
... young woman of seven, might I think that a queer start? Certainly! Then, that was a start as he himself had had his blessed eyes on—and he'd cleaned the shoes they run away in—and they was so little he couldn't get his hand into 'em." Whereupon, following up the thread of his discourse, Boots would take his crowd of hearers, quite willingly on their part, into the heart of the ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... they often, very hungry, and yet the sweetness of their song pierced through the vicious shriek of the tempest and the sullen boom and crash of the great billows that flung themselves against the cliffs or thundered in devouring majesty over the wrack-strewn shore, like a thread of silver that runs through a pall. One night a tempest drove across and down the Sea of Moyle from the north-east, and lashed it into fury. And the mirk darkness and the sleet that drove in the teeth of the gale like bullets ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... gentleman with pink cheeks who sings tenor. Far worse. The irresistible man, as we know him, is often a man who is doing a man's work in the world, and doing it well. He is frequently a man of character, but through that character runs this strange, irritating thread of conceit, which blinds our eyes to whatever of real worth may be within, because ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... room, and returned in a few minutes, with both the books in her hand. Sir Geoffrey took them, and opened the illuminated one—the genuine Breviary—first. Margery reseated herself, and took up her distaff, but the thread was very uneven, and she broke it twice, while her father turned over the leaves of the book, and praised her writing and illuminations. His praise was sweet enough, but some time he must come ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... lieutenant having given them directions, they followed him and his guide to that part of Dublin known as the "Liberties," inhabited by the dregs of the population. The night was dark; no lamps illumined that part of the town. The lantern carried by Larry Flynn, the coxswain, enabled the party to thread their way through several narrow streets till they reached a house, at the ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... trundling a wheelbarrow took possession of us and our light belongings, and led us forth into the night. We traversed the valley, mounted the hill on the other side, and at last entered the deeper night of a lampless village, and began to thread its steep, black streets. The only gleam of light was at what seemed to be the central fountain. Many women were gathered there, chatting as they filled their pails or stood with the replenished vessels poised on their heads. The inn was of a piece with all those at which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... sockets until twin pangs of agony met and crossed between his shoulder blades, and with his two exploring hands he pulled and fumbled and pawed and wrenched and wrested, to make further headway at his task. But the sewing-on had been done with stout thread; the buttonholes were taut and snug and well made. Those slippery flat surfaces amply resisted him. They eluded him; defied him; outmastered him. Thanks be to, or curses be upon, the passionate zeal of Miss Rowena Skiff for exactitudes, he, lacking the offices of an assistant ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... prudence; but in this part of our government neither Venice nor any nation that makes use of mercenary forces is for our instruction. A mercenary army, with a standing general, is like the fatal sister that spins; but proper forces, with an annual magistrate, are like her that cuts the thread. Their interests are quite contrary, and yet you have a better proveditor than the Venetian, another strategus sitting with an army standing by him; whereupon that which is marching, if there were any probability it should, would find as little possibility that it could recoil, as a foreign enemy ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... twelve years old smokes a cigarette of the thickness of pack-thread. When she has attained her fourteenth or fifteenth year, and is already marriageable, she is allowed to indulge her penchant at will, which is forbidden when younger. After this age the diameter of the cigarette increases ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... tender beamed the light of love down from his manly face, As he pressed her to his bosom in a fervent, fond embrace. No cost of others' happiness found place within his thought; The weakness of life's brittle thread no dim ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... thro' the long day Spinning the weary thread away; And ever said in undertone: "Come, that I ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... showed me a millstone which was broken in two pieces, and said, "Come, Ahikar, sew this together for me." But I took a small piece of a like stone, and said, "O king, I have not my tools with me; but command your shoemaker to cut me a thread out of this piece of stone, and I will sew the millstone together forthwith." Then Pharaoh laughed, and said, "Well, Ahikar, it was on a good day for your lord that you were born. Come, I will make you a feast, and ...
— Old Testament Legends - being stories out of some of the less-known apochryphal - books of the old testament • M. R. James
... Memory stands, Where many roadways meet and spread, Like Ariadne, in my hands Thrusting her little ball of thread. ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... from the nature and form of Poetry as it is from Drama. It is a succession of pictures of life, given with the utmost detail, having no connection with each other, and absolutely no crescendo, no movement, no approach to a climax. The only thread that holds the work together is the person of the travelling promoter, Chichikov, whose visits to various communities give the author the opportunity he desired. After one has grasped the plan of the book, the purpose of Chichikov's mission, which ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... it will seize out of the many threads of different feeling which nature has suffered to become entangled, one only, and where that seems thin and likely to break, it will spin it stouter, and in doing this, it never knots, but weaves in the new thread, so that all its work looks as pure and true as nature itself, and cannot be guessed from it but by its exceeding simplicity, (known from it, it cannot be,) so that herein we find another test of the imaginative work, that it looks always as if it had been gathered straight from nature, whereas ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... it. Thanks, Phil. I can wire it up now." Rick got to work, connecting up the newly installed servo. Like other servomotors it was tiny and powerful, translating electronic signals into mechanical actions. This particular one was no larger than a spool of thread, but it would actuate control tabs on the wings of Pegasus. Other motors ranged in size from even smaller to quite large ones about as big as a gallon can. The small ones were terrifically expensive, probably the reason they had been attractive to the Earthman ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... is a garden; and beyond that a small field sown with silver oats, which are dancing and glistening in the breeze and sunshine; while before the garden wicket, but not enclosed from the common, is a warm, sunny valley, in the very middle of which a slender thread of a brook widens into a lovely little basin of a pool, clear and cold, the very place for the hill ponies to ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... didn't you see it on the exhibits? We're going to sell everything under a trade name, just like thread and ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... hairs I could find, after combing her head, bound them together, and kept them for some time, until she told me I was not worthy to possess things so sacred. Jane McCoy and I were once sent to alter a dress for the Superior. I gathered up all the bits of thread, made a little bag, and put them into it for safe preservation. This I wore a long time around my neck, so long, indeed, that I wore out a number of strings, which, I remember, I replace with new ones. I believed it to possess the power of removing pain, and ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... his counsels. No other leader commanded so large a share of the confidence and devotion of his party. No other equaled him in the art of giving a velvety touch to its coarsest and most dangerous blows, or of presenting the work of its adversaries in the most questionable guise. It was his habit to thread the mazes of economic and fiscal discussion, and he was never so eloquent or apparently so contented as when he was painting a vivid picture of the burdens under which he imagined the country to be ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... fastened to the wharf still held her by the stern. Then she drifted faster, in toward the wharves. There was a sound like the report of a small cannon; then another and another. The great ropes that had held her to the wharf had snapped like thread. ...
— The Sandman: His Sea Stories • William J. Hopkins
... source of distress, for, from the warmth of the inhabitants, the roof of the snow-house began to melt, which occasioned a continual dropping, and by degrees made every thing soaking wet. The missionaries considered this the greatest hardship they had to endure, for they had not a dry thread about them, nor a dry place to ...
— Dangers on the Ice Off the Coast of Labrador • Anonymous
... and after executing a short dance 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
... meets every day are so hateful to me. They argue such a lack of brains. If I were so unfortunate as to love a woman who looked sour when I praised a beautiful face. I would snap the bond between us like a bit of thread. But you are not one ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... little, he gathered a store of feathers great and small. He fastened these together with thread, moulded them in with wax, and so fashioned two great wings like those of a bird. When they were done, Daedalus fitted them to his own shoulders, and after one or two efforts, he found that by waving his arms he ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... up the thread of tradition, as we find it in Ireland, and try to follow the doings and life of the Fomorian invaders; but in the meantime we may try to gain some insight into the most mysterious and enduring of their works. The cromlechs which have been excavated ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... sooner grow tired of it. Let him see evil arise from good, vice rewarded, justice and innocence trodden under foot, as is the custom of men. Conduct him through the wild and terrible scenes of human life; let him mistake its aim, and lose among its horrors the guiding thread of virtue. And when he stands separated from all natural and heavenly ties, in doubt concerning the noble destination of his race,—when even pleasure and enjoyment have left him, and the inward ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... most pathetic memorial I ever saw, a poor school-slate, in a wooden frame, with the inscription cut into it evidently by the father's own hand. In church, old Mr. Torrence preached—over eighty, and a relic of times forgotten, with his black thread gloves and mild old foolish face. One of the nicest parts of it was to see John Inglis, the greatest man in Scotland, our Justice-General, and the only born lawyer I ever heard, listening to the piping old body, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... impulse went out from the amphibian that begat the reptile. The reptile remains, but some impulse went out from the reptile that begat the mammal; and so on up to man. Man must have had a specific line of descent. One golden thread must connect him with the lowest forms of life. And the wonder is that this golden thread was never snapped or lost through all the terrible vicissitudes of the geologic ages. But I suppose it is just as great a wonder that the line of descent of the horse, or the ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... that," said Will, pointing to a little crack through which a thread of water made its way running over a few inches of rock, and then disappearing amongst the ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... us while loving us, We hang to the earth by a thread; This thread is our root, that is to say, our life, But we raise on ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... to its economy why this practice should not die out. The tearing up into strips of old garments, and the tacking of their ends together with needle and thread is work eminently suited for children, and one in which they take great pride, as it gives them a share in the creation of a ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... to simplify his own exertions, i. e., were combined and had motor effect, appears from an observation in the sixteenth month. Earlier than this, when I used to say, "Give the ring," I always laid an ivory ring, that was tied to a thread, before the child, on the table. I now said the same thing—after an interval of a week—while the same ring was hanging near the chair by a red thread a foot long, so that the child, as he sat on the chair, could just reach it, but only with much pains. He made a grasp ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... year. It was just as if he were drawing a net round my heart—but, oh! what a net! It was as if the flax on a distaff had been set on fire, and the flames spun out into thin threads, and the meshes knotted of the fiery yarn. I felt every thread and knot burning into my soul, and could not cast it off nor even defend myself. Aye! you may look grieved and shake your head, but so it was, and the scars hurt me still with a pain ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... she held the bit of glass above the tinder, moving it slowly until she had focused the sun's rays upon a tiny spot. She waited breathlessly. How slow it was! Were her high hopes to be dashed in spite of all her clever planning? No! A thin thread of smoke rose gracefully into the quiet air. Presently the tinder glowed and broke suddenly into flame. Jane clasped her hands beneath her chin with a little gurgling exclamation of delight. She ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... way to heaven, but in the way to hell. This state I laboured under for the space of five or six months. The more I heard or read, the more I" saw that I "was condemned as a sinner before God; till at length I was brought to perceive that my life hung by a slender thread, and if it was the will of God to cut me off at that time, I was sure I should be found in hell, as sure as God was in Heaven. I saw my condemnation in my own heart, and I found no way wherein I could escape the damnation of hell, only through the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... streets. Having cleared his way through the press, and arrived at Cheapside, he found a crowd much larger than he had as yet encountered, and shopkeepers plying before their shops or booths, offering velvet, silk, lawn, and Paris thread, and seizing him by the hand that he might turn in and buy. At London-stone were the linendrapers, equally clamorous and urgent; while the medley was heightened by itinerant vendors crying "hot sheep's feet, mackerel," ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... she hastened to patch together her thread, "of course, as I told Wayne, I knew that Ann was coming. But I didn't really expect her until day after to-morrow. You see, ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... too, that some mingled feeling may have arisen in Strafford's breast. It was something to have an ally at Court ready at all times to plead his cause with gay enthusiasm, to warn him of hidden dangers, and to offer him the thread of that labyrinth which, under the name of 'the Queen's side,' was such a mystery to him. It was something, too, no doubt, that this advocate was not a grey haired statesman, but a woman, in spite of ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... in threads, gold thread, cotton thread, etc. If the word is to be construed adjectively, puak ba[c,]pal would mean ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... a fascinating embroidery shop, the keeper of which was entirely willing, when he had no customers, to let Utta lounge on one of his sofas and inspect embroideries to her heart's content. So lounging, rapt in the contemplation of Egyptian appliqus, Syrian gold-thread borders, Spanish linen-work, silk flower patterns from Cos, Parthian animal designs and Celtic cord-labyrinths after originals in leather thongs, Utta could glance up from time to time and make sure that her charge was safe ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... man, the concupiscences of different individuals pursuing the same unshareable material or social prizes, the ideals which contrast so according to races, circumstances, temperaments, philosophical beliefs, etc.,—all form a maze of apparently inextricable confusion with no obvious Ariadne's thread to lead one out. Yet the philosopher, just because he is a philosopher, adds his own peculiar ideal to the confusion {199} (with which if he were willing to be a sceptic he would be passably content), and insists that over all these ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... unfailing as the little barefoot boy whose white feet are thrust into the face of the approaching season. Five months from now those little dimpled feet, now so bleached and tender, will look like a mudturtle's back and the superior and leading toe will have a bandage around it, tied with a piece of thread. ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... forced to be self-helpless in all the small affairs of life. A swarm of brisk, bright, active, bustling, handy, odd, skirmishing fellows, able to turn cleverly at anything, from a siege to soup, from great guns to needles and thread, from the broadsword exercise to slicing an onion, from making war to making omelets, was all you would ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... self-complacency—Self-sufficiency, she had, but not self-righteousness. Then, most striking contra-distinction of all to the old-land culture, there was unconsciousness of self—face to sunlight, radiant of the joy of life, not anaemic and putrid of its own egoism. She didn't talk in phrases thread-bare from use. She had all the naked unashamed directness of the West that thinks in terms of life and speaks without gloze. She never side-stepped the facts of life that she might not wish to know. Yet her intrusion on such facts gave ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... old ladies sitting somewhere, and thinking about you just at this very minute; one has a distaff in her hands, and is spinning a thread; she has come to a knot in it, and is puzzled what to do with it. Her sister has a great pair of scissors in her hands, and wants—as she always does, when any difficulty arises in the smoothness of the thread—to ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Point aux Pins, to range along the clean sandy shore, and sandy plains, now abounding in fine whortleberries. Directly on putting out from this, the broad view of the entrance into the lake burst upon us. It is magnificent. A line of blue water stretched like a thread on the horizon, between cape and cape, say five miles. Beyond it is what the Chippewas call Bub-eesh-ko-be, meaning the far off, indistinct prospect of a water scene, till the reality, in the feeble power of human vision, loses itself ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... his voice wonderfully steady. Sergeant Hal could not help admiring the evident courage of this little Filipino, who knew well enough that his life was hanging on a thread from ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... by the picture, so faithfully drawn in all details, of Aramis's generosity, felt himself most painfully and cruelly humiliated. His unconquerable pride revolted at the idea that a man had held suspended at the end of his finger the thread of his royal life. Every word that fell from Fouquet's lips, and which he thought most efficacious in procuring his friend's pardon, seemed to pour another drop of poison into the already ulcerated heart of Louis XIV. Nothing could bend or soften him. Addressing himself ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... greater dignity and less confusion. The background of the Deposition is flat, but broken here and there by faintly-indicated horsemen; naked boys riding on shadowy steeds like those vague figures which seem to thread their way through some panel of Gothic tapestry. There is an element of stiacciato in the Entombment, giving it the air of a mystery rather than of an historical fact. The draperies are thin and graceful, suited to the softer modelling of the limbs: some of the faces are almost ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... a court-yard; and an intensely shabby little man looked in, to inquire if the gentleman would have a Cicerone to show the town. His face was so very wistful and anxious, in the half-opened doorway, and there was so much poverty expressed in his faded suit and little pinched hat, and in the thread-bare worsted glove with which he held it—not expressed the less, because these were evidently his genteel clothes, hastily slipped on—that I would as soon have trodden on him as dismissed him. I engaged him on the instant, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... morning, hung in the air. Regularly, every day, there was a single bird, not singing, but awkwardly chirruping among the green madronas, and the sound was cheerful, natural, and stirring. It did not hold the attention, nor interrupt the thread of meditation, like a blackbird or a nightingale; it was mere woodland prattle, of which the mind was conscious like a perfume. The freshness of these morning seasons remained with me far ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... axe, mace, and a large sword; whose eye-brows are fair, whose locks are matted, who wieldeth the heavy short club, who hath the moon on his forehead, who is clad in tiger-skin, and who is armed with the bludgeon; who is decked with beautiful angadas, who hath snakes for his sacred thread, and who is surrounded by diverse creatures of the universe and by numerous ghosts and spirits, who is the One, who is the abode of ascetic austerities, and who is highly adored by persons of venerable age; who is Water, Heaven, Sky, Earth, Sun, Moon, Wind and Fire, and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... thousand miles an hour. On and on they flew, high above the gently rolling plain, mile after mile. The little brooklet became a great river, and the river kept growing more and more. Ahead of them was a range of hills, and they wondered how the river could thread its way among them. They found that it went through a broad pass that ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... muddy countryside and sunk to the knees in the furrowed fields daily since the wet week began. Where was the clay that had caked brown on our khaki, the rust that spoilt the lustre of our swords, and the fringes that the wire fences tore on our tunics? All gone; soap and water, a brush, needle and thread, and a scrap of emery paper had worked the miracle. We stood easy awaiting the arrival of the general; platoons sized from flanks to centres (namely, the tallest men stood at the flanks, and the khaki lines dwindled in stature towards the small men in the middle), and company officers at front ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... seven millions of people, and "works" also in West Africa, where it is probably native. It gives its young shoots and unripe seeds as food; its trunk makes a whole boat, or a drum or a walking-stick, according to size; hats, mats, thread and baskets—in fact, almost all kinds of clothing and utensils—are made from the split and plaited leaves; gum comes from it, and certain medicines, jaggery sugar too and an intoxicating drink for those who desire it. In one of the museums ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... regard; each sent an electric current across the protective separating space, the two pairs of eyes met and said, "I love you," in such clear tones that Nathan and Hetty marveled that the Elder did not hear them. Somebody says that love, like a scarlet spider, can spin a thread between two hearts almost in an instant, so fine as to be almost invisible, yet it will hold with the tenacity of an iron chain. The thread had been spun; it was so delicate that neither Nathan nor Hetty had seen the scarlet ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... somewhat easier since. It shewed your interest in my vexations, and also that you know nothing worse than I do. I cannot describe the weakness of mind to which she has reduced me. This state of suspense is like hanging in the air by a single thread that exhausts all your strength to keep hold of it; and yet if that fails you, you have nothing in the world else left to trust to. I am come back to Edinburgh about this cursed business, and Mrs. —— is coming from Montrose next week. How ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... has endeavored to relate a story of stirring adventure and at the same time eliminate all sensationalism and improbable elements. The thread of the story was given him by a man who was familiar with the life and experiences of prospectors. Indeed, there is warrant for almost every event ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... little thread of life wavered terribly as he spoke. Burrows had to put his ear close to ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Blessing all lands with its charity; The sea tosses and foams to find Its way up to the cloud and wind; The shadow sits close to the flying ball; The date fails not on the palm-tree tall; And thou,—go burn thy wormy pages,— Shalt outsee seers, and outwit sages. Oft didst thou thread the woods in vain To find what bird had piped the strain:— Seek not, and the little eremite Flies gayly ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... kept slipping out of my hand As wonderful thoughts came into my head: Sure, life is becoming too bright and grand To be given up to needles and thread! ...
— Harry • Fanny Wheeler Hart
... weather at Fort Munro. The wide Indus valley is known as the Sindh. The tract between it and the Hills is the Pachadh. It is seamed by hill torrents, three of which, the Vehoa, the Sangarh, and the Kaha, have a thread of water even in the cold season. The heat in summer is extreme, and the luh, a moving current of hot air, claims its human victims from time to time. The cultivation in the Sindh depends on the ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... ears... it was followed by a second and a third. 'In the meadows,' sang Lukerya. She sang, the expression of her stony face unchanged, even her eyes riveted on one spot. But how touchingly tinkled out that poor struggling little voice, that wavered like a thread of smoke: how she longed to pour out all her soul in it!... I felt no dread now; my heart throbbed ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... pair of day socks. A shirt. Tobacco and pipe. Notebook for diary and pencil. Extra balaclava helmet. Extra woollen mitts. Housewife containing buttons, needles, darning needles, thread and wool. Extra pair of finnesko. Big safety-pins with which to hang up our socks. And perhaps ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... brightened to living fire by the Puritans from over the sea who called the world they found New England. Somehow, the combination is unique, and the same curious sense of personality runs through everything, linking all together as a golden thread might link many different coloured beads. The cedars crowning the hills could be only American cedars. "Joe Pye weed" (whose Indian name is lost, but whose pinky purple colour is ever present) is so patriotic a plant that it would perish rather than grow in foreign ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... greater part of the face with a selendang, or long scarf of gold brocade. They occasionally also wear slippers. The gold brocade is a specialty of Brunai manufacture and is very handsome, the gold thread being woven in tasteful patterns on a ground of yellow, green, red or dark blue silk. The materials are obtained from China. The cotton sarongs are also woven in Brunai of European cotton twist, but inferior and cheap imitations are now imported from ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... years it had been standing there cold and lifeless. A part of the roof of the shed had ended by falling in upon it, and now the rain drenched it at every shower. A bit of the leather harness by which the crane was worked hung down, and seemed to bind the engine like a thread of some gigantic spider's web. And its metal-work, its steel and copper, was also decaying, as if rusted by lichens, covered with the vegetation of old age, whose yellowish patches made it look like a very ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... substantially to the worship of the tabernacle and cognate matters. It is historical only in form; the history serves merely as a framework on which to arrange thc legislative material, or as a mask to disguise it. For the most part, the thread of the narrative is extremely thin, and often serves merely to carry out the chronology, which is kept up without a hiatus from the Creation to the Exodus; it becomes fuller only on the occasions in which other interests come into play, as, for ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... see how they kept from impaling themselves on thorns or snags, so reckless were their lightning-like passages through the bushes and trees. When four or five of them were found in one place, they would fairly thread the air with green and purple as they described their circles and loops and festoons with a rapidity that fairly made my head whirl. At one place several of them grew very bold, dashing at me or wheeling around my head, coming so close that I could hear the susurrus of their ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... chestnuts, biscuits, and dates; linen cloth; escritoires worked in many colors, head-dresses, and thin cloths for veils [buratos, espumillas]; water-jugs, made of tin; lace edging, silk fringe, and gold thread, drawn in a manner never seen in Christendom; and many other rare articles—and all, as I have said, very cheap. The products of the islands themselves are sold also quite cheaply; for four arrobas of palm wine—which, in the absence of grape wine, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... his mother, pausing just as she was about to bite off a thread. "You gave me such a start, Joe! ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... cruelties than had been forced upon him in his mother's home, for in rainy weather or during the hardest storms as much was expected of him as when the sun was shining. Many times he was forced to work all day long without a dry thread of clothing upon his body and often without sufficient food. For all this he never complained, but he wondered why it was impossible to please some people, when he was always ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... The thread dropped from the spinning wheel as Elizabeth earnestly leaned forward in the firelight, that late afternoon ...
— Some Three Hundred Years Ago • Edith Gilman Brewster
... of this Martian girl. Something had come between them, stripped away the masculine frankness that had existed during their short and dangerous time together. Perhaps it was the softly revealing drape of the thread-of-gold robe she was wearing—true queenly garb, donned by her ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... corner for echoes, it has been remarked, that corner where the Doctor lived. Ever busily winding the golden thread which bound her husband, and her father, and herself, and her old directress and companion, in a life of quiet bliss, Lucie sat in the still house in the tranquilly resounding corner, listening to the echoing footsteps ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... historian of the short story. Even when the local colorists essayed the novel they commonly did little more than to expand some episode into elaborate dimensions or to string beads of episode upon an obvious thread. Hardly one of them ever made any real advance, either in art or reputation, upon his earliest important volume: George Washington Cable, after more than forty years, is still on the whole best represented by his Old Creole Days; and so—to name only the chief among the survivors—after ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... large eel, clean it well, force the inside with crumbs of bread, an anchovy cut fine, salt, pepper, a little nutmeg, and two or three oysters bruised, with some parsley shred fine; fill the inside as full as you can, sew it up with fine thread, turn it round, and run a small skewer through it, to keep it in its folds; put it into a small stewpan, with an onion stuck with cloves, and a faggot of herbs; put over it red wine; cover the pan down ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... nonsense these people talk," said Sir Antony, calmly, to me. "You and I were in the middle of an interesting problem discussion, were we not? And now I have lost the thread." ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... about his general character and appearance, we shall resume the thread of our story, and show how the lions behaved to Tom Brown and his friends the very night after the event narrated in ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... believe, the introduction of the plan of working from the reel instead of the shuttle. By this alteration the advantage of the shuttle being constantly kept filled with cotton was gained, and the necessity also obviated for frequently joining the thread; and to Mdlle. Riego, equally distinguished in all details appertaining to the employment of the needle, ladies are indebted for an arrangement by which the same thread used in the making of the pattern is used for fastening the work. The old plan only provided for the working ...
— Beeton's Book of Needlework • Isabella Beeton
... thwarts, and in the bottom of the boat, no less than fifteen men—whether living or dead it was difficult for the moment to say. At all events it was evident that there was no time to be lost, for if the men were not actually dead their lives were hanging by a thread; so, recovering possession of the jug of weak grog and the tumbler, I slid down into the boat and, taking them as they came, wetted the lips of each with a little of the liquid. Some of them were able to swallow it at once, while others had their teeth so tightly clenched that it was ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... rare; but mark the kindred beauties of the writer in Fraser. Around such men as Mr. Tait, Dr. M'Leod, and Dr. Muir, 'must crystallize the piety and the hopes of the Scottish Church.' What a superb figure! Only think of the Rev. Dr. Muir as of a thread in a piece of sugar candy, and the piety of the Dean of Faculty and Mr. Penney, joined to that of some four or five hundred respectable ladies of both sexes besides, all sticking out around him in cubes, hexagons, and prisms, like cleft ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... rococo district, if beyond the pale of Christianity, is far from being without the pale of fashion. Ladies, exhibiting the height of Parisian fashions, with dainty footsteps and soft movement, may be seen of an afternoon endeavoring to thread their way through the greasy throng, which jostle, elbow, and abuse each other in these narrow lanes. The cunning Israelites must have scouts to tell them whenever any particular connoisseur is approaching; for, strange enough, the article which each is in search of is precisely ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... too might be covered by a species of veil or mask, which, however, was now fastened back on the headpiece, after the manner of a visor. The front of the tunic was embroidered with fantastic devices in gold thread, brightened here and there with precious stones; and other devices appeared on the hood. The face of this figure was pale and calm, with great dark eyes beneath black brows. The stature was no greater than that of a lad ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... of season. Peel a pineapple; grate it into a mortar; then pound it well with six ounces of sugar; let it stand covered for an hour; add the juice of five oranges, and a pint and a half of syrup boiled to the little thread, or a lisse. (This syrup is much used in making water-ices, punches, etc. It is sugar and water boiled till it forms a little thread between thumb and finger.) Mix well and freeze. If canned fruit is used, you need less sugar, and substitute ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen
... Building revealed the productiveness of the country and its vast agricultural resources. Wool was displayed in numerous samples. That obtained from the Merino and Lincoln sheep was noticeable. The first species was of a short and exceedingly fine thread; the other, longer, coarser, and adapted for ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... some sort of jelly. While she ate slowly, she slowly made plans. No, she would not have a stay-all-the-time maid—yes, she would move her things into the room facing the next-door house. Until she got tired of watching the sociable thread of ...
— Miss Theodosia's Heartstrings • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... secrecy, the bird is not particular as to material, so that it be of the nature of strings or threads. A lady friend once told me that, while working by an open window, one of these birds approached during her momentary absence, and, seizing a skein of some kind of thread or yarn, made off with it to its half-finished nest. But the perverse yarn caught fast in the branches, and, in the bird's effort to extricate it, got hopelessly tangled. She tugged away at it all day, but was finally obliged to content herself with a few detached ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... the giant redwood's growth from a tiny seed; of the avalanche that, born a snowflake, heaves and grows on the peaks, to shrink and die on the level lands below. They told of the river at our feet: of its rise, a thread-like rill, afar on Tallac's side, and its growth—a brook, a stream, a little river, a river, a mighty flood that rolled and ran from hills to plain to meet a final doom so strange that only the wise believe. Yes, ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... if by magic, the forms of two French gentlemen accompanied by a small party of soldiers, who come from the mouth of the bay, and carefully thread their way along the shore. It is a strange company of men. The leader is a native of Rouen, and he says that few of his companions are fit for anything but eating. He thought that his band comprised creatures of all sorts, like Noah's ark, but unlike the collection of the great patriarch, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... aske the nearest Judge, He will tell thee 'tis pure fudge; When thou willest, thou mayst trudge; I'm thy Bondslave, Hymen's pact Bindeth me in law and fact; Thou art free in will and act; 'Tis but silke that bindeth thee, Snap the thread, and thou art free: But 'tis otherwise with me. I am bound, and bound fast so That from thee I cannot go. (Hah! We'll have this altered, though. Man must be a wing-clipp'd goose If he bows to Hymen's noose,— Heads you winne, and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 11, 1891 • Various
... Aromatic, stout, smooth herb, 4-6 high. Leaves with many slender thread-like divisions. Large umbel of yellow flowers, no involucre and no involucels. C. sativum: Low aromatic herb, leaves pinnately compound, small umbels with ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... the sable robe he wears, For this in pious guise appears. But then, the weak will cannot hide Th' inherent vanity and pride; And thus he acts the coxcomb's part, As dearer to his poor vain heart: Nature's born fop! a saint by art!! But hold! he wears no fopling's dress Each seam, each thread, the eye can trace His garb all o'er;—the dye, though true, Time-blanch'd, displays a fainter hue: Dress forms the fopling's better part; Reconcile this, and ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... my mind to catch at some previous event, from which I might trace up the thread of existence to the present moment. By degrees I called to mind the fairy pinnace, my daring embarkation, my adventurous voyage, and my disastrous shipwreck. Beyond that, all was chaos. How came I here? What unknown region had I landed ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... train flew along with express speed, the strangers entered into a cosy conversation, and mutual explanations. The gentleman was pleased, and the lady certainly did not pout. After other subjects had been discussed, and worn thread-bare, the lady made inquiries as to the price of a sewing machine, and where such an article could be purchased in this city. The gentleman ventured the opinion that she had "better secure a husband first." This opened the way for another branch of conversation, and the broken field ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... remembered, too, that all over the world there is a regard for things red, this colour having been once held sacred to Thor, and Grimm suggests that it was on this account the robin acquired its sacred character. Similarly, the Highland women tie a piece of red worsted thread round their cows' tails previous to turning them out to grass for the first time in spring, for, in ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... differently. They were proud of her pretty figure and yellow-brown eyes, which dilated so easily and sparkled with a kind of golden effervescence. They were always making pretty things for her, always coaxing her to come to the sewing-circle, where she knotted her thread, and put in the wrong sleeve, and laughed and chattered and said a great many things that she should not have said, and somehow always warmed their hearts. I think they loved her ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... 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. GSM - a global system for mobile (cellular) communications devised by the Groupe Special Mobile of the pan-European ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... mischief; partly by ignorance, partly by inadvertence; by the oblivion of whatever would be grating to remember, and the hopes of whatever may be grateful to expect, together palliating all griefs with an intermixture of pleasure; whereby I make men so far from being weary of their lives, that when their thread is spun to its full length, they are yet unwilling to die, and mighty hardly brought to take their last farewell of their friends. Thus some decrepit old fellows, that look as hollow as the grave into which they are falling, that rattle in the throat at every word they speak, ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... work, and is seeking for a means of escape from the body. He accordingly burns half a dozen holes with a red-hot iron or ramrod. In a few days the head of the guinea-worm appears; it is immediately captured by a finely-split reed, and by degrees is wound like a cotton thread by turning the reed every day. This requires delicate manipulation, otherwise the worm might break, and a portion remain in the flesh, which would increase the inflammation. An average guinea-worm would be about three feet in length. Animals ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... BEATING IN THE CORD, when the child comes into the world, it may at once be separated from the mother. This is to be effected by first tying the navel-string with common sewing thread (three or four times doubled), about two inches from the body of the child, and again two inches from the former ligature, and then dividing the cord with a pair of scissors between the two. And ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... cylinder, made of sheet silver as thin as paper, so that its weight is light. For coating large plates it is divided in the center, so as to adapt itself somewhat to irregularities in the surface of each plate. In this case it is supported by a third and central thread, as represented in the cut. Otherwise the cylinder would touch the center of the plate. Its two halves are held together by a slip of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... curving upward. It was about sixteen feet long. Its frame was of very light wood, and this was covered with tanned seal-skin. Sammy's mother was a Greenlander, and she could sew on seal-skin very handily, using sinews for thread; and she had covered her little boy's boat with seal-skin, leaving a hole in the centre just ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... marked by a complete unity of argument. Though the thread of the argument is sometimes dropped for the sake of practical exhortation, it is soon ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... in this life, not if I know myself. Not by any means! Attention! We mustn't let drink get the better of us. It seemed to me those days as if I'd been swallowing corkscrews. And I've no desire to knock at the monument just yet. Well, to go from the thread to the needle, this is what I thought: I'll make the proposition to Germinie. I'll treat myself to a little furniture. You've got what you have in your room. You know I'm not much of a shirker, I haven't a lazy bone in my body where work's concerned. And then we might look to not ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... lakes is floating upon its bosom over his head. Chicago is the most extensive grain and lumber market in the world; and Philadelphia and New York contain the largest and best furnished printing establishments now in existence. The submarine cable, running like a thread of light through the depths of the broad Atlantic from the United States to England, a conception of American genius, is the greatest achievement in the telegraphic line. The Pacific Railroad, that iron highway from ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith
... had graciously provided a huge char-a-banc for the purpose—had gone in a body to a fair over in the neighbourhood of Sevres, and darkness and stillness filled the long, broad corridor of the Chateau Larouge. Of a sudden, however, a mere thread of sound wavered through the silence, and from the direction of Miss Lorne's room a figure in black, with feet muffled in thick, woollen stockings, padded to an angle of the passage, lifted a trap carefully hidden beneath a huge tiger-skin rug, ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... board or heavy paper. The witches' hats of black or brown paper with a red ribbon band; the cats of black paper showing a back view may have a red or yellow ribbon necktie; the pumpkins of yellow paper with the sections traced in ink or notched a trifle and black thread drawn between ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... her for hours. For the first time in months he indulged himself in a few petty extravagances as he crossed the city to get his train. The day had excited him, had destroyed the calm of his usual controlled, plodding habits. The feverish buoyancy of his mood made it pleasant to thread the chaotic streams of the city streets. It was intoxicating to rub shoulders with ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... a rare bracelet of pearls off her own fair arms, placed it upon the Circassian's, and sealed it there with a kiss!—Another removed the leather shoes she wore, and replaced them with satin ones of curious workmanship and richly wrought with thread of gold, and still another loosened the coarse mantle that enshrouded her shoulders, and covered her with a shawl that had come across the desert from the far east, rich in texture and beautiful as costly. And as another ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... strength of sin," he says, "is the law." God giveth us the victory through Christ. And when we are familiar with St. Paul's trains of thinking, we find this idea coming in perpetually. It runs like a coloured thread through embroidery, appearing on the upper surface every now and then in a different shape—a leaf, it may be, or a flower; but the same thread still, if you only trace it back with your finger. And this was the golden recurring thread ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... use of a comedy, burlesque, melodramatic or even a dramatic plot. This form of sketch seldom rises into the playlet class. It is a two-act merely because it is played by two persons. Often, however, this form of the two-act uses a thread of plot on which to string its business and true two-act points. It may or may not make use of songs, parodies, tricks or other entertainment elements. We have now come to a form of two-act which is of so popular a nature that it requires more ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... the country lay spread like a relief map—valley, lesser ranges, foothills, far-off plain, the green of trees, the brown of grass and harvest, the blue of glimpsed water, the haze of heat and great distance, the thread-like gossamer of roads, the half-guessed shimmer of towns and cities in the mirage of summer, all the opulence of earth and the business of human activity. Millions dwelt in that haze, and beyond them, across the curve of the earth, hundreds of millions more, each actuated by ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... voyageurs felt the spirit of it and mumbled in dreamy undertones, and the cook unconsciously subdued the clatter of pot and pan. Somewhere a child was crying, and from the depths of the forest, like a silver thread, rose a ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... just ripped my jacket sleeve open for more than two inches. 'Twas made with one of those insidious one-thread machines, and I tried to pull out a loose stitch. Since then, she has avoided the subject of Miss Greenway, and I have spent a good share of my energy in mending the more visible portions of my attire. I ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... as spider web. And he's death on liars. Any time a feller tells a lie he's got to look out, or all to oncet one o' them bugs'll come scootin' at him and grab him by the nose with them jaws. Then he'll curl up his tail—the bug, I mean—and run his needle and thread right through the feller's lips and sew his mouth up tight. Then he flies ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... cow cheat head grain found how treat dead staid ground town beast stead waif hound growl bleat tread rail mound clown preach dread flail pound frown speak thread quail round crown streak sweat ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... who was a chubby-faced fellow with sleepy eyes, rose automatically and in one single stream, like a running tap, recited, without stopping to take breath, "The Wolf and the Lamb," rolling off La Fontaine's fable like the thread from a bobbin run ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and exhaustive episode on Puritan politics in England, Dr. Palfrey brings in that thread of his story on which is strung the fortune of Massachusetts. It is here that Englishmen will find explained some of our vaunting views of the importance of our annals. Dr. Palfrey, in this and in other chapters, traces with skill and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... creeping, or rather climbing, plant common to the New Zealand bush. It grows in long thread-like tendrils, as thick as whip cord, armed with myriads of sharp hooked thorns turned backwards. The tendrils grow hundreds of feet in length, stretching from branch to branch, and often forming a maze or web extending over a large area. A person ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... her. Above all things she must now use her ingenuity to efface these startling proofs. She darted to the cupboard and searched among the things there, and eventually found a rough housewife, and chose out a needle and coarse thread. It was better than nothing, so she hurriedly drew off the blouse, then she saw her torn underthings—and another convulsive pang went through her—but she set to work. She knew that however she might make even the blouse look to the casual eyes of her godmother, she could never deceive her maid. ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... she could see the brightness of the trees and enjoy the calm that prevailed. How long she span we do not know. On Ailie's return she was startled at the sight of her bending over the wheel. She was dead. While stooping to join a broken thread God took her. Next day buried her on a rising bit of ground overlooking the pond. What a mother she was I alone can know. I shall never forget her. Last evening there was to us a marvellous display of northern lights. When ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... Sea, overflowing the borders of the latter in order to express the volume of trade. Around either cape—Good Hope and Horn—pass strips of about one-fourth this width, joining near the equator, midway between Africa and South America. From the West Indies issues a thread, indicating the present commerce of Great Britain with a region which once, in the Napoleonic wars, embraced one-fourth of the whole trade of the Empire. The significance is unmistakable: Europe has now little mercantile ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... a thread from her old black skirt. "Oh, that letter in the 'Post,' long ago, you mean? Yes, I—knew about that; I wanted to speak to you about it at the time. ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the head of the apse, almost between two of the flame columns, stood a plain, square altar of the size of a small room, in front of which, as we saw when we drew nearer, were hung curtains of woven silver thread. On this altar was placed a large statue of silver, that, backed as it was by the black rock, seemed to concentrate and reflect from its burnished surface the intense light of the two ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard |
