"Yarn" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I want to revenge the injury which you have inflicted upon my friend Burley, and I also want to get a few pounds to pay me for the trouble I have taken in his behalf; so just heave ahead and shell out the shiners, and then we'll spin a yarn 'bout other affairs. ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... as night approached a sense of mystery and discomfort overhung the vessel. The man at the wheel got nervous, and flattered Bill into keeping him company by asking him to spin him a yarn. He had good reason for believing that he knew his comrade's stock of stories by heart, but in the sequel it transpired that there was one, of a prisoner turning into a cat and getting out of the porthole ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... too, to attract the Pettybaw weans, who steal in on wet days and sit on the floor playing with the thrums, or with bits of coloured ravellings. Sometimes when they have proved themselves wise and prudent little virgins, they are even allowed to touch the hanks of pink and yellow and blue yarn that lie in rainbow-hued confusion ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the Line withal, and other hot Countries, because they will stand, when others will melt, by the excessive Heat, down in the Binacles. Ever-green Oak, two sorts; Gall-Berry-Tree, bearing a black Berry, with which the Women dye their Cloaths and Yarn black; 'tis a pretty Ever-green, and very plentiful, growing always in low swampy Grounds, and amongst Ponds. We have a Prim or Privet, which grows on the dry, barren, sandy Hills, by the Sound side; ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... in a smash-up'? No,'twar done In a sort o' legitimate way; He got it a-trying to save a gal Up yar on the road last May. I heven't much time for to spin you the yarn, For we pull out at two-twenty-five— Just wait till I climb up an' toss in some coal, So's to keep ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... a rude tripod; this they swung to and fro to the tune of a weird Kurdish song. Behind one of the tents, on a primitive weaving-machine, some of them were making tent-roofing and matting. Others still were walking about with a ball of wool in one hand and a distaff in the other, spinning yarn. The flocks stood round about, bleating and lowing, or chewing their cud in quiet contentment. All seemed very domestic and peaceful except the Kurdish dogs, which set upon us with loud, fierce growls and ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... smoked for a while with closed eyes. I sat thoughtful and silent until he roused himself with a slight effort: "Draw a chair for your feet, Frank, and take a fresh cigar: you'll find them very mild. Go to sleep if I get prosy when fairly wound off on my yarn. I am going to begin at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... at his ignoring silence she appeared to receive it as a natural thing. If any word at all were uttered by the little group, it was an occasional whisper of the woman to the child—a tiny girl in short clothes and blue boots of knitted yarn—and the murmured babble of the ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... clothing for a while, I can do with birch-bark for my correspondence," she replied laughing. "Why not catch some of those wild sheep that seem so plentiful on the hills to westward? If we could domesticate them, that would mean wool and yarn and cloth—and milk, too, wouldn't it? And if milk, ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... did. Besides, this is fairly my task—you won't deny that. Chadlands will be mine, some day, so it's up to me to knock this musty yarn on the head once and for all. Could anything be more absurd than shutting up a fine room like that? I'm really ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... maple, wych elm, and sallow, and the rough butts, when sawn off before the sharping, supplied the firing for the boiling. Green ash is splendid for burning: "The ash when green is fuel for a Queen." Later, when I adopted a Kentish system of hop-growing on coco-nut yarn supported by steel wire on heavy larch poles, our visits to the woods were less frequent, and much wear and tear of horses and waggons was saved. Some of our journeys, in the earlier days, took us to the estate of the Duc d'Aumale, on the Worcester side ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... for information! However, there's some excuse for him. Translated into Rosemont language it means that you go to the laundry and put a ball of yarn into the ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... Fig. 23, especially useful for belaying, or making fast the end of a rope round its own standing part. The end may be lashed down or seized to the standing part with a piece of spun yarn; this adds to its security and ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... cable, etc., formed of braided or twisted strands. In making a rope or line the fibres (A, Fig. 1) of hemp, jute, cotton, or other material are loosely twisted together to form what is technically known as a "yarn" (B, Fig. 1). When two or more yarns are twisted together they form a "strand" (C, Fig. 1). Three or more strands form a rope (D, Fig. 1), and three ropes form a cable (E, Fig. 1). To form a strand the yarns are twisted together in the opposite direction ...
— Knots, Splices and Rope Work • A. Hyatt Verrill
... Anybody would sooner have a yarn with Geisner. We'll fix some boating when you're down again. You'll come again. Won't he, Nellie? Good-bye and a pleasant trip! Good-bye, Nellie." And having shaken hands by dint of much arm stretching, George pushed his boat away from ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... appeared at the close of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, especially in England. The expanded trade and commerce of England had made such a demand for economic goods that it stimulated invention of new processes of production. The spinning of yarn became an important industry. It was a slow process, and could not supply the {436} weavers so that they could keep their looms in operation. Moreover, Kay introduced what is known as the drop-box and flying shuttle in 1738, which favored weaving ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... some very amusing stories told in the family of cousin Betty's adventures, one of which I will relate here. She was at one time making one of her long visits at Mr. Wharton's, when, getting out of yarn, and not being willing to remain long idle, she began to worry about some way to get over to the village. The horses were all out at work upon the farm, except Old Prancer, a superannuated old horse, who was never used ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... remember everything when he is all wrapped in his own business and everybody trying to meddle with it?" grumbled Candage. He fumbled in his pocket and produced a knife. He slashed away the rope yarn which lashed the marlinespike. "If you can talk sense I'll help you do it! I reckon you can holler all you want to now. Them dudes can't find their own mouths in a fog, much less ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... sweet face!" cried the old woman; "but I would give all the yarn in my muckle chest to catch one look of his lucky eye! I warrant you, witch nor fairy could ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... Thomas, don't fancy that your diligence in cutting off legs and arms can be an excuse for cutting yours truly in this heartless manner. Not having a letter of yours to answer, I don't know how I shall scrape up material enough for a yarn. There was a big football-match on Saturday, and Jim and I were in it. You should have seen me turning somersaults, and butting my head into the fellows' stomachs. Jim and I got shoulder to shoulder once in the game. ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... this gear is all entangled, Like to the yarn-clew of the drowsy knitter, Dragg'd by the frolic kitten through the cabin, While the good dame sits nodding o'er the fire! Masters, attend; 'twill crave some skill to ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... have, while telling the story of my life, to relate more serious events, I will, after recounting one more yarn, not weary my readers with the little uninteresting details of my youthful adventures, but pass over the next three years or so, at which time, after having returned to England, I was appointed to another ship going to South America, ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... to cut slits in the flippers and lash them together with rope-yarn, the animal being thus placed hors de combat. The march was again taken up, and soon another track was found, but the eggs had been laid and the game was gone. An attempt to find this nest showed the cunning displayed by these clumsy creatures. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... the dare-devil. What a detective he'd 'a' made, wouldn't he, if he'd only a-turned his attention that way, and been on the side of the law instead of against it? He walked in bold as brass, sat down and talked with the superintendent over some cock-and-bull yarn about a 'Black Hand' letter that he said had been sent to him, and asked if he couldn't have police protection whilst he was in town. It wasn't until after he'd left that the superintendent he sees a note on the chair where the blighter ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... old man was floored, of course; but his only way of carrying the thing through was to play the martyr, and tell the story that for a year somebody had been writing to him daily or weekly over the name of Abbot. What a very improbable yarn, Putnam! Just think for yourself. What man would be apt to do that sort of thing? What object could he have? Why, the doctor himself well realized what a transparent fiction it must appear, and away he slips by the night train the moment he gets back. And now our friend, the landlord, ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... fractured portion of the deck, and barking out his indignation at the ruinous condition in which he found his marine home. Oscar had made eleven voyages in the Anne, and had twice saved the life of the captain. He was an ugly specimen of the Scotch terrier, and greatly resembled a bundle of old rope-yarn; but a more faithful or attached creature I never saw. The captain was not a little jealous of Oscar's friendship for me. I was the only person the dog had ever deigned to notice, and his master regarded it as an act of treason on the part of his four-footed favourite. When my arms ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... follow his track. She took up his trail where she had last seen him leave the camp. This she followed until she reached the so-called bandicoot's nest. Here his tracks disappeared, and nowhere could she find a sign of his having returned from this place. She felt in the hole with her yarn stick, and soon felt that there was something large there in the water. She cut a forked stick and tried to raise the body and get it out, for she felt sure it must be her son. But she could not raise it; stick after stick broke in the effort. ...
— Australian Legendary Tales - Folklore of the Noongahburrahs as told to the Piccaninnies • K. Langloh Parker
... he heard his son chuckle again. He had certainly caught a tartar—possibly two. With a twisted smile he recalled the old yarn of the hunter who caught the bear by the tail. Willing to ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... butler's face. "Well, seein' as I'm gettin' along in life, you must be a good way parst the meridian, if yer don't mind my sayin' so.... Funny thing, on the way down I run across a chap wot's visitin' pals in this 'ere village, and 'e pulls me the strangest yarn as ever a body 'eard. Summink to do wiv flames it were—Frozen Flames or icicles or frost of some kind. But 'e was so full up of mystery that there weren't no gettin' nuffin out er' im. Any one 'ere tell me the story? 'E fair got ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... those tailings by simply running them through the screens again and losing half the gold, we can build a proper roasting farnaoe, and then we can grind them, keeping the stampers for crushing alone. This morning I had a long yarn with Ah San, the boss Chinaman, and he is willing to let us have as many of his men as we want for twenty-five shillings a week each, and indenture them to me for six months—there's the labour we want, right to our hand. It's cheap labour, I admit, but that is no concern of ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke
... yarn stockings for his feet, raised the window, and crept out on the snowy roof. There was a crust of ice on the snow, but Jim jabbed his heels through it and stood up in the moonlight, his legs bare, his single garment flapping gently ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... such articles as England wanted, to be transported to that country and other countries belonging to Great Britain. The colonists were permitted to ship to foreign markets such products only as English merchants did not want. They were prohibited from selling abroad any wool, yarn, or woolen manufactured goods. This was done to keep the markets open for British wool and manufactures. Another law declared that no iron wares of any kind should be manufactured here. Thus was it attempted to ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young
... Kate was debarred from any share in this business, she worked every day at her tidies for the store, and knit stockings, besides, for some of the neighbors, who furnished the yarn and paid her a fair price. There were people who thought Mrs. Loudon did wrong in allowing her daughter to work for money in this way, but Kate's mother said that the end justified the work, and that so long as Kate persevered ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... Short, as the point is rather a long one, and as your brother said that he should expect us at two precisely, I think that we had better take the 'bus back to the Temple, when I can tell the yarn to ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... something I never could account for, but it's true as truth. I've known more such cases; some folks laughs at me for believing 'em,—'the cap'n's yarns,' they calls 'em,—but if you'll notice, everybody's got some yarn of that kind they do believe, if they won't believe yours. And there's a good deal happens in the world that's myster'ous. Now there was Widder Oliver Pinkham, over to the P'int, told me with her own lips that she—" But just here we saw the captain's expression alter suddenly, ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... almost the only office she performed at first, since Grisell had to dress her, and teach her to keep herself in a tolerable state of neatness, and likewise how to spin, luring her with the hope of spinning yarn for a new dress for herself. As to prayers, her mind was a mere blank, though she said something that sounded like a spell except that it began with "Pater." She did not know who made her, and entirely believed in Niord and Rana, the storm-gods of Norseland. Yet she had always been ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dismiss the only reference this document appears to make to your brother as a mere coincidence in names, but what you have told me makes things interesting—by Jove, it does, though. Well, here's the yarn ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... enormous increase of wealth-producing power given by the new machinery can scarcely be realized. It is reckoned that fifty men with modern machinery could do all the cotton-spinning of the whole of Lancashire a century ago. Mr. Leone Levi has calculated that to make by hand all the yarn spun in England in one year by the use of the self-acting mule, would take 100,000,000 men. The instruments which work this wonderful change are called "labour-saving" machinery. From this title it may be deemed ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... adjutant brought a small whip made of cotton, which consisted of a number of strands and knotted at the ends; but these knots were all cut off by the adjutant before the drummer took it, which made it not worse than to have been whipped with cotton yarn. ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... your Paw will be happy to give you pleasure, and you know how glad he is to have young people visiting here, rather than having you leave home to visit others," remarked Mrs. Brewster, slowly drawing the yarn through a ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... But ye don't think o' bringin' him HERE in this house? 'Cept you're thinkin' o' tellin' him that yarn o' yours about the hoss trade to beguile the winter evenings. I told ye ye'd hev to pay yet to get folks to listen ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... is necessary to produce a work of art is to take a drummer's story and tell it in dusty English, we might try our luck with the modern smoking-car yarn about the traveling-man who came to the country hotel late at night, and see how far we can get with it in the manner of James Branch Cabell ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... been unmasked as a vulgar fraud. Schiller evidently began the novel in no very strenuous frame of mind. He wished to profit by the popular interest in tales of mysterious charlatanry which had been aroused by the exploits of Cagliostro. So he set out to spin a yarn in that vein, but he had no definite plan and did not himself know where he would bring up. The literary merits of 'The Ghostseer', Schiller's most noteworthy attempt in prose fiction, will come ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... being very small in person, he did not consider that a man four times as big required twice as much rum to keep his sluggish frame in the same degree of good spirits. He held out against his crew for two days, during which time they never one of them so much as lifted a spun-yarn. The weather was, be sure, very mild and pleasant. I confess, however, that I was very uneasy, under the idea that we might all perish, from the obstinacy of the crew, on one side, and the firmness of the little man on the other. Our captain found that his government was democratical; and perceiving ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... portion of my story is at an end. My poor patient, sicker than she had been the night before, left me but little leisure for thought or action disconnected with my care for her. But towards morning she grew quieter, and finding in an open drawer those tangled threads of yarn of which I have spoken, I began to rewind them, out of a natural desire to see everything neat and orderly about me. I had nearly finished my task when I heard a strange noise from the bed. It was a sort of gurgling cry which I found hard to interpret, but which only ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... either red or blue, lined with baize, and having regimental cuffs; and a waistcoat and breeches of baize. The suit is ornamented with orris lace. He is also presented with a white orris shirt; his stockings are of yarn, one of them red, the other blue, and tied below the knee with worsted garters; his Indian shoes are sometimes put on, but he frequently walks in his stocking feet; his hat is coarse, and bedecked with three ostrich feathers ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... three of his companions. Once, when two men were drowned in a deep part of the river, Metcalf was sent for to dive for them, which he did, and brought up one of the bodies at the fourth diving: the other had been carried down the stream. He thus also saved a manufacturer's yarn, a large quantity of which had been carried by a sudden flood into a deep hole under the High Bridge. At home, in the evenings, he learnt to play the fiddle, and became so skilled on the instrument, that he was shortly able ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... see whether walking or driving through Salisbury. Although by no means a large erection, it formed one of the most striking objects in the city, and a more beautiful piece of Gothic architecture it would be difficult to imagine. It was formerly called the Yarn Market, and was said to have been erected about the year 1378 by Sir Lawrence de St. Martin as a penance for some breach of ecclesiastical law. It consisted of six arches forming an open hexagon, supported by six columns on heavy foundations, with a central pillar square at the bottom ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... please." "I don't think he wants you to know what he have been having happen to him, but I can't keep from telling you 'cause I'm tickled clean to my funny bone. Dave Hanks come over here at daylight wanting a doctor quick, and I had a cramp in my leg what I forgot to tie a yarn string around before I went to bed, so I had to let Tom hurry on over there 'count of the push they was in. Then I got to studying it over and while I knewed how Tom had had a lot of practice in such things in a hospital, I thought it was just as well to let him get a little Harpeth experience ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... explained the journalist, "—the jam and the break, and all this magnificent struggle afterwards. It makes a great yarn. I feel tempted sometimes to help it out a little—artistically, you know—but of course that wouldn't do. She'd make a ripping yarn, though, if I could get up some motive outside mere trade rivalry for the blowing up of ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... cost him much. Nellie Craig had them for a while after Cordelia died. Good old soul, Nellie. But her tongue hung in the middle and worked both ways like a bell-clapper. I always blamed her for the start of the miser yarn. Adam managed to get it over on her ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... commodities: textiles (garments, cotton cloth, and yarn), rice, leather, sports goods, and carpets ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... sorry you've got to be homing, Though I grant it's unwise to continue your roaming, But the evening's to spare ere you drop me astern, So come up to my room and indulge in a yarn. ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... manner, so that one can only move by daylight and then often only by constant sounding. Consequently, starting at noon on Monday, it took us till 5 p.m. Wednesday to do the 130 miles. It is much less for a crow, but the river winds so, that one can quite believe Herodotus's yarn of the place where you pass the same village on three consecutive days. Up to Kurna, which we reached at 7 a.m. Tuesday, the river is about 500 yards to 300 yards broad, and the country mainly poor, bare, flat pasture; the date ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... mind like his. Well worth knowing too, both to the man and to the future creator of character, were those brave hardy sons of toil who did the rough work of his firm's harbours and lighthouses; and many a good yarn he must have heard them spin as he stood side by side with them on some solid block of granite, or on some outlying headland, or chatted and smoked with the captain and the sailors of The Pharos as she made ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... great manufacturing town, like Manchester to-day, and Bruges a busy port, like modern Antwerp or Liverpool. All this prosperity was largely dependent upon England, for it was from there that the Flemish manufacturers procured the fine, long wool which they wove on their looms into cloth and spun into yarn. In 1336 the count of Flanders, perhaps at Philip's suggestion, ordered the imprisonment of all the Englishmen in Flanders. Edward promptly retaliated by prohibiting the export of wool from England and the importation of cloth. At the same time he protected and encouraged the Flemish ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... safe in Terrence's hands," had been Dick's mock apology. "A pair of Irishmen, you know. I'd forgot Terrence was case- hardened. Do you know, after he said good night to you, he came up to me for a yarn. And he was steady as a rock. He mentioned casually of having had several sips, so I... I... never dreamed ... er... that he had ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... branch of it, however, to which this remark does not apply. The art of cotton-spinning and cotton-weaving struck deep root in Russian soil. After remaining for generations in the condition of a cottage industry—the yarn being distributed among the peasants and worked up by them in their own homes—it began, about 1825, to be modernised. Though it still required to be protected against foreign competition, it rapidly outgrew the necessity for direct ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... though he was on a steamboat excursion in rough weather. The boy took the pipe by the tail, and the tobacco paper in his other hand, and went out, and soon returned with a heavy blanket coat on, a pair of felt boots, and a toboggan knit-cap, and a pair of yarn mittens on, though it was late in July, and the weather was quite hot. Uncle Ike looked at him in wonder, as though he was not sure but it was winter, and he was so ill as not to know that summer and fall had passed ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... outworn elders were with them, some on foot, some riding on oxen and asses. In their forefront went the two signs of the Battle-shaft and the War-spear. But moreover, in front of all was borne a great staff with the cloth of a banner wrapped round about it, and tied up with a hempen yarn that it ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... "the three," as the youngest were called in the councils of their elders. So a name was printed by Santa Claus on a large red card and pinned upon each receptacle, FLOSSY or LAURA, while all were willing to accept of his bounties contained within, even if they did not recognize yarn or knitting as familiar. Matty hurried back with their treasures. She brought from her own room the large red tickets, already prepared, and then, on the floor by her mother's bedside, assorted the innumerable parcels, ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... performed that office, it would exceedingly depreciate them. * * * In the winter season, the women gather buffalo's hair, a sort of coarse, brown, curled wool; and having spun it as fine as they can, and properly doubled it, they put small beads of different colours upon the yarn, as they work it, the figures they work in those small webs, are generally uniform, but sometimes they diversify them on both sides. The Choktah weave shot-pouches which have raised work inside and outside. They likewise make turkey feather blankets with the long feathers of the neck and ...
— Prehistoric Textile Art of Eastern United States • William Henry Holmes
... the paddles. It's many's the time I shot the self-same riffle before, and it's many's the time after, but niver a wink of the same have I seen. 'Twas the sight of a lifetime.' 'Do tell!' dryly commented Bettles. 'D'ye think I'd b'lieve such a yarn? I'd ruther say the glister of light'd gone to your eyes, and the snap of the air to your tongue.' ''Twas me own eyes that beheld it, an' if Sitka Charley was here, he'd be the lad to back me.' 'But facts is facts, an' they ain't no gettin' round 'em. It ain't in the nature of things for the water ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... tang again. But from now to the end of the yarn I want you to forget it. I tell you I forgot it, sitting there on the edge of that swan-skin robe and listening and looking at the most wonderful woman that ever stepped out of the pages of Thoreau or of ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... Sir Peter Warren, who receives with him the enemy's submission, is a rough and haughty English seaman, greedy of fame, but despising those who have won it for him. Pressing forward to the portal, sword in hand, comes a comical figure in a brown suit, and blue yarn stockings, with a huge frill sticking forth from his bosom, to which the whole man seems an appendage this is that famous worthy of Plymouth County, who went to the war with two plain shirts and a ruffled one, and is now ...
— Biographical Sketches - (From: "Fanshawe and Other Pieces") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... his return from California, the tangled web of my yarn began to unravel. Mat Bailey had reported that nothing had been heard of the highwaymen "from that day to this." But John Keeler's work had not been done in vain. O'Leary of You Bet, the Nevada City jail-bird, had been duly impressed with the handsome reward offered for ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... late nineteenth century teenager's book, and if you like that sort of thing you will enjoy it too, for it is what used to be called a crackingly good yarn. ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... summoned all my strength, and called out long before we floated past her Anderson reading the Bible to Jack Anderson reading the news of the Battle of the Nile Jack's Father landing after the Battle of the Nile Jack in Nanny's Room Jack and Bramble aboard the Indiaman The Fore-peak Yarn "How's her head, Tom?" Bramble saving Bessie Jack heaving the lead Nanny relating her story Jack and his Father under the Colonnade A Surprise Bramble and Jack carried into a French Port The Leith Smack and the Privateer ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... goes, I know things of which the priests themselves are ignorant. If I were to tell you all I have seen, you would be astounded. But a still tongue makes a wise head, and my father, who, all the same, delighted in spinning a yarn, did not disclose a twentieth part of what he knew. To make up for this he often repeated the same stories, and to my knowledge he told the story of Catherine Fontaine ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... we can sell the cow for any thing at all to Mr. Dennis, since his eye is set upon her, better let him have her mother, dear; and that and my yarn, which Mrs. Garraghty says she'll allow me for, will make up the rent—and Brian need not talk of America. But it must be in golden guineas, the agent will take the rent no other way; and you won't get a guinea for less than five shillings. Well, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... and I daresay there are a good many others who will recollect all about it as well as myself. But to explain the matter properly I must go back a little in my dates; for, instead of Callao at the commencement of my yarn, you must read Calabar. ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... more furious than ever, and did nothing but plot mischief against the man's daughter, who was daily growing more and more beautiful. At last, one day the wicked woman took a large pot, put it on the fire and boiled some yarn in it. When it was well scalded she hung it round the poor girl's shoulder, and giving her an axe, she bade her break a hole in the frozen river, and rinse the yarn in it. Her stepdaughter obeyed as usual, and went and ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... staring at me up to this point, leaning forward on their benches, for sailors are nearly as fond of a good yarn as they are of tobacco; and I heard afterwards that they had voted parson's yarn a good one. Now, however, I saw one of them, probably more ignorant than the others, cast a questioning glance at his neighbour. It was not returned, ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... "I suppose they would drop the notoriety yarn and find time to consider whether the working woman is treated fairly or not. The weakness in her defence at present seems solely that not enough pretty women make up her defenders. Bah! You all ought to have kittens to play with, and ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... arrived in the evening at my dear home, kissed my wife and all the women I could meet with that were worth the trouble, sat myself down in a snug elbow-chair near a comfortable English fire, told a long, tough yarn about mountains of sugar and rivers of rum, bottle-nosed porpoises, sharks, grampuses, and flying-fish, until I fell sound asleep, but, however, not so sound to prevent my hearing my best end of the ship whispering to someone to put more coals on the fire, ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... anything that can swim," replied Jupp, quite in his element when talking of the sea, and always ready to spin a yarn or tell what he knew. "It might be made of spare spars, or boards, or anything that can float. When I was in the Neptune off Terra del Faygo I've seed the natives there coming off to us seated on a couple of branches of a tree lashed together, ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... Excusing himself for a few minutes, Sheridan remarked as he left to go upstairs that the Prince would finish the story. But of course the Prince was not equal to the occasion, and when he got hopelessly stuck he proposed an adjournment upstairs where Sheridan would be able to complete his own yarn. It was then Selwyn realized that he had been fooled, for the first to greet him upstairs was Sheridan himself, now a full member of the club, with profuse bows and thanks for Selwyn's "friendly suffrage." Happily Selwyn had too keen a sense of humour not to ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... transport equipment, electric power machinery, food and livestock, metal and metal products, chemicals and chemical products, plastics, yarn, paper ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... and the Brahman began the whole story over again, not missing a single detail, and spinning as long a yarn as possible. ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... before us. I was able to enter upon it only six months ago. Five families that had left off the calling have reverted to it and they are doing a prosperous business. The Ashram supplies them at their door with the yarn they need; its volunteers take delivery of the cloth woven, paying them cash at the market rate. The Ashram merely loses interest on the loan advanced for the yarn. It has as yet suffered no loss and is able to ...
— Third class in Indian railways • Mahatma Gandhi
... had in the world. It was to be on the race-track. Say, she didn't demonstrate worth a cent. My syndicate jibbed, and I—well, here I am, a cattleman—you see cattle haven't the speed of automobiles, but they mostly do what's expected. That's my yarn, boss. You didn't know much of me. It's not a great yarn as life goes. Mostly ordinary. But there's a deal of life in it, in its way. There's a pile of hope busted, and hope busted isn't a pleasant thing. Makes you think a deal. However, Will Henderson ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... pain. He wore a white tennis-cap pulled over his eyes, and a short gray jacket that reached to his waist. Under one arm was a wooden crutch. His left leg was bent at the knee, and swung clear when he jerked his little body along the ground. The other, though unhurt, was thin and bony, the yarn stocking wrinkling ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... exercises were the catches, such as "Peter Piper picks a peck of pickled peppers," or "Selina Seamstich stitches seven seams slowly, surely, serenely and slovenly," or "Around a rugged rock a ragged rascal ran a rural race." Then, too, Professor Stokes had composed a wonderful yarn about the memory, entitled "My M-made memory medley, mentioning memory's most marvelous manifestations." This took up as much as three or four pages of this book, every word beginning with m. It was a marvelous exercise for lingual development. He also had "The Far-Famed Fairy Tale of Fenella," ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... told by the mate of the wrecked ship; and as he and his colleagues, both of the lifeboat and the steam-tug, want no better introduction than their own deeds to the sympathy and attention of the public, let Charles Edward Fish begin his yarn ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... the first, no more. There is not a heart-beat in the whole grind. As to Willis—he failed egregiously, when he attempted to 'gild refined gold and paint the lily,' as he did in his so-called 'Sacred Poems.' He can spin a yarn pretty well, and coin a new word for a make-shift, amusingly, but save me from the foil-glitter of ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... sturdy craft "Nomad" and the stranger experiences of the Rangers themselves with Morello's schooner and a mysterious derelict form the basis of this well-spun yarn of the sea. ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... the tiny cabin with an extra suit of clothes of his own, made of the roughest kind of gray jeans, home knit yarn socks and a pair of heavy brogan shoes. A second trip brought underclothing of the same rough quality, but Harry changed into them gladly. Jarvis meanwhile produced a bottle ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Next, a turner would be seen, either out upon the sidewalk, or close to his door, turning with a bow lathe; and next a range of families all along the street, the women knitting or sewing, or spinning yarn, and the children playing about on the pavements near. Perhaps one of the oldest of the children would be tending the baby, either holding it in her arms, or rocking it to sleep in a round-bottomed basket on the pavement. ...
— Rollo in Naples • Jacob Abbott
... bo'sun, suggesting that we should try and capture it. And so, there being by now scarce any wind, he bade us get out a couple of the oars, and back the boat up to the weed. This we did, after which he made fast a piece of salt meat to a bit of spun yarn, and bent this on to the boat hook. Then he made a running bowline, and slipped the loop on to the shaft of the boat hook, after which he held out the boat hook, after the fashion of a fishing rod, over the place where I had seen the crab. Almost immediately, ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... TRUE; it's sixteen pages of the South Seas; their essence. What am I to do? Lose this little gem - for I'll be bold, and that's what I think it - or go on with the rest, which I don't believe in, and don't like, and which can never make aught but a silly yarn? Make another end to it? Ah, yes, but that's not the way I write; the whole tale is implied; I never use an effect, when I can help it, unless it prepares the effects that are to follow; that's what a story ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the detective.' He resembles a cock-sparrow, so I asked him why he didn't fly in through an attic window. He took my point at once, and remarked that he wanted none of my lip, or he would ask me officially what became of Don Ramon de Santander's big pink pearl. It's a queer yarn. There was a ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... me; while I have been spinning this long yarn, you have been smoking and imbibing; I am very willing to join you in both; but to-night I am tired out. The next time we meet, I shall be delighted to tell you what particulars I learned on my return to New Orleans, relative to Adele and her poor orphan child; ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... entangled my old gut casting-line, and at the end of the line was an eel of two pounds' weight! On cutting him open, there, sure enough, was the identical clipped salmon fly; it had been inside that eel for three weeks without hurting him. This sounds like a regular angler's yarn, and nobody need believe it unless he likes; nevertheless, it is perfectly true. I had got "fixed up" in the same stick that had broken my line on ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... nodded, and as she turned to limp down the passage, her ball of gray yarn slipped from her grasp and rolled after her until Corinna recovered it. In silence the cripple led the way, and in silence they followed her, until she opened the closed door at the end of the hall, and they entered the room, with the ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... sot off in one, Josiah in one also nigh by with Tommy. One side of it comes off so you can git in and set on a high cushion and read or knit. I took my knittin' and most knit one of Josiah's heels whilst I rid by palaces and elephants and camels and fakirs and palm trees. Oh, Jonesville yarn! you never expected to be knit amid seens like this. I can knit and admire scenery first rate, and my blue and white yarn seemed to connect me with Jonesville in some occult way, and then I knew Josiah would need his socks before ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... to her. So of any other ordinary business. Yet when it comes to teaching, anything like definite study or observation of the mode of doing it, is almost unknown! It is really no exaggeration to say that many teachers bungle in their work as egregiously as would a woman who should put yarn into a churn, and expect, after a proper amount of ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... said Peaks, as he seated himself on the main-hatch, and twined his long legs around those of the prisoner, so that he was held as fast as though he had been in the folds of an anaconda. "Hold still, now, and I'll spin you a sea-yarn. Once on a time there was a little boy that wanted to ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... Manufactures, the value of the textile products of North Carolina was greater than that of Massachusetts. Every farmhouse had spinning-wheels and one loom or several on which the women of the family spun yarn and wove cloth for the family wardrobe. On the large plantations negro women produced much of the cloth for both slaves and family. Except on special occasions, a very large proportion of the clothing worn by the average Southern community was of household or local manufacture. Hats were ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... with this central fibre of his faith, there were strands of a strange philosophy; he held strongly the doctrine of Illusion, by which the one impersonal Spirit, "in the illusion which overspreads it, is to the external world what yarn is to cloth, what milk is to curds, what clay is to a jar, but only in that illusion," that is, "he is not the actual material cause of the world, as clay of a jar, but the illusory material cause, as a rope might be of a snake"; and the spirit ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... ever hear Bob Taylor's yarn about Uncle 'Rastus's funeral? Funniest thing Bob ever got off." ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... sale, both pure and mixed with clay in briquettes, and salt in blocks almost as black as coal, and three times as heavy, and piles of drugs—a medley of bones, horns, roots, leaves, and minerals—and raw cotton and cotton yarn from Wuchang and Bombay, and finished goods from Manchester. At one of the villages there was a chair for hire, and, knowing how difficult was the country, I was willing to pay the amount asked—namely, 7d. for nearly seven miles; but my friend the convert, who arranged these ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... he left because he didn't like the crowd or the life there. We haven't changed the story any since our return. We'll tell you fellows, for we never used to have any secrets from you in the old days. But you mustn't pass the yarn around." ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock
... at length the Queen took upon herself to grant patents of monopoly by scores. There was scarcely a family in the realm which did not feel itself aggrieved by the oppression and extortion which this abuse naturally caused. Iron, oil, vinegar, coal, saltpetre, lead, starch, yarn, skins, leather, glass, could be bought only at exorbitant prices. The House of Commons met in an angry and determined mood. It was in vain that a courtly minority blamed the Speaker for suffering the acts of the Queen's Highness to be called in question. The language of the discontented ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... indicted. There was the whirlwind of talk you can imagine. Reminiscent, too! 'Don't you remember?' from house to house, and whenever two men met in the road or hung over the fence to spit and yarn. It was amazing, the number of folks who had set him down as 'queer,' 'odd,' all the country verdicts on the chap that's got to be accounted for. Even his religion was brought up against him. The chief argument ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... I told him. "She is slick as a whistle. Lindstrom fell for her yarn that it was sleight of hand—but it was HC. I'd have sworn it ...
— Modus Vivendi • Gordon Randall Garrett
... belt in which they carry their hammer and knife is manufactured from the fur of the opossum spun into a small yarn like worsted; it is tightly bound at least three or four hundred times round the stomach; very few however possessed this ornament; and it is not improbable that the natives who had their hair clubbed, those that wore belts, and the one who was ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... heavily laden with marine curiosities. There were sou'westers, and tarpaulins, and skull-caps; frieze jackets, and overalls, and hickory shirts; tarpaulin coats, and heavy sea-boots, and duck blouses with old bunches of oakum sticking out of the pockets; there were coils of rope-yarn well tarred, and jack-knives in leather cases, still black with whale-gurry: and a few telescopes and log-glasses. "Take 'em all," said the captain. "They smell a little fishy, but no matter. It's all the better ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... damn it, I don't like it that way. I want strings, see? I want meshes of 'em, balls of 'em, like what comes in yarn—get it?" ...
— The Very Black • Dean Evans
... an old "yarn," repeated from generation to generation. We find in a Chinese work quoted by Amyot: "The palace of the king (of Japan) is remarkable for its singular construction. It is a vast edifice, of extraordinary height; it has ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... take the skunks into the secret, more or less, an' they've played it double on us both. Meant bagging the letter from you to blackmail me with it; that's what they meant! Of course, when they failed to bring it off, they'd pitch any yarn to you. But that was their game all right. You must see for yourself it could never have been mine, Raffles, and—and let me out o' ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... army began to gather into Boston. Tall, lanky, awkward, fellows, came in squads, and companies, and regiments, swaggering along, dressed in their brown homespun clothes and blue yarn stockings. They stooped, as if they still had hold of the plough-handles, and marched without any time or tune. Hither they came, from the corn-fields, from the clearing in the forest, from the blacksmith's forge, from the carpenter's workshop, ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... by this that he said: "The old pauper woman whom I saw to-day in the poorhouse, in her hunger saving her apple to give to the little orphan just brought in, and unraveling her stocking and bending her twisted old fingers to knit its yarn into socks for the blue feet of the child will, I verily believe, begin her life at death with more intellectual genius—mark the words, intellectual genius—than will begin that second life any statesman or prime minister or man famed in our day. For I know of none who hath been faithful ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... of the half-breed woman—a giantess—who had a dozen sons, has about it for me all the glamour of an ancient yarn. The sons were free-trappers, you know, and, incidentally, thieves and murderers. (I suspect some of our classic heroes were as much!) But they were doubtless living up to the light that was in them, and they were game to the finish. So was the old woman; they called her "the mother of the devils." ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... took it up, and Hank had to spend a barrel of money to come clear. That, and a range war that grew out of the killing, and some kind of a business deal just about broke them. That's the way this fellow had it; said a trail-boss told him at Ogalalla that spring. I didn't take much stock in the yarn at the time, but I'm beginning to think he had it straight. You didn't hear anything ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... lingo. It's Malory brought up to date, with a dash of Quixote. I nearly died at that place where the knight breaks his lance on the first automobile he ever saw and then rides at the head of the circus parade. It's certainly a ticklesome yarn." ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... "This is a curious yarn that I am going to tell you," said Carnacki, as after a quiet little dinner we made ourselves comfortable ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... actresses ambling to and fro, his own delicious presence dressed in his best, his "funny" stories, his songs being ground out by the hand organs, his friends extending their hands, clapping him on the shoulder, cackling over the latest idle yarn. ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... a silk hat, that he might go to Washington with head- gear equal to the occasion. A farmer's wife knit him a pair of yarn stockings. Hundreds of such attentions, kind in intent, grotesque in appearance, he received with that kindness which is the soul of courtesy. There was a woman at whose modest farmhouse he had once dined on a bowl of bread and milk, because he ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... said Bob, "I'll be careful." And to show how careful he intended to be, he let the cutter run up amidst the reeds, and jumped out with a dozen men, provided with some fiery spirit, and some spun yarn and matches. ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... had hoped you would have known me better than to believe that I would swallow the ludicrous yarn you've prepared. Don't you ever stop and ask yourself on these occasions if it's ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... and turned up his hands in a gesture of frank wonder. "Professor Lambert," he said, "I can't believe what I have seen myself. If I told such a yarn to the reporters, they'd never forget it. They'd kid me out of ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... However, my lady was very charitable in her own way. She had a charity school for poor children, where they were taught to read and write gratis, and where they were kept well to spinning gratis for my lady in return; for she had always heaps of duty yarn from the tenants, and got all her household linen out of the estate from first to last; for after the spinning, the weavers on the estate took it in hand for nothing, because of the looms my lady's interest ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... stories are true or not, the fact remains that Mr. Koussevitzky became a conductor and a great one—one of the greatest. The yarn of the mirrors is the most credible of the lot, for the Russian batonist's platform appearance is so meticulous and his movements are so obviously studied to produce the desired effects that he seems to conduct ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... preceding Yule was a day of general preparation. Houses were cleaned out and borrowed articles were returned to their owners. Work of all kind was stopped, and a general appearance of completion of work was established; yarn was reeled off, no lint was allowed to remain on the rock of the wheel, and all work implements were laid aside. In the evening cakes were baked, one for each person, and duly marked, and great care was taken that none should break in the firing, as such an accident was a bad ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... be described the crew's quarters. The crew consisted of two hands, both strong and sturdy, and both belonging to the same coloured man. Though our trusty tar, Henry, had doubtless never heard "The Yarn of the 'Nancy Bell'" and had never eaten a shipmate in his life, yet he had a whole crew within himself as truly as the "elderly naval man" who had eaten one. There was therefore no occasion for extensive quarters. Fortunately, an available ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... yarn with this declaration, and you could never make him believe that he had had only a ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... the end of the story. As soon as the boilers cooled off they worked all right on those supply pumps. May I be hanged if they had not sucked in, somehow, a long string of yarn, and cloth, and, if you will believe me, a wire of some woman's crinoline. And that French folly of a sham Empress cut short that day the victory of the Confederate navy, and old Davis himself can't tell when we shall have ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... cotton cloth, and yarn), rice, leather goods, sports goods, chemicals, manufactures, carpets ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... Simon persisted in assuming that the cuts were made transversely, or across, and that therefore the complete length was nine cables. The skipper, however, explained (and the point is quite as veracious as the rest of his yarn) that his cuts were made longitudinally—straight from the tip of the nose to the tip of the tail! The complete length was therefore only three cables, the same as each piece. Simon was not asked the exact length of the serpent, but how long ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... It had been done by H. G. Wells and God knew how many other writers. Break a yarn like that and nobody would believe it. Still, if he could get his hands on ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... that "Tidy," as we will call him, was the first speaker who had something to say. He had a reason for talking, for some evil genius had followed him for two days. The yarn is best told in his own words, so far ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... board a ship in a storm may be real confusion and riot, or it may only seem so to those not used to the sea. Often what is a hopelessly tangled mass of sails, ropes, spars and gears to the landsman, is as clear to a sailor as a skein of yarn is to an experienced knitter, who can ply her needles in ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... tell something, you know, to cover his mysterious movements. 'Tonio's story may be cock and bull for all we know. It is just such a yarn as I have heard told many a time and oft in the Columbia basin. Most Indians are born liars, and 'Tonio has everything to gain and nothing to lose in telling a believable whopper now. 'Tonio says his people are persecuted saints, and all others ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... gave her inarticulate but infinitely expressive answer to the question of Maurice Kirkwood. The good-hearted woman thought it time to leave the young people. Down went the stocking with the needles in it; out of her lap tumbled the ball of worsted, rolling along the floor with its yarn trailing after it, like some village matron who goes about circulating from hearth to hearth, leaving all along her track the story of the new engagement or of the arrival ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... of yarn, with which kittens have been making cobwebs, has always seemed to me a much easier task than to unknot the tangled skein of confused influences, that trip up our feet at every step in life's path. Here was I, who but a month ago had a supreme contempt for guile and a lofty ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut |
