"Coil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the deck certain blue figures lounging about seemed to be quite a long way off, indeed in another world. Here and there on the deck were circles of yellow or white rope, coiled as precisely and perfectly as Audrey could coil her own hair. Mr. Gilman led them to the door of the deck-house and they gazed within. The sight of the interior drew out of the ravished Audrey an ecstatic exclamation: "What a darling!" And at the words she saw that Mr. Gilman, for all his ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... darker, and the rain came down in torrents. The thunder-cloud, as though attracted by the height of their situation, kept hovering over the hill, and often seemed to coil round, and wrap them in its terrific bosom. Night, they knew, was about setting in, but they were still unable to issue forth without imminent danger. The thick cloud by which they were enveloped would have rendered it ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... peculiarity which you Yankees seldom think of, that Englishmen can't endure to live in America. Well, that peculiarity is just as active after they "shuffle off the mortal coil." They must have their little England, even in the ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... from his summer-dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams, Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers Quivering within the wave's intenser day, All overgrown with azure moss and flowers So sweet, the sense ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... had ever seen. He was sunning himself, after the cold night, and he must have been asleep when Antonia screamed. When I turned he was lying in long loose waves, like a letter "W." He twitched and began to coil slowly. He was not merely a big snake, I thought—he was a circus monstrosity. His abominable muscularity, his loathsome, fluid motion, somehow made me sick. He was as thick as my leg, and looked as if millstones could n't crush the disgusting vitality ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... descend by a hole close to the tallest of those three pines yonder,' she said as she seized a small coil of rope and led the way. Having fastened the rope around the trunk of ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... boy worked industriously dredging for the cable. He found it; and under-running the heavy rope, raised it and the anchor. When the steamer returned to Beteley's Landing, Stirling delivered the anchor and coil of rope to the captain, who, intending to defraud the young man of the promised reward, ordered the mate to "cast off the lines." The gong had signalled the engineer to get under way, but not quick ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... one-half of the current flows through the cell and acts upon the selenium. Between the bridge and the cell is a reversing switch, so that the current can be reversed through the cell without changing its course through the bridge. A Bradley tangent galvanometer is used, employing the coil of 160 ohms resistance. The Leclanche battery is exclusively ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... him. The two men were lashed together by the light plastisteel cable. The sergeant held the end of the cable in his hands, waiting for the coil ...
— The Judas Valley • Gerald Vance
... their climbers buckled on, they took a little coil of rope and some queer little wooden things and a big hammer, and they went ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... train climbed the grade beyond San Bernardino, he grew restless. Flinging down his cigarette, he began unwrapping his belongings. Out came blankets, extra clothing, a rifle, canteens of several patterns, two pack-saddles, a coil of rope, a pair of high lace boots,—hobnailed, heavy, and unserviceable,—a pocket compass, a hunting-knife, a patent filter, two halters, two galvanized pails, a small, compact, silk tent, an axe, a fishing-rod, a rubber cup, a box of cigars, a bottle of brandy, several neckerchiefs, a cartridge-belt, ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... the females wore a sort of red jacket and the conical Malay hat; but those are used only on "state occasions." The single garment was secured at the waist by being drawn into a belt of rattans, colored black. Above this was worn a coil of many rings of large brass wire; and all of them seemed to be provided with this appendage. There was some variety in the use of this ornament; for some wore it tightly wound around the body, while ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... starlight on the meditative upturned eyes, the clearly marked brows, the firm setting of the lips, was more conscious than ever of the latent witchery in the sweet, serene face. He would not flee from its spells now, he decided. He would meet them boldly, and throw them off, coil for coil, however subtilely, however dexterously they were wound about him. Meanwhile, two things had not escaped him: She had yielded the point gracefully, and convinced, instead of launching out into a voluble farrago of irrelevant rubbish, ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... much above thirty: tall, erect and lithe. Her throat, bared to the breeze, was of the purest modeling; her skin of a whiteness unusual in that warm climate. Her head, a little small for her rounded figure, was crowned with a coil of chestnut hair, and her eyes glowed with a look strange to the common light of every day. It was her soul that was scanning that ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... The first frosts, on the other hand, shrivel the bines of white bryony, which part and hang separated, and in the spring a fresh bine pushes up with greyish green leaves and tendrils feeling for support. It is often observed that the tendrils of this bryony coil both ways, ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step its shining archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last-found home, and knew ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... Peri-faced maiden heard the words of the hero; Quickly she unbound her auburn locks, Coil upon coil, and serpent upon serpent; And she stooped and dropped down the tresses from the battlement, And cried: "O hero, child of heroes, Take now these tresses, they belong to thee, And I have cherished them that they might prove an ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... the old tiger on the quarterdeck, and in one of his blander humours. Captain le Harnois was sitting on a coil of rope, his back reclining against a carronade, with a keg of brandy on the dexter hand and a keg of whisky on the sinister. An air of grim good humour was spread over his features; he had just awaked from slumber; was for a few minutes sober; and had possibly forgotten ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... so," replied Cap'n Bill. "While I was there I never heard the edge mentioned. They're cruel enough to do that—'specially the Boolooroo—but I guess they've never thought o' throwin' folks over the edge. They fight with long cords that have weights on the ends, which coil 'round you an' make you helpless in a jiffy; so whenever they throw them cords you mus' ward 'em off with your long sticks. Don't let 'em wind around your bodies, ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... islands she was to visit. Thus, axes and picks were not wanting, Captain Crutchely having had an eye to the possible necessity of fortifying himself against savages. Mark now ascended the crater-wall with a pick on his shoulder, and a part of a coil of ratlin-stuff around his neck. As he went up, he used the pick to make steps, and did so much in that way, in the course of ten minutes, as greatly to facilitate the ascent and descent at the particular place he had selected. Once on the summit, he found a part of the rock that ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... free thought. But king and emperor and pope fed the fire. The reign of terror blasted the Netherlands, and when it had succeeded there, when Italy, Austria, and Holland surrounded the states of Germany, Philip knew it would be the smothering coil of the serpent around the cradle of religious liberty. But the young Hercules of free thought throttled the serpent, and leaped forth to win ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... don't know. If it had come to that she would have been most likely fished out, what with her natural want of luck and the good many people on the quay and on board. And just where the Ferndale was moored there hung on a wall (I know the berth) a coil of line, a pole, and a life-buoy kept there on purpose to save people who tumble into the dock. It's not so easy to get away from life's betrayals as she thought. However it did not come to that. He followed ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... An' down to Boston, ef you take their showin', Wut they don't know ain't hardly wuth the knowin'. There's sunthin' goin' on, I know: las' night The British sogers killed in our gret fight 70 (Nigh fifty year they hedn't stirred nor spoke) Made sech a coil you'd thought a dam hed broke: Why, one he up an' beat a revellee With his own crossbones on a holler tree, Till all the graveyards swarmed out like a hive With faces I hain't seen sence Seventy-five. Wut is the news? 'T ain't good, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... on her forehead in most unbecoming fashion. That also would have to be considered in the question of costume—a head-dress which should combine use and ornament. The idea of having only a wet, white rag on one's head! No wonder people looked "objects!" Perhaps it would be better to coil the hair about the brow and have no fringe, or at least only a few loose locks that would look equally well, straight ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... knock came to the door, and the servant entered, carrying a large mahogany chest of chemicals, with a long coil of steel and platinum wire and two rather ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... scene— Yon river, like a silvery snake, lays out His coil i' th' sunshine, lovingly; it breathes Of freshness in this ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... was in the empty, echoing space of the hangar level. The fuel tanks bulged huge in the dimness. Here were reels of the feed hose he needed—flexible metal that had withstood the years; here a faucet nozzle, and a long coil of fine wire. Haste driving him, he made the connections. Then he was descending again, dragging behind him a long black snake of hose whose other end was clamped to a vat of ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat
... Then both manly shame and manly passion (for the actor loved her in his way, which was by no means her way, or the way of any large, loyal nature) restrained all unbecoming expression of chagrin and disappointment,— which yet sunk into his heart, and prepared the not uncongenial coil for a goodly crop of suspicion, jealousy, alienation, aversion, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... what at first looked to Gard like a perfectly smooth spot amid the troubled waters, and then he was lifted from below and flung awry and out of his stroke, and tossed and tumbled till he felt as helpless as a dead fish. Then a fresh coil of the bubbling tide whirled him to one side and he was out again in the ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... more in those dear arms, Nor thy life's comfort call me, O these are but too powerful charms, And do but more enthral me! But see how patient I am grown In all this coil about thee: Come, nice thing, let my heart alone, I cannot ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... that somebody lies dead in the parish. In this gloomy place the sexton keeps his dismal apparatus,—the hearse, with its curtains of rusty sable, the bier, the spades and shovels for digging graves; and in a corner lies a coil of soiled ropes, whose rasping sound, as they slipped through the coffin-handles, while the bearers lowered the corpse into the earth, has grated harshly on many a shuddering mourner's ear. The leaves of the hearse-house door are fastened together ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... position to analyse and to deal with each in turn. You might be obscured by ophthalmia, crippled by gout or consumed to a spectre by phthisis, and I should be able, without haste, without anxiety, to unravel the coil, to reduce the nodosities, to make the fleshy instrument respond in melody to ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... that the trapper might come soon; and by way of practice for the serious enterprise that would come later, as well as to direct the prisoner's mind a little from his painful predicament, Kane began trying to lasso him with a coil of heavy ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... finally left—and she came down late in an evening gown. The marble steps, which Rimrock had insisted upon having, led up and then turned to both sides and as she came down, smiling, with her ear-'phone left off and her hair in a glorious coil, Rimrock paused and ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... on a coil of rope and blithely hummed an old song—"Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!" Oh, how she had wearied of bumping, heaving, bumping! At first she had enjoyed the storm. It was a new kind of play, and the mise-en-scene was ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... few moments in the cloakroom, and reappeared, a radiant vision in deep blue silk. Her hair was gathered in a coil at the top of her head, and surmounted with an ornament ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to loadstone as first discovered in Magnesia, a town in Asia Minor; also to a piece of iron, nickel, or cobalt having similar properties, notably the power of setting itself in a definite direction; also a coil of wire carrying an electric current, because such a coil really possesses the properties characteristic of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... after, the hole was enlarged, and Robert passed from the arms of his sister to those of Lady Helena. Round his body was rolled a long coil of flax rope. ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... you know," pursued the Ghost, "the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas-eves ago. You have laboured on it since. It is a ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... from the second to the sixth are available. The same department of the British Museum was enriched in 1904 with a terra-cotta model (fig. 2) of a late Roman bugle (c. 4th century A.D.), bent completely round upon itself to form a coil between the mouthpiece and the bell-end (the latter has been broken off). This precious relic was found at Ventoux in France and has been acquired from the collection of M. Morel. This is precisely the form ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... This is equivalent to boiling about seven gallons of ice-water every twenty-four hours. Differently expressed, the body gives off each hour the same amount of heat as a foot and a half of two-inch steam coil. This is the same amount of heat which would be produced by burning about two-thirds of a pound ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... the company in the cabin congenial. One night at the dinner-table the conversation chanced upon the subject of electro-magnetism, and Dr. Jackson described some of the more recent discoveries of European scientists—the length of wire in the coil of a magnet, the fact that electricity passed instantaneously through any known length of wire, and that its presence could be observed at any part of the line by breaking the circuit. Morse was, naturally, much interested and it was then that the inspiration, which had lain dormant ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... hear no more, but hurried to the structure indicated— a building all but ready to fall down. In a harness closet they found a few old straps and a coil of ...
— The Rover Boys in New York • Arthur M. Winfield
... sky was hidden by the thick darkness. No ray of silver or gray showed anywhere, but the Onondaga knew where lay the star upon which sat his patron saint with the wise snakes, coil on coil, in his hair. He felt that through the banks of mist and vapor Tododaho was watching over him, and, as long as he tried to live the right way taught to him by his fathers, the great Onondaga chieftain would lead him through all ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... "Here is a pretty coil about a red-headed brute of a Pict! Danes, Ostmen," he cried, "are you not ashamed to call such a fellow your lord, when you have such a true earl's son as this to ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... of entomologists abound. Slaters of an immense kind, and spotted, and small mahogany-coloured Blattidae, are found under stones, which also conceal hordes of predatory beetles and scorpions, which bristle up at you as you expose them; and nests of tiny snakes, that coil and cuddle together, from the size of crowquills to the thickness of the little finger. During June and July, the monotonous Cicadae spring their rattles in the trees around, and one comes at last even to like their note, in spite of its sameness. A little ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... middle of those dreadful abodes where the poor are born, to languish and die. I looked at those decaying walls, which time has covered with a foul leprosy; those windows, from which dirty rags hang out to dry; those fetid gutters, which coil along the fronts of the houses like venomous reptiles! I felt oppressed with grief, and ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... he. 'Your imagination is all right, and New York is neither heaven nor the other place. The fact is, I'm spooking, and I can tell you, Austin, it's just about the finest kind of work there is. If you could manage to shuffle off your mortal coil and get in with a lot of ghosts, the way I have, you'd ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... women's ornaments were more numerous than those of the men, and comprised necklaces, bracelets, ankle, finger, and ear rings; their hair was separated into bands and kept in place on the forehead by a fillet, falling in thick plaits or twisted into a coil on the nape of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... lay underneath, that he was able to breathe again. Immediately he asked himself, however, IF he could live with his father and wear a mask, and never betray his dreadful secret. So he wandered homeward in the most miserable of all conditions; he was paralysed by the intricacy of the coil which enveloped and ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... a foot long and perhaps four inches wide. Through it ran a piece of paper which unrolled from one coil and wound up on another, actuated by clockwork. Across the blank white paper ran an ink line traced by a stylographic pen, such as I had seen in mechanical pencils used in offices, hotels, banks ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... the forest mold in your nostrils is the clear tang of sun-bathed, water-washed rocks; and the sky begins to swim, to lose itself at the horizon. There is no sudden bursting of a sea on your view. The river begins to coil in and out among islands. The amber waters have become sheeted silver. You wind from island to island, islands of pink granite, islands with no tree but one lone blasted pine, islands that are in themselves forests. There is no end ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... atrocities of which they boasted that I longed for the time when Rube and I should fall upon them. In half an hour I gave the signal. I had picked out a sharp stone in a convenient position, and it was not a minute before I felt the coil of cords loosen with a sudden jerk, and knew that I was free. I found my hands were completely numbed, and it was a long time before I could restore the circulation. It must have been a good half-hour ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... of gravity and sunk, and it was all the darker because the stars were not out. The path was steep and coiled downward like a wounded snake. In one place a tree had fallen across it, and to reach the next coil of the path below was dangerous. So I had the girls dismount and I led the gray horse down on his haunches. The mules refused to follow, which was rather unusual. I went back and from a safe distance in the rear ...
— A Knight of the Cumberland • John Fox Jr.
... hands through the shock of hair that hangs about his head—like the mane of a wild beast. Then shivers—until the cot shakes—with unutterable terror. Then, with uplifted fist, fights back the devils, or clutches the serpents that seem winding him in their coil. Then asks for water, which is instantly consumed by his cracked lips. Going his round some morning, the surgeon finds ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... are beautifully enclosed and finely cultivated, being laid out by one of its former chaplains, according to the most artistic rules of landscape gardening; every coil and curve of avenue being a line of beauty, and its fifteen miles of drive startling the eye with its grouping of lake and garden, bridge and stream, ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... possession of the field. I am sentenced to regimen and the sofa. But as it is my rule in life to make afflictions as light as possible, so I have asked a few friends to take compassion on me, and help me 'to shuffle off this mortal coil' by dealing me, if they can, four by honours. Any time between nine and twelve to-night, or to-morrow night, you will find me at home; and if you are not better engaged, suppose you dine with me to-day—or rather dine opposite to me—and excuse my Spartan broth. You will meet ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... dress, was of the color, popularly dominated "navy-blue," and the linen collar and cuffs were scarcely whiter than the round throat and wrists they encircled. The burnished auburn hair clinging in soft waves to her brow, was twisted into a heavy coil, which the long walk had shaken down till it rested almost on her neck; and though her heart beat furiously, the pale calm face might have been marble, save for the scarlet lines of her beautiful ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... remnant of the stiff-necked old Berber tribe. The M'zabites preserve the pure Arab dress—the haik, or small bornouse without hood, the broad breeches coming to the knee, the bare legs, and the turban rolled up into a coil of ropes. Thus accoutred, and squatting in the ledges of their small booths, the jewelers, blacksmiths and tailors of Bona are ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... midst of my Nol Pros., special verdicts, depositions, protests, business correspondence, etc., like a visitant from the skies. Indeed, my dearest Kate, you may laugh at me if you will for saying so, but there is something about your influence over me which seems to have shuffled off this mortal coil of earthiness; to be unmixed with anything that remains to be perfected; to be perfectly spiritualized, and yet to retain its contact with every part of its subject.... Lest I should talk foolishly on this subject, I will dismiss it, only begging you not to forget how ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... faded and many of the stars went back into infinite space. A dusky film was drawn across the sky, and at a distance the fields and forest blended into one great shadow. Harry looked back at the brigade which wound in a long dark coil among the trees. He could not see faces of the men now, only the sinuous black shape of illimitable length that ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... her own war is done you'll hear her speak To France in cannon tones that will make quake Napoleon on his throne! That great mock-god. Who seeks to free all men that he may fit Their necks to his own yoke! (With growing intensity) That adder who Would coil about the world! That serpent scruffed With white deceit and low ambition's slime, That crept into the garden of my dream And cankered bud and root, nursed by my toil, Fed with my dearest blood! Ay, he will quake, ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... quietly releasing it and tossing its coil into the carriage, "It's too rotten. If it ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... Like anything long and limp you can think of. He sits all in a coil and twist, and you don't think there's much of him; but when he gets up and pulls himself upright, you go looking and looking till you don't know where's the top of him, till you see a thin white face in washed-out hair. He is a good fellow, awfully kind, and I suppose he can't ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... about this girl was free and fearless—her walk, the way she held her head, her unflinching hazel eyes and ready, ringing laugh. Even her red gold hair demanded freedom and refused to stay confined in coil, ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... The black astrologer Night! Night is the world!—I shiver with fright:— The air is full of evil things, The coil and glitter of snaky rings, And, the tremor of vast invisible wings, That are not heard but felt: They touch my hair, my hand, my cheek, They mope and mouth, but they never speak To utter their awful history. Oh, when will the darkness break and melt, Like blocks of ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... keep thy soul. That is a promise that can fold us in divine comfort and peace, and that can do something towards interpreting for us every coil of difficulty, every hour of pain. But if this is to be so, we must ourselves be true to the view of life the promise gives us. We must think of the soul as God thinks of it. We live in a world where souls are cheap. They are bought and sold ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... was singing lustily as he dropped with a spring into his boat. He began to coil the loose ropes at once, as if the disappointments in life were only a necessary interruption, to be accepted philosophically, to this, the serious ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... a moment and disappeared in the shadows. When she returned, she carried a curved band of flexible steel. Quest took it from her, attached it by means of a coil of wire to the battery, and with firm, soft fingers slipped it on to Lenora's forehead. Then he stepped back. A rare emotion quivered ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... into a most luxuriant variety of forms. The typical form was closely coiled like a nautilus. In others the coil was more or less open, or even erected into a spiral. Some were hook-shaped, and there were members of the order in which the shell was straight, and yet retained all the internal structures of its kind. At the end of the Mesozoic the entire tribe ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... men that we are, find ourselves caught in some entanglement of our mortal coil even before we have fairly embarked upon the enterprise of thinking our case through. The art of self-reflection which appeals to us as so eminent and so human, is it after all much more than a vaporous vanity? We name its subject "human nature"; we give it a raiment of timeless generalities; ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... escape from fire is to have an iron ring fastened to the window sill, and inside of the room a cradle, with a coil of rope attached to it. The rope is put through the ring, and the person wishing to escape gets into the cradle, and lowers himself down by passing the rope through his hands. The great objection to this plan, which is certainly very simple, is the difficulty, or rather impossibility, of persuading ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... something. Get your rifle and lariat and hatchet. Stick the handle of the hatchet inside your trousers so that it will not be so evident, or better yet, we can do it just before we get to town. Then, too, we can coil our riatas over one shoulder, and slip our coats on over them. In that way we won't attract so much attention. The rifles won't appear to be out of place, for it would be only natural that we should ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... had been a member of the faculty of Columbia University since 1888, solved this problem in his quiet laboratory and, by doing so, won the greatest prize in modern telephone art. His researches resulted in the famous "Pupin coil" by the expedient now known as "loading." When the scientists attempt to explain this invention, they have to use all kinds of mathematical formulas and curves and, in fact, they usually get to quarreling among themselves ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... her husband's arm, laid along the rock behind her. Presently he freed that arm and with the ease of much usage withdrew the bodkins from her hair. The heavy coil dropped over his breast down to his knee. With delicate touches he began to free from the splendid tangle a single strand of glistening white hair. When she saw it shining like spun silver across the back of his hand, she looked up at him. With infinite care he searched her face, while she waited ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... yours is only functional, hers is organic. Now, why have I broken through my rule of saying nothing about my patients? You will be fancying and fretting all night that you are going to shuffle off this mortal coil just as quickly as poor Mrs. Watson will have to do before long, I fear. Why, Effie, what is the matter? Why are you staring at me with those ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... but, peaceful, all enjoy Their sweet siesta on the waving bough, Fearless of ruthless wind, or gliding snake. So peaceful lies Fitzgibbon at his post, Nor dreams of harm. Meanwhile the foe Glides from his hole, and threads the darkling route, In hope to coil and crush him. Ah, little recks he that a woman holds The power to draw his fangs! And yet some harm must come, some blood must flow, In spite of all my poor endeavour. O War, how much I hate thy wizard arts, That, with the clash and din of brass and steel, O'erpowers ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... hill from the picnic grounds came a group of girls, Ann Hicks in the lead. Most of her companions were too small to do any good in any event. The girl from the ranch carried a neat coil of rope in one hand and she shouted to ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... kisses will not soil; Her tears are pure as rain; Her hair—'tis Love unwinds the coil, Love and her ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... Rogers, I still hoped, and Sir Edgar fully believed, that a majority of the men on board would be sufficiently swayed by motives of humanity to insist upon bringing us ashore our clothing, and at least a few of the more obvious necessities of life, such as a spare sail, a coil or two of line, a few nails, a hammer, a saw, a trifle of crockery, some cooking utensils, and, above all, our fowling-pieces and some ammunition. Miss Merrivale, however, was positive that they would not; and as the time dragged slowly by without any sign of the reappearance ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... oxygen in the proper proportions to form carbonic acid. Some of these tubes have been submitted without explosion to sparks from a large Leyden jar, to a continuous succession of sparks from a Holtz machine, and to the discharge of a Ruhmkorff's coil, that heated the platinum wires between which it passed to bright redness. Other tubes which withstood the passage of the sparks from a Leyden jar, when submitted to the discharge of the coil, exploded after a few seconds when the platinum wires became red-hot. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... oats, blue-joint, and porcupine grass are among them. When mature, the grain and glumes drop off, or are pushed off, and go to the ground. When moist, these awns untwist and straighten out, but when dry they coil up again; with each change they seem to crawl about on the ground and work down to low places or get into all sorts of cracks and crevices, where the first rain is likely to cover them more or less with earth, after which they ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... partner he resigned himself to the drag of the whirlpool, staking his life on a single throw of the rope. Once the plaited rawhide was wetted it would twist and bind in the honda and before Creede could beat it straight and coil it his partner would be far out in the centre of the vortex. Planting his feet firmly on the rock the big cowboy lashed the kinks out of his reata and coiled it carefully; then as the first broad swirl seized its plaything and swung him slowly around Creede ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... the group above the cliff, and were sidling down its face cautiously, for the hurricane now flattened them back against the rock, now tried to wrench them from it; and all the way it was a tough battle for breath. The foremost was Jim Lewarne, Farmer Tresidder's hind, with a coil of the farmer's rope slung round him. Young Zeb followed, and Elias Sweetland, both ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... faintly said. "Uf dot peen a fact, I vos retty to shuffle off der mortal pucket und kick der coil! I don'd vant to lif no longer ven I got to lookin' an Irishman like und dalkin' so I mistook volks for von! My heart ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... here who can dive?" shouted the skipper coming forward with a thin coil of line. And, amidst a ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... that coil around my mind, Reality's dark dream! I turn from you, and listen to the wind, Which long has raved unnoticed. What a scream Of agony by torture lengthened out That lute sent forth! Thou Wind, that rav'st without, Bare crag, or mountain-tairn, or blasted tree, Or pine-grove whither woodman never ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... ...rrup! A coil of rope hurtling from a height comes rattling to the rail, to be secured to its own particular belaying-pin. Out of a seeming chaos comes order. Every rope has its name and its place and its purpose; and though ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... be speeding so poorly, we'd best to do some gude deed an' look after this other coil. You must let Will knaw what 's doin' by letter this very night. 'T is awnly fair, you being set in trust ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... for the gangway. A torch-basket of pine-knots blazing under the bow covered flood and land with crimson light and inky shadows. The engines had stopped. The boat swept the shore. A single stage-plank lay thrust half out from her forward quarter. A sailor stood on its free end with a coil of small line. The crouching earthwork and its fierce guns glided toward them. Knots of idle cannoneers stood along its crest. A few came down to the water's edge, to whom Anna and Hilary, still paired alone, were a compelling sight. They lifted their smart red caps. Charlie ventured ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... from my porch. We reminded ourselves of the Pilgrims and Christopher Columbus and a lot of other people you meet in school. Our young hero, P. Harris, was all decorated up like a band wagon, belt-axe, badges, compass, cooking set, a big coil of rope and the horn part of a phonograph. He had that hanging over his back like a soldier's pack. The only thing he forgot to bring was the player piano from ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Peace with wide and shining wings Invades this warring isle, And my beloved Germania brings Wearing her largest smile; When close about her waist I coil And mouth to mouth apply, Not SNOWDEN, patriot son of toil, Will be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 28, 1917 • Various
... of an hour perhaps, went by. Then Marie reappeared in her little conveyance. Her face was very pale and wore an expression of despair. Her beautiful hair was fastened above her head in a heavy golden coil which the water had not touched. And she was not cured. The stupor of infinite discouragement hollowed and lengthened her face, and she averted her eyes as though to avoid meeting those of the priest who thunderstruck, chilled to the heart, at last made up his mind to grasp ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... and one was fair; both possessed a wonderful wealth of beautiful glossy hair, gold in the one case, in the other brown, rolling back from the brow in upstanding pompadours, which were, however, more picturesque than stiff, and rolled into coil after coil at the back of the neck. Done-up hair—that was very "finished" indeed! Both were distinctly good-looking, and the younger, though the smaller of the two, possessed a personality which at once seemed to constitute her mistress of the ceremonies. Both were perfectly at ease, and ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... wondering at such bluntness of wit in a woman, and said, "Are you quite deficient in the craft of your sex, child? You can, and you will, guard yourself ten times better when your aim is simply to subject him." But this was not reason to a spirit writhing in the serpent-coil ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... WEATHER-COIL. When a ship has her head brought about, so as to lie that way which her stern did before, as by the veering of the wind; or the motion of the helm, the sails ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... Keep her away or you'll be on to her; hard up, sir! So, steady! Now, hard down and shake her. That'll do, sir; keep her at that. Luff a bit yet, sir. So, steady!" and, dashing aft, the boatswain snatched up a small coil of line that we had made ready for the purpose, and hurled himself recklessly at a dark mass that at that moment came sliding close past what had been our lee side before I luffed the catamaran into the wind. I heard the splashing clatter of his boots as he landed upon certain objects ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... assigned its usual position, and was held in reserve. The battle opened in the morning, and continued with varying success during the day. Late in the afternoon General Stoneman found his troops badly beaten, and unable to extricate themselves from the confederate coil; they were not the "Old Guard," and the question with them was not "victory or death," but surrender or death. Nor was this long a question. General Stoneman ordered up the 6th Phalanx, dividing them into three columns, placing himself at the head of one, and giving ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... sharply, "Not a drop; French Huguenot, my dear Major, and I am surprised you should have made such a mistake." This black hair parted in the middle, lay close to her head—such a wealth and torrent of it; even with tucking it behind her ears and gathering it in a coil in her neck it seemed just ready to fall. The face was oval, the nose perfect, the mouth never still for an instant, so full was it of curves and twinkles and little quivers; the eyes big, absorbing, restful, with lazy lids that lifted slowly and lay motionless as the wings of a resting ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... turned his face to the other side of the ship. By so doing, his glance accidentally fell on a young Spanish sailor, a coil of rope in his hand, just stepped from the deck to the first round of the mizzen-rigging. Perhaps the man would not have been particularly noticed, were it not that, during his ascent to one of the yards, he, with a sort of covert intentness, kept ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... brother and his nephew, while above the opposite portal are the four Duchesses of Milan, Bianca Maria Visconti, Bona of Savoy, Isabella of Aragon, and Beatrice d'Este with the same soft, beautiful face, the same long coil of hair and jewelled net that we see in her portrait in the Brera or in Cristoforo Romano's bust ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright |
