"Spin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shall burst in sunder, The hinges shrieking spin, When time, whose hand is thunder, Lays hand upon the pin, And shoots the bolts ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... by his astonishing activity, his boldness, his decision, his ready versatility, and by rousing and employing the old military spirit of Sweden, keeps up the top with continual agitation and lashing. The moment it ceases to spin, the royalty is a dead bit of box. Whenever Sweden is quiet externally for some time, there is great danger that all the republican elements she contains will be animated by the new French spirit, and of this I believe ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... went out into the forest, "I am afraid that the last two visits have been rather a strain. We must find something a little less serious; but I am going to fill up all your time. You had got too much taken up with your psychology, and we must not live too much on theory, and spin problems, like the spider, out of our own insides; but we will not spend too much time in trudging over this country, though it is well worth it. Did you ever see anything more beautiful than those pine-trees on the slope there, with the blue ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... "not to neglect the skins these animals cast off three times before they begin to spin; for the eyes, mouth, teeth, ornaments of the head, and many other parts may be discovered better in the cast-off skins ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 381 Saturday, July 18, 1829 • Various
... the cats to eat!" burst out the other, "if ever I saw a man lie on a sofa and blow blue circles in the air and spin pretty theories about what is ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... moved now; and if she could, it will be months before the house is fit to live in. But we cannot stay here in comfort, unless thy mother will let me make up in some way. Mother will not need me all the time, and I know thy mother hires women to spin." ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... greatness, and that preferment. There was lily work upon them; that is, they lived upon the bounty and care of God, and were content with that glory which he had put upon them. 'The lilies,' saith Christ, 'they toil not, neither do they spin, and yet—Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these' (Matt 6:28,29; Luke 12:27-29). Thus, therefore, these pillars show, that as the apostles should be fitted and qualified for their work, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... William, "to give you time to spin fresh webs, I suppose, and to seek what fresh flies you can take in them? It is well, go on with your work; but you have just seen that it is not easy to deceive William Douglas. Play your game, I shall play mine". Then turning to the servants, "Go out, all ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... desire you. Fool: she makes you fight because you bring her the ornaments and the treasures of those you have slain, and because she is courted and propitiated with power and gold by the people who fear you. You say that I make a mere convenience of Adam: I who spin and keep the house, and bear and rear children, and am a woman and not a pet animal to please men and prey on them! What are you, you poor slave of a painted face and a bundle of skunk's fur? You were a man-child when I bore you. Lua was a woman-child when I bore her. ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... Dodona. He makes sacrifices and then he exhibits his complaints. Why have you condemned me, O great God, to be wicked and unhappy? Change [370] my lot and my heart, or acknowledge your error. Jupiter answers him: If you will renounce Rome, the Parcae shall spin for you different fates, you shall become wise, you shall be happy. SEXTUS—Why must I renounce the hope of a crown? Can I not come to be a good king? JUPITER—No, Sextus; I know better what is needful for you. If you go to Rome, you are lost. Sextus, not being able to resolve upon so great ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... its heart of gold Above the purple hills; The eve, that spills Its nautilus splendor where the sea is rolled; The night, that leads the vast procession in Of stars and dreams,— The beauty that shall never die or pass:— The winds, that spin Of rain the misty mantles of the grass, And thunder raiment of the mountain-streams; The sunbeams, penciling with gold the dusk Green cowls of ancient woods; The shadows, thridding, veiled with musk, The moon-pathed ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... curiosity; though a million times had it been done in the past ages, set the compass before us, having it from the Great Museum. But, as ever in that age, it did spin if we but stirred the needle, and would stop nowheres with surety, for the flow of the Earth-Current from the "Crack" beneath the Pyramid had a power to affect it away from the North, and to set it wandering. And this may seem very strange to this present Age; yet to that, ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... Caesar's near approach Force us to yield. 'Twill never be too late To sue for chains, and own a conqueror. Why should Rome fall a moment ere her time? No, let us draw her term of freedom out In its full length, and spin it to the last, So shall we gain still one day's liberty; And let me perish, but in Cato's judgment, A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty, Is worth a whole ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison
... a playful punch on the shoulder, for Gunnar's thoughts seemed to be growing more dismal by the minute. "Well, little man, it was all a bright dream that went too fast. And are we to stay here on this ledge 'til doomsday while you try to re-spin the broken threads ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... who loved him, and the dear, dumb friends whom he had fondled and tended with such constant care. Never again to swing along through the sweet freshness of the morning before the sun was up to find the earliest snowdrops for Mrs. Hawthorne, or take a spin in the moonlight with every nerve a-tingle across the frozen bosom of the lake, or wander in delight along the wood roads when every tree was clad in the witching beauty of a silver thaw, or sweep across the wide stretching country in the very poetry of motion, or hear the soft ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... to work in earnest with both hands. She seizes herself firmly by the back, and turns the upper part of her body round till her hair is in front and her eyes behind. Still holding herself firmly with her left hand—did she let herself go, goodness knows where she would spin to;—with her right she prospects herself. The purse is there, she can feel it, the problem is how to get at it. The quickest way would, of course, be to take off the skirt, sit down on the kerb, turn it inside out, and work from the bottom of the pocket ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... courses, the wallows caused by the buffaloes forming baths for themselves by ripping the earth open with their heads in soft, oozy spots, and the burrowing of that sharp and watchful little animal the prairie dog, cause both horse and horseman to run considerable risk when taking a spin over the flat. Hill and dale, bluff and level, the landscape broke upon the eye in one of those infinite and fruitful wastes, which strikes the mind with awe at its grand ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... she could properly focus what she saw, everything began to whirl and to spin around her, to dance a wild and idiotic saraband, which caused her to laugh, and to laugh, until her throat felt choked and her eyes hot; after which she remembered ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... deformed dwarf. He aided a miller's daughter, who had been enjoined by the king to spin straw into gold; and the condition he made with her for this service, was that she should give him for wife her first daughter. The miller's daughter married the king, and when her first daughter was born, the mother grieved so bitterly that the dwarf ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... description of it. A conjecture about the reason why Silk is so susceptible of vivid colours: and why Flax and Hair is not. A conjecture, that it way perhaps be possible to spin a kind of artificial Silk, out of some glutinous substance that may ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... of reasons. For one, after a gun has been fired a few times the inside is affected. The rifling is worn in places, and that gives a slightly different spin to the shell. It doesn't take much of a change in conditions to alter the course of a shell a good deal. And the weather counts, too. Sometimes there is more air resistance; on a day when it is damp and ...
— The Belgians to the Front • Colonel James Fiske
... hair and mustaches, well-formed hands and feet, and a clear blue eye. He seemed born to please without being conscious of the power he possessed. It must be owned, and no one was more ready to confess it than himself, that his literary attainments were by no means of a high order. "We don't spin tops" is a favorite saying amongst artillery officers, indicating that they do not shirk their duty by frivolous pursuits; but it must be confessed that Servadac, being naturally idle, was very much given ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... which he has observed, not those of which he has dreamt; and he delivers his facts in the fewest possible words, and in the plainest possible way. He does not cultivate flowers of rhetoric; he does not unduly spin out his narrative. It is plain that he is especially bent on making his meaning clear, and ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... at headquarters," said Zeph. "Don't bother asking me about him now. You will soon see him, and he will tell you his own story. Then, too, Mr. Gibson wishes to see you particularly. Here's our hand-car, jump aboard. We'll spin along at a fine rate, I tell you, ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... in my remembrance, that horror of death of which you sometimes spoke to me. I thought to myself: I shall lie thus in the dark, only this heart will be still, this blood will be cold, and there will be no dawn for me,—yet the world will spin on as before, and those who loved me will smile again. I feared death for the first time, because, for the first time, life is dear to me. It is the outcome of my great content; I cling to my happiness, and Death is my only enemy, the only power ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... of order; her babies never cry, never keep one awake o' nights; and her husband never in his life said, "My dear, there's a button off my shirt." Flies never infest her kitchen, cockroaches and red ants never invade her premises, a spider never had time to spin a web on one of her walls. Everything in her establishment is shining with neatness, crisp and bristling with absolute perfection,—and it is she, the ever-up-and-dressed, unsleeping, wide-awake, omnipresent, never-tiring Mrs. Exact, that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... him milk and wool and food. He brought with him to our shores cows and sheep and goats, horses and dogs. Moreover he made pottery, moulding the clay with his hand, and baking it in a fire. He had not discovered the advantages of a kiln. He could spin thread, and weave stuffs, though he usually ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... song amongst the ruins," says one of us, "what a wonderful acoustic phenomenon!" "Bhuta, bhuta!" whisper the awestruck torch-bearers. They brandish their torches and swiftly spin on one leg, and snap their fingers to chase away ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... Maurya Jude To dance in Beg-Innish,[13] And when the lads (they're in Dunquin) Have sold their crabs and fish, Wave fawny shawls and call them in, And call the little girls who spin, And seven weavers from ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... seen with all the reasons, that there's no chance for him whatever. Of course, with all that, he has done his best not to let himself go. But there are moments," Mr. Mitchett ruefully added, "when it would relieve him awfully to feel free for a good spin." ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... thy wif; By corpus domini, I will have thy knife, And thou shalt have my distaff and go spin. ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... old England! She is more sensible than I ever thought for. They couldn't have done a nobler thing than to have placed her likeness here!" and thus the jolly fellow's tongue flew, as if he would re-spin all the forecastle yarns of his lifetime, much to the discomfiture of the eagle-eyed guide, who bade the intruder begone; but our nautical friend, deigning to give this polite invitation to depart no further notice than he would have given to ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... say, "I beg your pardon, miss." There were children, who always will go where they ought not to go, running against people, and taking hold of their clothes with sticky, smeared hands, asking commercial gentlemen to spin their tops, and corpulent ladies to play at hide and seek. I saw one stern-visaged gentleman tormented in this way till he looked ready to give the child its "final quietus." [Footnote: American juveniles are, generally ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... made specially for him by the blacksmith down in the village, without a handle, for people were tired of putting new handles to it, he broke them so quickly. There was a horse-shoe, and the iron catch of a gate, and besides these a boxwood top, which he could not spin, but which he had payed away half the savings in his money-box for, because he had seen it split the other ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... of time, prolongation of time, extension of time; delay &c (lateness) 133. V. last, endure, stand, remain, abide, continue, brave a thousand years. tarry &c (be late) 133; drag on, drag its slow length along, drag a lengthening chain; protract, prolong; spin out, eke out, draw out, lengthen out; temporize; gain time, make time, talk against time. outlast, outlive; survive; live to fight again. Adj. durable; lasting &c v.; of long duration, of long-standing; permanent, endless, chronic, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... is said to have 'spin' on it when it gains an acceleration of pace, not necessarily a variation of direction, on touching ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... from thy face to mine, and flushes From brow to chin. The hot blood sings in my ears and gushes With surge and spin Through ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... twigs that many a traveler has placed his foot in the midst of a brood, and heard the whir of the old bird as she flew off, and her anxious calls and mewing, or seen her trail her wings to attract his attention, without suspecting their neighborhood. The parent will sometimes roll and spin round before you in such a dishabille, that you cannot, for a few moments, detect what kind of creature it is. The young squat still and flat, often running their heads under a leaf, and mind only ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... went on Cleek, without taking the slightest notice of anything, "just as I was going past that door I picked up a most remarkable thing. Wonder if it's yours, madam?" glancing at Zuilika. "Just have a look at it, will you? Here, catch!" And not until he saw a piece of gold spin through the air and fall into Zuilika's lap did the major remember that promise of ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... that afternoon when we met our third general, and this meeting was quite by chance. Coming back from a spin down the lines we stopped in a small village called Amifontaine, to let our chauffeur, known affectionately as The Human Rabbit, tinker with a leaky tire valve or something. A young officer came up through the dusk to find out who we were, and, having found out, he invited us ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... hive all alive with the hum of the bees.... Such somber, golden music, like an autumn honeycomb, slowly gives forth the rhythm which shall mark its path: the round of the planets is made plain: it begins to spin.... ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... their kine, as home they wind, The lagging traveller of his rest remind! With might and main their fallows let them till: Till comes the seedtime, and cicalas trill (Hid from the toilers of the hot midday In the thick leafage) on the topmost spray! O'er shield and spear their webs let spiders spin, And none so much as name the battle-din! Then Hiero's lofty deeds may minstrels bear Beyond the Scythian ocean-main, and where Within those ample walls, with asphalt made Time-proof, Semiramis her empire swayed. I am but a single voice: but many a bard ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... parachute. A touch of the magic lever, and again we fly away; but now upwards, upwards to the glorious blue sky and air of mother earth. A miner with his lamp accompanies us. By its dim light we see how rapidly we spin through the shaft. Our car clashes again at the top, and as we step forth into the clear sunshine, we thank GOD for such a bright and beautiful ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, to be turned to any kind of work, to spin the gossamers as well as to forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with the great and fundamental truths of nature and the laws of her operations; one whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... she was thinking of unpaid bills; since human lilies of the field, though they neither toil nor spin, must pay for irreproachable shoes and ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... was still six thousand feet above her head. All at once, Helen felt subdued. The fancy seized her that the carriage was rumbling over the roof of the world. In a word, she was yielding to the exhilaration of high altitudes, and her brain was ready to spin wild fantasies. ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... of a poor tailor in an Eastern city. He was a spoiled boy, and loved play better than work; so that when Mustapha, his father, died, he was not able to earn his living; and his poor mother had to spin cotton all day long to procure food for their support. But she dearly loved her son, knowing that he had a good heart, and she believed that as he grew older he would do better, and become at last a worthy and prosperous ...
— The Frog Prince and Other Stories - The Frog Prince, Princess Belle-Etoile, Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp • Anonymous
... wherein it seems that every mote must feel to the full its sentient life, and its swelling towards development or fulfilment. On a day like the latter, everything and everybody bestirs. The dust motes spin in whirling columns, the gnats dance for their lives their dance of death before the wayfarer. The gardeners and the grave-diggers turn up the earth with energy, making the clods fly like water. The rich play, or work that they may play, as do the poor. Everybody is up and wide awake and doing. ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... out of whose mouth a frog jumped every time she opened it. Indeed, the sentence seemed actually visible between them, like a squat and ugly small beast on the shining white cloth. "Sorry, Aunt Lyddy," said Jane, penitently. "I'm a crosspatch to-night, and I ought to sit by the fire and spin, instead of gamboling." ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... mending all their own and the men's clothes, which it was part of their duty to wash. This done, wool in what is called its 'raw state' was served out to them—that is, wool as it had been taken off the sheep's fleece—and they had to comb out all the tangles, and spin it into long skeins. Then the skeins were taken to the men, many of whom were weavers by trade, and by them it was woven into cloth which ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... Harding, having at his disposal neither carders, combers, polishers, stretchers, twisters, mule-jenny, nor self-acting machine to spin the wool, nor loom to weave it, was obliged to proceed in a simpler way, so as to do without spinning and weaving. And indeed he proposed to make use of the property which the filaments of wool possess when subjected to a powerful pressure of mixing together, ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... narrow escapes at first, but I have gradually learned to go about. There is a certain system to it, but it is one which a lost man, if he were in the dark, could not possibly find out. Even now I always spin out a ball of string behind me when I am going far into the catacomb. You can see for yourself that it is difficult, but every one of these passages divides and subdivides a dozen times before you ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... but only those of the third division are well known to the people in general. Those of the first section are seldom heard except during the dry season when the people gather around bonfires in various parts of the village. To these go the men and women, the latter to spin cotton, the former to make fish nets or to repair their tools and weapons. In such a gathering there are generally one or more persons who entertain their fellows with these tales. Such a person is not paid for his services, ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole
... am very desirous of establishing a small school within the town of Horncastle, wherein the children of such poor persons, as the Governors of the Grammar School shall think objects of charity, may be taught to read, knit, spin, and plain needlework, or sewing. I do therefore hereby earnestly request, will, and direct, my nephew and executor, after my decease, by deed, conveyance (&c.), to convey, and assure, to the said Governors, and their successors, ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... insects, in the same way as trains are sometimes blocked by gigantic snowdrifts! This, of course, is ridiculous; what really happens is that the rails become so greasy from the crushed bodies of the locusts that the wheels can secure no grip on the metals and spin ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... Life? A thing of watery salt Held in cohesion by unresting cells Which work they know not why, which never halt, Myself unwitting where their master dwells. I do not bid them, yet they toil, they spin; A world which uses me as I use them, Nor do I know which end or which begin, Nor which to praise, which pamper, which condemn. So, like a marvel in a marvel set, I answer to the vast, as wave by wave The sea of air goes over, dry or wet, Or the full moon comes ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... Murray. Some were busy spinning, some reeling and carding, and some combing the flax, while the minister preached to them on the text from Exodus xxxv. 25: "And all the women that were wise-hearted did spin with their hands." These spinning-bees were everywhere in vogue, and formed a source of much profit to the parson, and of pleasure to the spinners, in spite of ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... chill creeps through her veins, gradually changing to burning fire. She can neither speak nor move, the hedges seem to fly round, the trees spin, the ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... ever we wrought this sin! Our bodily sustenance for to win, Ye must delve and I shall spin, In care to ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... to me, and I will give you twenty bundles of English lace, for we English can spin cheaper than ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... replied, thinking that he would rather have the man with him than on his way to report the departure of the Nelson. "We are just going to look the ship over—perhaps take a little spin. Come along." ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson
... assumed was new, it yet seemed somehow familiar. The speed and weight and power caused him no distress, there was no detail that he could not manage easily. To race thus o'er the world, keeping pace with an eternal dawn, was as simple as for the Earth herself to spin through space. His union with her was as complete as that. In every item of her being lay the wonder of her perfect form—a sphere. It was complete. Nothing could ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... mission. Then she took joyfully to the spoiling of her goods, the cutting up of her blanket, she received the Sabbath as God's day, and more than once remained behind her company when they travelled on that day, making it up on Monday. She learned from missionaries to spin and knit, and weave garments for herself and husband. At forty-five years of age she learned to read her Dakota Bible, and of her children she sent one to Ohio to learn the ways of Christian white people. She has adhered to the faith for these fifty-four years. With her quilt ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 1, January 1888 • Various
... well; but what was going to happen if the two of us were bundled off to Baghdad with instructions to wash away the British? Our time was getting pretty short, and I doubted if we could spin out more than three days more in Constantinople. I felt just as I had felt with Stumm that last night when I was about to be packed off to Cairo and saw no way of avoiding it. Even Blenkiron was getting anxious. He played ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... the garment ten times better than I could have done. So I was let to go unwhipped of justice for that misdemeanor, and perhaps that was the lesson which burnt into my soul. My story doesn't sound Southerny, does it? Well, here is something more. During that summer, father had me taught to spin and weave negro cloth. Don't suppose I ever did anything worth while; only it was one of his maxims: 'Never lose an opportunity of learning what is useful. If you never need the knowledge, it will be no burden to ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... ready servant of his will, and does with equal ease and pleasure all the work that as a mechanism it is capable of,—whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic-engine, with all its parts of equal strength and in smooth working order, ready like a steam engine to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... non lungi un bel cespuglio vede Di spin fioriti e di vermiglic rose, Che de le liquide onde al specchio siede, Chiuso dal Sol fra l' alte ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... twenty-five acre site, by a large bathing pond, includes one of the finest orchards in India-five hundred fruit trees-mango, guava, litchi, jackfruit, date. The boys grow their own vegetables, and spin at ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... led the life I have, and getten as weary of it as I have, and thought at times, "maybe it'll last for fifty or sixty years—it does wi' some,"—and got dizzy and dazed, and sick, as each of them sixty years seemed to spin about me, and mock me with its length of hours and minutes, and endless bits o' time—oh, wench! I tell thee thou'd been glad enough when th' doctor said he feared ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... sir," he said. "Hold your row, Harry, the—this gentleman's going to spin us a yarn. Keep awake if you can spare ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... has never been a time nor a country in which their traditionary sphere has shrunk to so small dimensions. Nowhere else are there so many women of such a station that they are not obliged to toil and spin, nor to sleep all day to make up for nights of dissipation. For all those who do not have to concern themselves with the wherewithal of living, the art of living easily has been brought to a state of great perfection. The general care of the house and of the children ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... year. My Mercedes came on from New York yesterday and I got her out for a spin. Couldn't resist, don't you know. She's ...
— The Flyers • George Barr McCutcheon
... flourishing in New France. Hemp was being grown successfully, and a larger quantity of wool was made available by increasing flocks of sheep. The intendant insisted that women and girls should be taught to spin. He distributed looms to encourage the practice of weaving, and after a time the colony had home-made carpets and table-covers of drugget, and serges and buntings. The great number of cattle ensured an abundance of raw hides. Accordingly the intendant established ...
— The Great Intendant - A Chronicle of Jean Talon in Canada 1665-1672 • Thomas Chapais
... Moore as he tipped his chair against the wall, and crossed his feet on the low railing in front of him. "Clay promised to be here half an hour ago," he went on in an injured tone, "and if he doesn't come in a few minutes I'm going to have a spin on the river. It's aggravating to sit here and do nothing. I can count a dozen boats between the railroad ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... contented mind to the pursuit of affluence? "And dost thou think," said the fair one, with a gesture of disdain that made her look ten times more amiable, "to seduce me with baits like these? Know, mistaken man, that I am happy. I spin the finest wool of our flocks, and drain the distended udders of our cows. I superintend the dairies; the butter and the cheese are the produce of my industry. In these employments my time is spent in chearfulness and pleasure. Surrounded with our little possessions, I am conscious to no deficiency; ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... hands in blindness spin No self-determined plan weaves in; The shuttle of the unseen powers Works out ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... come, and we shall give her wool to spin." Next we heard, and were loth to believe it, that a new truce of fifteen days more had been made with Burgundy. The Maid, indeed, said openly that she loved not the truce, and that she kept it only for the honour ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... I mentioned was standing near the chimney, and as I spoke I walked over to it and started to spin it round. It resisted me heavily; I bent over it, lifting my candle. Then I uttered an exclamation, stood petrified, ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... Angelic Love," said the light, "and I spin for joy of the womb in which our Hope abided; and ever, O Lady of Heaven, must I thus attend thee, as long as thou art pleased to attend thy Son, journeying in his ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... Spin, spin, belle Mergaton! The moon wheels full, and the tide flows high, And your wedding-gown you must put it on Ere the night hath no moon in the sky Gigoton, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the court; but chile, the lie-yers are aworking day and night fur to hang you, and little is made of much, on your side, and much is spun out of little, on theirn. They are more cunning than foxes, and bloodthirstier than panters, and they no more git tired than the spiders, that spin and piece a web as fast as you break it. Three nights ago, I got down on my knees, and I kissed a little pink morocco slipper what your Ma wore the day when she took her first step from my arm to her own mother's knees, and I swore a solemn ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... games, and some of these games are shared with them by their fathers and mothers—yes, and by their grandfathers and grandmothers too, for an old man will fly a kite as eagerly as his tiny grandson. The girls play battledore and shuttlecock and bounce balls, and the boys spin tops and make them fight. A top-fight is arranged thus: One boy takes his top, made of hard wood with an iron ring round it, winds it up with string, and throws it on the ground; while it is spinning merrily, another boy throws his top in such a ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Japan • John Finnemore
... child sporting upon the sward. He has work, earnest work, to perform, from which he will not be turned, even at the forfeit of his life. Reaching his appointed place, he ceases even to eat, and begins to spin those delicate fibres which, woven into fabrics of beauty and utility, contribute to the comfort and adornment of a superior race. His work done, he lies down to the sleep from which he never wakes in the old form. But ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... cattle. A little further on, workmen of all descriptions are engaged in their several trades: shoemakers ply the awl, glassmakers blow through their tubes, metal founders watch over their smelting-pots, carpenters hew down trees and build a ship; groups of women weave or spin under the eye of a frowning taskmaster, who seems impatient of their chatter. Did the double in his hunger desire meat? He might choose from the pictures on the wall the animal that pleased him best, whether kid, ox, or gazelle; he might follow the course of its life, from its birth in the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... was a rich farmer who had a thrifty wife. She used to go out and gather all the little bits of wool which she could find on the hillsides, and bring them home. Then, after her family had gone to bed, she would sit up and card the wool and spin it into yarn, then she would weave the yarn into cloth to make ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... the tomb of Thot-nefer at Thebes, who was a royal scribe in the middle of the 18th Dynasty, circa 1425 B.C. In his tomb his house is shown. He himself sits in the hall, while inside some servants spin and weave, make bread, store the grain, etc. The roof of the chambers is supported on pillars, and between two of these the looms are set up which are here depicted. They are not attached however, either to the roof or the pillars. Faint sketching lines are mixed ...
— Ancient Egyptian and Greek Looms • H. Ling Roth
... the excitement of work, of mingling with crowds, of going when and where one pleases. A woman is hemmed in by a thousand petty must-nots. She can't go out after dark; she can't play whist or billiards, or sit at a table in the open and drink and smoke and spin yarns. Woman's lot is wondering and waiting at home. When I marry I suppose that I shall learn the ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... difference as to principle, but only as to the method of adjustment. For instance, in the flagrant and unpardonable outrage of taking men by force from the United States frigate "Chesapeake," the British Government, although permitted by the American to spin out discussion over a period of four years, did not pretend to sustain the act itself; the act, that is, of searching a neutral ship of war. Whatever the motive of the Ministry in postponing redress, their pretexts turned upon points of detail, accessory to the main ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... taught to spin silk; for her father had a garden of mulberry-trees, and a quantity of silk worms. She was of so much use in spinning, that her mother did not like to spare her: but the little maid promised, that if she might go to school, she would spin ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... Guesclin proudly fixed his ransom at a hundred thousand francs, which seemed a large sum even to the Prince of Wales. "Sir," said Du Guesclin to him, "the king in whose keeping is France will lend me what I lack, and there is not a spinning wench in France who would not spin to gain for me what is necessary to put me out of your clutches." The advisers of the Prince of Wales would have had him think better of it, and break his promise; but "that which we have agreed to with him we will hold to," ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the stubbled corn The blithe quail pipes at morn, The merry partridge drums in hidden places, And glittering insects gleam Above the reedy stream, Where busy spiders spin their ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... said the mother herself, "when I remember how we used to sit round with the lamp in the middle, and spin the whole table when we wanted a drawer on the further side. But it won't bring back those who sat there! and now the light falls anywhere but where it is wanted, and our goods get into each other's way! Yes, Babie, you may dispose of it ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... guineas in the corner of his swab—some puts it round their necks, and some into their pockets; I never heard of such a thing till chaps run soft and watery—and so we come to this here place to change the air and the breeding, and spin this yarn to your honor's honor, as hath a liberal twist in it; and then to take orders, and draw rations, and any 'rears of pay fallen due, after all dibs gone in your service; and for Bob to tip a stave in ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... moment of inertia, I Fh/a rather than the one so frequently given importance for computational purposes, Smr^{2}. Quantitative experiments are furnished by the rotational counterpart of the Atwood machine. Lecture demonstrations for several talks abound: stability of spin about the axis of greatest inertia, Kelvin's famous experiments with eggs and tops containing liquids, which suggest the gyroscopic ideas, and finally a discussion of gyroscopes and their multitudinous applications. ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... do not know that the promise implies that. I fancy it covers a far wider range, and embraces a much ampler truth. Yes, I doubt if any man ever yet sought without finding. When I was a boy I lost my peg-top. It was a somewhat expensive one, owing partly to the fact that it would really spin. I noticed this peculiarity about it whilst it was still the property of its previous possessor. I had several tops; indeed, my pockets bulged out with my ample store, but none of them would spin. After pointing out to the owner of the coveted top the frightful unsightliness ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... the Koraun says, 'Obedience to a creature in a criminal matter, is a sin against the Creator.' The sultan (may God pardon him!) acts against scripture, and obeys the dictates of Satan. We three sisters, with our good mother, make it a rule to spin every night a certain quantity of cotton, which in the morning we dispose of, and of the price of our labour we lay out a part in provisions, and the remainder in a new supply of materials for working ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... avarice, money mania, jealousy, love of power, desire to outshine neighbors, lust, sensuality, gross appetites, gourmandism, love of praise, personal conceit and egotism, selfishness in every form—all these are webs which the Devils spin about humanity. ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... which of you by being anxious can add one cubit unto the measure of his life? And why are ye anxious concerning raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God doth so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... escape to the gallery on the top of the house, where my chief delight was to view, with a telescope, our fleet and army at Staten Island. My amusements were few; the good Mrs. Putnam employed me and her daughters constantly to spin flax for shirts for the American soldiers; indolence, in America, being totally discouraged; and I likewise worked some for General Putnam, who, though not an accomplished muscadin, like our dilletantis of St. James's-street, was certainly one of the best characters in the world; ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... feel the force of that famous "Damghan wind," so called from the city of that name. Of course this wind was against us. In fact, throughout our Asiatic tour easterly winds prevailed; and should we ever attempt another transcontinental spin we would have a care to ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... of these two young women, born on the one hand of hard experience, on the other of a gentle existence, fused, and burned with a white light whose power is beginning to touch the lives of the women who toil and spin for the great Southwest. ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... to every wind That makes the white ash spin; And tide and tide and 'tween the tides Her sons go out ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... shall endeavour,' said Mr. Micawber, 'occasionally to spin them a yarn; and the melody of my son Wilkins will, I trust, be acceptable at the galley-fire. When Mrs. Micawber has her sea-legs on—an expression in which I hope there is no conventional impropriety—she will give them, I dare say, "Little Tafflin". ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... when he found he could, he thought he might as well follow, and spin us back, if we liked to go, and he hoped Miss Van Buren would pardon the liberty he had taken ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... The MR4 continued to spin even more lazily in space. Her sun-blackened hull, pitted by the glancing blows of by-passing meteor fragments, was slowly overheating. Her refrigeration units were gradually breaking ...
— Rescue Squad • Thomas J. O'Hara
... deceiving, now lighted up by one of the old smiles, now hard set as one who had suffered much for her years. But there was nothing over-womanish in her talk, and we two thrashed it out there, just the same as if Ken's Island wasn't full of devils, and the lives of me and my men worth what a spin of the coin might buy ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... enough to be sheared," she explained, "I shall help to do that myself. Then my mother will help me to card its nice black wool, and we will spin it into long threads. I shall then weave a thick cloth, which will make me a warm ...
— Some Three Hundred Years Ago • Edith Gilman Brewster
... in some measure excused, or at least be less censured, for passing sentence on several persons as being the instruments of Satan in those diabolical operations, when they were involved in such a dark and dismal scene of providence, in which Satan did seem to spin a finer thread of spiritual wickedness than in the ordinary methods of witchcraft: hence the judges, desiring to bear due testimony against such diabolical practices, were inclined to admit the validity of such a sort of evidence as was not so clearly and directly demonstrable to human ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... a foot behind his leg, gave him a sort of twirl, and laid him flat on his back. The fall caused the knife to spin into the air, and the poor Eskimo found himself at the mercy ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... sings: "Round and round, rolls my hoop, Scarcely touching the ground, With a swoop, And a bound, Round and round. With a bumpety, crunching, scattering sound, Down the garden it flies; In our eyes The sun lies. See it spin Out and in; Through the paths it goes whirling, About the beds curling. Sway now to the loop, Faster, faster, my hoop. Round you come, Up you come, Quick and straight as before. Run, run, my hoop, run, Away ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... every spinning-wheel should be paid for its loss. And not only so, but the King told his merchants to buy spun yarn from neighbouring countries so that the people might be able to weave, even though they could not spin. ...
— The Sleeping Beauty • C. S. Evans
... ordered Tom. "You're side slipping. First you know you'll come down in a tail spin and I'll have to be looking for ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... I enjoy a "spin" on my tandem bicycle. It is splendid to feel the wind blowing in my face and the springy motion of my iron steed. The rapid rush through the air gives me a delicious sense of strength and buoyancy, and the exercise makes my pulses dance and my ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... way, madam," said Mary, "now that you have got two great girls added to your establishment, I hope you are going to make them useful in some way—we can sew, knit, and spin." ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... ignis fatuus of the day! Leave it, and settle down as woman should. What has been always, must be to the end. Always has woman been subordinate In mind, in body, and in power, to man. Let rhetoricians rave, and theorists Spin their fine webs,—bow you to holy Nature, And plant your ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... that they were without power to consent to this. Hereupon the Assembly became violent, and many members denounced the refusal as equivalent to breaking off the negotiations. Everything indicated, so it was urged, a desire on the Spanish side to spin delays out of delays, and, meantime, to invent daily some new trap for deception. Such was the vehemence upon this point that the industrious Franciscan posted back to Brussels, and returned with the archduke's permission to deliver the document. Three conditions, however, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... know! These women lie like the very devil. You just go and talk with her a bit about her first fall. She'll spin ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... of wire round a magnetic needle he bends its upper portion to the west: the north pole of the needle immediately swerves to the east: he bends his loop to the east, and the north pole moves to the west. Suspending a common bar magnet in a vertical position, he causes it to spin round its own axis. Its pole being connected with one end of a galvanometer wire, and its equator with the other end, electricity rushes round the galvanometer from the rotating magnet. He remarks upon the 'singular independence' ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... 13 Behold their women did toil and spin, and did make all manner of cloth, of fine-twined linen and cloth of every kind, to clothe their nakedness. And thus the sixty and fourth year did pass ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... public, some conscientiousness of production in the artist. If artistic creation be not a joy, an imperious necessity, an instinct of all the forces of the mind, let the boy go and plough, and the girl go and spin." ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... or try to form any plan of action, he found himself obliged to spin around that same trunk with all the rapidity he could command, for the elk was apparently determined to overtake him, and those towering antlers seemed pointed with spikes, in the eyes of the startled lad as he strained every effort ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... retail trade in this article of luxury and had also made extensive inroads into the English market. The textile industry had not only transformed great centers of New England into an American Lancashire, but the Southern States, recovering from the demoralization of the Civil War, had begun to spin their own cotton and to send the finished product to all parts of the world. American shoe manufacturers had developed their art to a point where "American shoes" had acquired a distinctive standing in practically ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... Fear and dread. And there was puzzlement too. A puzzlement that made his brain spin. Joan had spoken with terror in her voice. Terror that had said somebody was going to kill. And Joan was not a girl to be easily frightened. And she had mentioned Gaddon's name. Gaddon, the man who had shot into the heavens in an experimental rocket. Gaddon, ...
— The Monster • S. M. Tenneshaw
... Arsiero, on May 31, 1916, was driven back by the Italians beyond the Posina, thus relieving the strongest pressure on the town. A little further west another Austrian force attacked the Italian positions on Monte Spin, southeast of Posina. The Italian lines held on the mountain slopes and the Austrian advance here was checked. West of Posina an Austrian assault on Monte Forni Alti was repulsed. On the Sette Comuni Plateau, where the Austrians were ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... could write their own names, and most of them did not care about sending their children to school. They did not think that reading or writing was of much use; but thought that it was far better for boys to learn to be good soldiers, and for girls to learn to spin and weave. ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren
... pleasure; but, bewitching jades! they have beggared me. Would they but spare me a little of their cast-linen! Were it only to put it in my power to say, that I have a shirt on my back! But the idle wenches, like Solomon's lilies, "they toil not, neither do they spin;" so I must e'en continue to tie my remnant of a cravat, like the hangman's rope, round my naked throat, and coax my galligaskins to keep together their many-coloured fragments. As to the affair of shoes, I have given that up. My pilgrimages in ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... the depth of that stout old mandolin, in which so many human sorrows had spun tunes out of themselves, as the spiders spin misty grey webs, till it was all haunted with music, soon the old cry went up to the stars again, a thread of supplication spun of the matter which else were distilled in tears, beseeching it knew not what. And, but that Fate is deaf, all that man asks ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... "Be a father to him! A real father! Get down on the floor and play with him. Shoot marbles with him, spin one of his tops. Remember the toy locomotive you gave him for Christmas after I got hysterical and screamed at you? Remember the beautiful little train? Get it out of the closet and wreck it accidentally. He'll warm up to you then. He'll be broken-hearted, but he'll feel close ...
— The Calm Man • Frank Belknap Long
... intention to dwell on all the minute incidents of this, my first voyage to sea, else would it spin out the narrative unnecessarily, and render my task as fatiguing to the reader, as it might prove to myself. One occurrence, however, which took place three days out, must be mentioned, as it will prove to be connected with important circumstances in the ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... word that soon got corrupted into Nonantum; and, under Mr. Eliot's directions, they divided their grounds with trenches and stone walls, for which he gave them tools to the best of his ability. They built wigwams of a superior construction, and the women learnt to spin; there was a continual manufacture of brushes, eel-pots, and baskets, which were sold in the English towns, together with turkeys, fish, venison, and fruits, according to the season. At hay and harvest times they would hire themselves out to ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge |
