"Needle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... winter night had already set in, and she was seated before the stove in a heavy rocking-chair. Her busy fingers were plying her needle, a work she loved in spite of the hard training of her early days in the north. At the other side of the glowing stove Jessie was reading one of the books with which Father Jose kept her supplied. The wind was moaning desolately about the house. The early snowfall was being drifted into ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... most in people. As to his inheritance and the part played by Prince Vasili, it is very sad for both. Ah, my dear friend, our divine Saviour's words, that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God, are terribly true. I pity Prince Vasili but am still more sorry for Pierre. So young, and burdened with such riches—to what temptations he will be exposed! If I were ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... dropping down. A touch of the control switch and he stayed at the new level, collecting himself. The lemak, puzzled and angry, wheeled up to see what had become of the victim that did not descend, and found instead a searing needle of heat which burnt through its broad right wing. Then, screaming with pain and in a frenzy to escape, it went with a rush into ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore
... you into depths unsuitable, I fear, for a rapid lecture. Such difficulties as these have to be teased out with a needle, so to speak, and lecturers should take only bird's-eye views. The practical upshot of the matter, however, so far as I am concerned, is this, that if I had been lecturing on the absolute a very few years ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... Mischief!" said Mary, good-humoredly, while she pricked his hand lightly with her needle. "Try and mould it yourself: you have seen me do it often enough. I must get this sewing done. It is for Rosamond Vincy: she is to be married next week, and she can't be married without this handkerchief." Mary ended merrily, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... a pair of knee-breeches, of most famous velveteen, double tweel, which have been only once on my legs, and that no farther gone than last Sabbath. I'm pretty sure they would fit ye in the meantime; and I would just take a pleasure in driving the needle all night, to get ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... learning his whereabouts, repaired to the jail, and implored his prodigal son to return to the needle and the shop-board at St. Lo, but his entreaties were unavailing, and the would-be aristocrat plainly announced his intention of wearing fine clothes instead of making them. Accordingly, when he was released, he assumed feminine attire, had recourse to prominent royalists ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... and spruces and firs have lost their pale green fingertips which they wave to the world in spring, and have settled down to the placid business of growing new cones that shall bear the seed of future forests as stately as these. On the shadowed, needle-carpeted slopes there is always a whispery kind of calm; the calm of Nature moving quietly about her appointed tasks, without haste and without uncertainty, untorn by doubts or fears or futile questioning; like a broad-souled, deep-bosomed mother contentedly rearing ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... bread and a cup of water for his wayworn child,—his final farewell to the Old World at the Canaries,—his entrance upon the trade winds, which then, for the first time, filled a European sail,—the portentous variation of the needle, never before observed, the fearful course westward and westward, day after day, and night after night, over the unknown ocean, the mutinous and ill-appeased crew; at length, when hope had turned to despair in every heart but one, the tokens ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... said to her mother that night, when the children had gone to bed and they were sewing by the fire. "Oh, ma! she told me more to-day about me insides than I would care to remember. Mind ye, ma, there's a sthring down yer back no bigger'n a knittin' needle, and if ye ever broke it ye'd snuff out before ye knowed what ye was doin', and there's a tin pan in yer ear that if ye got a dinge in it, it wouldn't be worth a dhirty postage stamp for hearin' wid, and ye mustn't skip ma, for it will disturb yer Latin ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... comely grace in every turn appear'd. Whether she rounded into balls the wool; Or with her fingers mollify'd the fleece; And comb'd it floating light in cloudy waves; Or her smooth spindle twirl'd with agile thumb; Or with her needle painted: plain was seen Her skill from Pallas learnt. This to concede Unwilling, she ev'n such a tutor scorn'd Exclaiming:—"come let her the contest try; "If vanquish'd, let ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... Silent, electronic conflict! Not a question of men in battle. A man at a switch on the brigand ship was the sole actor so far in this assault. And the results were visible only in the movement of the needle-dials on our instrument panels. A struggle, so far, not of man's bravery, or skill, or strategy, but merely ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... a hard life enough, without any signs—most of us do. He won't have to make shirts, anyhow," rejoined her daughter, who had worn out her youth with fine stitching of linen shirts for a Jew peddler. Then she settled back over her needle-work with a heavy sigh, indicative of a return from the troubles of others ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... "A needle." Q "What is the length and what the breadth of the bridge Al-Sirt?" "Its length is three thousand years' journey, a thousand in descent and a thousand in ascent and a thousand level: it is sharper than a sword and finer than a hair."—And Shahrazad ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... lean, ill-favoured days. And when, because of these, Monseigneur Forest reviled himself, Lyveden refused to listen, declaring that the experience had been invaluable, and must surely stand the camel in good stead when the time came for him to negotiate the needle's eye. For a prelate to withstand such a contention was more than difficult.... Yet if the patient spoke to the point, it was by accident. His thoughts were elsewhere. Childishly excited, he was wanting to use his wand. Ridiculously ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... girls, in every town, village and parish of Ireland, is one of the crying needs of the time. I am confident there are in Galway alone five thousand women and girls who would hail with gratitude and thoroughly improve an opportunity to earn six-pence per day. If they could be taught needle-work, plain dressmaking, straw-braiding, and a few of the simplest branches of manufactures, such as are carried on in households, they might and would at once emerge from the destitution and social degradation which now enshroud them into independence, comfort and consideration. Knowing ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... would ride a horse of steel Wound up with a ratchet-wheel. Every beast I'd put to rout Like the man I read about. I would singe the leopard's hair, Stalk the vampire and the adder, Drive the werewolf from his lair, Make the mad gorilla madder. Needle-guns my work should do. But, if beasts got closer to, I would pierce them to the marrow With a barbed and poisoned arrow, Or I'd whack 'em on the skull Till my ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... wriggle that way or I shall stick the needle in you. To go and have a big genuine fight like that ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... made herculean efforts to lift himself. There was another man who received with perfect gravity the chaffing statement of a comrade, to the effect that he had shot a wood-pigeon at the North Pole, and that the bird had fallen on the needle on the top of the Pole, and had frozen so hard that it ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... because it aids them to be self-reliant and self-supporting by tiding over times of need. It provides sewing or other work for needy women; it maintains a sales-room for the handiwork of the indigent or the gentlewoman reduced in circumstances, whether the work be preserves, needle-work, or anything that is salable; it has a large reception-room well stocked with the best papers, periodicals, and magazines, books, all the parlor games, etc.; it provides throughout the winter season a series of ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various
... knows enough to teach those ignorant little creatures. Half of them are foreigners, and never touch a needle in their homes. It's every thing to give them some ideas beyond their ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... found it so nice, that he soon held out his plate—or rather his calabash—for more. Sumichrast told him he was eating some of the mole, though not aware of it: he appeared confused at first, but soon boldly began on his second helping. After the meal, l'Encuerado took from an aloe-fibre bag a needle and bodkin, and set to work to mend Lucien's breeches, torn a day or two before. Two squirrels' skins were scarcely sufficient for the would-be tailor, who lined the knees also with this improvised cloth. Lucien was ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... of the most important things you'd be called on to do. You'd never get anywhere if you weren't quick with your needle and thread. And then there'd be hair-dressing. You have to know something about that. I don't say that you must be a professional; but for the simpler occasions—after that there's packing. That's something we often overlook, ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... of Histories, the Queen continued her labours with her needle, while Lady Fleming and Catherine read to her alternately for ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... minute Jo was particularly absorbed in dressmaking, for she was mantua-maker general to the family, and took especial credit to herself because she could use a needle as well as a pen. It was very provoking to be arrested in the act of a first trying-on, and ordered out to make calls in her best array on a warm July day. She hated calls of the formal sort, and never made any till Amy ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... rely on your needle!" said mademoiselle jocosely; "and then, will Mere Jupillon ever give ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... lain hid for thousands of years from the knowledge of civilization and science, is altogether unexampled. He was incontestibly the first bold and scientific mariner who ever dared to launch out into the trackless ocean, trusting solely to the guidance of the needle and the stars, and to his own transcendent ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... and get some more ice. It's in the bucket in the bath-room. Break it up into little pieces, like that. You split it with a needle." ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... takes a fancy to me, and said, she would be the making of me, if I was a good girl; and she put me to sing, to dance, to play on the spinnet, in order to divert her melancholy hours; and also taught me all manner of fine needle-work; but still this was her lesson, My good Pamela, be virtuous, and keep the men at a distance. Well, so I was, I hope, and so I did; and yet, though I say it, they all loved me and respected me; and would do any thing for me, as if ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... turned to the maiden aunt who sat under the lamplight with her sewing on her lap. He saw that her lips were intolerantly compressed and that her needle came and went in protesting little jabs. "Hannah," he quietly inquired, "what ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... the hill, passes a conical knoll of deep red syenite, clothed with verdure, and known as Primrose Hill. The summit is 1,320 feet above the level of the sea, and commands a prospect embracing a radius of seventy miles. Our engraving represents a severed cliff of greenstone at the top, called the Needle's Eye, and which tradition alleges to have been riven at the Crucifixion. Near it is a culminating boss of pinkish felspar known as the Bladder Stone, a name derived, it is supposed, from Scandinavian ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... they have, than That they have it. That the Load-stone and Iron have somewhat equivalent to a Tye; though we see it not, yet by the effects we know. And it would be easy to shew, that two Load-stones, at once applyed, in different positions, to the same Needle, at some convenient distance, will draw it, not to point directly to either of them, but to some point between both; which point is, as to those two, the common Center of Attraction; and it is the same, as if some one Load-stone were in that point. Yet have ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... things Henriette heard, as she sat plying her needle, or stood fitting a dress to the forms of some of her gay companions; but now her interests were separate from theirs, and she toiled on, through the weary day. There were some who appreciated her motives, and spoke kindly ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... fine and needle-like, stung Val's face. There were ominous pools of water gathering in the garden depressions. Even the small stream which bisected their land had grown from a shallow trickle into a thick, mud-streaked ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... indescribable arrangements made and presented by loving parishioners and demanding unceasing attention from the occupant. But the chair was drawn up in the sunshine pouring into the window, and Mrs. Whitney's thoughts were sunny, too; for she smiled now and then as she drew her needle busily in and ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... would a man use? How long would be the arrow that fitted that bow? How long would the bows and arrows of the Lilliputians be? Would an arrow that size, fired with the force a Lilliputian could give, "prick like a needle," and if there were many of them would they set a man "a-groaning with ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... known laces were those of Venice, Milan and Genoa. The Italians claim the invention of point or needle-made lace; but the Venetian point is now a product of the past, and England and France supply most of the fine laces of the ...
— The Art of Modern Lace Making • The Butterick Publishing Co.
... fine linen, elaborately embroidered with silk, which so profusely covered the linen that the general effect was as if the main texture were silken. It was stained, and seemed very old, and had an ancient fragrance. It was wrought all over with birds and flowers in a most delicate style of needle-work, and among other devices, more than once repeated, was the cipher, M.S.,—being the initials of one of the most unhappy names that ever a woman bore. This quilt was embroidered by the hands of Mary-Queen of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... most revered objects was the mariner's compass, and before it they would place tea, sweet cake, and pork, in order to keep it faithful and true! It is well known that the Chinese were acquainted with the phenomenon of the magnetized needle centuries before it was known in Europe, and their compass differs materially from ours; instead of consisting of a movable card attached to the needle, theirs is simply a needle of little more than an inch in length balanced in a glazed hole in the centre of a solid wooden dish, finely ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... organism is limited in its choice of behavior. A hamster, for instance, cannot choose to behave in the manner of a Rhesus monkey. A dog cannot choose to react as a mouse would. If I prick a rat with a needle, it may squeal, or bite, or jump—but it will not bark. Never. Nor will it leap up to a trapeze, hang by its tail, and chatter ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the spot, but the fact that some mistake has occurred somewhere with regard to its position has quite thrown us out, and to look for it among the numerous islands which constitute this archipelago would be somewhat like searching for a needle in a bundle of hay, and the chances of finding either the one or the other would be about equal, I should say. If I only held a sufficient clue to warrant the slightest hope of success, I would willingly prosecute a search, ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... to the lighthouse, the old man observed a woman sitting on a stool in front of the door, busily engaged with her needle, while three children—two girls and a boy—were romping on the grass plat beside her. The boy was just old enough to walk with the steadiness of an exceedingly drunk man, and betrayed a wonderful tendency to sit down suddenly and gaze—astonished! The girls, ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... and Lazarus. She then went on to the visit of the wealthy young lawyer to Jesus, and paused at the reply of the Lord; she repeated the words, "How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God. For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... not appear to me that Benoni had helped me much, after all. You might as well look for a needle in a haystack as try to find anyone who goes to the Italian mountains. The baron offered no further advice, and sat calmly smoking and looking at me. I felt uneasy, opposite him. He was a mysterious person, and I thought him disguised. It was really not possible that, with his youthful manner, ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... red lips burn and sear My body like a living coal; Obeyed the power of those eyes As the needle trembles to the pole; And did not care although I felt The strength go ebbing ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... own; But I can't leave the child alone." "I think," Mama said, in a fuss, "We can't have her to stay with us: I do not like my Jane to mix With children who have naughty tricks." But Jane said, with a gentle smile, Plying her needle all the while, "Pray, let her come here, dear Mama, With the permission of Papa; I have a hope that she might be Influenced for her good by me: For I could show her that she would Be happier if she ...
— Plain Jane • G. M. George
... have done formerly. She almost told him that he had been as wrong throughout as was the jealous husband in the play whose words he quoted, and that his jealousy, if continued, was likely to be as tragical. But she restrained herself, and kept close to her needle,—making, let us hope, an auspicious garment for Hugh Stanbury. "She has seen it now," he continued; "she has seen it now." Still she went on with her hemming in silence. It certainly could not be her duty to upset at a word all that her sister had achieved. "You know ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... party, and the steward was asked many questions as to their sayings and doings. All the Americans took great interest in everything about them; carrying their admiration to the extent of making birch-bark-covered needle-books of the coarse red flannel spread upon the ground for Lord Dufferin to walk upon—intending them as valuable souvenirs ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... Though he charmed iron, it charmed not him, From needles and nails and knives he'd turn, For he'd set his love on a Silver Churn! His most aesthetic, Very magnetic Fancy took this turn— "If I can wheedle A knife or needle, Why ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... if my notions clear though rudely thrown And loosely scattered in my poesie, May lend men light till the dead Night be gone, And Morning fresh with roses strew the skie: It is enough, I meant no trimmer frame Or by nice needle-work to ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... thought this would be fun, and soon they started off. It was a beautiful day, sunny but not too hot, and soon Mrs. Brown was busy with her needle while Sue and her ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Christmas Tree Cove • Laura Lee Hope
... themselves within the confines of the parish of St. Bride's, with its church built by Wren shortly after the great fire, and its queer pointed steeple, like a series of superimposed tabourets overtopped with a needle-like spire? ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... read Belisarius, Robinson Crusoe, and Philip Quarles; and then I found the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, one tale of which, (the tale of a man who was compelled to seek for a pure virgin,) made so deep an impression on me, (I had read it in the evening while my mother was at her needle,) that I was haunted by spectres, whenever I was in the dark: and I distinctly recollect the anxious and fearful eagerness, with which I used to watch the window where the book lay, and when the ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... of the year brought its communal activity: corn shucking in the fall, that was ever followed by a frolic. Bean stringing when the womenfolk pitched in to help each other out stringing beans with a long darning needle on long strands of thread. These were hung up to dry and supplied a tasty dish on cold winter days. There was also apple-butter-making in the fall when long hours were spent in peeling and preparing choicest apples which were boiled in the great copper kettle and richly seasoned with ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... cold-hearted, interested, ignorant, disagreeable woman, upon whom the tenderness of Pope's heart in the desolation of his latter days was cast away, not knowing whither to turn as he drew towards his premature old age, childless and lonely,—like the needle which, approaching within a certain distance of the pole, becomes helpless and useless, and, ceasing to tremble, rusts. She seems to have been so totally unworthy of tenderness, that it is an additional proof of the kindness of Pope's heart to have been able to love such ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... other was the one to take for Oxford. Also, I would see that the one to Boling started due north out of Salem and the other, the one I must follow, started due west out of Salem. Taking out my compass, I would see in what direction the north end of the needle pointed; the road running off in that direction would be the one to Boling, so I would start off west ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... whirl. A dimmer ray Touches thy surface from the silent room In which they tend the sick, or gather round The dying; and a slender, steady beam Comes from the little chamber, in the roof Where, with a feverous crimson on her cheek, The solitary damsel, dying, too, Plies the quick needle till the stars grow pale. There, close beside the haunts of revel, stand The blank, unlighted windows, where the poor, In hunger and in darkness, wake till morn. There, drowsily, on the half-conscious ear Of the dull watchman, pacing on the wharf, Falls the ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... out, in and out, she was a twentieth century version of any one of the Fates, with the Klinger darner and mender substituted for distaff and spindle. There was something almost humanly intelligent in the workings of Martha's machine. Under its glittering needle she would shove a sock whose heel bore a great, jagged, gaping wound. Your home darner, equipped only with mending egg, needle, and cotton, would have pronounced it fatal. But Martha's modern methods of sock surgery always saved its life. In and out, ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... named after him. And as we climbed the brown road—moist with tears wept by the mountains for the banished monks—it seemed to us that the scenery was always leading up to him, as a preface leads up to the first chapter of a book. We went through tunnels as a thread goes through the eye of a needle; we wound round intricate turns of the road; we came upon pinnacle rocks; and then, at last, when we least expected the climax of our journey, we dropped into a great green basin, rimmed with soaring crags. In the midst stood an enormous ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... friends, scientists have known of the existence of gold in sea-water. Together with other metals,—silver, platinum, and so on, there is a great amount of gold in sea-water. It is in tiny particles, not so big as the point of a needle. There it is,—but how shall it be got together? How shall it be extracted from the water? Aristotle tried to discover a method. He failed. Diogenes Laertius tried. He failed. Sir Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin,—they tried. And THEY failed. Professor Von ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... instinct to decide for me, I find, strange and whimsical as it may seem, that I finally and inevitably settle southwest, toward some particular wood or meadow or deserted pasture or hill in that direction. My needle is slow to settle,—varies a few degrees, and does not always point due southwest, it is true, and it has good authority for this variation, but it always settles between west and south-southwest. The future lies that way to me, and the earth seems more unexhausted and richer on that side. ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... life is certainly what the Master had in mind when he said, It is as hard for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven as it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. For, if a man give all his days and his nights merely to the accumulation of outer material possessions, what time has he for the growing, the unfolding, of the interior, the spiritual, what time for finding that wonderful kingdom, the kingdom ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... in this one teaspoon of fine sugar and one tablespoon common rennet or thirty drops of Hauser's extract of rennet. Let it remain in a warm place until curd sets. Rush and straw mats are easily made by cutting the straw into lengths and stringing them with a needle and thread. The mats or baskets should not ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... would hold a knitting needle over the table, and he would put his fore paws over it, and dance up and down the whole length of the needle until ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... Why has he pulled you up? He calls me crippled, but I am not, only my legs are swollen like barrels, and I am shriveled up myself. Once I used to be so fat, but now it's as though I had swallowed a needle." ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... hopelessly ill, he did not call a doctor, because it would be a useless expenditure. He insisted that the sewing woman, Carolina, who had only made five shirts in a week, not being sick, should make nine. He entered in his account "thread and needle, one penny," and used said thread and needle himself. All this closeness and contempt for shiftlessness and prodigality were perfectly consistent with a large and hospitable way of living; for during many years of his life he kept open house at Mt. Vernon. This frugal and prudent ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot
... a singular combination of intelligence and childish simplicity developed by the Indians. Father Hennepin had a small pocket compass, of which they stood in great need. When they saw him turn the needle with a key, they were awe-stricken, and whispered to one another that it was a spirit which had become obedient to the white man's will. He had an iron pot, with three feet resembling a lion's paws. This they never dared to touch, unless their hands were covered with some robe. What ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... well steal our horses." After awhile he would begin to talk about his children. He would say: "These niggers are ruining my children! My girls are good for nothing! They can not help themselves! They are so helpless they can not even pick up a needle. And my boys! These niggers are ruining my boys! My boys won't work!" And then he would go on to tell the nameless vices the young men of the city were drawn into through their intimacy with the blacks. I thought, but did ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... below looks as sharp as a needle, has a platform on its summit of about fifty paces in circumference. Here is a heap of small loose stones, about two feet high, forming a circle about twelve paces in diameter. Just below the top I found on every granite block that presented a smooth surface, inscriptions, the ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... them my plans for gathering samples of the weed. Florence tucked her stillthreaded needle between her teeth and inspected the current pair of socks critically. Joe walked over to the piano ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... with her needle also, and she bent her head to one side, affecting to arrange her muslin; but her hand shook, her color heightened, and her eyes lost their moisture in an expression of ungovernable interest, ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... the result of their conversation. She sat sewing near the lamp, giving all her attention to the piece of lace on which she was working. Her father made her a sign which meant "He consents," and then Marien saw that the needle in her fingers trembled, and a slight color rose in her face—but that was all. She did not say a word. He could not know that for a week past she had gone to church every time she took a walk, and had offered a prayer ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... of the whole mental life. It is the one center where all lines of communication meet. London is not so perfect a center for the commerce and finance of England as is the conscious ego (smaller than a needle's point) for ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... gourd into the toe of one of Lucy's little white stockings, Virginia gazed attentively at a small round hole while she held her needle arrested slightly above it. So exquisitely Madonna-like was the poise of her head and the dreaming, prophetic mystery in her face, that Mrs. Pendleton waited almost breathlessly ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... heard but the methodical click of her needle as it struck the head of her thimble, and then the long swish of the thread as she drew it through the cloth. The lamp at her elbow burned steadily, and the glare glanced along her arm as she raised it with the large movement ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... harem musk; tang of the sandy sea, fume of the street; the trail of smoke and onions; the milk of goats; the reek of humanity; the breath of kine. Make a bundle of that, and tie it with the silken lashes of women's eyes; secure it with the steel of a needle-pointed ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... morsitans sleeps by night beneath leaves in the bush, and only wakes when disturbed. For this reason we drive our horses, mules, and cattle by night through these fly-belts. Savage and pertinacious to a degree are these pests, and their bite is like the piercing of a red-hot needle. Simple and innocent they appear, not unlike a house fly, but larger and with the tips of their wings crossed and folded at the end like a swallow's. They are mottled grey in colour, and their proboscis sticks out ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... applied to useful purposes, such as the copying of paintings on glass by the light thrown through them on the prepared paper—Imitations of etchings, which may be accomplished by covering a piece of glass with a thick coat of white oil paint; when dry, with the point of a needle, lines or scratches are to be made through the white lead ground, so as to lay the glass bare; then place the glass upon a piece of prepared paper, and expose it to the light. Of course every line will be represented beneath of a black color, and thus an ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling
... definite claims can be staked out in rotation without congestion of the avenues of approach. I hope this system will be generally adopted next summer and, if it is used in conjunction with my Progress Indicator (which shows by a moving needle what stage the person bathing has reached), it ought to work very smoothly. But there must be no hanky-panky, no sharp practice with caddies; every sponge must be put down by one of the players in person. And there must be none of that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920 • Various
... Law-copying Office for women opened February 15.... Victoria Printing Press, established March 26.... Institution for the Employment of Needle-women commenced.... First admission of women students to the Royal Academy ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... geologist would fail to recognize as gneiss at all. We find along the precipices its two unequivocal varieties, the schistose and the granitic, passing not unfrequently, the former into a true mica schist, the latter into a pale feldspathose rock, thickly pervaded by needle-like crystals of tremolite, that, from the style of the grouping, and the contrast existing between the dark green of the enclosed mineral, and the pale flesh-color of the ground, frequently furnishes specimens of great beauty. ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... sufficient size for a whole canoe, but this is rather exceptional, and the bottom is generally pieced out, as seen in our drawing. This piecing may be accomplished with an awl and Indian twine, or by the aid of a large needle threaded with the same, sewing with an over-and-over stitch around the edge of each piece. Use as large pieces as are attainable, and continue to sew them on until the area of bark measures about four and a half feet in width by twelve feet in length, the dark colored sides of the bark ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... five weeks longer. You'll have enough to get you heaps of fine clothes," Sadie flung out enviously, with one of her needle-sharp glances. ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... spending them, but she so seldom had any money that she chiefly relied on her own ingenuity. Year by year it became more difficult to make anything which would "do for a boy;" but it was easy to please Darling, and "Mother's" unabated appreciation of pincushions, and of needle-books made out of old cards, ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... pertinacious resistance, marched out in solemn procession, with the crucifix before them, chanting, at the same time, the psalm De exitu Israel, in token of their persecution. Isabella resorted to milder methods. She visited many of the nunneries in person, taking her needle or distaff with her, and endeavoring by her conversation and example to withdraw their inmates from the low and frivolous pleasures to which they were ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... records were only of the best, and the care he took of them was a revelation. He handled each one reverently, as a sacred thing, untying and unwrapping it and brushing it with a fine camel's hair brush while it revolved and ere he placed the needle on it. For a time all I could see was the huge brute hands of a brute-driver, with skin off the knuckles, that expressed love in their every movement. Each touch on the discs was a caress, and while the record ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... Fig. 28 indicates the apparatus of our experiment. When we close the switch, S, the battery starts a stream of electrons from a towards b. Just at that instant the needle, or pointer, of the current instrument moves. The needle moves, and thus shows a current in the coil cd; but it comes right back again, showing that the current is only momentary. Let's say this again in different words. The ...
— Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son • John Mills
... Chamberlain's company would not be at the Blackfriars play-house until Martinmas; and before that time to look for even Master Will Shakspere at random in London town would be worse than hunting for a needle in a haystack. ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... to thee I turn, As turns the needle toward the pole, And feel my heart within me yearn For all thou offerest to the soul; Why should I join in feverish haste The crowd for which I have no taste, The precious boon of ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... Still, he did move, and in time (it seemed, indeed, a time) he left the island, which disappeared in the luminous vapours. Uncertain as to the direction, he got his compass, but it would not act; the needle had no life, it swung and came to rest, pointing any way as it chanced. It was demagnetized. Felix resolved to trust to the wind, which he was certain blew from the opposite quarter, and would therefore carry him out. The stars he could ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... went back to her father. He was still lying with his face turned to the wall, and Nina, thinking that he slept, took up her work and sat by his side. But he was awake, and watching. "Is she gone?" he said, before her needle had ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... friends, they were fellow-sufferers, and long after Henrietta had tired of singing, Rose went on playing, mournfully, as it seemed to Henrietta, consoling herself with sweet sounds. Sophia sat before her embroidery frame, slowly pushing her needle in and out; Caroline read a novel with avidity and an occasional pause for chuckles, and when Rose at length dropped her hands on her knees and remained motionless, staring at the keys, Henrietta startled her aunts by saying firmly, 'I am just ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... at the close of the war better men than he sought and accepted gratefully such a livelihood as he disdained—that women in whose veins ran good old English blood left their wasted homes to teach in public schools, or turned their delicate hands to the needle for support. He was ashamed of his past ambition—of his vaunted aspiration—and he was ashamed of Jerry Pollard and ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... assignats in the strong-box, she produced from her work-basket a white scarf, which she had begun to embroider, and set to work on it. At once industrious and a coquette, she knew instinctively how to ply her needle so as to fascinate an admirer and make a pretty thing for her wearing at one and the same time; she had quite different ways of working according to the person watching her,—a nonchalant way for those she would lull into a gentle languor, a capricious way for those she was fain to ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... were ocean steam navigation, railroads, and telegraphs. [Footnote: Ploetz in his Epitome of History, instructively compares these inventions to the three great inventions or discoveries— the magnetic needle, gunpowder, and printing—that ushered in the Modern Age.] In the year 1830 Stephenson exhibited the first really successful locomotive. In 1836 Morse perfected the telegraph. In 1838 ocean steamship navigation ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... of bringing his majesty back to the bosom of the catholic church—a bosom which no doubt the marquis found as soft as it was capacious, but which the king regarded as a good deal resembling that of a careless nurse rather than mother—frized with pins, and here and there a cruel needle. Therefore, expecting every hour that the king would apply to him for more money, the marquis had resolved that, at such time as he should do so, he would make an attempt to lead the stray sheep within the fold—for the marquis was not one of those who regarded a protestant ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... mother says the lace she sold us was the most wonderful bargain, even though we did give her more than she asked for it. And as for making pretty things, why she's a positive genius. My pretty lace handkerchief that was so badly torn, she mended beautifully. And she is so skillful with the needle! Mother says she never need go out peddling lace again. There are any number of shops that would be glad to have her as ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... Selldon thought regretfully of the comfortable easy chair that she usually enjoyed after dinner, and the ten minutes' nap, and the congenial needle-work. And Mark Shrewsbury thought of his chambers in Pump Court, and longed for his type-writer, and his books, and his swivel chair, and his ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... such stone was rarely found along the lower Columbia. Squaws sat in front of their wigwams sewing mats,—carefully sorting the rushes, putting big ends with little ends, piercing each with a bodkin, and sewing them all together with a long bone needle threaded with buckskin or sinew. Others were weaving that water-tight wickerwork which was, perhaps, the highest art to which the Oregon Indians ever attained. Here a band of Indians were cooking, feasting, laughing, shouting around a huge sturgeon captured the night ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... the little parlour in his home he found his nephew sitting, silent and discontented, by the window. Madeline had taken up a book, and Ellinor, in an opposite corner, was plying her needle with an earnestness that contrasted ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... souls which was coming along by the bank, and each of them was looking at us, as at eve one is wont to look at another under the new moon, and they so sharpened their brows toward us as the old tailor does on the needle's eye. ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... looking at the pictures and books, at the open piano with some music on it, at a piece of embroidery with a needle stuck through the half-finished petal of a flower, he began to feel deserted. The day was before him. What was he going to do? What was there for him to do? For a moment he felt what he would have called "stranded." He was immensely accustomed to Hermione, and her splendid ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Howbeit, when we had threatened the now barefoot knave with cruel torture, he confessed that, having been an honest tailor till of late, he had soft feet by reason that he had ever sat over his needle. And when he pulled on the stolen shoes somewhat therein hard hurt his sole, and when he made search under the leather, behold a large letter closely folded and sealed. This had been the cause and reason of his being ill at ease, and he had opened it, being of an enquiring mind, and, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... body thus marked are their faces, arms, hands, thighs, and in some few women the breasts, but never the feet as in Greenland. The operation, which by way of curiosity most of our gentlemen had practised on their arms, is very expeditiously managed by passing a needle and thread (the latter covered with lamp-black and oil) under the epidermis, according to a pattern previously marked out upon the skin. Several stitches being thus taken at once, the thumb is pressed upon the part while the thread ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... And he yoked his wife thereto on the left and his own self on the right. And the king placed on the car, among its other equipments, the goad which had three handles and which had a point at once hard as the thunderbolt and sharp as the needle.[307] Having placed every requisite upon the car, the king said unto the Rishi, 'O holy one, whither shall the car proceed? O, let the son of Bhrigu issue his command! This thy car shall proceed to the place which thou ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... fingers were very swift and deft with the forceps. Scott watched her. She picked up the green-and-rose Pandorus, laid it on its back on a setting-block, affixed and pinned the oiled-paper strips, drew out the four wings with the setting-needle until they were symmetrical and the inner margin of the anterior pair was at right ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... the eagerness which attempts to do several things at once. He said it was like trying to thread more than one needle at a time. One of his favourite mottos was: "Sufficient to the ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... absolutely correct. Further on, five miles from Kabakada, was another trader named Bruno Ran, a hard-working Swiss; then, after rounding Cape Stephens, was the large German trading station of Matupi in Blanche Bay, where you could buy anything from a needle to a chain cable. On the Duke of York Island was another trading station, and also the Wesleyan Mission, which as yet had made but few converts in New Britain; and over in New Ireland were a few scattered English traders, who ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... the same sort of history. We speak of a "fine needle" when we mean that it is thin, and a "fine baby" when we mean that it is fat. The first meaning is nearer to the original, which was "well finished off." Often a thing which had a great deal of "fine" workmanship spent on it would be delicate and "fine" in the first sense, and so the word came ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... finger-shield of industry,) The inventive gods, I deem, to Pallas gave, What time the vain Arachne, madly brave, Challenged the blue-eyed virgin of the sky A duel in embroidered work to try. And hence the thimbled finger of grave Pallas, To th' erring needle's point was ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... devil into the far distance when it is rumoured that the battalion will deploy. He sits now at leisure, but even at leisure he is not at ease: silent, with every nerve and fibre strained to the utmost tension, he crouches over his work. He is at his darning; ay, with real wool and a real needle he is darning his socks. The colour of his work may not be harmonious, but it is a thorough job; he has done what even few women would do, he has darned not only the hole in his hosiery but his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... daughter exchange glances, plainly saying, 'tis Sunday, and no using needle or knife that day. I understand them well enough, for I would have thought exactly the same myself in my childhood. So I try to find a way out by a little free-thinking: 'tis another matter when it's a machine that does the work; no more than when an innocent cart comes rumbling down the ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... pirate captured and took all they money in English war. (Revolution) Dem day Ladies wear bodkin fastened to long gold chain on shoulder—needle in 'em and thimble and ting. Coming down from New York to get away from English. My great grandmother little chillun. Pirate come to her Missus. Take all they money—come cut bodkin off her shoulder. Grandmother ma gone on the boat and twiss herself in Missus' skirt. Pirate put 'em off to Wilmington. ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... military mind at this day. The debate among them is but as to the best utilization of the old arrow-theory. The oblong projectile, that goes singing on its winding way, is common to them all. Slipped in at the back door or rammed home at the front, delicately stirred up by the insinuating needle and its titbit of fulminate or bluntly ordered off by the snappish percussion-cap, it is the same obedient and faithful messenger, and goes on its appointed errand ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... Nicaraguans trace the custom of flattening the heads of children to instructions from the gods, and Pelew Islanders believed that to win eternal bliss the septum of the nose must be perforated, while Eskimo girls were induced to submit to having long stitches made with a needle and black thread on several parts of the face by the superstitious fear that if they refused they would, after death, be turned into train tubs and placed under the lamps in heaven.[77] In order ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... basket were chosen and included a silver needle case, a silver thimble case, a silver hem gauge, a unique tatting shuttle, a little silver ripping knife, a cunning strawberry emery with a silver hull and a wee wax cherry ...
— Entertaining Made Easy • Emily Rose Burt
... briefly. The intern nodded. He shined the light into Rick's eyes and watched the pupils contract. "Possible concussion. We'll check at the hospital." He knelt and took a roll of cloth from his bag and unwrapped it to disclose hypodermic needles in a sterile inner wrapper. He fitted a needle to a syringe and found a bottle of alcohol and a vial of sedative. Working swiftly, he wiped the vial top and Rick's arm with alcohol, then drew fluid into the syringe. "This will help the pain," he said, and pressed the needle ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... ascended, and from its summit enjoyed the finest view of the Peak Range I had yet seen. I attempted to sketch it in its whole extent, and gave to its most remarkable peaks separate names. A long flat-topped mountain I called "Lord's Table Range," after E. Lord, Esq., of Moreton Bay; and a sharp needle-like rock, which bore west-by-north, received the name of "Fletcher's Awl," after Mr. John Fletcher, whose kind contribution towards my expedition had not a little cheered me in my undertaking. Towards the east and north-east, ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... home, feeding on Hector's letters, and strengthened by her mother's sympathy. She was teaching regularly at the High School, and adding a little to their common income by giving a few music lessons, as well as employing her needle in a certain kind of embroidery a good deal sought after, in which she excelled. She had heard nothing of his having begun to distinguish himself, neither had yet seen one of the reviews of his book, for no one had taken the trouble to show her ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... opera of his own, which Mr. Laporte, with a very uncourteous discretion, had thought fit to refuse. The season passes—and Mr. Monck Mason has ruined himself without being able to bring out his opera after all! What a type of speculation. A speculator is one who puts a needle in a hay-stack, and then burns all his hay without finding the needle. It is hard to pay too dear for one's whistle—but still more hard if one never plays a tune on the whistle one pays for. Still the world has lost a grand pleasure in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... misfortune to women, to whom beauty is more important than life, and the beauty of whom consists in the roundness and graceful contour of their forms. The most careful toilette, the most, sublime needle-work, cannot hide certain deficiencies. It has been said that whenever a pin is taken from a thin woman, beautiful as she may be, she ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... compelled to acknowledge that things the most reliable are the most unpretending. The star, by which the mariner has steered for ages, is not a 'bright particular star;' the needle of his compass is shaped from one of the baser metals, (though in a figurative sense gold is highly magnetic.) The inner bears such a relation to the outer, that the inner senses are named from the outer; we are slow to perceive that also all objects of the outer ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... many long days in the house at this time and practiced an unskillful needle, while her thoughts wandered far and near through the sullen weather to this old cross and that. Then came a night of rainless darkness through which past augmentations of water still thundered. Nature rested ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... the Musgrave native's tracks for about half a mile in a nearly south direction, and then came upon a stony plain with a few large bushes growing at one end of it. He gave a yell of delight. They were needle-bushes. The party was saved. Here was water, stored by nature right in the ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... they were holding the morning ceremony that the thing came out of the forest. At first he thought that a tree had moved. It was green, with reddish blotches like clusters of needle leaves, and it seemed to ooze forward toward them from among the trees. Aoooya noticed it first, and pointed and screamed. It was the size of a tiger, thought Bradley, and might be even more dangerous. He had difficulty keeping his eyes on the rapidly moving creature through the goggles of his ...
— Divinity • William Morrison
... lowest, supported by a string from the head. Round the neck, a tight flat collar of beads, arranged in fancy patterns, is worn with coral necklaces, and sometimes a broad gold plate immediately in front. A large blue shirt is generally worn, the collar and breast ornamented with needle-work. The women also wear white shirts, and striped silk ones called shami, which are brought from Egypt; a jereed and red slippers complete their dress. They generally have their wrappers of a darker colour than those of the men. Some of the better class of women wear trousers, not ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... belched out flames and smoke not so very long ago. One reminded me of Ben Sleoch as it rises out of Loch Maree, the same mass of rock atop, but here more rugged. Each mountain top and side was studded with enormous needle-like pinnacles and rough warty masses. It is strange how fertile these volcanic earths are, these high mountains were clothed with trees below, and had thick shrubbery almost to the top—mostly hollyoak, I fancy. The colouring of the rocks is very fine, the colours being warm reds, browns, purples, ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... steer'd for seas untrack'd, unknown, And westward still sail'd on—sail'd on— Sail'd on till Ocean seem'd to be All shoreless as Eternity, Till, from its long-loved Star estranged, At last the constant Needle changed,{C} And fierce amid his murmuring crew Prone terror into treason grew; While on his tortured spirit rose, More dire than portents, toils, or foes, The awaiting World's loud jeers and scorn Yell'd o'er ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... equal shares, as brothers." That which gave the traitor Bautistilla more courage in undertaking so great a treason was a stratagem and subtilty which he employed to know those on his side. This was to order each Sangley to bring a needle and deliver it into his hand. This they did, and he put the needles in a little box. He thus ascertained that twenty-two thousand one hundred and fifty Sangley Indians could gather in Manila on the last of November, the day of St. Andrew, patron of this country. He had determined and ordered ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various
... in a poor way," he said, "for the needle went more than a quarter of an inch into him, and he never cried out or stirred. Couldn't help it ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... humble laborer named Trow, and first saw the light in 1813. Her educational facilities—as indeed were all those similarly or even better circumstanced in England seventy years ago—were of the humblest kind. But she was made to work, taught to use her needle, and "sent out to service" in her early teens. And so it came to pass that, at the age of sixteeen, she was "maid of all work" for a butcher in her native town. She was quite good-looking, with piercing black eyes and thick, luxuriant black hair, and shapely form. ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... wins honor in medicine, in literature, in music, in engineering, in astronomy, in laundry-work, in cookery, in needle-work, ennobles literature, or music, or science, or housekeeping. What worthy pursuit can you not, by excellence, raise into honor and esteem? Matilda of Normandy embroidered, in the quiet of her castle, stitch by stitch, and day after day, the battle of Hastings, at which ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... argument before Caleb could convince those shy and suspicious people that his errand was an honest one. Eventually they did come to believe him; they led him, a-foot, another half mile up the timber-fringed stream, to a log cabin set back in the balsams upon a needle carpeted knoll. And they stood and stared in stolid wonder at this portly man in riding breeches and leather puttees, when he finally emerged from that small shack, "Old Tom's" tin box under his arm, and, with lips working strangely, pinned the door ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... said the sergeant. "But that's the hard part of it!"—and he stuck his needle viciously through the pants—"I always get savage when I think of our ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... made of the needle must not be forgotten. For a year and a half, whilst at Canterbury, he went regularly for five hours a day to a tailor to learn the trade, and was found very handy with his needle. He proved to be of much use in the ordinary work ...
— Kalli, the Esquimaux Christian - A Memoir • Thomas Boyles Murray
... Stick the needle on Hudson Bay and swing the leg down round New York and up through the wheat plains of the Northwest. Draw lines to the center of your circle—to your amazement, you find the lines from the wheat plains to New York are twice and ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... sitting-room, so disappointed and unnerved that she was on the brink of tears. Janet who had just come in from milking, was standing by the table, mending a rent in her waterproof. She looked up as Rachel entered, and the needle paused in her hand. ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the hip on the left side, as though he wore half of a blue shirt. The tahuna who had done the work seemed to have drawn outlines and then blocked in the half of his torso. But remembering that every pin-point of color had meant the thrust of a bone needle propelled by the blow of a mallet, I realized that Kahauiti had endured much for his decorations. No iron or Victoria ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... enter the house through the open door of the dining-room, but stood irresolute by the little work-table where trailed a white piece of calico, with a needle stuck in it, as if the work had been left hurriedly. The pink-crested cockatoo started, on his appearance, into clumsy activity and began to climb laboriously up and down his perch, calling "Joanna" with ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... the bursar presents to every member a needle and thread with the words, "Take this and be thrifty." We have not been able to obtain a statistical return of the standing of the Queen's men in the books of the tradesmen of Oxford as compared with members of other ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... the Jackal came limping along, for all his sorry looks as sharp as a needle, and he, ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... equally, and when putting theirs in the window, so that they might still see some of the blue sky, as she expressed it, she looked across the Court towards Lizzie Stevens' home. Yes, there she was, Pollie could see, busy plying her needle, and there were the violets also, in a broken jam jar close by her as she sat at work; and raising her pale face towards them, as though they were old friends returned to her, she caught sight of little Pollie arranging her bouquet in the window; so with ...
— Little Pollie - A Bunch of Violets • Gertrude P. Dyer
... have so extravagantly and not unwisely delivered yourself on flounces and ruffles. But to think, when in love, were, indeed, disastrous. O Love, Love, what Camels of wisdom thou canst force to pass through the needle's eye! What miracles divine are thine! Khalid himself says that to be truly, deeply, piously in love, one must needs hate himself. How true, how inexorably true! For would he be always inviting trouble and courting affliction, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... head is narrow, the bottom of it broad. His body is short and thick and square; his legs even thicker, and his feet turn out too much; the general effect is almost pyramidal. Again, take this one," and he indicated a gentleman coming down the steps, "you could thread his legs and body through a needle's eye, but his head would defy you. Mark his boiled eyes, his flashing spectacles, and the absence of all hair. Disproportion, ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... to try that moment, but she knew she was due at her needle-work, and very unwillingly went into the drawing-room, where her mother and sisters were sitting round a lamp-lit table, stitching away very busily at a new set ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... to learn a trade, his father, not being able to put him out to any other, took him into his own shop, and taught him how to use his needle: but neither fair words nor the fear of chastisement were capable of fixing his lively genius. All his father's endeavours to keep him to his work were in vain; for no sooner was his back turned, than he was gone for that day. Mustapha chastised him, but Aladdin ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... house-wife, eased the trouble with a needle, stabbed Mulvaney in the calf with the same weapon, and was swiftly ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... "It's habit with a man who shoots. Besides, seeing him was like a bit of Scotland—their auerhahn is kin to the black-cock and capercailzie. So I marked him to the skirt of Thusis, yonder—in line with that needle across the gulf and, through it, to that bunch of pinkish-stemmed pines—there where the brook falls into silver dust above that gorge. He'll lie there. Just before daybreak he'll mount to the top of one of those pines. We'll hear his yelping. ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... got her finger mashed open, she turned pretty pale with the pain, but she never said a word. I took her in my lap, and the surgeon sponged off the blood and took a needle and thread and began to sew it up; it had to have a lot of stitches, and each one made her scrunch a little, but she never let go a sound. At last the surgeon was so full of admiration that he said, 'Well, you ARE a brave little thing!' and she said, just as ca'm ...
— A Horse's Tale • Mark Twain
... it was as if his body had been penetrated thrice by a needle of fire. The anguish of it was exquisite, stupefying. He was aware of a darkening, reeling world, wherein men's faces swam like moons, pallid, staring, and of a mighty and invincible lethargy that ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... commonest avocations of her sex—that of sewing. She held in her hand a coarse garment, one of Spike's, in fact, which she seemed to be intently busy in mending; although the work was of a quality that invited the use of the palm and sail-needle, rather than that of the thimble and the smaller implement known to seamstresses, the woman appeared awkward in her business, as if her coarse-looking and dark hands refused to lend themselves to an occupation so feminine. Nevertheless, there ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... to this insane counsel, the mob resolved to act upon it. Headed by the merchant, they ran down Thread-needle-street, and, crossing Stock's Market, burst open several houses in Bearbinder-lane, and drove away the watchmen. One man, more courageous than the others, tried to maintain his post, and was so severely handled ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... emaciating, and godless, was the condition to which the mere advent of this festival reduced worthy Miss Williams, the dressmaker, who had more white muslin and young ladies on her hands than she and her choir of needle-women knew what to do with. During this tremendous period Miss Williams hardly resembled herself—her eyes dilated, her lips were pale, and her brow corrugated with deep and inflexible lines of fear and perplexity. She lived on bad tea—sat up all night—and every now and then burst ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... refuse it. And may God give her and me grace so to use the riches of this world that they become not a stumbling-block to us, and a rock of offence. It is possible that the camel should be made to go through the needle's eye. ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... her sister, because of the latter's headaches and backaches, and other disorders; she herself sat on an ordinary chair of the bedside species, to which by this time she had become used. Their sewing, when they did any, was strictly indispensable; if nothing demanded the needle, both preferred a book. Alice, who had never been a student in the proper sense of the word, read for the twentieth time a few volumes in her possession—poetry, popular history, and half a dozen novels such as the average mother of children would have approved in the governess's hands. ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing |
