"Reel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... despising my taste; but I always delight in overthrowing those kind of schemes, and cheating a person of their premeditated contempt. I have, therefore, made up my mind to tell you, that I do not want to dance a reel at all—and now despise ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... him!" hissed the miserable lad beneath his breath. "I hope they pound him to death right off the reel." ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... it. It marked a temperature of 82 degrees in the sepulchre. Having noted this, he thrust it into the coffin between the crystal wall and its occupant. Then we went out and waited a little while to give the odours time to dissipate, for they made the head reel. ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... jaws of Death, Into the mouth of Hell Rode the six hundred. Flash'd all their sabres bare, Flash'd as they turn'd in air Sabring the gunners there, Charging an army, while All the world wonder'd; Plunged in the battery-smoke Right thro' the line they broke; Cossack and Russian Reel'd from the sabre-stroke Shatter'd and sunder'd. Then they rode back, but not, ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... being done towards producing our own silk. The mulberry is being distributed in large numbers, eggs are being imported and distributed, improved reels were imported from Europe last year, and two expert reelers were brought to Washington to reel the crop of cocoons and teach the art ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... kind of you, Copas," said Brother Bonaday slowly, his eyes fixed now on the reel, the whirring click of which drew his attention, so that he seemed to address his speech to it. "It is very kind, and I thank you. But I hope the Master will not refuse: though, to tell you the truth, there is another small difficulty which makes ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the yawner; his strength was not more than his courage, but both had been strained too severely at first. Montacute struck the spurs into him with a savage blow over the head; the madness was its own punishment; the poor brute rose blindly to the jump, and missed the bank with a reel and a crash; Sir Eyre was hurled out into the brook, and the hope of the Heavies lay there with his breast and forelegs resting on the ground, his hindquarters in the water, and his neck broken. Pas de Charge would never again see the starting flag ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... inheritors of my happy lot in future generations. Always, whether sleeping or waking, I shall know that in Spring the sun rides over the silver streets of Kensington, and that in the Gardens the shorn sheep find very green pasture. Always the plaited threads of traffic will wind about the reel of London; always as you go up Regent Street from Pall Mall and look back, Westminster will rise with you like a dim sun over the horizon of Whitehall. That dive down Fleet Street and up to the black and white cliffs of St. Paul's will for ever bring to mind ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... to his desk, at the other end of the school. I obeyed; "Pray, Sir," said he, "what were you laughing at?" I found I was deceived, and I stood silent, unable to answer the interrogatory; upon which he gave me a severe box under the ear, which made me reel again, and nearly knocked me down. He then sternly said, "Go, Sir, to your seat, and mind your business, and in future take care how you let me catch you laughing again." This at once impressed upon my mind the ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... has been singularly good. The wine which thou didst thyself drink at the banquet a few nights ago, O venerable Merolchazzar, was of this year's vintage. Dost thou not remember how thou didst praise it? It was the same night that thou wast inspired by Belus and didst reel to and fro, and discourse sacred mysteries. These things are too hard for me. I comprehend them not. The only wine which is bad is that which is sent to my judges. Who can expound ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Hamilton, as I said, perhaps—called for a set of "American dances," an odd thing happened. Everybody then danced contra-dances. The black band, nothing loath, conferred as to what "American dances" were, and started off with "Virginia Reel," which they followed with "Money-Musk," which, in its turn in those days, should have been followed by "The Old Thirteen." But just as Dick, the leader, tapped for his fiddles to begin, and bent forward, about to say, in true negro ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... "I mean every word of it, I tell you, Dev." Dev, like Dunny, is a misnomer; my name is Devereux—Devereux Bayne. "Don't you risk your bones enough with the confounded games you play? What's the use of hunting shells and shrapnel like a hero in a movie reel? We're not in this war yet, though we soon will be, praise the Lord! And till we are, I believe in neutrality—upon my soul ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... as if at their comrade's wit, all save the women, whose tender faces spoke more of pity than of mirth. The wine flew to his brain as he drank it, and things about him seemed to reel and spin. Strains of fantastic music burst upon his ears: then, all in rhythm, the women joined their partners and whirled about him with a lightsome step. And, moving with it, his throbbing brain seemed dancing from his head. The room itself, all swaying ...
— The Last American - A Fragment from The Journal of KHAN-LI, Prince of - Dimph-Yoo-Chur and Admiral in the Persian Navy • J. A. Mitchell
... and Zalmunna bled So let their Princes bleed. 12 For they amidst their pride have said By right now shall we seize Gods houses, and will now invade *Their stately Palaces. *Neoth Elohim bears both. 13 My God, oh make them as a wheel No quiet let them find, 50 Giddy and restless let them reel Like stubble from the wind. 14 As when an aged wood takes fire Which on a sudden straies, The greedy flame runs hier and hier Till all the mountains blaze, 15 So with thy whirlwind them pursue, And with thy tempest chase; 16 *And till they *yield thee honour due, *They seek thy Lord ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... although our canoe was half full of water. Then could we enter into David's words, as for life we struggled, and our little craft was tossed on the cross sea in our efforts to reach a place of safety: "They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit's end. Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and He bringeth them out ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... trees, to seeing the stooking of barley, to watching the blue banner of the flax, to walking on frosty roads on great nights of stars.... To riding with the hunt, clumsily, as a sailor does, but getting in at the death, as pleased as the huntsman, or the master himself.... To the whir of the reel as the great blue salmon rushed ... Pleasure, and peace, and ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... The Abana, River of Damascus. How Life is dim, unreal, vain, like scenes that round the drunkard reel; How Being meaneth not to be; to see and hear, ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... Masaniello, "but a horned lizard has put me into a fright, for she has threatened that if I do not bring her our youngest daughter, she will make me suffer for it. My head is turning like a reel. I know not what fish to take. On one side love constrains me; on the other the burden of my family. I love Renzolla dearly, I love my own life dearly. If I do not give the lizard this portion of my heart, she will take the whole compass of my unfortunate ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... it's very polite of you, but you must excuse me. I was never anything great in quadrilles; but if a reel or a jig—" ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... swords—swords!... And his steel Should rip death from my breast. But would he ever know the feel Of Spring again, of its ribald reel, As once I ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... the Three should catch at last Thy serenader? While there's cast Paul's cloak about my head, and fast Gian pinions me, Himself has past His stylet thro' my back; I reel; And... ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... acknowledged the doctor lazily. "I'll warrant Winnie can tell you right off the reel, Mrs. Hildreth. She's proud of her success—I heard her ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... from the Great Eternal mind: Streams of his unexhausted spring of power, And, cherished with his influence, endure. He spread the pure cerulean fields on high, And arched the chambers of the vaulted sky, Which he, to suit their glory with their height, Adorned with globes, that reel, as drunk with light. His hand directed all the tuneful spheres, He turned their orbs, and polished all the stars. He filled the Sun's vast lamp with golden light: And bid the silver Moon adorn the night. He spread the airy Ocean without shores, Where birds are wafted with their ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... were nothing, and nought after death; If when men died, at once they ceased to be, Returning to the barren womb of nothing, Whence first they sprung; then might the debauchee Untrembling mouth the heavens:—then might the drunkard Reel over his full bowl, and, when 'tis drain'd, Fill up another to the brim, and laugh At the poor bugbear Death: then might the wretch That's weary of the world, and tired of life, 390 At once give each inquietude the slip, By stealing out of being when he pleased, And by what way, whether by hemp, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... very tranquilly. "Do not be too sure of that! And why should the human brain 'reel'?—the sagacious, calculating, clear human brain that never gets tired, or puzzled, or perplexed!—that settles everything in the most practical and common-sense manner, and disposes of God altogether as an extraneous sort of bargain not wanted in the general economy of ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... the safety rings, as, with a reel to one side, almost as if it were going to capsize, the tank rumbled on. Tom cast a half-amused smile at his chum, and then ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton
... 27. Preach funeral of Joseph Reel's daughter. Age, seven years and nine months. Stay all night at James Fitzwater's in ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... their sabers bare, Flash'd as they turn'd in air Sab'ring the gunners there, Charging an army, while All the world wonder'd: Plunged in the battery-smoke Right thro' the line they broke; Cossack and Russian Reel'd from the saber-stroke Shatter'd and sunder'd. Then they rode back, but not Not the ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... aright, "little puff"? This battle of wind and wave a little puff! And she who regarded this cataclysmic scene with such contempt—that brave and confident figure, swaying so easily to the deck's reel, that bizarre costume, that sparkling face—was she the distressed maid he had fought for the night before? Yes, he remembered that vivid, expressive face. By George, ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... and abbots to cope, By a nod, if you please, you can make me a Prior— By a word you render me Pope. If you'd eat, I'm a Crab; if you'd cut, I'm your Steel, As sharp as you'd get from the cutler; I'm your Cotton whene'er you're in want of a reel, And your livery carry, as Butler. I'll ever rest your debtor If you'll answer my first letter; Or must, alas, eternity Witness your taciturnity? Speak—and oh! speak quickly Or else I shall grow sickly, And pine, And whine, ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... and what he didn't 'low was perfectly well known to every darky. For instance, "he didn't 'low no singin' uv week-er-day chunes uv er Sunday," nor "no singin' uv reel chunes" (dance music) at any time; nor did he "'low no sassin' of ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... little later, the barouche was announced. It drew up close to the porch, axle-deep in snow. Upstairs the orchestra was sawing out the strains of "Major Malley's Reel," as Endymion lifted his sister in and slammed the door upon her and Narcissus. The noise prevented his hearing a sash-window lifted, immediately above ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Henderson," Mary said, and proffered the cord which was wound on a fishing reel. I played the kite up and down for a few minutes, then reeled it in. It was, almost exactly, a wind sock, but the hole at the small end was shaped—by wire—into the general form of a kidney bean. It was beautifully made, and had a sort of ...
— Junior Achievement • William Lee
... him, as you know, in Mrs. Taylor's back chamber, making tops for the children. In a few days he was able to go down stairs. The first use he made of his liberty was to make a reel for Mrs. Taylor to wind ...
— Bertie and the Gardeners - or, The Way to be Happy • Madeline Leslie
... rain, when rivers or brooks are somewhat beyond their usual bounds, a well scoured lob worm will take the best of fish. For worm fishing you must have a yard of good gut attached to your cast line, which line ought to be of the same thickness from the gut to the loop of your reel line, your hooks may be a trifle larger in the Spring than in the Summer, and should be tied on to the gut with good strong red silk; two No. 4 or 5 shot corns, partially split, and then fastened upon ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland
... room were of tiered logs, the bark still on, and the chinking between the logs, plainly visible, was arctic moss. Through the open door that led to the dance-room came the rollicking strains of a Virginia reel, played by a piano and a fiddle. The drawing of Chinese lottery had just taken place, and the luckiest player, having cashed at the scales, was drinking up his winnings with half a dozen cronies. The faro- and ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... steel dogs instead of a modern stove, and logs of oak burning, if it be cold. At table, all his plate is of the most ancient make, and he drinks toasts and healths in tankards of ale that is strong enough to make a horse reel, but which he continually avows is as mild as mother's milk, and wouldn't hurt an infant. He has an old rosy butler, and loves very old venison, which fills the whole house with its perfume while roasting; and an old double-Gloucester cheese, full of jumpers and mites; and after ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... his women stood with hands uplifted shrieking like fiends of hell. Hand and foot grew weary; their speed slackened. Slowly, now, they moved in front of the cohort and back to the middle space. They were evenly matched; both began to reel and labor heavily, their strength failing in like degree. The end was at hand. Now the angel of death hovered near, about to choose between them. Suddenly Antipater, pressing upon his man, fell forward. At the very moment Vergilius, who had been giving quarter, reeled a few paces and was down ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... and glen, through wood and wild, Far from his lordly home, to be Lord of the forest's fairest child." It was as when a thunder peal Bursts, crashing from a cloudless sky, It caused my brain and heart to reel And throb, with speechless agony: Yet, when wild Passion's trance was o'er, And Thought resumed her sway once more, I breathed a prayer that she might be Saved from the pangs that tortured me; That her young heart might ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... other's bucklers withouten any dread. There has Ferrand Gonzalvez pierced don Pero's target through. Well his lance-shaft in two places he shattered it in two. Unto the flesh it came not, for there glanced off the steel. Per Vermudoz sat firmly, therefore he did not reel. For every stroke was dealt him, the buffet back he gave, He broke the boss of the buckler, the shield aside he drave. He clove through guard and armour, naught availed the man his gear. Nigh the heart into the bosom he thrust the battle-spear. Three mail-folds had Ferrando, and the third was ...
— The Lay of the Cid • R. Selden Rose and Leonard Bacon
... girders, or whether he only dreamed of that awful passage. It was quite fearful enough to cross when the footway was all down, and he could see the blue gleam of the river far underneath through the cracks between the boards. It made his brain reel; and he felt that he took his life in his hand whenever he entered the bridge, even when he had grown old enough to be making an excursion with some of his playmates to the farm of an uncle of theirs who lived two miles up the river. ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... For our Chiefs said "Done," and I did not deem it; Our Seers said "Peace," and it was not peace; Earth will grow worse till men redeem it, And wars more evil, ere all wars cease. But the old flags reel and the old drums rattle. As once in my life they throbbed and reeled; I have found ray youth in the lost battle, I have found my heart on the battlefield. For we that fight till the world is free, We are not easy in victory: ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... item in your bundle, you returned to the ward to attend to other (and generally less entertaining) duties until such time as it was proper to repair to the Clean Linen Store. The staff of the Clean Linen Store, a huge department whose system of book-keeping is enough to make the brain reel (for here sheets, etc., are dealt with not in dozens but in thousands), had in the interim received your chit from their colleagues of the Dirty Linen Store. These latter, rashly or otherwise, had guaranteed its accuracy by initialing it. Accordingly, ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... the fly and missed it. "We will rest him for five minutes," said Kingfisher, and lighted his pipe for a smoke. Then he changed his fly for a larger and more brilliant one, and at the first cast a big fish rolled over at the fly and went off with a rush, making the reel whiz. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... border. A man whose terribly hard life had turned him into a man of bone and muscle, rivalling the most active Montenegrin in strength and endurance. And what a fund of anecdote and adventure he could reel off! Without doubt he was one of the most interesting and fascinating men we have ever met; a perfect rifle, gun, and revolver shot, fine horseman ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... they did not mistake. Parson Fair had discovered Mistress Dorothy's absence, and home she must hasten at once. It was evident enough to everybody that staid and decorous Dorothy had run away to the ball with Burr Gordon, and a smothered titter ran down the files of the Virginia reel. ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... When the ship by her rapidity pulls the line off the log-reel, without its being assisted. Also, upright conduct. Also, any performance without stop ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... gradations of shade being fully provided for by a single engraved block. When machines of great precision have been finally perfected for admitting of the successive blocks being printed from on paper run from the reel without any handling, a revolution will be brought about not only in artistic printing, but even in the conditions of studio work upon which the ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... some good husband's life) Enter at a certain door And—but he will see no more. He will see Good Templars reel— See a prosecutor steal, And a father beat his child. He'll perhaps ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... the stir, the rush, the commotion for place in the final dance. The reel reaches the whole length of the hall with every foot of space crowded. There are thirty couples in line when the musicians pause, tune their instruments and with a sudden burst play "The Gray Eagle." The Virginia Reel ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... over all the great material forces of the world. The engineer, who glanced out once from his dust-swept cab, held them bound and subject in the hollow of the grimy hand he clenched upon the throttle. With a deafening roar, the great train leapt across the trestle, which seemed to rock and reel under it, and plunged once more into the forest. A whistle sounded—a greeting to the men upon the bridge—and then the uproar died away in a long diminuendo ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... hidden body; thus the beating of the heart and the pulse is tipilac. Ca yumtah banderas ob, when the banners waved; yumtah is to swing to and fro as a hamack or a flag. Piixtahob, from pixitah, to unreel or reel off yarn, etc., from a spindle. I suppose it refers to letting ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various
... his head, tried to summon words to answer that demand. A sullen kind of pride made him release his hold and stand away from the bay, only to reel back and bring up hard against a rock, grating his arm painfully. He clung there for a ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... learned by rote and repeated with very little understanding of what they rehearsed. More than most of her kind Terentia comprehended what she declaimed, but she knew by heart many poems entirely beyond her childish grasp. At barely eight years of age she was able to reel off without hesitation or effort anyone of an amazingly long list. With little prompting she could recite some of the longest narrative poems in Latin literature and she needed prompting only to give her the cue words at the beginning of each book ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... this flood. O debauchery, debauchery, what hast thou done in England! Thou hast corrupted our young men, and hast made our old men beasts; thou hast deflowered our virgins, and hast made matrons bawds. Thou hast made our earth 'to reel to and fro like a drunkard'; it is in danger to 'be removed like a cottage,' yea, it is, because transgression is so heavy upon it, like to fall and rise no more (Isa 24:20). O! that I could mourn for England, and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... whizzing too. This is but the whirling centre of the ever-spreading wheel of force that has begun to turn at New Zion. Coalchester will spin soon, and then the disappointed fields around it, then the neighbouring towns would join the reel, and so on and on, faster and faster, madder and madder, till even London itself moves, and the world that changes its axis at the will of any strong spirit will whirl its immeasurable velocities around the vortex ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... her shoulders. Memories came to her which almost made her reel. ... Ah, Heaven; why had all this come so late, so late? But there was still a long time before her—there were still five, still ten years during which she might remain beautiful.... Oh, there was even longer so ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... the hut as he spoke, but in trying to keep his balance, removed his hand from his side. A torrent of blood gushed forth, and dyed the ground a scarlet hue; he strove to keep upon his feet, but his strength was ebbing fast, and with a reel and lurch, like some strong ship before foundering, he fell to the ground, never ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... reel immensely, for the pigeon wings were superb, and her partner conducted her through the convolutions of the dance without a fault, going down the middle in his most gallant style. Landing safely at the bottom, she stood aside to let ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... this shall be my pretext To have her change her room and take a chamber Both larger and near mine. If she will do't, Her bath shall be the juice of violets, roses, Or pinks, and gold and amber she shall quaff, Until the roof-beams reel in dizzy madness. ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... depths below, Now mounted up to heaven again, They reel and stagger to and fro, At their ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... a silence followed upon this; for the talk had got to be very serious for a dinner-table. Lady Bernard was the first to speak. It was easier to take up the dropped thread of the conversation than to begin a new reel. ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... through the opening; and how the single grinder, evidently no recent introduction into the cave, could have got mixed up in the straw with the human bones, seemed an enigma somewhat of the class to which the reel in the bottle belongs. I found in Edinburgh an unexpected commentator on the mystery, in the person of my little boy,—an experimental philosopher in his second year. I had spread out on the floor the curiosities of Eigg,—among the rest, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... out at sunrise with our reel of piano wire and take soundings," he said. "The heavy artillery won't wake until they're ready to be loaded ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... he strove to make an end of Christian, that good man put out his hand in haste to feel for his sword, and caught it. Boast not, oh Apollyon! said he, and with that he struck him a blow which made his foe reel back as one that had had his last wound. Then he spread out his wings and fled, so that Christian for a ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... from Church Dykely and back again—and of nearly everyone else; and Captain Monk gave forth his decision one day when all was turbulence—a resident governess. Mrs. Carradyne could have danced a reel for joy, and wrote to a governess ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... replied, "You bet! The playin' 's reel nice, and good 'nough fer anybody—outside ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... flying. Believing that the only way to avoid the catastrophe was to haul it down, followed by Toby, I ran aft to do so. I was too late. The Frenchmen fired, and another crushing broadside struck the lugger, and made her reel with the shock. The companion-hatch was knocked to pieces. We should have been killed had we remained at ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... happy,! even though their eyeballs, blasted by excess of light, wither to ashes in their sockets!—Were it not a noble end to have seen Zeus, and die like Semele, burnt up by his glory? Happy, thrice happy! though their mind reel from the divine intoxication, and the hogs of Circe call them henceforth madmen and enthusiasts. Enthusiasts they are; for Deity is in them, and they in It. For the time, this burden of individuality vanishes, and recognising themselves as portions of the universal Soul, they rise upward, ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... giving lessons in town all day. It was good to see the latter beam at his friend as he nearly shook his hand off; better still to see how Dan gratefully remembered all he owed Nat, and tried to pay the debt in his rough way; and best of all to hear the two travellers compare notes and reel off yarns to dazzle the ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... with a trembling step, She reached the palace door, And was shown into a chamber, where Was straw upon the floor. They brought her a chair and a spinning-wheel, A little can of oil, and a reel; And said that unless the work was done— All of the straw into the gold-thread spun— By the time that the sun was an hour high Next morning, she would have ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... broken out. Of course there had to be a war, I said to myself: we couldn't have peace and give this donkey a chance to die before he is found out. I waited for the earthquake. It came. And it made me reel when it did come. He was actually gazetted to a captaincy in a marching regiment! Better men grow old and gray in the service before they climb to a sublimity like that. And who could ever have foreseen that they would go and put such a load of responsibility on such green and inadequate ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... you young cub!" thundered the Vice-Warden. "And take this!" and a resounding box on the ear made the unfortunate Professor reel across ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... wind draw out of the west and wail, Dance and stagger and jig and reel! With the long low sound of a life ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... fisher had no favour for the sport; but if he had been, he might have thought that now he was going to give his fish a very long line indeed, and let it play to any extent of shyness or wilfulness; his hand on the reel all the time. ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... departed in the noiseless way of the trained servant. Her hands on the keys broke unconsciously into the solemn music of Chopin's Funeral March. She took her hands off the piano with a shiver as she realized her choice and began something else, a mad, merry reel to which the feet could scarcely refrain from dancing. But her heart did not dance. The music fretted her, keeping her from listening. After a while she gave up the pretence of it and went back to the fireside, to the sofa on which she ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... as it is paid out passes over a measuring wheel, the revolutions of which record on a dial the number of fathoms out. A spring brake, which is capable of stopping the reel instantly, is kept out of action by the tension of the wire, but when the sinker strikes the bottom, the loss of tension allows the brake to spring back and stop the reel. The depth can then be read ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... interior a woman brushed past him so that he had to stop in his tracks. As she passed she looked into his eyes. Something in him stopped with a click like a notch on a reel. ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... up, a sayin, 'Snitchety, snatchety, up I go,' 'wot time is it old witch?' 'niggers as good as a white man,' 'fee-faw-fum,' 'Chinese mus go,' 'all men is equil fore de law,' 'blitherum, blatherum, boo,' and all the words of madgick wich he cude think of. After a wile it got reel dark, but he kep on a climeing, and pretty sune he see a round spot of dalite over his hed, and then he cum up out of a ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... pressed it to his yelling lips mysteriously. Sometimes Jukes would break in, admonishing hastily: "Look out, sir!" or Captain MacWhirr would bawl an earnest exhortation to "Hold hard, there!" and the whole black universe seemed to reel together with the ship. They paused. She floated yet. And Captain MacWhirr would resume, his shouts. ". . . . Says . . . whole lot . . . fetched away. . . . Ought to see . . . what's ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... the process, and tells us that the vintage is a fair average, though the vine disease, the oïdion, has penetrated even into these mountains. Evoe Bacche! The fumes of the reeking cave mount to our heads, the floor is slippery with the lees and trodden vine-leaves. We reel to the door, glad to breathe a ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... more credence in what Slingerland had told him at Medicine Bow. That night Hough and then many other acquaintances halted Neale to gossip about Larry Reel King. ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... own very nature, take the lead in making rebellion an excuse for resolution. There were, no doubt, many ardent and sincere persons who seemed to think this as simple a thing to do as to lead off a Virginia reel. They forgot what should be forgotten least of all in a system like ours, that the administration for the time being represents not only the majority which elects it, but the minority as well,—a minority in this case powerful, ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... warns you that its last hold on earth is gone. The axe of the chopper has performed its duty; the motion of the falling tree becomes accelerated every instant, till it comes down in thunder on the plain, with a crash that makes the earth tremble and the neighbouring trees reel ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... is no time to do anything that one wants to do, and to feel that the matters themselves will be handled amiss and bungled. But if one can only keep the mind off, or distract it by work, or beguile it by a book, a walk, a talk, how easily the thread spins off the reel, how quietly one comes to harbour on the Saturday evening, with ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... least half a minute the two men shook each other's hands lustily and in silence. Then they burst into a loud laugh, while Joe, suddenly recovering, went crashing into a Scotch reel with energy so great that time and tune were both sacrificed. As if by mutual impulse, Ruby and Dove began to dance! But this was merely a spurt of feeling, more than half-involuntary. In the middle of a bar Joe flung down ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... her positive conclusion so readily as she would have liked to have him. He knew that beginners are very apt to make what they think are discoveries. But he had been an angler and knew the meaning of a yielding rod and an easy-running reel. He said quietly, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... River, as I have said, would be an 11ft. or 12ft. rod of the pattern of Hardy's Murdoch, a steel-centred split cane; the reel should carry at least 80yds. of line and 100yds. of strong backing; it would be well to carry a spare line. Traces and casts should be taken, but spoons could be got better on the spot or in Victoria. Tackle for fly-fishing might well be ...
— Fishing in British Columbia - With a Chapter on Tuna Fishing at Santa Catalina • Thomas Wilson Lambert
... doing a family wash with ANY soap," answered Rebecca; "but it must be true or they would never dare to print it, so don't let's bother. Oh! won't it be the greatest fun, Emma Jane? At some of the houses—where they can't possibly know me—I shan't be frightened, and I shall reel off the whole rigmarole, invalid, babe, and all. Perhaps I shall say even the last sentence, if I can remember it: 'We sound every chord in ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... songs - He, she, all of them—yea, Treble and tenor and bass, And one to play; With the candles mooning each face . . . Ah, no; the years O! How the sick leaves reel down in throngs! ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... and Kripa, and Chitrasena, O Bharata, and Dussasana, and Vikarna, those heroes mounted on their bright cars, caused the Pandava host to tremble. Slaughtered in battle by those high-souled warriors, the Pandava army began to reel in diverse ways, O king, like a boat on the waters tossed by the wind. As the wintry cold cuts kine to the quick, so did Bhishma cut the sons of Pandu to the quick. As regards thy army also, many elephants, looking like newly-risen clouds, were felled by ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... to detect by the severest tests any defect in the wire of the cables, but a piece of it, being thrown upon the floor, curled up, showing the old "kink" which the iron had when it was first made, and wound on the reel. The Menai suspension bridge, in which 1,000 tons of iron have hung suspended across an opening of 600 feet for sixty years, shows no depreciation that the most rigid inspection could detect. Iron rods, recently taken from an old bridge in this country, have been carefully tested after ...
— Bridge Disasters in America - The Cause and the Remedy • George L. Vose
... struck panic into our philosophic breasts. Could Tempest but hold out these few yards, we were safe. He would! No! Yes! No, they're all but level another six yards. Then suddenly we saw Tempest fling his hand behind and reel forward with a blind stagger over the tape, and as the simultaneous report proclaimed a dead heat, fall sprawling and helpless ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... always the center of a group of loungers. His nine years seemed to have been crowded full of the wildest of wild adventures and happenings, as well by land as by sea, and, given an appreciative audience, he would reel off his yarns by the hour, in a reckless, devil-may-care fashion that set agape even old sea dogs who had sailed the western ocean since boyhood. Then he seemed always to have plenty of money, and he loved to spend it ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... the best of their knowledge, gave youthful spirits to the aged, and so well was the commemoration of the Reform Bill conducted that it was much admired by all who witnessed it. In the evening they all, ladies and gentlemen and poor, about 400 in number, had a reel together, and concluded the evening in a very amiable manner, wishing ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... fell off until the ship lay broadside to the gale, which made her reel until her lee lower yard-arms nearly dipped. Then she overcame the cauldron of water that was boiling around her, and began to draw heavily ahead. Three seas swept athwart her decks, before she minded her helm in the least, carrying with them every thing that was not most ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... extra covering of thin sheet steel on the film boxes," said Charlie, talking the matter over with his two chums. "A stray bit of shrapnel might go through them now and make a whole reel light-struck." ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front - Or, The Hunt for the Stolen Army Films • Victor Appleton
... Travers' lips as he wound up his reel and stole swiftly along a cattle-track up from the river, but a sudden light gleamed in his eyes and his muscles hardened with excited tension. He knew the shanty to which Gardiner referred, as they had once been there together, ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... contes populaires, par exemple sur Richard 1'er, sur Robert 1'er, soit des particularites qu'il savait par tradition (sur ce meme Robert le magnifique, sur l'expedition de Guillaume, &c.) et qui donnent a son oeuvre un reel interet historique. Sa langue est excellente; son style clair, serre, simple, d'ordinaire assez monotone, vous plait par sa saveur archaique et quelquefois par une certaine grace et une ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... was not a cloud on the face of the sky. In the space of a breath, thick darkness overspread the earth, rendering it as dark as the darkest night, and the thunders rolled so awfully, that the very earth seemed to reel like a man who has drunken twice of the fire-eater, which the brothers of our friend sell us in the Village of the High Rock.[A] But what astonished our people most was, that no lightning accompanied the thunder. In ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... feel safer, politically speakin', if they had among 'em a aristocracy to which they could look up to in times of trouble, as their nat'ral born gardeens? I ask yer this because I want to know for myself what are the reel sentiments ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... was wound onto the pillar as much as he possibly could be, and as tight—like cotton on a reel—the Princess stopped running, and though she had very little breath left, she managed to ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... any obscure little eating-house and the precise moment at which it is on the table. He knows the best house for cabbage, and the house to be avoided if you are thinking of potatoes. He knows where to go for sausage and mashed, and he can reel off a number of places which must be avoided when their haricot mutton is on. He knows when the boiled beef is most a la mode at Wilkinson's, when the pudding at the "Cheshire Cheese" is just so, and when the undercut at Simpson's ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... Beauty' done it," Mr. Morton broke in peevishly. "Wish't I'd never let them film people camp up there on my paster lot and take them picters on my farm. Sallie was jest carried away with it. She acted in that five-reel film, 'A Rural Beauty.' And I must say she looked as purty ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... man o' leather Gaed through the heather, Through a rock, through a reel, Through an auld spinning-wheel, Through a sheep-shank bane. Sic a man was never seen. Wha ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... from my desperate embrace; there was a sudden blinding shock that hurled me backward into the road: lying thus helpless, my antagonist leapt to kick the life out of my defenceless body, but I saw him reel suddenly and whirl about, grasping at an arm that spouted blood between his hairy fingers, while he stared at the girl crouched for another spring, the knife glittering in ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... the eyes of the latter, as he replied: "de Soto, my imagination is not—" when suddenly the roar of cannonading again commenced, drowning the remainder of the sentence. Then came a shock that made the stately vessel reel throughout the whole of her massive fabric. There was a rending and grinding of timber, and a frightful crash on deck announced that one of the masts ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... wouldn't reel out the guide-book like that!" grumbled the somnolent person beside her. "As if I didn't know all about the Cobalt mines, and that kind ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... o'clock," remonstrate the parents; "And are ready to go on till one to-morrow," replied the children. By degrees, however, the frequent sound of wheels was heard, and the dancers got thinner and thinner, till, for the last half hour, some half-dozen couples of young people danced at interminable reel, while Mr. and Mrs. Porter, and a few of the most good-natured matrons of the neighborhood looked on. Soon after midnight the band struck; no amount of negus could get anything more out of them but "God save the Queen," which they accordingly ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... body and I caught the dead man's hand. It was fat and soft and still warm. The touch of it made me reel with horror. I turned my face away from his so as not to see ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... your little head; That would hurt a deal, And make it very red. Then so bad 'twould feel, Like a lump of lead. First with careful zeal, Very gently tread; Do not jump or squeal, Precious little maid. But, when at your meal, Eating milk and bread, Sing a merry peal, Without any dread. Dance a little reel, Then skip up ...
— The Little Nightcap Letters. • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... pell-mell leapt on other two. The fourth rogue's thrust, Duke Joc'lyn blithely parried Right featly with the quarter-staff he carried. Then 'neath the fellow's guard did nimbly slip And caught him in a cunning wrestler's grip. Now did they reel and stagger to and fro, And on the ling each other ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... through which the merest thread of milky water trickles disconsolately. The sun blazes overhead and hours pass, while you trudge through the fiery inferno; scintillations of heat rise from the stones and still you crawl onwards, breathless and footsore, till eyes are dazed and senses reel. One may well say bad things of these torrid deserts of pebbles which, up till lately, were the only highways from the lowlands into the mountainous parts. But they are sweet in memory. One calls to mind the wild savours that hang in the stagnant ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... while watching the unwinding from the cocoon of many miles of filament in order to produce a single pound of the raw silk thread, making up the thread unaided by any mechanical device beyond a simple reel on which the thread is wound as finished, and a basin of heated water in which the cocoons ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... great island that we're on. Nearly all the Atlanteans, the Cro-Magnon men, have perished, except for a few who have crossed in ships to the coasts of France and Spain. They'll be the founders of modern Europe—Basques and Iberians, and Bretons and Welshmen. Our ancestors! It makes my brain reel to think ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... the flier's side, the opaque coating breaking sufficiently to permit daylight to strike in upon the powder phial within the bullet's nose. There was a sharp explosion. Carthoris felt his craft reel drunkenly beneath ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... head and blanched face To him whose senses reel at such rare grace And piercing sweetness, she prefers her lips; But stooping close, his ardent eyes behold In those deep eyes, sewn thick with points of gold, A hazardous sea bestrewn ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... in the midst of the foemen with his war-flame reared on high, But all about and around him goes up a bitter cry From the iron men of Atli, and the bickering of the steel Sends a roar up to the roof-ridge, and the Niblung war-ranks reel Behind the steadfast Gunnar: but lo, have ye seen the corn, While yet men grind the sickle, by the wind streak overborne When the sudden rain sweeps downward, and summer groweth black, And the smitten wood-side roareth 'neath the driving thunder-wrack? So before the wise-heart Hogni shrank ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... stretched and painted, much too large to be got through any of the doors, and the jest of all our neighbors. One compared it to Robinson Crusoe's long-boat, too large to be removed; another thought it more resembled a reel in a bottle; some wondered how it could be got out, but still more were amazed how it ever ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... mistaken." He said, "Are you not Miss Kroh? This is for her." By this time we were getting excited and with one accord the guests arose to see the result. Father became uneasy at her long silence and came out in time to see her reel against the railing of the stairs. She had read the note and realized that her great desire had at last become a reality and her birthday had brought her the long-wished-for piano. This is what ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... with the opposite files of spearmen. Then came the charge of the cavalry, which—notwithstanding they were thrown into some disorder by the fire of Pizarro's arquebusiers, far superior in number to their own—was conducted with such spirit that the enemy's horse were compelled to reel and fall back before it. But it was only to recoil with greater violence, as, like an overwhelming wave, Pizarro's troopers rushed on their foes, driving them along the slope, and bearing down man and horse in indiscriminate ruin. Yet these, ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... this dry drudgery of the desk's dead wood? Who but the Being unblest, alien from good, Sabbathless Satan! he who his unglad Task ever plies 'mid rotatory burnings, That round and round incalculably reel— For wrath divine hath made him like a wheel— In that red realm from whence are no returnings; Where toiling, and turmoiling, ever and aye He, and ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... with Gossett at eleven-thirty, he would have plenty of time to have his game and be at the end of the board-walk at the appointed hour. He had no delusions about the respective merits of Gossett and himself as golfers. He knew that Gossett would win the necessary ten holes off the reel. It was saddening, but it was a scientific fact. There was no avoiding it. One simply had to ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... Marshal's mind, which he opposed to the project, was that it involved an increase of the material of the army, for I proposed the addition of two or more light wagons, each containing in a small box the telegraph instruments and a reel of fine insulated wire to be kept in readiness at the headquarters on the field. I proposed that, when required, the wagons with the corps of operators, two or three persons, at a rapid rate should reel off the wire to the right, the centre and the left of the army, as near to these parts of the ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... Gray, "let us forget all about it and wind up the party with a Virginia reel. Tom and Grace must lead it off, and Anne, you and David watch the others so that when it comes your turn you will be able to dance ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... with eyes eager and ears a-cock for romance—for nowhere on this earth do the stars shine so sweetly as down between the precipices of shame to the black floor of the slum's abyss. Spenser, stooped and shaking, rose abruptly, thrust Susan aside with a sweep of the arm that made her reel, bolted into the street. She recovered her balance and amid hoarse croakings of "That's right, honey! Don't give him up!" followed the shambling, swaying figure. He was too utterly drunk to go far; soon down he sank, a heap of rags and filth, ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... lord, serenely do I pity all who are stirred one jot from their centers by ever so much drinking of this fluid. Ply him hard as you will, through the live-long polar night, a wise man can not be made drunk. Though, toward sunrise, his body may reel, it will reel round its center; and though he make many tacks in going home, he reaches it at last; while scores of over-plied fools are foundering by the way. My lord, when wild with much thought, 'tis to wine ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... serves to confirm such a conclusion. To argue, with Mr. Hudson, that they cannot be sexual because they sometimes occur before the arrival of the females, is much the same as to argue that the antics of a kitten with a feather or a reel have no relationship whatever to mice. The birds that began earliest to practise their accomplishments would probably have most chance of success when the females arrived. Darwin himself said that nothing is ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... that almost before his resignation as midshipman was accepted, his license as a lawyer was signed. As for practice, it was currently remarked at his wedding, at the sight of him flying down the room in the reel with his bride for partner, that his tongue was as nimble as his heels, and that if he only turned his attention to criminal practice, there was no man in the country who would make a better prosecuting attorney ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... and the sight of him, so suddenly, in this out-of-the-way place, made her reel, almost fainting against ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer |
