"Reel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... distant battle-field or brings the dream so near it That, almost, as the rifted clouds around them swim and reel, A thousand grey-lipped faces flash—ah, hark, the heart can hear it— The sharp command that lifts as one the ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... just 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 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Ransom, "that's jess the hightonedest music we ever had to Bytown. You 're a reel player, Frenchy, that's what you are. What's your name? Where'd you come from? Where you goin' to? What brought ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... of men have suffered more from the evils of intemperance than our brave sailors, fishermen, and rivermen. Foreigners tell our missionaries to convert our drunken sailors abroad, and when they wish to personify an Englishman, they mockingly reel about like a drunken man. And what lives have been lost through the intemperance of captains and crews! The 'St. George,' with 550 men: 'The Kent,' 'East Indiaman,' with most of her passengers and crew: 'The Ajax,' with 350 people: 'The Rothsway Castle,' with 100 men ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... the 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 roulette-tables were busy and quiet. The draw-poker ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... dragon 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 say, ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... worm on his hook and flicked it toward the brook. A second after it struck the water there was a splash, and Lew's reel sang shrilly. ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... keel, And smoking torch on high, When winds are loud and billows reel, She thunders foaming by; When seas are silent and serene, With even beam she glides, The sunshine glimmering through the green That ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... will do," remarked Russ, as he saw that there was no more film left in the camera. "Now, Mr. Pertell, you'll have to get some story written around these scenes. Add more to them, and you'll have a good reel." ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... 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 ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... the Lord Chamberlain had difficulty in making room for them. While Musard furnished special music for the minuets and quadrilles, adapting it in one case from airs of the '45, the Queen's piper, Mackay, gave forth, for the benefit of the strathspey and reel- dancers, the stirring strains of "Miss Drummond of Perth," "Tullochgorum," and "The Marquis of Huntly's Highland Fling," which must have rung with wild glee through the ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... rows of brass buttons. Mr. Jeffries opened the ball, and to the delight and amusement of us all, he succeeded in leading out with him Mrs. Sproul, who turned the opening dance into a stately old Virginia reel, which so delighted the tango dancers with its novelty that the dance was repeated several times during the evening by ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... things come natteral like with me," he said. "I kin reel 'em off by ther yard when I git started. Folks up aour away say I'm ther funniest critter that ever growed ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... stores and, sitting cross-legged on the ground, began to play. He played "Annie Laurie," and a woman's voice, her head a black outline against the west, sang the words. Then there was a clamor of applause, sounding thin and futile in the evening's suave quietness, and the player began a Scotch reel in the production of which the accordion uttered asthmatic gasps as though unable to keep up with its own proud pace. The tune was sufficiently good to inspire a couple of dancers. The young girl called Lucy rose with a partner—her brother-in-law some one told Susan—and facing one another, ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... aim was swung from beast to man, Dane fired first. His ray brought a scream from the other, who dropped his weapon from a badly seared hand to reel back, cursing. ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... She minds her dairy, While I go a-hoeing and mowing each morn. Merrily runs the reel And the little spinning-wheel While I am singing and mowing ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... you, sir: he used to shove a little thin old file through a cotton reel, and make a drill of it. You know ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... after picture flickered before his mind's eye, as though his brain had built up a five-reel mental movie from all sorts of memory film; a hundred feet of this, two hundred of that, a thousand here, there just a flash. It had all one common mark; it was all "the church," but the hit-and-miss ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... colour suddenly fled her cheek, the distaff forsook her hand, the reel revolved, and with dishevelled locks she broke away, wailing ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... jokes, such as they are, can be made, we cannot present a tabular statement of the times we have done things brown (in the opinion of partial friends) or have been asked if we were related to the eccentric old slave and horse "liberator," whose recent Virginia Reel has attracted so much of the public attention. Could we do so the array of figures would be appalling. And sometimes we think we will accept the first good offer of marriage that is made to us, for the purpose of changing ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... made—sometimes scarcely visible by outward signs—as often accompanied by a watery heave, and a flash like that of an aurora borealis,—and downwards, upwards, onwards, a twenty-pounder darts away with lightning speed, while the rapid reel gives out that heart-stirring sound so musical to an angler's ear, and than which none accords so well with the hoarser murmur of the brawling stream; till at last, after many an alternate hope and fear, the glittering ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... dear scheme Of our life doth seem Shivered at once like a broken dream And our hearts to reel Like ships that feel A sharp rock grating against their ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the French and American standards were planted on the parapet, but they were soon hurled from thence. The fire of the redoubt and the batteries being aided by a well-posted armed brig flanking the right of the British lines, made the whole column stagger and reel like drunken men; and Colonel Maitland, seizing the critical moment, issued forth with a mixed corps of grenadiers and marines, and charged them at the point of the bayonet. This charge decided the contest. The French and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... runs close to the fence on their left for a hundred yards, and beyond it they see white tents gleaming. They are half-way past the forest, when, sharp and loud, a volley of musketry bursts upon the head of the column; horses stagger, riders reel and fall, but the troop presses forward undismayed. The farther corner of the wood is reached, and Zagonyi beholds the terrible array. Amazed, he involuntarily cheeks his horse. The Rebels are not surprised. There to his left they stand crowning the height, foot and horse ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... sir," he said, finally, glowing upon the impassive face before him, "like a tight ship, can weather a little bad weather. Perhaps you noticed our troupe? The old lady is Mrs. Adams. She is nearly seventy, but can dance a horn-pipe or a reel with the best of them. The two sisters are Kate and Susan Duran, both coquettes of the first water. Our juvenile man is a young Irishman who thinks much of his dress and little of the cultivation of mind and manners. Then," added the old man ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... which carries a reel of paper ribbon arranged to be fed over a roller by clockwork. A pencil, inking roller, or embossing stylus (for the latter the roller must have a groove) is carried by an arm with restricted range of vibration ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... reel backwards and fall, with a queer grotesque movement, head over heels down the stone steps. The dull thud her body made as she fell on the half landing echoed up and down the bare well of ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... girl who used to be, Come down the Old World road with me, And watch the galleons leaping home Deep-laden, through the rainbow foam, And the far-glimmering lances reel Where clashes battle-axe on steel, When the long shouts of triumph ring Around the banner ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... at her wistfully in pity for the little weak figure that would reel beneath the blow of ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... tumultuous winds, spreading its livid wings around the gloomy concave, armed with terrors of thunder and fiery shafts of lightning. Now the lofty forests bend low beneath its fury; their limbs and wavy boughs are tossed about and catch hold of each other; the mountains tremble and seem to reel about, and the ancient hills to be shaken to their foundations: the furious storm sweeps along, smoking through the vale and over the resounding hills: the face of the earth is obscured by the deluge descending ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... loveliest, most reluctant, when you lay yourself beside me All the planets reel around me—fade away, And the sands grow dim, uncertain,—I stretch out my hands towards you While I try to speak but know not ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... machine similar to those used for yarns, and winding the ten cords on to one drum. This operation is known as "ten-stranding." Furthermore, six "ten-stranded" reels are afterwards wound upon one, and the "sixty-stranded" reel is then ready to be sent away, This is done in order to obtain a uniform blending of the material. With cordite of a larger diameter, the cord is cut into lengths of 12 inches. Every lot of cordite from each manufacturer has a consecutive number, numbers representing ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... bend your oars!' shouted the captain through his trumpet. The entire length of rope unwound directly from the reel or 'bollard' of the first launch, and the line of a second boat was attached forthwith; a third and a fourth were annexed, but the whale exhibited no sign of exhaustion, and dragged his pursuers like the wind. A fifth and a sixth line spun out. The captain's cheek grew pale, ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... destiny was thus fulfilled, his followers began to reel; they seemed dismayed at the fate of their chief, beheld their companions drop like the leaves in autumn, and suddenly halted in the midst of their career. The Imperialists, observing the confusion ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... sudden, so powerful and straight to its mark (which was a jaw), that Big Tom's breath went—as his toes tipped up, and he began to reel backward, fanning the ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... assistance urges upon me the advisability of reaching there to-day, if possible. The morning is ushered in with a stiff head-wind, and the fever leaves me feeling anything but equal to pedalling against it when I mount my wheel at early daybreak. By sheer strength of will I reel off mile after mile, stopping to rest frequently at villages ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... its days through. It was as the unwinding of a reel of silk, each day a round, each round and the body of the reel grew thinner and thinner, and the coils of silk lay wasted—entangled ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... faster than it had come; it pulled the bicycle behind it as easily as a child pulls a cotton-reel along the floor by a bit of thread. So that Harold and Billy were home by tea-time, and it was the jolliest meal either of ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... ae straik that Forbes strack, He garrt Macdonell reel; An the neist ae straik that Forbes strack, The ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... however, a stranger, and he was welcome. When I tell you that stranger is my husband, you may imagine the rest. When the dance then on foot was ended, he asked my hand. I could not refuse it if I would, but I would not if I could. He was irresistible. We danced and danced until the earth seemed to reel around us. I could perceive, however, even in the whirl of tumultuous delight which forced me onward, that we neared the water's edge in every successive figure. We stood at length on the verge of the stream. The current ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... consciousness. Waboose and her mother did not sigh, however. They sat still and gazed in silent wonder. Jessie Macnab, with a slight blush at the unexpected effect, ran her fingers lightly over the keys of her instrument, and then suddenly began to play a Highland reel with tremendous vigour! ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... bashaws click time, As if on polish'd ice; in trance sublime The iman hoar with some spruce courtier slides. Nor rank nor age from capering refrain; Nor can the king his royal foot restrain! He too must reel amid the frolic row, Grasp the grand vizier by his beard of snow, And teach the aged man once more to bound amain!" ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... skipping after the MPS order on the setting of the end of record flag. The read-write check flag or the end of record flag is then interrogated to see that the tape is actually at the end of record. If a tape is not at the end of record, then the tape is either at the end of the reel, or a parity ...
— Preliminary Specifications: Programmed Data Processor Model Three (PDP-3) - October, 1960 • Digital Equipment Corporation
... took possession of the dancing-hall, where, surrounded by the elders, a quick succession of Money Musk, Opera Reel, Chorus Jig, etc., interspersed sparingly with cotillons, evidenced the relish with which young spirits and light hearts enjoy the ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... les personnes auxquelles l'etude du passe est familiere reconnaitront, l'auteur n'en doute pas, l'accent reel et sincere de tout ce livre. Un de ces poemes (Premiere rencontre du Christ avec le tombeau) est tire, l'auteur pourrait dire traduit, de l'evangile. Deux autres (Le Mariage de Roland, Aymerillot) sont des feuillets detaches de la colossale epopee du moyen age (Charlemagne, ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... formerly had a little taste for turning, and though I had now neither lathe nor any other of the tools, yet I knew how a spinning-wheel and reel should be made, and, by dint of application, I succeeded in completing these two machines to her satisfaction. She began to spin with so much earnestness, that she would hardly take a walk, and reluctantly left her wheel to make dinner ready. She employed ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... listeners hear the cool splash and see the foam of the mountain brooks. They saw the shimmer of the speckled beauties as they leaped for the fly, and felt the tingle of the rod as the line suddenly tightened, and hear the hum of the reel as the fish darted away in imagined safety. Burt saw his vantage—was not Amy listening with intent eyes and glowing cheeks?—and he kept the little group in suspense almost as long as it had taken him to play, ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... of the blossom began to make her head reel. How they clung to him! She tore at the tough ropes, and he and the white inflorescence swam about her. She felt she was fainting, knew she must not. She left him and hastily opened the nearest door, and, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... anguish through every fibre. This produced a transition to Flanagan—the contemplation of whose perfidious vengeance made him spring from his seat in a paroxysm of indignant but intense hatred, so utterly furious that the swelling tempest which it sent through his veins caused him to reel with absolute giddiness. ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... this case, sir, till my brain begins to reel; but I can't find any ordinary solution of it. At the time of each attempt no one has seemingly come into the house; and certainly no one has got out. What does it ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... who had been a famous dancer in his day, led off the Virginia Reel, she wondered how it would strike the sailors of a passing brig,—this gay apparition of light and music, riding ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... 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
... armfuls of a dry, brittle shrub. But all three ceased from their exertions to watch Wemple as he shot the car backward down the V and up. The car seemed first to stand on one end, then on the other, and to reel drunkenly and to threaten to turn over into the sump-hole when its right front wheel fell into the air where the road had ceased to be. But the hind wheels bit and climbed the ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... in England to-day. Ask the chef-de-reception of any of our smartest hotels, and they will reel off the names of half a dozen or so elderly bachelors, widowers or wife-quarrelers with huge incomes who prefer to pass along the line of least resistance in domesticity—the private suite in ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... remaining part of the day in such amusements as were in our power. Sir Allan related the American campaign, and at evening one of the Ladies played on her harpsichord, while Col and Mr. Boswell danced a Scottish reel with the other. ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... 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 me ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... self-control she has taught herself, Lady Baltimore's self-possession gives way. Her brain seems to reel. Instinctively she grasps hold of the back of a tall prie-dieu next ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... these barbarous men Were slain by hundreds to each ten Of the King's brave well-armoured folk, No wonder if their charges broke To nothing, on the walls of steel, And back the baffled hordes must reel. So stood throughout a summer day Scarce touched the King's most fair array, Yet as it drew to even-tide The foe still surged on every side, As hopeless hunger-bitten men, About his folk grown wearied then. Therewith the ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... affair and not the public's; and, with like perverseness, if he chose to thrust his kitchen under the public's very nose, what should the generally fagged-out, half-famished representative of that dignified public do but reel in his dead minnow, shoulder his fishing-rod, clamber over the back fence of the old farmhouse and inquire within, or jog back to the city, inwardly anathematizing that very particular locality or the whole rural district in general. That is just the way that ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... said to herself that no one should enter her door again till Bartley opened it; she would die there in the house, she and her baby, and as she stood wringing her hands and moaning over the sleeping little one, a hideous impulse made her brain reel; she wished to look if Bartley had left his pistol in its place; a cry for help against herself broke from her; she dropped ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... 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 ...
— Bridge Disasters in America - The Cause and the Remedy • George L. Vose
... 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 the ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... he left the doctor's office to reel and stagger drunkenly through the slush and the sleet, and the icy blasts, which bit ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... solitary wide spaces of sand; they were in their own land, following their old pursuits. They were standing outside clumps of trees, guns in their hands, while the sharp cry, "Mark! Mark!" came to their ears. Trench heard again the unmistakable rattle of the reel of his fishing-rod as he wound in his line upon the bank of his trout stream. They talked of theatres in London, and the last plays which they had seen, the last books which they ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... because the smaller ship can run close ashore to explore. To keep up the spirits of the men, there is much merrymaking. Becalmed off Cape Breton, Sir Humphrey visits the big ship Delight, where the trumpets and the drums and the pipes and the cornets reel off wild sailor jigs. "There was," says the old record, "little watching for danger." Wednesday, August 26, the sounding line forewarned the reefs of Sable Island. Breakers were sighted. The Delight signaled that her captain wanted to shift southwest to deeper water, but ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... the rush of that giant billow that even now overhangs your bark? These questions would inevitably rush through the mind; but in a second of time the huge body beside you sunk, you were on its summit, and another came rolling on. Meanwhile the ship would reel, with a slow slanting movement that gradually lowered the tall masts till the yards almost dipped in the brine, and you were either laid back on the frame- work behind you, or well-nigh suspended, looking down upon the water over ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... must cling, though cold and insolent, He still degrades me to myself, and turns Thy glorious gifts to nothing, with a breath. He in my bosom with malicious zeal For that fair image fans a raging fire; From craving to enjoyment thus I reel, And in enjoyment languish ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... by the woman (Plate XX). On this she cleans the outer layers of the hemp stalk, from which a stronger and coarser thread can be obtained. The fiber is tied in a continuous thread and is wound onto a reel. The warp threads are measured on sharpened sticks driven into a hemp or banana stalk, and are then transferred to a rectangular frame (Plate XXI). The operator, with the final pattern in mind, overties or wraps with waxed threads, such portions of the warp as she desires to remain white ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... think that the curtains are drawn, Yet I see their shadows suddenly kneel To pray, or laughing and reckless as drunkards reel Into dead ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... was glad. Some persons would have wanted a reel and light tackle, to play him—but we were ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... the war first broke out I was attached to the Loamshires, and we were one of the first British Regiments to start for the land across the water. After six months' fighting, during which every day was crowded with enough incident to provide a three-reel thriller for a cinema-man, I found myself quartered at Ypres. Have you ever been to Ypres? If you have, it will act as a kind of antidote to those wretched picture post-cards which show it in its last phase—a heap of senseless wreckage. The 'Coal Boxes,' 'Jack Johnsons' and other varied presents ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... Dick and I parted company. By three o'clock I came again to the River, far up, halfway to the Big Falls. Deuce watched me gravely. With the first click of the reel he retired to the brush away from the back cast, there to remain until the pool was fished and ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... mitrailleuse? It is just like a telegraph instrument, with its insistant clickety click-click-click, only it is a hundred times as loud. Indeed I have been told by French officers that it has sometimes been used as a telegraph instrument, so accurately can its operator reel out its hundred ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... want to take a little fire out of this bright Spark, boys," said Bart. "We need a couple of runs right off the reel. Who's ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... bedstead he died on; that ugly slanting contrivance used to be put under his pillow in the days when his breath came hard; there is his old chair with both arms gone, symbol of the desolate time when he had nothing earthly left to lean on; there is the large wooden reel which the blear-eyed old deacon sent the minister's lady, who thanked him graciously, and twirled it smilingly, and in fitting season bowed it out decently to the limbo of troublesome conveniences. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... spoke, And the thoughts that in him woke Can adequately utter none Save to his ear the wind-harp lone. Therein I hear the Parcae reel The threads of man at their humming wheel, The threads of life and power and pain, So sweet and mournful falls the strain. And best can teach its Delphian chord How Nature to the soul is moored, If once again that silent string, As erst it wont, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Jones. He was old now and couldn't see very well, unable to go to the brook or pond to fish, but he still started out daily with the fine new rod and reel which the annuity had bought for him, and would sit out in the sun, joint his rod together, and fish in the ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... 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 and bow ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... Terror came to an end with the deaths of Robespierre and St. Just. The interval had seen the whole progress of the French Revolution, had applauded the constitutional struggle for liberty, had shuddered at the September massacres, had seen the disciplined armies of the great European Powers reel back dismayed before the ragged regiments of the Republic, had seen France answer Europe with the head of a king, with the head of a queen, had observed how the Revolution, like Saturn, devoured its own children, had witnessed with fear as well as with fury the apotheosis ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... harder and harder. Dick simply had to do something. So, after he had parried more than a score of blows the young football captain suddenly took a springy step forward, shot up Phin's guard, and landed a staggering blow on the nose. Phin began to reel. Dick hit him more lightly on the chest, yet with force enough to "follow up" and ...
— The High School Captain of the Team - Dick & Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard • H. Irving Hancock
... 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 him get his breath, ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... straight off the reel, Wildwood," he said. "I believe you're honest. Go on with your little arrangement, and let's see how it pans out. I shan't make any move until after ten ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... at the sky, but, standing on his longest toe, was trying to get a peep into that mysterious cart dragged from the station. A man now stood on the axle and lighted a lamp on a pole. The lamp was inclosed so that the storm could not harm it. Charlie saw a stout reel in the cart, about which went many turns of a stout rope. Then there was the wreck-gun. There were ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... catch the gale Round veered the flapping sail, Death! was the helmsman's hail, Death without quarter! Mid-ships with iron keel Struck we her ribs of steel; Down her black hulk did reel Through ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... to mend it. A brass thimble was soon produced from the kitchen clock, where Jane keeps it "to have it handy," but never were needle and thread more difficult to procure. After much hunting, a dirty reel of white cotton was discovered in the soup-tureen, the needle-case had entirely disappeared; she finally managed, however, to squeeze some rusty kind of skewer out of her pincushion, and with these ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... pictures. Ever see a moving-picture mother that had a chance to be happy for more than the first ten feet of film? You certainly got to cry to hold down that job. Ain't she always jolted quick in the first reel by the husband getting all ruined up in Wall Street, or the child getting stole, or the daughter that's just budding into womanhood running off with a polished shoe-drummer with city ways, or the only son robbing a bank, or husband taking up with a lady adventuress ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... this season is over, and, in spite of the fresh and open weather, most anglers will feel that the time has come to close the fly-book, to wind up the reel, and to consign the rod to its winter quarters. Salmon-fishing ceases to be very enjoyable when the snaw broo, or melted snow from the hilltops, begins to mix with the brown waters of Tweed or Tay; when the fallen leaves hamper the hook; and when the fish are becoming sluggish, black, and ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... rod 'n' line 'n' reel, whether it's with flies, spoons, or minnows, castin' or trollin', or spearin' or nettin', Warry's th' expertest fish-catcher that ever waded the rapids or paddled th' lakes o' this old Province o' Quebec. But it's gettin' a leetle hard for Warry late years—fish 's ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... foundations and kept the shed vibrating. But the big dynamo drowned these little noises altogether with the sustained drone of its iron core, which somehow set part of the ironwork humming. The place made the visitor's head reel with the throb, throb, throb of the engines, the rotation of the big wheels, the spinning ball-valves, the occasional spittings of the steam, and over all the deep, unceasing, surging note of the big dynamo. This last noise was from an engineering point of view a defect, but Azuma-zi ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... can't tell side by side A Tyrian fleece from one Aquinum-dyed, Is not more surely, keenly, made to smart Than he who knows not truth and lies apart. Take too much pleasure in good things, you'll feel The shock of adverse fortune makes you reel. Regard a thing with wonder, with a wrench You'll give it up when bidden to retrench. Keep clear of courts: a homely life transcends The vaunted bliss of ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... wuz spun into thread dey put it on a reel. It turned 100 times and struck, when it struck it wuz called a cut. When it come from de wheel it wuz called a broach. De cuts stood fer so much flax. So many cuts made a yard, but dere wuz more ter do, size it, and hank it ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... comer, totally disregarding John's exclamations, and remaining dripping in the doorway, "far exceeds anything I could have conceived, if I had not witnessed it. If I told you once, I told you twenty times, that I had seen the bird on three distinct occasions in the meadow below Reel's mill; and you each time threw your jacksnipe theory in my face. To-day I marked him down in the bare ground outside Haveldon wood, then ran at full speed up to the jager, and offered him five shillings if he would come down ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... die by herself in some lonely spot, she got down from her chariot to horse, and fled out of the field. Rinaldo saw the flight; and though one of the knights that remained to her struck him such a blow as made him reel in his saddle, he despatched the man with another like a thunderbolt, and then galloped after ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... no use waiting for your uncle. If he's at the tavern, he will stay there until he is full of liquor and then he will reel home. Come in and sit down to ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... scrap of paper. If there was any treaty binding Britain to Teutonism it is, to say the least of it, a lost scrap of paper: almost what one might call a scrap of waste-paper. Here again the pendants under consideration exhibit the illogical perversity that makes the brain reel. There is obligation and there is no obligation: sometimes it appears that Germany and England must keep faith with each other; sometimes that Germany need not keep faith with anybody and anything; sometimes that we alone among European peoples are almost entitled ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton
... and raising his cane, brought it down with a crack on Doyle's head. The chauffeur was half-way up the walk by that time, and broke into a run. He saw Doyle, against the light, reel, recover and raise his fist, but he did not bring ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... you little dear, dear kid!" cried Mary, first running towards the kid, then back to look at the dolls, then again at the kid, then at the dolls, and the Italian boy played away with his pipe and tabor, and made his dolls jump up in the air, and reel, and set, and hop; but it was all nothing to the jumps in the air of the kid, and its frisking kicks and flings, and its fun and ...
— The Goat and Her Kid • Harriet Myrtle
... reel of pink cotton of the same size, or two pieces of white and two of pink netting-silk; three silk pink and white tassels; two yards and a half of silk bag-cord; half-a-yard of pink sarsnet; three meshes cornucopia gauge of No. 1, No. 6, and one No. 11; two netting-needles; and a piece of cane used ...
— The Lady's Album of Fancy Work for 1850 • Unknown
... 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 ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 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
... 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, ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... are placed on a table, say a box of matches, a bag of beans, a reel of cotton or ball of string, a large stone, a stick, a photograph, and various coins with the date side turned down. Each of the company is provided with a card on which these articles are written, and the object is to guess as nearly as possible something about each; for instance, how ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... the katydids seemed to keep time to their heart-beats; the fiddles began tuning for another reel, and the horses tethered near stretched out their ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... They come to look, and they prefer to stare. Reel off a host of threads before their faces, So that they gape in stupid wonder: then By sheer diffuseness you have won their graces, And are, at once, most popular of men. Only by mass you touch the mass; for any Will finally, himself, his bit select: Who ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... faults one to another." Having read it with a return of the former trembling, and paused, his brain suddenly seemed for a moment to reel under a wave of extinction that struck it, then to float away upon it, and then to dissolve in it, as it interpenetrated its whole mass, annihilating thought and utterance together. But with a mighty effort of the will, in which he seemed to come as near as man could come ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... Lord George Gordon, President of the Great Protestant Association; which toast Hugh pledged likewise, with corresponding enthusiasm. A fiddler who was present, and who appeared to act as the appointed minstrel of the company, forthwith struck up a Scotch reel; and that in tones so invigorating, that Hugh and his friend (who had both been drinking before) rose from their seats as by previous concert, and, to the great admiration of the assembled guests, performed an extemporaneous ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... Hobart Town gaol, taken on the Shannon, exhibited these feats of quickness and strength. He would spring up into the air five feet, and reel round and round, with uncommon rapidity. He threw a broomstick, at twelve yards distance, through a hole in the sentry box, of but little larger diameter; and a lath, cast at thirty yards, pierced a hat through and through. They used no ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... the edges with thin wire which stretches less than string. This kite will fly in a very light breeze. The string, particularly if you have a tandem, should be flexible and strong. In a stiff breeze, and with more than one kite, it is well to have a reel, as in a fishing rod, for ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... implore you to crush out that fatal habit while it may yet be time! You must not, you shall not be deaf to my supplications longer!" My struggling Conscience showed sudden signs of weariness! "Oh, promise me you will throw off this hateful slavery of tobacco!" My Conscience began to reel drowsily, and grope with his hands—enchanting spectacle! "I beg you, I beseech you, I implore you! Your reason is deserting you! There is madness in your eye! It flames with frenzy! Oh, hear me, hear me, and be saved! See, I plead with you ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... over 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 far as he was concerned, if they remained together, since, ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... sounded again one long peal that seemed to make all the air reel and quiver, and the soldiers and lords shouted: ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... had a sketch he prized very much: Connie sitting on the stool before the wheel, her flowing mane of red hair on her rusty black frock, her red mouth shut and serious, running the scarlet thread off the hank on to the reel. ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... clouds overhead. A dozen bars of glowing steel had been drawn simultaneously from the charcoal, and thrice as many massive hammers were forging them into the rude shapes of weapons on the anvils, which, notwithstanding their vast weight, appeared to leap and reel, under the blows that were rained upon them faster than ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... last you would forget. His light hair was very long and silky, coming down over his coat. His beard had been prepared in holy land, and was patriarchal. He never shaved and rarely trimmed it. It was glossy, soft, clean, and altogether not unprepossessing. It was such that ladies might desire to reel it off and work it into their patterns in lieu of floss silk. His complexion was fair and almost pink; he was small in height and slender in limb, but well-made; and his voice ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... seems for to think by the looks on him, and ain't he jist got a lot of big books for to read! I was surprised to find as there wasn't not no Lord Mare among the lot. His Lordship's state robes wood have lighted up the hole place. And now for the reel picters. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 30, 1891 • Various
... 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, smell, ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... in the chamber of an outbuilding where she was weaving a carpet, or cloth. I used to help do some of the quilling—running the yarn or linen thread upon spools to be used in the shuttles. The distaff, the quill-wheel, the spinning-wheel, the reel, were very familiar to me as a boy; so was the crackle, the swingle, the hetchel, for Father grew flax which Mother spun into thread and wove into cloth for our shirts and summer trousers, and for towels and sheets. ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... 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 had he ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... indulgent. Let's grant it is not Amiss to tumble on the bed of Ptolemy; To give a kingdom for a mirth; to sit And keep the turn of tippling with a slave; To reel the streets at noon, and stand the buffet With knaves that smell of sweat: say this becomes him,— As his composure must be rare indeed Whom these things cannot blemish,—yet must Antony No way excuse his foils when we do bear So great weight in his lightness. ...
— Antony and Cleopatra • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... and in bounds the dancer. Stand back and give plenty of room for the gyrations. The lords are enchanted. They never saw such poetry of motion. Their souls whirl in the reel, and bound with the bounding feet. Herod forgets crown and throne,—everything but the fascinations of Salome. The magnificence of his realm is as nothing compared with that which now whirls before ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... go on talking like that, you'll make my brain reel," said Zora laughing. "Do tell me something about ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... hereafter es I've hed here, I ain't a goin'if fin' no fault,' said Uncle Eb. ''S a reel, splendid world. God's fixed it up so ev'ry body can hev a good time if they'll only hev it. Once I heard uv a poor man 'at hed a bushel o' corn give tew him. He looked up kind o' sad an' ast if they wouldn't please shell it. Then they tuk it away. God's gin us happiness in the ear, ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... j'y be unconfined!'" yelled O'Dwyer, as he combined an Irish jig and a Red River reel. He had not noticed Me-Casto, but Latimer and Danvers exchanged glances. Just then Pine Coulee looked wistfully toward the opening door. Burroughs, ever watchful, caught a glimpse of Me-Casto as his lips gave an almost imperceptible ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... in his homage, and thus the reader feels himself called on to worship and in duty bound to scoff. All's well, though, when the homage is latent in the irony. Thackeray, inviting us to laugh and frown over the follies of Mayfair, enables us to reel with him in a secret orgy of veneration for ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... filatures. A number of cocoons, greater or less, according to the size of thread desired, are placed in a basin of hot water, which softens the gum. After the outside fibers are removed so that the ends run free, the ends are collected through a guide and are wound upon a reel. As the silk cools and dries, the gum hardens, sticking the fibers from the different cocoons together in one smooth thread varying in size according to the number of cocoons used. After the silk has been reeled ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley |
