"Spool" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an' 'tain't," said Aunt Ri. "I don't s'pose I'm much of a jedge; fur I can't remember when I fust learned it. I know I set in the loom to weave when my feet couldn't reach the floor; an' I don't remember nothin' about fust learnin' to spool 'n' warp. I've tried to teach lots of folks; an' sum learns quick, an' some don't never learn; it's jest 's 't strikes 'em. I should think, naow, thet you wuz one o' the kind could turn yer hands to anythin'. When we get settled in San Bernardino, if yer'll come down thar, I'll teach yer ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... medicines and bandages. Scamper and Uncle Squeaky hauled the cart with its four stout spool wheels. ...
— Grand-Daddy Whiskers, M.D. • Nellie M. Leonard
... hadn't. And there, in the undeveloped spool lies HIS MAJESTY superimposed on the back of the Bosch piglet we had photographed outside Ypres. Isn't that just ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various
... fluctuated and transpired in inflections of voice and picturesque glances. She was always aware of the effect of herself on others, and she forgot a great deal of her disappointment in the pleasure of astonishing Harold. The story unwound itself like spun silk. The principal spool was the Panama scandals.... But around it there were little spools full of various thread, a little of which Mildred ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... from the floor of her room, where Phronsie and she had thrown themselves, the piece-box of ribbons between them, "here comes Clem up the drive; now I 'most know she wants me to help her on that sofa-pillow," and she twitched a square of yellow silk into a tighter tangle. "How in the world did that spool get in here?" she ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... produced a spool of the slender, tough wire that is sometimes used to nip the buds of expensive roses, to prevent them ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... besides the things I have mentioned, twelve marbles, part of a jew's harp, a piece of blue bottle-glass to look through, a spool-cannon, a key that wouldn't unlock anything, a fragment of chalk, a glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, six fire-crackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass door-knob, ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... to escape a possibly far worse fate. Just as he started to follow out this idea, Slippery stepped around the corner, and after he once more warned the lad not to falter in shooting to kill, he gave Joe a spool of fine copper wire to hold and when the surprised boy wished to know the reason, he showed Joe where he had the other end of the same wire twisted about his wrist, and cautioned him to hold it taut and that every time he gave ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... Sabbath being just departed, ghost stories were particularly in favor. After two or three of the creepy legends we began to move closer together under the lamp. At the end of an hour or so we started and screamed if a spool fell, or a window rattled. At bedtime nobody was willing to make the round of doors and windows, and we were afraid to bring a ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... all. I mean that he babbled. Literally. Here: I've got a sample recording in my files." He got up from his chair and went to the tall gray filing cabinet that hid in a far corner of the pine-paneled room. From a drawer he extracted a spool of common audio tape, and returned ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... grimly. "Wallace and Simms stole an information sound spool from the capsule. On that spool was a detailed description of the energy lock and the adjustable light-key. There were only seven keys in the system up to now. If we don't catch Wallace and ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... drawers is amazing. So great is their delicacy of touch that they can make a thousand yards of silver thread out of a silver dollar; and if you will give one of them a sovereign, in a few moments he will reel off a spool of gold wire as fine as No. 80 cotton, and he does it with the simplest, ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... out," said the Major, as Gwyn went on counting and the reel turned steadily on, Joe turning one finger into a brake, and checking the spool so that it would not give out the line ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... the boys' entrance. Mike had a deck-chair in one hand and a book in the other. Psmith—for even the greatest minds will sometimes unbend—was playing diabolo. That is to say, he was trying without success to raise the spool from the ground. ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... good to us Niggers. Us warn't beat much. De onliest Nigger I 'member dey whupped wuz Cicero. He wuz a bad boy. My Marster never did whup me but onct. Mist'ess sont me up town to fetch her a spool of thread. I got to playin' marbles an' 'fore I knowed it, it wuz dinner time. When I got home, Mist'ess wuz mad sno' 'nough. Marster cotch me an' wore me out, but Mist'ess never touched me. I seed Niggers ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... was thinking how I'd dress her for the last spool in the big fire scene. Well, anyway, I'm this Hawaiian princess, and my father, old King Mauna Loa, dies and leaves me twenty-one thousand volcanoes ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... Don Carlos's Ranch," or whatever the book was, there was kindling to be split, or an armful of wood to be brought in, or a pitcher of water from the well, or "run over to Mrs. Boggs's and ask her if she won't please lend me her fluting-iron," or "run down to Galbraith's and get me a spool of white thread, Number 60, and hurry right back, because then I want you to go over to Serepta Downey's and take her that polonaise pattern she asked me to cut out for her," or—there was always ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... man, build the barn, Thinner man, spool the yarn, Longen man, stir the brew, Gowden man, make a shoe, Littlen man, all ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... three feet of water. When the wind ruffles the surface, it is impossible to see the holes, but on calm days we waded knee-deep in the clear water, stepping carefully and peering intently for the homes of the sea-centipede. Finding one, we cautiously lowered into the hole a spool ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... fastened that at one end they could be either raised up above the level of the first row or dropped beneath it. Sitting at the tied end her mother would throw a little wooden boat skimming between the two sets of threads, from one side to the other, the boat being laden with a spool of yarn and dragging a thread behind it. When the boat reached the other side, the thread would be drawn tight. Then with the foot in a strap the loose bar would be drawn down, taking one set of threads with it, and there would be the boat's thread caught as in a trap. Then ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... with keen eyes that a careworn look had become the habitual expression of the sweet girlish face, and she sat wishing with all her heart that she were something herself besides a poorly paid little music teacher with the wolf lurking at her own door. As she wound the basting threads on a spool she planned the rose-coloured future Judith should have if it were only in her ...
— Mildred's Inheritance - Just Her Way; Ann's Own Way • Annie Fellows Johnston
... unrolled. The Cowardly Lion, looking very anxious, followed. No sooner had they done so than the road gave a terrific leap forward that stretched the three flat upon their backs and started unwinding from its spool at a terrifying speed. As it unrolled, tall trees snapped erect on each side and began laughing derisively at the three travelers ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... inspected your empty room in detail, and inspected your embroidery-frame, with the work still hanging on it. It had been left untouched in its corner. Next, I inspected the work itself, of which there still remained a few remnants, and saw that you had used one of my letters for a spool upon which to wind your thread. Also, on the table I found a scrap of paper which had written on it, "My dearest Makar Alexievitch I hasten to—" that was all. Evidently, someone had interrupted you at an interesting point. ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... speaking-telephone was invented. But it took a long time to find the simplest and best way to make it. At last, however, Mr. Bell's telephone was perfected in the form illustrated below. Fig. 1 shows the inner structure of the instrument. A is the spool carrying the coil of wire; B, the magnet; C, the diaphragm; E, the case; F, F, the wires leading from the coil, and connecting at the end of the handle with the ground and line wires. Fig. 2 shows how a telephone looks on ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... department store! Perfectly normal—when the big steamship offices presented in their windows bare blue seas which had once been charted with the going and coming of German ships! Perfectly normal—when the spool of the killed and wounded rolled out by yards like that of a ticker on a busy day on the Stock Exchange! Perfectly normal—when women tried to smile in the streets with eyes which had plainly been ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... The spool was as big around as David's body, and the stuff that looked like rubber tubing looked all twisty, as if there were two ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... went for the thread, and very soon made her appearance at the window with one spool in her arms, and then ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... the smiling company, I took from my pocket a spool of strong silk twist, and proceeded to fasten the psychic's wrists. Each arm was tied separately in such wise that she was unable to bring her hands together, and could not raise her wrists an inch from the chair. Next, with the aid of Mrs. Cameron, I looped a long piece of tape about ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... necessaries, save corn and bacon, became desperate. Salt and wheat bread were rare luxuries. In 1864 a suit of jean cost $600, a spool of cotton $30, a pound of bacon $15. It should, of course, be borne in mind that these high prices in part represented the depreciation of Confederate paper money. Drastic drafting and the arming of negroes could avail little for lack of accoutrements and food. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... clerk in a country store—and I suppose he'll fetch up there some day. You know what that means—selling sugar, and tea, and dried apples to old ladies, and occasionally measuring off a yard of calico, or selling a spool of cotton. If I couldn't do better than that I'd hire out as a ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... material which has been cut out in the previous lesson, each pupil should provide her own spool of thread (number sixty white thread will probably answer for all the work), a piece of cardboard 5 inches wide for a gauge, and pins to use in ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Science in Rural Schools • Ministry of Education Ontario
... spade, pick and shovel, an ax, a hatchet, two large pails, a barn lantern, a can of kerosene, a dozen candles, a cocoa box filled with matches, a pair of scissors, needles, buttons, pins and safety pins, a spool of white and another of black cotton, fishing tackle, a roll of heavy twine, a coil of rope, and a set of dominoes and checkers. But most important of all was a chest of tools belonging to Reddy. These were all collected when Uncle Ed ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... rises again. Nobody can help liking the creature, he means so well—but I do dread to come across him again; he's bound to set us all crazy, of coarse. Well, there goes old widow Hopkins—it always takes her a week to buy a spool of thread and trade a hank of yarn. Maybe Si can come ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... we are winding thread, and it is tangled, we pass the spool across and through the skein, now this way, now that way; even so, to finish off the War, we shall send embassies hither and thither and everywhere, ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... prayer-books and guide-books, a bottle of soda mint tablets, a spool of dental floss, a Bath bun, a bit of gray frizz that aunt Celia pins into her steamer cap, a spectacle case, a brandy flask, and a bonbon box, which broke and scattered cloves and cardamom seeds. (I hope he guessed ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... there. Bell was one of those six-foot, low-voiced products, formed from a union of the West and the South. I liked him. To look at him you would think he should be robbing stage coaches or juggling gold mines with both hands; but he would sell you a paper of tacks or a spool of thread, with ten times more patience and courtesy than any saleslady in a city ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... "That's nonsense. He's not in the least like an actor. Anybody could see by his tread and his air that he's never been on the stage. He's more like a travelling salesman. The next thing he'll do will be to pull out of that bag some samples of spool thread ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... sort of chance, or mischance, get into a young lady's work-basket, was there in rare confusion. Jessie's love of order was not very large. Her temper was often sorely tried by the trouble which her careless habit caused her when seeking a pair of scissors, or a spool of cotton. It was so to-day. She plunged her hand deep into the basket, in search of the colored worsteds required for her uncle's slippers. After feeling round awhile, she drew forth a tangled mess, which she placed ...
— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester
... no intention of waiting until the lawhounds arrived, he needed a start against the handicap of high-powered cars. He was in high humor as the buckboard was greased, a team of buckskins given a special feed and a rub-down, and various articles gathered for transportation. Among these were a spool of barbed wire and a ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... well advanced; thread, cordage, and even ropes of considerable weight were made with a degree of uniformity and refinement that surprises us. The finest threads with which I am acquainted are perhaps not as fine as our no. 10 ordinary spool cotton thread, but we are not justified in assuming that more refined work was not done. What we have is only that which happened to be preserved through burial with the dead or by impression on the plastic surface of ...
— Prehistoric Textile Art of Eastern United States • William Henry Holmes
... closes the shutter at just the proper moment. The same machinery feeds down a fresh section of the ribbon-like film into position and coils the exposed portion in a dark box, just as the film of a kodak is rolled off one spool and, after exposure, is wound up on another. The film used in the biograph when taking the Suburban was two and three-fourth inches wide and several hundred feet long; about forty exposures were made per second, and for each exposure the film had to come to a dead stop before ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... said. "Loaded with a four-hour spool. No matter how long this thing lasts, I'll have a record of it, if I want ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... of laughter which greeted this was renewed when the tiny animal began making playful passes at a spool on a string which the dignified professor held before it, remarking, "See? Ze ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... of two spools of hard rubber RR, held apart at a distance of 10 centimetres by bolts c and nuts n, likewise of hard rubber. Each spool comprises a tube T of approximately 8 centimetres inside diameter, and 3 millimetres thick, upon which are screwed two flanges FF, 24 centimetres square, the space between the flanges being about 3 centimetres. The secondary, SS, of the best gutta ...
— Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High - Frequency • Nikola Tesla
... don't talk that silly stuff! I won't hear it!" Miss Sterling got up hurriedly and went to her work-table, apparently hunting for something in her spool basket. ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... the corset-stitchers who have to pay day by day out of their time and labor the total enhancement of price due to the tax. Women who earn their own living probably earn on an average seventy-five cents per day of ten hours. Twenty-four minutes' work ought to buy a spool of thread at the retail price, if the American work-woman were allowed to exchange her labor for thread on the best terms that the art and commerce of today would allow; but after she has done twenty-four minutes' work for the thread she is forced by the laws of her country ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... and disclosing a bit of it was nothing more heinous than a casual exhibition of good needlework. Deacon Baxter furnished only the unbleached muslin for his daughters' undergarments; but twelve little tucks laboriously done by hand, elaborate inch-wide edging, crocheted from white spool cotton, and days of bleaching on the grass in the sun, will make a petticoat that can be shown in church ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... had come prepared. He attached a detonator to one of the flasks, and while the other two were placing the explosive in position he fastened two wires to the apparatus with steady but hurrying fingers; then at full speed he ran with the spool from which the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... declared the nurse with violent partizanship. "Look at the way he sneaked home, and left the other young man to get a doctor and help move Sheeley to the hospital. Yes, sir, it's time for your medicine, just wait 'till I finish this spool and I'll go down ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... and my easel, was a mere way-station on her homeward travels. But she failed to appear, while I busied my wits in trying to recall which particular item in the collection had a hole in it. Yes, there was a spool among other odds and ends in a Japanese boat-basket. That must be it! But on examination the paper still covered both ends, and I was again at a loss. What, then, can be the attraction on my table? My wondering curiosity ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... invention relates to improvements in sewing machines, and consists in certain improvements in mechanism for forming the loop, and for conveying the binding thread through the same, in a manner to prevent the contact of the binding thread spool, or its carrier, with the thread of the needle, and thereby to avoid wearing the same, and to produce more easily operating parts; also, a secure, permanent, and reliable arrangement of apparatus, and calculated also to be more ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... quarters of pork went into the brine-tub; from a beam in the shed there hung the side of a fat heifer-the other half sold to people in Honfleur-which the cold would keep fresh till spring; sacks of flour were piled in a corner of the house, and Tit'Be, provided with a spool of brass wire, set himself to making ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... Yarn is wound on bobbins on the ring or mule spinning frame. These bobbins are transferred to a machine called a spooler where the yarn is re-wound on a spool preparatory to ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... a whole spool of cotton," said Mary. And, so saying, she held up in her hand the spool, to the thread of which she ...
— Rollo's Experiments • Jacob Abbott
... novelty of working against time, with a room full of grown people, and of seeing the great stacks of unfinished garments change into great stacks of finished ones, was stimulation in itself. She was proud of her cushion full of strong needles and her spool of coarse thread. She was pleased with the nods of approval gentle Mrs. Lavinski gave her work in passing, and of the slight interest with which she was ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... dollars and forty cents in two weeks, but was denied permission to take them in when done, though urgently needing her pay, being told that she would be making too much money. Another made vests with ten button-holes and three pockets for fifteen cents, furnishing her own cotton at twenty cents a spool. A third, whose husband was then in the army, found the price of infantry-pantaloons reduced from forty-two to twenty-seven cents,—reduced by the Government itself,—but she made eight pair a week, took care of five children, and was always on the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... her wrist bag and opened it, but discovered only some money, a handkerchief, a spool of ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... covered his entire face. Through its round eye plates he looked at the others who crowded about him. Grotesque, almost ludicrous—twenty men, armed with clumsy sub-machine guns; the others would follow later. A searchlight was on a tripod at the center, and a spool of ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... legs were thrown high, he was tossed aside like a thing of paper, but blind, half stunned, he scrambled back to his post. By this time the whole structure of the derrick was rocking to the mad gyrations of the bull wheel; the giant spool was spinning with a speed that threatened to send it flying, like the fragments of a bursting bomb, but the youth understood dimly the danger of stopping it too suddenly—to fetch up that plunging weight at the cable end might snap ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... by sawing off the end of a large spool and sticking a match or small stick through the hole in the centre. Four concentric circles are drawn upon a sheet of paper which should be about twelve inches square. Inside of the smallest circle, which should have a diameter of 2 inches, the number 20 ...
— School, Church, and Home Games • George O. Draper
... through, imparts to it mechanical power. The shaft set in motion by means of this mechanical power is, in turn, belted to the pulley of a dynamo. This dynamo consists, first, of a shaft on which is placed a spool, wound in a curious way, with many turns of insulated copper wire. This spool revolves freely in an air space surrounded by electric magnets. The spool does not touch these magnets. It is so nicely balanced that the weight of a finger will turn ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson
... mother for pigs' knuckles, with a nickel tightly grasped in his chubby fist, he always crosses the street car track safely twenty feet ahead of the car; and then suddenly turns back to ask his mother whether it was pale ale or a spool of 80 white cotton that she wanted. The motorman yells and throws himself on the brakes like a football player. There is a horrible grinding and then a ripping sound, and a piercing shriek, and Willie is sitting, with part of his trousers torn away by ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... flitting. Light forms darted up and down the stairs and past the windows, appearing now at the back, now at the front of the house, with a picture, or a postage stamp, or a dish, or a penwiper, or a pillow, or a basket, or a spool. The chorus of "Where shall we put this, Muddy?" "Where will this go?" "May we throw this away?" would have distracted a less patient parent. When Gilbert returned from school at four, the air was filled with sounds of hammering and ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... grateful little heart. He would have worn us all out, showing the gift and celebrating the generosity of the giver. How flattered he was, always, to be considered! He never seemed in the least to care for the value of the thing. He would cherish an empty spool from a friend's hand. It was wonderful how he loved to be loved. I feel sure, I know, that coat was taken from him; ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... go out to Uncle Dan's for greens, they took the buckboard, and I went to Keyser's for the cheese-cloth, and he had only eighteen yards of pink, but he thinks Kelley's have more, and there are the tacks, and they don't keep spool-wire, and the electrician will be here in ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... at 'Cooerdinates Division!'" Beardsley laughed, making a minor joke of it. "Now here," he touched a spool labelled in red, "is your Basic Invariant. Carmack—Amos T. Murdered man. Found bludgeoned in library of his home, night of April 4. Age 56, held all outstanding patents on ECAIAC, worth millions, and"—he ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... tram car, trolley car; box car, box wagon; horse car [U.S.]; bullet train, shinkansen [Jap.], cannonball, the Wabash cannonball, lightning express; luggage van; mail, mail car, mail van. shovel, spool, spatula, ladle, hod, hoe; spade, spaddle^, loy^; spud; pitchfork; post hole digger. [powered construction vehicles] tractor, steamshovel, backhoe, fork lift, earth mover, dump truck, bulldozer, grader, caterpillar, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Here is some rav'lin's I use. I pull that out of tobacco sacks, flour sacks, anything, when I don't have the money to buy a spool of thread. I sew right on just as good with the rav'lin's as if it was thread. Tobacco sacks make the best rav'lin's. I got two bags full of tobacco sacks that I ain't unraveled yet. There is a man down town who saves them for me. When a man pulls out a sack he ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... tongues stuck up, gigantic, joyously bright, and lapped to the right, and lapped to the left, and united, and flowed into one another, and grew longer and broader—became a fiery ribbon that unrolled more and more and speedily wound itself out as if from a spool. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... crochet needle into her spool. "I usually dip my smelts in bread crumbs. Have you ever tried them ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... and strode back to the scout. Climbing into the craft, he picked up the audioscriber microphone and recorded a brief message. Removing the threadlike tape from the machine, he returned to the house and left it on the spool of the audioscribe-replay ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... car. Even Madaline forgot her own timidity, and seeing a switch button for what she thought to be lights, she crossed to the corner and quickly pressed a tiny button. As she did so she felt something like a wire with a spool attached, and almost unconsciously she gave the spool a yank. Instantly a flood of light of marvelous brilliancy engulfed ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... fence. He had never done this before. The spools of wire weighed on him heavily. A crowbar thrust through the core made them a sort of axle with which to carry it. Thus they walked forward, revolving the heavy spool with the greatest care while the strand of wire unwound behind them. Every once in a while a coil would kink, or buckle back, or strike as swiftly and as viciously as a snake. The sharp barbs caught at their clothing, and tore Bob's hands. Jack Pollock seemed familiar with the idiosyncrasies of ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... [Nat], can you give us a declamation?" and Nat was never known to refuse. He always had one at his tongue's end, which would roll off, at his bidding, as easily as thread unwinds from a spool. ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... could be of any service, when he was aware that Mr. Minford had hired a woman, who lived on the floor below, to do all their household work, marketing, cooking, and general errands. He knew that Pet, on these occasions, asked him to go for a spool of thread, or a paper of needles, or a package of candy, merely to gratify him with the idea that he was making himself useful. When he came into the room tidily dressed, and highly polished as to his boots, he blushed even redder than he used to. It was not the acquisition of a little money by ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... Drills, Twills, White Corduroys, Fancy Cloakings, Tailors' Trimmings, Ladies' Dress and Cloak Trimmings, Gimp, Fringes, Braids, Buttons, Superior Quality Spool Cotton, Perfumery, Toilet ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... headache (to adopt a suggestion of GILBERT's), When too freely you've dined, or too heavily wined, or munched too many walnuts or filberts; When your brain is a maze, and creation a haze, then each queer social craze—there are many!— Gets your wits in a spool, and there isn't a fool for your thoughts would ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... giggled Delia. Gypsy, all in a flutter at having her name read right out in school, and divided between her horror lest the kitten she had tied to a spool of thread at recess, had been discovered, and an awful suspicion that Mr. Jonathan Jones saw her run across his plowed field after chestnuts, went slowly ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... trial came to an end. The seemingly endless spool of legal red tape having unrolled over a period of four and a half years, suddenly snapped off. Anthony and Gloria and, on the other side, Edward Shuttleworth and a platoon of beneficiaries testified and lied and ill-behaved ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Benton rose on a stump and semaphored with his arms. The engineer whistled answer and stood to his levers; the main line began to spool slowly in on the drum. Another signal, and he shut off. Another signal, after a brief wait, and the drum rolled faster, the line tautened like a fiddle-string, and the ponderous machine vibrated with the strain ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... with spool-thread and tape in a dry- goods store at Ogdensburg, on the St. Lawrence River, State of New York. He Rallied Round the Flag, Boys, and HAILED Columbia every time she passed that way. One day a regiment returning from the war Came Marching Along, ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... in the darkroom winding the infrared film on hundred-foot rolls and placing them in light-tight cans, then he reloaded the camera with a full spool. That done, there was nothing to do but wait and try ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... Isabella, "because he brings you meat to eat; and Mr. Spool, because he keeps the thread store. Thank you for putting me ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... concerns her. They called her the night-spinster, by reason that she ofttimes would sit at her wheel till late into the night to earn money which she was paid at the rate of three farthings the spool. But it was not out of greed that the old body was so ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... morning, their house had stood. Though nothing now was left of it but some charred wood, the place was still home to them. As Fetuao moved forlornly about, picking up a few trifles that had been dropped or thrown away by the invaders—a comb, a spool of thread, a flatiron, a book or two with the covers scorched off—she lifted up a grimy rag and tossed it, with a little gesture of disdain, at her husband's feet. He spread it out and saw that it was the consul's flag, the flag he had flown above his house with such confidence in its ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... shown at D. A metal contact called a brush is fixed on either side of the wheel. It costs about $7.00 and the motor to drive it is extra. The choke coil is wound up of about 250 turns of No. 30 Brown and Sharpe gauge cotton covered magnet wire on a spool which has a diameter of 2 inches and a length ...
— The Radio Amateur's Hand Book • A. Frederick Collins
... where everything was sold, from a nail or a spool of 'slack' to a keg of spirits or an almanac: sold for money when it could be had, for flour or wool or potash when it couldn't; likewise a post-office, whither a stage came once a week with an odd passenger, or an odd dozen ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... newcomer said, her eyes glued on Max Kirschner. "I was just passin' by on my way to the depot and I remembered that I needed a spool ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... long you can keep them. Let me count two hearts, four red fishes, three barley-sugar horses, nine almonds, and a dozen chocolate drops. Do you agree to that?" asked sly Mrs. Jo, popping the sweeties into her little spool-bag. ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... scientific management. Nothing in the factory was ever where anyone could find it. It almost drove me crazy. What was my joy then when one day the boss told me to put the spools in order. There was a mess of every-colored spool, mixed with every other color, tangled ends, dust, buttons, loose snappers, more dust, beads, more spools, more dust. A certain color was wanted by a stitcher. There was nothing to do but paw. The spool, like as not, would be so dusty it would take ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... sewing and folded it, quilting her needle back and forth, putting her thimble and spool of cotton inside and slipping it in her work bag. Then she rose and wrapped her shawl about her and tied on ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... returned the same cheery voice, its owner changing the position of the garment in her lap and reaching for a spool of silk. ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... around the room. On the stand beside the bed was something which she had not noticed before: a little old-fashioned work-box with a picture of a little boy in a pinafore on the top. Beside this work-box lay, as if just laid down by the user, a spool of black silk, a pair of scissors, and a large steel thimble with a hole in the top, after an old style. Louisa stared at these, then at the sleeves of her dress. She moved toward the door. For a moment she thought that this was something legitimate about which she might demand ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... make any promises; if I need a spool of thread and can save a walk, I shall go over there to get it," ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... pretty regular, I suppose, from the other end; but you should see the mother begin to come in hungry again the second day after her letter came. And when a boy came home successful and prosperous, and his proud mother towed him down Main Street on pretense of getting him to carry a spool of thread home for her, it used to go to my heart to see the wistful looks of her women friends. There is hardly a family in Homeburg of the right age which hasn't a grown-up son off at war somewhere—fighting failure. It's grand when they win; ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... other who is so small in the flanks was Michael Scott,[2] who verily knew the game of magical deceptions. See Guido Bonatti,[3] see Asdente,[4] who now would wish he had attended to his leather and his thread, but late repents. See the forlorn women who left the needle, the spool, and the spindle, and became fortune-tellers; they wrought spells with herb and ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... thick end of the rib in position on the lines of glue. Hold the shaft under your left arm while with the left thumb, forefinger, and middle finger steady the feathers as they are respectively put in place. With one end of a piece of cotton basting thread in your teeth and the spool in your right hand, start binding the ribs down to the arrow shaft. After a few turns proceed up the shaftment, adjusting the feathers in position as you rotate the arrow. Let your basting thread slip between the bristles of the ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... permanent horseshoe magnets, fixed parallel with each other and an inch apart. A very thin spool or bobbin of insulated wire is suspended, like the pendulum of a clock, between these permanent magnets, in such a manner that the bobbin hangs just in front of the four poles. A counterpoise is fixed at the top of the pendulum bar, which permits ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... say How idly I would play With my tail or silly spool upon the floor— Till one unlucky day Three children came to stay— After that I wasn't happy ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... launch across the river to see the new orange grove, and the children were left alone save for old Uncle Pomp who was hoeing in the truck patch, something happened that made quite a scare. Hetty went into mamma's room for a spool of white thread, and when she came out there was a frightened ...
— Dew Drops Vol. 37. No. 17, April 26, 1914 • Various
... carrying the graduations, a gearing causes the revolution of a wheel, D, which carries figures corresponding to such graduation. At the same time, two feed rollers, E, cause a small portion of the paper tape (which is wound upon a spool, A) to move forward and wind around a receiving spool, B. After the apparatus has been made accurately to embrace the trunk of the tree to be measured, it is removed and a pressure given to the lever, H, which applies the paper to the type wheel, D. A special button permits, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... with a number of the riveted splices on the banding. Such a splice occurs for every spool of banding used. In every case where one of these splices has pulled apart, the break was the result of defective riveting, permitting the rivets to pull out. In no case has a rivet been found sheared off, and even one good rivet appears to be sufficient to prevent rupture. The explanation ...
— The Water Supply of the El Paso and Southwestern Railway from Carrizozo to Santa Rosa, N. Mex. • J. L. Campbell
... concave and pessimistic attitude. Penrod felt in a dark corner of the box and laid hands upon a simple apparatus consisting of an old bushel-basket with a few yards of clothes-line tied to each of its handles. He passed the ends of the lines over a big spool, which revolved upon an axle of wire suspended from a beam overhead, and, with the aid of this improvised pulley, lowered the empty basket until it came to rest in an upright position upon the floor of the storeroom at the ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... "The Home" the matron had given her a little needle-book containing a spool of thread and thimble for a good-by present. These now came into good play. She used the lamp shears to ...
— The Potato Child and Others • Mrs. Charles J. Woodbury
... it can be warped. The spooler is a simple machine, but one that requires constant attendance. In the spooler, bobbins are placed upon holders or spindles, and the thread is passed over a series of guides to the spool, up above. The spool revolves at a high rate of speed, and the thread is wound evenly upon it. The operator must watch for broken threads, retie them, replace the empty bobbins by full ones and see that the empty ones are gathered up uninjured. She—the operator is usually ...
— The Fabric of Civilization - A Short Survey of the Cotton Industry in the United States • Anonymous
... or rubble-walled buildings, thatched or tiled. Some of them were unoccupied and were tumbling in ruins. There was nothing else—not even the "general shop" usual in most small cantonments. Not a spool of thread, not a tin of sardines, could be purchased within a three days' journey. Most of the food supplies and almost everything else had to be brought from Bombay. Around the bungalow the compounds were simply patches of the universal sands surrounded by mud walls. No flowers, no trees, ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... An enormous spool on wheels, which in the darkness seemed a mile high, was rolled silently from somewhere or other, the wheels staked and bound to the ground, and braces were erected against it. Very little sound was made and there were no lights save in the houses, which seemed all to be swarming with ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... thought his pal had missed, then he realized what Scotty had done. The spear shaft was attached to a long wire leader, and the leader to a safety line coiled around a spool just ahead of the pistol grip. Scotty had deliberately fired ahead of the propeller, knowing that the wire leader would be caught and ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... not like to refuse this request, although at home he was not allowed to enter his mother's kitchen; so the giant carried him in and placed him on a high shelf, where Fiddlecumdoo seated himself on a spool of thread and began to ...
— The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People • L. Frank Baum
... her hand on the spool of silk, when Babiche stood on her absurd head, a trick she'd not performed before ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... laughing and its weeping, Through its living and its keeping, Through its follies and its labors, weaving in and out of sight, To the end from the beginning, Through all virtue and all sinning, Reeled from God's great spool of Progress, runs the golden ...
— The Way of Peace • James Allen
... the merchants sold a calico or gingham dress pattern they threw in their profit by giving a spool of thread (two hundred yards), hooks and eyes and lining. In the thread business, however, it was only a few years after that thirty and fifty yard spools took the place of the two hundred yards."—"History of ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... 53) shows the use of a permanent horse-shoe magnet and the second (Fig. 54) an electro-magnet consisting of an iron rod with a coil or spool magnet at the outer end. In either case the magnet should not be allowed to become heated ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... public square in the middle of the village you will see a big roundhouse. If you take the top off the roundhouse you will see a big spool with a long string winding ...
— Rootabaga Stories • Carl Sandburg
... pottery of the Mississippi Valley furnishes many examples of this fabric. It is made of twisted cords and threads of sizes similar to those of the other work described, varying from the weight of ordinary spool cotton to that of heavy twine. The ...
— Prehistoric Textile Fabrics Of The United States, Derived From Impressions On Pottery • William Henry Holmes
... corkscrew, a box of matches, a paper-covered copy of a book entitled "Mary, the Beautiful Mill-Hand," a bottle of embrocation, a spool of cotton, two pencil-stubs, and other useful and entertaining objects. It contained, in fact, almost everything except a paint-splashed shoe, and Baxter gazed at the ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... minutes after she had helped Duncan unpack, Hetty had to run downtown to buy a spool ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... forgotten their joke in a game of Letters, when "Tingle, tangle!" went the bell, and the basket came in heavily laden. A roll of colored papers was tied outside, and within was a box that rattled, a green and silver horn, a roll of narrow ribbons, a spool of strong thread, some large needles, and ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... stands watching us, and would dearly like to try the machine herself, but every time she comes near, Olga says: "Be careful, mother, you'll despise it." And when the spool needs filling, and her mother takes the shuttle in her hand a moment, the child is once more afraid it may be "despised." [Footnote: Foragte, literally "despise." The word is evidently to be understood as used in error by the girl herself, in place of some equivalent ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... off abruptly, and began hunting for her spool of thread which had rolled off into the grass. When she found it she stitched away in silence as if she ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... clerk remembered to fetch her out in front, she would sit all day in the cabin, in the same place, crocheting lace, her spool of thread and box of patterns in her lap, on the handkerchief spread to save her new dress. Never leaning back—oh, no! always straight and stiff, as if the conventual back board were there within call. She would eat only convent fare at first, notwithstanding the ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... the man working it occasionally calling out the number of feet of blank film left on the spool so that the director might know whether to hasten or retard the action of ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... little shawl of dingy brick-dust hue about her shoulders. No matter what the occasion or what the day, she always carried her knitting with her, and seldom ceased the incessant twist, twist of the shining steel among the white cotton meshes. She might put down the needles and lace into the spool-box long enough to open oysters, or wrap up fruit and candy, or count out wood and coal into infinitesimal portions, or do her housework; but the knitting was snatched with avidity at the first spare moment, and ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... inches long, was used to copy farm records. The user wrote on paper with an indelible pencil. The original paper and copy papers were placed between two water-soaked linen leaves and all was rolled up on a wooden spool. Then the spool was inserted in the tube and left for a few minutes until the penciled ink stained through the wet papers and thus made copies. This specimen was used on a farm in Virginia. Gift of Mrs. Arthur ...
— Agricultural Implements and Machines in the Collection of the National Museum of History and Technology • John T. Schlebecker
... evenings she spun and wove down in their cabin. Aunt Arrie added "an' I did love to hear that old spinnin' wheel. It made a low kind of a whirring sound that made me sleepy." She said her mother, with all the other negro women on the place, had "a task of spinnin' a spool at night", and they spun and wove on rainy days too. "Ma made our clothes an' we had pretty dresses too. She dyed some blue and brown striped. We growed the indigo she used fer the blue, right dar on the plantation, and she used bark and leaves to ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... Then he remembered, and picked up one of the reels at random. "There's a clamp here just the right size to hold one of these," he explained, fitting the ribbon into place and threading its free end into a loop on a spool which looked as though made for it. But his excitement had passed; he now cautiously set a small anvil between himself and the apparatus, and then, with the aid of a long stick, he ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... rendering the smile from out over her glasses. "I didn't see you all day yesterday and not the day before, neither. But I put it down to a work-hold on us both, and didn't worry none. And now here you are, with some of the little folks! Here's a empty spool for little Bettie," and she held out the treasure to the toddler, who sidled up to her knee with confidence to ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... are winding, It chances to tangle, then, as perchance you may know, through the skein This way and that still the spool we keep passing till it is finally clear all again: So to untangle the War and its errors, ambassadors out on all sides we will send This way and that, here, there and round about—soon you will find that the ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... heard and answered our prayers, but fearing you will take less pleasure in reading we will forbear, only saying that God has been petitioned for corn for our horse, and the prayer answered in a marvelous way before the day was over. We have asked God for a spool of thread, and our prayer has been answered at once. One time wife was on her knees asking God for soap, when there was a rap at the door, and upon opening it a lady presented her with a bar of soap. Almost daily ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... home with its bare, clean rooms and its spotless floors. She rose abruptly and went out to the rear of the house, where Tommy was playing with Europena Wiggs. They were absorbed in trying to hitch the duck to a spool-box, and paid ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice
... write, with a flush of real excitement on her face. In the middle of things the baby choked on a small twist spool and Sidney had to catch him up by the heels and hold him head downward until the trouble was ejected. Then she had to soothe him, and finally write the rest of her letter holding him on one arm and protecting the epistle from the grabs of his ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... ohm, and some idea of the value of an ohm can be obtained if we remember that a 300-foot length of common iron telegraph wire has a resistance of 1 ohm. An approximate ohm for rough work in the laboratory may be made by winding 9 feet 5 inches of number 30 copper wire on a spool or arranging it in ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... fastened at start with a knot or knot and back stitch and finished with two or three back stitches. The length of thread may be broken or cut from the spool, but should always be cut from the work. Breaking weakens the fastening and biting off soils delicate work with the moisture from the breath, to say nothing of the injury to the teeth. Basting for large work should usually be done ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... begin at once, for time pressed. The old formulas had failed, and a new one had to be made, but, after all, the object was not extravagant or eccentric. One sought no absolute truth. One sought only a spool on which to wind the thread of history without breaking it. Among indefinite possible orbits, one sought the orbit which would best satisfy the observed movement of the runaway star Groombridge, 1838, commonly ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... within reasonable limits." He showed photographs of a box of laboratory weights of platinum, aluminum, and brass, they and the brass hinges all having been photographed from a closed box, without any indication of the box. Also a photograph of a coil of fine wire, wound on a wooden spool, the wire having been photographed, and the wood omitted. "The rays," he continued, "passed through all the metals tested, with a facility varying, roughly speaking, with the density of the metal. These phenomena I have discussed carefully ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... casements with instinctive longing for the outdoor air which could not of course enter through the glass; or plodded their monotonous rounds to tend the frames and see that the thread was running properly to each spool, and that the spools ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke |
