"Needle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fill the entire horizon; and that these systems are scattered through the stellar spaces at distances so incredible that, were some hardy discoverer to seek our planet in the midst of them, it would be like looking for a needle lost somewhere on the western prairies. The consequence is inevitable: a vast progressive universe plus an inadequate God means that in many minds faith in ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... be made of a burlap sack, or oil cloth, about five feet square. Stuff this with hay or straw. It may be flattened by a few quilting stitches put right through with a long packing needle. On this the target is painted. In scoring, the centre is 9, the next circle 7, the next 5, the next 3 and the last circle 1. The shortest match range for ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... one real attraction, that of Spirit. The pointing of the needle to the pole symbolizes this all- embracing power or the attraction ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... very small brass plate, and sometimes an earthen cup-shaped contrivance, with the top closed or decked over, having only a tiny hole in the center. Into this little aperture the opium, in a semi-liquid state, after being well melted in a lamp flame, is thrust by means of a fine wire or needle. The drug is inserted in infinitesimal quantities. It is said that all the Chinese smoke opium, although all do not indulge to excess. Some seem to be able to use the drug without its gaining the ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... be off now to my sewing society, which is a great farce, since I can earn thirty or forty times as much with my pen as I can with my needle, and if they would let me stay at home and write, I would give them the results of my morning's work. But the minute I ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... you have,' says Teddy, who is as sharp as a needle, 'because, well, you don't look very ...
— Lippa • Beatrice Egerton
... was informed of the fact so late, or I might have contrived to keep off other young men while you were at sea, or until an opportunity offered to enable you to secure my daughter's affections. That done, neither time nor distance could have displaced you; the needle not being more true than Lucy, or the ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... me that Benoni had helped me much, after all. You might as well look for a needle in a haystack as try to find anyone who goes to the Italian mountains. The baron offered no further advice, and sat calmly smoking and looking at me. I felt uneasy, opposite him. He was a mysterious person, and I thought him disguised. It was really not ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... of purple passion," replied Miss Mackay succinctly. She snipped a thread, deftly inserted fresh thread in her needle and added casually, ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... said the sewing-woman, laying down her needle, which indeed had been little hindrance to her ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... informed by his Lordship's agent, that if he did not appear at Devizes, to oppose any proposition that was made by Hunt, he should never serve the family at Wilton-house with another joint of meat. The gang thus raked together was led on by regular leaders; Black Jack, alias the Devil's Knitting Needle, was commander in chief; Bob Reynolds, a scamping currier of Devizes, who was a sort of lickspittle to Old Salmon, the attorney, was bully major; and a jolter-headed farmer, of the name of Chandler, who lived on the Green, was captain of a gang of little dirty toad-eaters of the corporation; ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... Indian who had kept pace with me through the forest. He was not there; he walked with me no longer; save for myself there seemed no breathing creature in the dim wood. I looked to right and left, and saw only the tall, straight pines and the needle-strewn ground. How long he had been gone I could not tell. He might have left me when first we came to the pines, for my dreams had held me, and I had not looked ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... Preparing: Wipe the tenderloins with a damp cloth. With a sharp knife make a deep pocket lengthwise in each tenderloin. Cut your pork into long thin strips and, with a needle, lard each tenderloin. Melt the butter in the water, add the seasoning and the cracker crumbs, combining all thoroughly. Now fill each pocket in the tenderloin with this stuffing. Place ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... fingers fly; the eyes may see Only the glancing needle that they hold; But all my life is blossoming inwardly, And every breath is like a litany; While through each labour, like a thread of gold, Is woven the ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... women, where is the limit to be drawn, and who shall draw it? It is true that there is now no actually defined limit. There is much work that is commonly open to both sexes. Personal domestic attendance is so, and the attendance in shops. The use of the needle is shared between men and women; and few, I take it, know where the seamstress ends and where the tailor begins. In many trades a woman can be, and very often is, the owner and manager of the business. Painting is as much open to women as ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... help. At Nantes she had spent many a happy hour in fancy needle-work and embroidery. In Paris the work was followed for twelve hours a day that she might earn two francs and so help keep that terrible wolf from coming up the stairs. Aunt Caroline kept house and made the children's clothing go as far as possible. All helped as well as they could. They must stay ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... when its limitations are thoroughly understood and it should be carefully calibrated. Unless the brass and iron are known to be of the same temperature, its action will be anomalous: for instance, if it be allowed to cool after being exposed to a high temperature, the needle will rise before it begins to fall. Similarly, a rise in temperature is first shown by the instrument as a fall. The explanation is that the iron, being on the outside, heats or cools more quickly than ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... such a precious reminder of Johnny's boyhood some day, when he had put away childish things. Every stitch would be dear to her, because of the little stubby fingers that worked so patiently to set them, despite the needle pricks and knotted thread. ...
— The Quilt that Jack Built; How He Won the Bicycle • Annie Fellows Johnston
... softened. Then a small tube of alder is prepared, an inch longer than the wound of the intestine, carefully thinned down (subtilietur) and introduced into the gut through the wound and stitched in position with a very fine square-pointed needle, threaded with silk. This tube or canula should be so placed as to readily transmit the contents of the intestine, and yet form no impediment to the stitches of the wound. When this has been done, a sponge moistened in warm water and ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... I wouldn't come again," replied Susan, as sharp as a needle. Then instantly repenting a little, she explained: "You are welcome to me, Will, and you know that as well as I do, but I want you to come some other evening, if it is all the same ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... Then he discovered that when the light shone she was at work. Sometimes she was sitting at the wooden table with a book, sometimes she was laboring at some task with pen and ink, sometimes she was trying to use her needle. ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... wheel, construction of Water wheel, Mr. Halliday's Water wheel, mounting the Water wheel paddles Water wheel receiving trough Water wheel, surveying for Water wheel, towers for Water wheel towers, setting up War, council of Weaving needle Well, digging the Wheel, the wind Wheels for gravity railroad Wheels, mounting, on car Wheels, mounting frame on Wigwag abbreviations Wigwag alphabet Wigwag numerals Wigwag signals Wigwagging and heliographing Wigwagging at night Willow Clump Island ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... Still keeping high up upon the pony tracks of the moors, she passed eastwards to the Cree, crossed it, and with Godfrey McCulloch to aid her, she carried the fiery cross along the shore-side of Solway to the great arch of the Needle's Eye, which is at Douglasha', in the parish of Colvend. Here she turned, for she was frightened at what might be going on during her absence in the dim region of the flowes and flooded marshes called the ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... butterflies' wings his shirt was made, His boots of chicken hide, And by a nimble fairy blade, All learned in the tailoring trade, His coat was well supplied. A needle dangled at his side, And thus attired in stately pride A dapper mouse he used ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... grumble, even worse than before, because now each one of them would be worried lest it was his own field of knowledge that had failed. Hunting a needle in a haystack was easy. At least you knew what a needle looked like, could recognize it when ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... none too safe there. Its great wall-spaces were broken by only two or three old engravings in ancient frames. Lucette, under her mother's direction, was putting the finishing touches to a piece of needle work, and, on the rather worn-out piano, I was playing, with the soft pedal down, one of Rameau's dances; the old-fashioned music sounded exquisite to me as it mingled with the noise of ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... principal annoyances of all sailing-masters in the Arctic regions is the sluggish action of the magnetic needle as they approach the magnetic pole, and it was a difficulty from which we were not exempt. The land all looks so much alike that even when running in plain sight of it it requires the greatest familiarity with the principal points to be able to steer by them. During the night of Friday, August ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... stand for their rights." Cheers were now given for "the poet of the day." Charlie stood up and read these lines, which were subsequently found by Aunt Stanshy in the pocket of his pants, for these needed the help of her needle after the great and fatiguing duties of the Fourth. The name and age of the author, Charlie had been particular to place over the poetry. We give the lines exactly as they appear in the original ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... a thin strip of whalebone and showed it to them. The ends were sharp as needle-points. The strip he coiled carefully, till it disappeared in his hand. Then, suddenly releasing it, it sprang straight again. He picked up a piece ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... ragged elbows on broken tables, scowling from between their dirty hands at the world and the future; while in higher rooms sat solitary girls in hard wooden chairs, a pile of straw covered with a rug in the corner, and a box to put a change of linen in, driving the needle silently and ceaselessly through shirts or coats or trowsers, stooping over in the foul air during the heat of the day, straining their eyes when the day darkened to save a candle, hearing the roar and the rush and the murmur far away, mingled in ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... nation in morals, civilization, and refinement, is in proportion to the elevated or degraded position in which woman is placed in society; and the same instructive volume will enable us to perceive, that the fanciful creations of the needle, have exerted a marked influence over the ...
— The Ladies' Work-Table Book • Anonymous
... table beside Mme. Le Grange lay an embroidery frame, the needle set in a puffy red peony. Mme. Le Grange picked it up and took a stitch or two. Her head bent over her work, so that the playful light made gold of the white in her ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... use they make of poison against their larger enemies. It would seem this poison of theirs is closely akin to snake poison, and it is highly probable they actually manufacture it, and that the larger individuals among them carry the needle-like crystals of it in their ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... being no other white person on the plantation, as it is now holidays) to know if I could stop the blood. I went and found that the poor creature must bleed to death unless it could be stopped soon. I called for a needle and succeeded in sewing it up as well as I could, and in stopping the blood. In a short time his master, who had been sent for came; and oh, you would have shuddered if you had heard the awful oaths that fell from his lips, threatening in the same breath "to pay him for ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... rest, he relieved him, and carried the dog for some distance, holding it too when the pit was reached, and Pete lowered himself down to take it, and creep in with it to place it on his fir-needle bed. ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... we have a representation of an Egyptian-looking man holding a cup before him. We shall see, as we proceed, that the magnetic needle, or "mariner's compass," dates back to the days of Hercules, and that it consisted of a bar of magnetized iron floating upon a piece of wood in a cup. It is possible that in this ancient relic of the Bronze Age we have a representation of the magnetic cup. The magnetic ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... softly against his breast, while across the room The General gave a quick, nervous laugh which he as immediately suppressed as though fearful unnecessarily of calling attention to their presence. The other vagabond fumbled with his hypodermic needle and the narcotic which would quickly give his fluttering nerves ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... looked for the mark of a hypodermic needle, but there is none. If I'm correct, the drug was a light one, possibly amytal. Your reflexes are slower than normal, even taking the accident and subsequent shock into account, and ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... Dame was quite pleas'd And ran out to market; When she came back They were mending the carpet. The needle each handled As brisk as a bee; "Well done, my good cats," ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... the continuous burning or boring pain of inflammation assumes a throbbing character, with occasional sharp, lancinating twinges. Should doubt remain as to the presence of pus, recourse may be had to the use of an exploring needle. ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... Veenia, pirate captured and took all they money in English war. (Revolution) Dem day Ladies wear bodkin fastened to long gold chain on shoulder—needle in 'em and thimble and ting. Coming down from New York to get away from English. My great grandmother little chillun. Pirate come to her Missus. Take all they money—come cut bodkin off her shoulder. Grandmother ma gone on the boat and twiss herself in ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... the whole of any Truth, if we could do that, there would be no such mystery of Infinity to puzzle us; we could, as it were, see all around it, but that is again looking through another window. We are now considering relativity. If we cut off the very end of the point of the finest needle, we get so minute a particle of steel that it is hardly visible to the naked eye, and yet we know that that small speck contains not only millions but millions of millions of what are called atoms, all in intense motion and never touching each other. Try and conceive how small each ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... the most important antimony-producing country in the world, and normally supplies over half the world's total. Chinese antimony is exported in part as antimony crude (lumps of needle-like antimony sulphide), and in part as antimony regulus, which is about 99 per cent pure metal. France was the only other important source of antimony before the war (25 to 30 per cent of the world production), and Mexico and Hungary produced small amounts. The large demand for antimony occasioned ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... and Moltke engaged in an animated conversation apart from the rest. At this moment Marshal Randon, Minister of War, walked across the room, and the emperor, noticing him, raised his voice, saying, "Come here, marshal. General Moltke says that with the needle-gun he would be strong enough to fight even the French army." Marshal Randon drew near, and, turning toward Moltke, said, in a tone loud enough to be heard by all in the room, "Pardon me, general; but, in spite of the high opinion I have of your judgment, I cannot share your belief. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... gave us so much matter for mirth, that, instead of bemoaning our ill-luck, we could not hold from laughing at every word he uttered. When the doctor wanted to sew up his wound, and had already made three stitches with his needle, the fellow told him to hold hard a while, since he did not want him out of malice to sew his whole mouth up. Then he took up a spoon, and said he wished to have his mouth left open enough to take that spoon in, in order that he might return ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... accumulated as tangible result of his business career. By providing books of a less scholarly, more popular character, such as novels, sermons, plays, comic ballads, religious poems, and the like; as well as by working with her needle, and sometimes copying legal and other documents, Mrs. Winwood managed to keep the kettle boiling. And in the bookselling and the copying, she soon came to have ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... "why, who do you spose, but that'ere sour-faced feller, (pointing at Hull,) what looks like a cow swelled on clover, and that 'ere little nimshi, who isn't bigger than my Poll's knitten needle. They was ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... was her wont, but not—he thought and hoped—less cordially. Maidens are wilful and perverse. Why should she hold her head down, as she had never done before? Why strain her eyes upon her work, and ply her needle as though her life depended on the haste with which she wrought? Thus might she receive a foe; better treatment surely merited ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... answered the old man, and taking a big darning needle, he made a top to it of sealing wax, and gave it ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... a long, glittering Spanish stiletto, not much thicker than a coarse needle, but strong and glittering ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... a winding trail to the top, and few had made acquaintance with it. John Talbot knew it well, and that to which it led—a lake in the very cup of the peak, so clear and bright that it reflected every needle of the dark ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... waiting in the darkness, a gleaming, bluish needle protruded from the floor. It grew to rings and became a snake which breathed forth flames and dissolved into flame ... And the tongues of these flames played on all sides and finally parted in curves like the leaves of an opening lotus flower, out of whose calix ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... had business, Mr Crathie had prided himself on his honesty, and was therefore in one of the most dangerous moral positions a man could occupy—ruinous even to the honesty itself. Asleep in the mud, he dreamed himself awake on a pedestal. At best such a man is but perched on a needle point when he thinketh he standeth. Of him who prided himself on his honour I should expect that one day, in the long run it might be, he would do some vile thing. Not, probably, within the small circle of illumination around his wretched rushlight, but in the great region beyond ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... order to rise and meet Hyde. Rem sat idly fingering a pack of playing cards and talking to Cornelia. This situation George took in at a glance; though his sense of sight was quite satisfied when it rested on the lovely girl who dropped her needle as he entered, for he saw the bright flush which overspread her face and throat, and the light of pleasure which so filled her eyes that they seemed to make her whole ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... additional spur to my endeavors to repurchase the boat. I entered myself as a day-laborer in the garden of our squire; and my wife was called occasionally to perform some services at the house, and employed herself in needle-work, spinning, or knitting at home. Not a moment in the day was suffered to pass unemployed. We spared for ourselves, and furnished all the comforts we could to the poor about us; and every week we dropped a little ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... radius of five feet, for a more complete splash had never been made by any descending mass, the "lights out" bells were ringing in all the corridors. Miss Woodhull had only to press a series of buttons arranged in the hall just outside her study door to produce the effect of the needle-prick in the fairy tale. Every inmate immediately dropped asleep. Every? Well, exceptions prove a ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... from the room, Walter Harkness also understood, and he knew that this was no idle threat. He had heard ugly rumors of Herr Schwartzmann and his methods. One man, he knew, had dared to oppose him—and that man had gone suddenly insane. A touch of a needle, it was whispered.... ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... hot hillside among tangled masses of jasmine, in which here and there were set star-like golden flowers, whose gardenia-like perfume mixed with the resinous aromatic smell of the long-needle pines. I rode a little behind, on purpose, for I love to see a pretty woman turn her head and look backward across her shoulder. She has no pose more charming, unless it be when she stands before the "laughing mirror" and lifts her hands to ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... as active and diligent as Adolphus. She was a seamstress before the days of Foray and the Drummer, and still continued to ply her needle, though no longer urged by necessity. She sewed for the officers' wives, she knit stockings and mufflers for the soldiers. The income thus derived independently of Montier's public service was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... cups and two candlesticks. Moreover it contained two tents and two platters and two hooks and a cushion and two leather rugs and two ewers and a brass tray and two basins and a cooking-pot and two water-jars and a ladle and a sacking-needle and a she-cat and two bitches[FN151] and a wooden trencher and two sacks and two saddles and a gown and two fur pelisses and a cow and two calves and a she-goat and two sheep and an ewe and two lambs and two green pavilions and a camel and two she-camels and a ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... out his housewife, eased the trouble with a needle, stabbed Mulvaney in the calf with the same weapon, and was ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... but I wished to become one. Had I aiver vorked on vaistcoats? I hadn't, but I could do anything with my needle. ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... upon the carpet. But of this I was unconscious as I admired Fanny's new dress, the mysterious earrings of our stately Bertha, and ventured upon a slight compliment to Henrietta, who lounged upon the divan. With admirable dexterity, the young lady caught the fleurette upon her crochet needle, reviewed it carelessly, and finally decided to accept it; an event that I had undoubtedly foreseen, for the compliment was a graceful and artistic one. But brothers, as you, Gustav, my boy, have long since discovered, are not events, and I was presently consigned to the 'elephant chair' ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of myself that writes and thinks, the greater part is always with Aniela. At this moment I see a streak of light from her window resting on the barberry bushes. My poor love has sleepless nights too. I saw her dozing over her needle-work to-day. Seated in a deep armchair she looked to me so small, and she drew such a long breath as if from weariness. I had a feeling for her as if ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... took a large sail-needle and some heavy-thread and I sewed two pairs of his trousers and two of his coats up the middle of the legs and arms, so he couldn't put them on, at least right away. I picked up hammer and nails and ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... quite different in a celebrated beauty. If you scrawl all over the face with which the coarse finger of the potter has decorated a water-jar, the injury to the wretched pot is but small, but if you scratch, only with a needle's point, that gem with the portraits of Ptolemy and Arsinoe, which clasps Cleopatra's robe round her fair throat, the richest queen will grieve as though she had ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... destitute of firearms, ranges through the forest in chase of the fiercest and largest animals which haunt its shade, armed with a slender tube, and a quiver full of needle-like arrows. The tube, ten or eleven feet long, is the celebrated gravatana, or blow-pipe; called also the zarabatana by the Spaniards. Slight as are the arrows which are blown through this weapon, they will penetrate the thickest hide; and being tipped with a deadly poison, carry death ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... peculiar to men who have dreamed of getting free from the hulks. The whole thing assumed the shape and consistency of a ball of dirty rubbish, about as big as the sealing-wax heads which thrifty women stick on the head of a large needle when ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... we were fairly away from Old England, and on the next day off Ushant, which we rounded at about 4.30 p.m., at the distance of a mile and a half; the sea was tremendous, the waves breaking in columns of spray against the sharp needle-like rocks that form the point of the island. The only excitement during the day was afforded by the visit of a pilot-boat (without any fish on board), whose owner was very anxious to take us into Brest, 'safe from the coming storm,' which he predicted. In addition to ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... brought the teapot to the spotless table, and clumsily touched the teacups and spoons so that they jarred upon Sally's nerves. Everything her mother did now annoyed Sally. The slow motions, the awkward way in which her fingers turned to thumbs, the shortsightedness that made her unable to thread a needle or read a paper except through an old magnifying glass, the general air of debility and discouragement. Sally felt furious with her all the time—"Old fool ... old fool!" she would frantically murmur ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... all the land bought by me as aforesaid, under the future name of Clarence, being all the land bounded on the north by the sea, on the east and south by Hay-brook, and on the west by a line running from the sea due south, by the magnetic needle, or south-south-east, by the pole of the world, until it joins Hay-brook, the Peninsula of Point William included in the same, being in north latitude about three degrees and forty-five minutes, and east ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... variety of articles are produced, consisting of every description of knick-knackery, if I may be allowed the term, as snuff-boxes, cigar-cases, memorandum books, souvenirs, bon-bon boxes, tablets, tooth-picks, card and needle-cases, pocket mirrors, housewives, paper presses, port-crayons, rulers, seals, musical snuff-boxes, etc., etc. The above articles being executed in every possible variety that can be imagined, of tortoise-shell, ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... what?" he bellowed, in a voice that ran up and down Lady Underhill's nervous system like an electric needle. "I was afraid you were going to have a pretty rough time of it when I read the forecast in the paper. The good old boat wobbled a ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... gait, with which the men seemed to urge themselves over the ground with ease and rapidity. There was little or no straggling, and being strong, lusty young fellows, and lightly equipped—they carried only needle-guns, ammunition, a very small knapsack, a water-bottle, and a haversack —they strode by with an elastic step, covering at least three ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... went home, Mrs Hexton was sitting up very straight and stern-looking in her chair, with a knitted stocking in one hand, a worsted-threaded needle in the other, and a handkerchief tied over her head to keep off the draught, for the new ...
— Son Philip • George Manville Fenn
... mounted on the merest skeletons of horses blind or blind-folded and so weak that they could not make a sudden turn with their riders without danger of falling down. The men are armed with spears having a point as sharp as a needle. Other men enter the arena on foot, armed with red flags and explosives about the size of a musket cartridge. To each of these explosives is fastened a barbed needle which serves the purpose of attaching ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... I know not how, so that my poor mother had but a hard time of it; and when I was just turned of twenty-one and was free of my apprenticeship, she had but little to live upon but what I could bring home, and what she could earn by her needle. This was no grief to me, for I was fond of my trade, and I had learned it well. My old master was fond of me, and would trust me with work of a good deal of responsibility. I neither drank nor smoked, nor was ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... could wipe it off, a sudden, sharp sob took her unawares and, plump, right into the pastry, went this big fat tear. Of course, if you are even a little girl you must know that it is as useless to hunt for tears in pie-crust as it is to "hunt for a needle in a hay-stack." So Letty did not even try to recover her lost property. But it had one good effect, it made her laugh, and, between you and me (I tell this to you as a secret), Letty, like every other girl, little or big, fat or thin, was much pleasanter to look upon when she smiled than when ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... Wordsley, who could only point to the pall of gleaming dust where their ship had lain, and to the silver needle which glinted for a moment in the sky and ...
— The Marooner • Charles A. Stearns
... hidden like the needle in the hay, and yet ubiquitous in the stack, the bushranger remained for months. Then there was an encounter, not the first of this period, but the first in which shots were exchanged. One of these pierced the lungs of his melodeon—an instrument more notorious by this time than the musical-box ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... wherewith each hair was hammered into his head, with such an uprising it rose. Thou wouldst have weened it was a spark of fire that was on every single hair there. He closed one of his eyes so that it was no wider than the eye of a needle. He opened the other wide so that it was as big as the mouth of a mead-cup.[a] He stretched his mouth from his jaw-bones to his ears; he opened his mouth wide to his jaw so that his gullet was seen. The champion's light rose ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... girl bestowed a provisional pat upon one fold of the white table-cloth and regarded the result with critical approval. All being in blameless order, she moved one of the candlesticks the width of a needle. The table was now garnished to the last resource of the Golden Pomegranate: the napery was snow, the glassware and the cutlery shone with a frosty glitter, and the great bowl of crimson roses afforded the exact splurge of vainglorious color and glow she had designed. Accordingly, ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... came on board, the anchor weighed, and we ran through the Needles with a fine N.E. breeze. I admired the scenery of the Isle of Wight, looked with admiration at Alum Bay, was astonished at the Needle rocks, and then felt so very ill that I went down below. What occurred for the next six days I cannot tell. I thought that I should die every moment, and lay in my hammock or on the chests for the whole of that time, incapable ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... was now light, and he had no sooner bent down over it than he pronounced it to be a hedgehog fast enough, or rather a Canada porcupine. Its weight was over thirty pounds, and some of the quills on its back were four or five inches in length, with needle-like, finely barbed points. ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... a head and thorax without joints, and a hinder part of seven articulated rings, besides six tail rings. The last ring, the thirteenth, contains two poison glands and is furnished with a sting as fine as a needle. The poison is a fluid ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... of his interview with the Bishop, and was nearly at the end of his journey when he noticed that one of his shoes had come unsewn, and he stopped at a cabin; and while the woman was looking for a needle and thread he mopped his face with a great red handkerchief that he kept in the pocket of his threadbare coat—a coat that had once been black, but had grown green with age and weather. He had out-walked himself, and feeling he ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... and was somewhat astonished to find the aunt seated between two worthy Capuchins, who were talking small talk to her while she worked at her needle. At a little distance ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... under the shade of the thick bamboo. On the banks grew many flowers and plants whose strange names you told me in Latin and Spanish, for you were even then studying in the Ateneo. [44] I paid no attention, but amused myself by running after the needle-like dragon-flies and the butterflies with their rainbow colors and tints of mother-of-pearl as they swarmed about among the flowers. Sometimes I tried to surprise them with my hands or to catch ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... looking for her brother, and might just as well have looked for a needle in a bottle of hay. Arthur was ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... him. Affection must run in the channel, or it is but weak, if once ye divide the streams. The love of the world makes the heart carnal, it is the defilement of the whole soul, and a weight that easily besets us, that it cannot mount up in a cloud of divine affection to Jesus. Can the needle go to two contrary points both at once? Can it move to the north and the south at the same time? Such an opposition is there between the Father, and the things of the world. If then ye turn your face on the creature, ye must turn your back upon God. Think not, Christians, to keep ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... folds of my cravat, which I removed for the purpose, formed a perfect guard or hilt, and the lower extremity formed like a tube, in which the pike-handle had been inserted, afforded ample space for the grasp of my hand; the point had been made as sharp as a needle, and the metal he ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... depth of all their glorious gloom. So should I learn your history from its birth, Through all its glad and grave experiences, Better than if—(your journal in my hand, Written as only women write, with all A woman's shades and shapes of feeling, traced As with the fine touch of a needle's point)— I followed you from that bright hour when first I saw you in the garden 'mid the flowers, To that wherein a letter from your hand Made me all rich with the ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... market in the root form. No one thing was more generally hawked about the streets of China than the water chestnut. This is a small corm or fleshy bulb having the shape and size of a small onion. Boys pare them and sell a dozen spitted together on slender sticks the length of a knitting needle. Then there are the water caltropes, grown in the canals producing a fruit resembling a horny nut having a shape which suggests for them the name "buffalo-horn". Still another plant, known as water-grass (Hydropyrum latifolium) is grown in Kiangsu province where the land is too wet for ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... God!' It is quite like his way of putting things. Calling them first to reflect on the original difficulty for every man of entering into the kingdom of God, he reasserts in yet stronger phrase the difficulty of the rich man: 'It is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.' It always was, always will be, hard to enter into the kingdom of heaven. It is hard even to believe that one must be born from above—must pass into a new ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... transactions consisted of obtaining for and forwarding to those clients anything and everything that they might chance to require, whether it happened to be a pocket knife, a bridal trousseau, or several hundred miles of railway; a needle, or an anchor. And, being a keen man of business, it was only necessary to mention to him the kind of article required, and he was at once prepared to say where that article might be best obtained. Also, being a tremendously busy man, he was wont to get straight to business, ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... Guardian, is one of extreme difficulty, and it is not easy to find a competent director; but it seems to me to be easy to name many men who would do better in art-management than a corporation, and embarrassingly difficult to name one who would do worse. Any one man can thread a needle better than twenty men. Should the needle prove brittle and the thread rotten, the threader must resign. Though a task may be accomplished only by one man, and though all differ as to how it should be accomplished, yet, when the task is well accomplished, an appreciative unanimity ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... eyebrows and eyelashes, carmine and sepia for those about the mouth and nostrils. The spot of white in the eye must not be forgotten. The lights are always left, not taken out afterwards. Any hairs that may be found on the ivory after a tint is washed in must be removed with a needle or the extreme point of a clean brush. Lay in your colours with decision, and always try as far as you possibly can to work in ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... first time I saw it pointed to "Stormy." I hastened over breakfast in order to get into the garden in time to fix up the starboard fence. After working feverishly for three hours, glancing at the sky at frequent intervals, I heard the "All clear" signalled from a back window, the needle having ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... would be in her dream, too, with her work-basket in her lap, absently picking the table-cloth with her needle. But for us, all we knew was that the Cinderella had a day's start of us, and the weather in the Southern Ocean, when we got there, was like the death of the world. I was aware that we were under foresail, lower topsails, and ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... spices of the hot burning islands, and wonders of the silversmith's and the goldsmith's fashioning, and fair-wrought weapons and armour of the best, and every thing that a rich chapman may deal in. And amidst of it all stood Blaise clad in fine black cloth welted with needle work, and a gold chain about his neck. He was talking with three honourable men of the Port, and they were doing him honour with kind words and the bidding of help. When he saw Ralph and Richard come in, he nodded to them, as to men whom ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... and gave order (for which I had a warrant) for a great quantity of the strongest cable and bars of iron. The cable was about as thick as packthread, and the bars of the length and size of a knitting-needle. I trebled the cable to make it stronger, and for the same reason I twisted three of the iron bars together, bending the extremities into a hook. Having thus fixed fifty hooks to as many cables, I went back to the northeast ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... be impossible to predicate of any individual; doubtless there are perfectly sane persons, that is, sane at times, but to find them would be like finding the traditional needle. I suppose our good friend Willis would rank higher than the average, ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... grievance. She had married well, as every one thought, but in these days her husband had lost his health and Delia was obliged to put her shoulder to the wheel. She sewed well, but there was a sigh every time her needle went into the cloth, and a groan when ...
— "Some Say" - Neighbours in Cyrus • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... prettily arranged electric balance, and by placing plates of different substances between the inductor and one of the inductometers Faraday expected to see the balance destroyed to an extent which would be indicated by the deflection of the needle of the galvanometer. To his surprise he found that it made not the least difference whether the intervening space was occupied by such insulating bodies as air, sulphur, and shellac, or such conducting bodies as copper and the other non-magnetic ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 417 • Various
... daughter, adopted because they were cheap. They seldom ventured on the extravagance of meat, and that was one reason, doubtless, for Mrs. Burke's want of strength and sometimes feeling faint and dizzy while working at her needle. ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... sewing machines for soaking or waxing the thread as it passes the needle, has been patented by Mr. Pedro F. Fernandez, of San Juan, Porto Rico. The invention consists in a frame secured to the arm of a sewing machine by a thumb-screw, and provided with a clamping device for holding wax ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... the out-pouring soldiers, the tiny workers ran and bit and chewed away at whatever they could reach. Dozens of ants made their way up to the cotton, but found the utmost difficulty in clambering over the loose fluff. Now and then, however, a needle-like nip at the back of my neck, showed that some pioneer of these shock troops had broken through, when I was thankful that Attas could only bite and not sting as well. At such a time as this, the greatest difference is apparent between these and the Eciton army ants. The Eciton soldier ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... Bernard, from having been one of the judges of the Superior Court, was sitting in an arm-chair, reading a newspaper; Mrs. Bernard was busy with her knitting; the young lady employed upon one of those pieces of needle-work, which, in those days, were seldom out of female hands, and Pownal looking at her all he dared, and listening to an occasional paragraph read by the Judge from ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... Constitutional Bishop. Thy-doxy, if thou be Dissident, is that he cannot; but that he must become an accursed thing. Human ill-nature needs but some Homoiousian iota, or even the pretence of one; and will flow copiously through the eye of a needle: thus always must mortals ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... esprit. It was simply the rallying point of a party. The only woman present was Mme. Roland herself, but at first she assumed no active leadership. She sat at a little table outside of the circle, working with her needle, or writing letters, alive to everything that was said, venturing sometimes a word of counsel or a thoughtful suggestion, and often biting her lips to repress some criticism that she feared might not be within her province. She had left her quiet home in the country fired with a single thought—the ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... its worst and every nerve on edge, another scream from behind us cut our ears like a needle, the eyes of the tigress as well as ours sought the door, and there in her golden curls and white "nightie" stood little Madeline. The eyes of the tigress softened to tenderest love, and with a bound, the ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... showed me in long-preserved "housewives," or "huz-ifs," as she called them. They were lengths of domestic linen on which small squares or triangles of chintz were sewn, making a series of small pockets, each one stuffed with convenient threads or bits of colored sewing silks, or needle and thimble. These were pinned at the belt of the active housewife, and hung swaying against her skirts if she rose from her sewing, or were conveniently at hand if she sat patching or embroidering. I remember that some of my grandmother's "huz-ifs" still held threads of different ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... no reply. But her husband did not fail to observe that she lost, almost instantly, that rigid erectness with which she had been sitting, nor that the motion of her needle had ceased. "My shirts are better made, and whiter than those of any other man in our shop," said ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... disease the effect of an injury, of an operation, or of emotional excitation is heightened. The extent to which the threshold to pain or to any other excitant is affected by Graves' disease is illustrated by the almost fatal reaction which I once saw result from the mere pricking with a hypodermic needle of a patient with this disease. As the result of a visit from a friend, the pulse-rate of a victim of this disease may increase twenty beats and his temperature rise markedly. I have seen the mere suggestion of an operation produce collapse. As the brain ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... a bench fastened to the side of the oven, where in winter, the wet, and cold, and weary may rest; while finally, at the head of the apartment is a small table, whereon the landlady, almost always one of the inmates of the hall, plies her needle-work and ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... to have been the mast of a vessel of one hundred twenty tons, and which seemed to have been a long time in the water. At this distance from Ferro, and for somewhat farther on, the current was found to set strongly to the northeast. Next day, when they had run fifty leagues farther westward, the needle was observed to vary half a point to the eastward of north, and next morning the variation was a whole point east. This variation of the compass had never been before observed, and therefore the admiral was much surprised ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... fever and unconscious. How long I remained so, I scarcely know. I awoke one afternoon, and found Mary Dean sitting by my side working with her needle. I fancied that I was dead, and that she was an angel watching over me. Although I discovered that the first part of the notion was a hallucination, I was every day more convinced of the truth of the second. When I got rather better, ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... keep him waiting. Lady Moseley resumed her seat by the side of her sister with an air of great complacency, as she returned from the window, after having seen her daughter off. For some time each was occupied quietly with her needle, when Mrs. Wilson suddenly ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... become wife than her habits and character utterly changed for the worse, and the father had a very vexatious case of tadashiku suguru ("too much of a good thing") on his hands. The wife became not only very merry and lively, but utterly forsook loom and needle. She gave up her nights and days to play and idleness, and no silly lover could have ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... endure her snubs and haughty ways as Twonette does. I seek the friendship of no princess. Girls of my own class are good enough for me. "Twonette, fetch me a cup of wine." "Twonette, thread my needle." "Twonette, you are fat and lazy and sleep too much." "Twonette, stand up." "Twonette, sit down." Faugh! I tell you I want none of these princesses, no, not one of them. I hate princesses, and I tell you I ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... they sit together, patrician and plebeian, Catholic and Protestant, and make garments for the poorly-clad soldiery. An order came to Boston for five thousand shirts for the Massachusetts troops at the South. Every church in the city sent a delegation of needle-women to 'Union Hall,' a former aristocratic ball-room of Boston; the Catholic priest detailed five hundred sewing-girls to the pious work; suburban towns rang the bell to muster the seamstresses; the ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... believe that if they cut with an axe near a fire, or stick a knife into a burning stick, or touch the fire with a knife, they will "cut the top off the fire." The Sioux Indians will not stick an awl or a needle into a stick of wood on the fire, or chop on it with an axe or ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... that is to say the cotton-plant; a country of Asia where it is a mark of nobility for the women to have tiny feet, on which account they are bandaged in their infancy, that they may only grow to half their natural size; the magnetic needle which points out the north to mariners; the country of the five thousand islands (Oceania); the roundness of the earth, which is such that the inhabitants of the Antipodes have their feet directly opposite to ours, and yet do not fall off into space any more than ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... thousand feet above the valley (as the clouds flit past behind it, or leave the sky), first white, and then dark blue. Well, there's just such an eyelet hole in one of the upper crags of the Diamond Valley; and, from a distance, you think that it is no bigger than the eye of a needle. But if you get up to it, they say you may drive a loaded camel through it, and that there are fine things on the other side, but I have never spoken with anybody who had ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin |
