"Reel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... trusts for her deliverance to Heaven—that her body may be destroyed—that her soul cannot be harmed. Scarcely are the words uttered than a terrible clangour is heard. The walls of the dungeon seem breaking down, and the ponderous columns reel. The demon statue rises on its throne, and a stream of flame issues from its brow. The doors of the cells burst open, and with the clanking of chains, and other dismal noises, skeleton shapes stalk forth, from them, each with ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... not thinking about you. Cotton, please—a reel of No. 50 white from my chest of drawers. Left hand drawer. Now ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... impervious to pathos. The giggles coalesced to a general laugh when the poor old mother, again mopping on the floor, was seen to say, "I hate these mopping mothers. You get took with house-maid's knee in the first reel." ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... can cheer the heart sae weel As can a canty Highland reel; It even vivifies the heel To skip and dance: Lifeless is he wha canna feel ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... 'lowed and what he didn't 'low was perfectly well known to every darky. For instance, "he didn't 'low no singin' uv week-er-day chunes uv er Sunday," nor "no singin' uv reel chunes" (dance music) at any time; nor did he "'low no sassin' ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... the first fire a rain of dirt fell from the chinking in the wall over my head. As soon as the others sprang away from the table, I kicked it over in clearing myself, and came to my feet just as The Rebel fired his second shot. I had the satisfaction of seeing his long-haired adversary reel backwards, firing his guns into the ceiling as he went, and in falling crash heavily into the glassware on ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... head, for, looking straight forward, he could conjure up the laughing vision; but when he glanced to the empty saddle he heard once more the last unlucky shot fired from the train as they raced off with their booty, and saw Hal reel in his saddle and pitch forward; and how he had tried to check his horse and turn back; and how big Dick Wilbur, and Patterson, and mighty-handed Phil Branch had forced him to go on and leave that form lying motionless on ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... wild and fierce points of his character, had a kind, honest, and warm heart. The other from a young friend, whom Highlanders call MacVourigh, and Lowlanders MacPherson of Cluny. He is a fine spirited boy, fond of his people and kind to them, and the best dancer of a Highland reel now living. I fear I must not add a third to Nimrod and Bran, having little use for them except being pleasant companions. As to labouring in their vocation, we have only one wolf which I know of, kept in a friend's menagerie near me, and no wild deer. Walter has some roebucks indeed, but Lochore ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... use waiting for your uncle. If he's at the tavern, he will stay there until he is full of liquor and then he will reel home. Come in and sit down to ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... tarnish the mirror of life, A spatter of rust on its polished steel! The seasons reel Like a goaded wheel. Half-numb, half-maddened, ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... her reel backwards and fall, with a queer grotesque movement, head over heels down the stone steps. The dull thud her body made as she fell on the half landing echoed up and down the ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... of drawers, with a small looking-glass, ornamented by a sprig of asparagus, a dresser of rough pine shelves on the right of the fireplace, and a cupboard on the left, a half-dozen chip-bottomed chairs, a spinning-wheel, and a reel and jack, ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... masts and rigging swung in a slow drunken reel. Presently she settled back to normal with a heavy crushing sound as the water in her hold rushed forward. She seemed some mighty leviathan weltering in agony. She lay on even keel for four or five minutes while a hissing and spewing of air compressed ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... finished—red and white in the centre with a darker border, the whole surrounded by a ring of violet leaves—she looked about for something to tie it up with. Sarah, applied to, was busy ironing, and had no string in the kitchen, so Pin ran to get a reel of cotton. But while she was away Laura had an idea. Bidding Leppie hold the flowers tight in both his sticky little hands, she climbed in at her bedroom window, or rather, by lying on the sill with her legs ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... Mrs. Hodgkins, "but hearin' the things I've got ter tell will interest ye, an' make ye feel reel perky. Ye needn't feel ye've got ter talk, fer I kin talk 'nough ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... path. Every delicate plant and creeping thing was poisoned by their breath, and the larger animals were devoured in the flap of a bird's wing. With them came terrific lightnings that rent the trees and cleft the solid rock, and thunders which caused the earth to reel like a man who had drank many times of fire-water. Nearer and nearer they approached, and now the chosen residents of this fair plain were filled with alarm for their lives, and at once began to build fortifications against ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... feel the things that all men feel, And think in well-worn grooves of thought, Whose honest spirits never reel Before ...
— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis
... from mortal lips, and no less sweet—though infinitely puzzling—was that exquisite humility with which she crowned the wonder of her self-surrender. Yet even as he heard his brain grew bewildered—his senses seemed to reel. Strange thoughts and shapes seemed to hover around him, and all the soft, dim space of night appeared a black and peopled horror. For a moment he felt that consciousness was forsaking him... that the shock of this unexpected joy was beyond his strength ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... joined the group. The happy earl, with many a hearty laugh, enjoyed the jollity of his people; and while the steward stood at his lord's back describing whose sons and daughters passed before him in the reel, Mar remembered their parents-their fathers, once his companions in the chase or on the wave; and their mothers, the pretty maidens he used to pursue over the hills in ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... which she admired in Alice. One night there was a sleighing party to a hotel in the suburbs, where they had dancing and then supper. After the supper they danced "Little Sally Waters" for a finale, instead of the Virginia Reel, and Alice would not go on the floor with Dan; she said she disliked that dance; but she told him to dance with Miss Langham. It became a gale of fun, and in the height of it Dan slipped and fell with ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... performed its duty; the motion of the falling tree becomes accelerated every instant, till it comes down in thunder on the plain, with a crash that makes the earth tremble and the neighbouring trees reel and bow before it. ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... watched till the kopje was blotted from his sight, and the demons of the storm came shrieking back. Then suddenly there came a crash that shook the world and made the senses reel. He heard the rush and swish of water, water torrential that fell in a streaming mass, and as his understanding came staggering back he knew that the first, most menacing danger was past. The cloud ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... all their sabres bare, Flash'd as they turn'd in air, Sabring the gunners there, Charging an army, while All the world wonder'd: Plunged in the battery-smoke Right thro' the line they broke; Cossack and Russian Reel'd from the sabre-stroke Shatter'd and sunder'd. Then they rode back, but not Not the ...
— Beauties of Tennyson • Alfred Tennyson
... the great eternal mind; Streams of his unexhausted spring of power, And cherish'd with his influence, endure. He spread the pure cerulean fields on high, And arch'd the chambers of the vaulted sky, Which he, to suit their glory with their height, Adorn'd with globes, that reel, as drunk with light. His hand directed all the tuneful spheres, He turn'd their orbs, and polish'd all the stars. He fill'd the sun's vast lamp with golden light, And bid the silver moon adorn the night. He spread the airy ocean without shores, Where birds are wafted ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... absorbed in the stirring drama of the Alaskan gold fields, and for the time being almost forgot their surroundings. In the midst of the last reel, however, Jack felt the girl ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... the critical point. Some 480 feet of sail surface were thus spread to the wind, working on a radius of fifteen feet. The horizontal drive wheel had a diameter of ten feet, carried eighty-eight wooden cogs which engaged a pinion with fifteen leaves, and there were nine arms on the reel at the other end of the shaft which drove the chain. The boards or buckets of the chain pump were six by twelve inches, placed nine inches apart, and with a fair breeze the ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... the gale Round veered the flapping sail, Death! was the helmsman's hail Death without quarter! Mid-ships with iron keel Struck we her ribs of steel; Down her black hulk did reel Through the black water! ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... as to habitations, what's these to a street in Lunnun? Begin on the starboard hand, for instance, as you walk down Cheapside, and count as you go; my life for it, you'll reel off more houses in half an hour's walk than are to be found in all that there village yonder. Then you'll remember, sir, that the starboard hand only has half, every Jack having his Jenny. I look upon Lunnun as ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... funny reel was being shown and the audience was laughing heartily. Then came an illustrated song, sung by a young woman with a fairly good voice, and after that "Broncho Bill's Reward," a short drama of the plains, with cowboys and cattle thieves, and a sheriff, who aided ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield
... silver-gray fly with a barbed tail darts out across the pool, swings around with the current, well under water, and slowly works past the big rock in the centre, just at the head of the rapid. Almost past it, but not quite: for suddenly the fly disappears; the line begins to run out; the reel sings sharp and shrill; a ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... don't get a bite the whole blessed day," said Condy, as he paid out his line to the ratchet music of the reel, "we'll have fun just the ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... a formal and elaborate pigeonwing, settled down to a shuffle that shook the floor. Music and motion were as much a part of 'Mazin' Grace as her brown skin and her white teeth. All Aunt Melvy's piety had failed to convince her of the awful wickedness of "shaking her foot" and "singing reel chunes." She danced now with utter abandon, and the harder she danced ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... preacher discourses on the excellence of holiness, he may have been a thoroughgoing scamp all his life; but it don't follow he's dishonest, because he's so accustomed to talk goody-goody talk that it runs off his lips as the thread off a reel——" ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... tentative accord were beginning to be heard. The musicians were some of Mr. Jefferson's slaves who had shown marked ability and whom he himself had instructed in the art. They had proved themselves apt pupils and could play excellently airs for the minuet and Virginia reel. Mr. Jefferson was never happier than when Monticello was thronged with gay dancers, nor was he an indifferent votary of Terpsichore himself. Indeed, many were the balls and assemblies he attended during his student days in Williamsburg, many the nights he danced ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... foremost of the crew, Then, laughing, pell-mell leapt on other two. The fourth rogue's thrust, Duke Joc'lyn blithely parried Right featly with the quarter-staff he carried. Then 'neath the fellow's guard did nimbly slip And caught him in a cunning wrestler's grip. Now did they reel and stagger to and fro, And on the ling each other ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... a salmon takes a minnow, and goes off with a tremendous rush, which sometimes continues until there is little of the 1000 yards of line left on the reel. It is impossible to touch the reel except at the risk of cutting the fingers. The fisherman sits facing the stern of the launch, with the butt of his rod fixed in a hole under his seat. If little line is left, the fisherman may put on the leather brake ...
— Fishing in British Columbia - With a Chapter on Tuna Fishing at Santa Catalina • Thomas Wilson Lambert
... know that there'll be such an awful lot of news in it at first," went on Dick, "for I've got to learn this art of flying, and I don't expect to do any hair-raising stunts right off the reel. ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... seemed all at once to leave her. All the fabric of her character, so mercilessly assaulted, appeared in that moment to reel, topple, and go crashing to its wreck. She was shattered, broken, humbled, and beaten down to the dust. Her pride was gone, her faith in herself was gone, her fine, strong energy was gone. The pity of it, the grief of it; all that she held dearest; her fine and confident steadfastness; the great ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... poems was issued in Sixteen Hundred Forty-five, when he was thirty-seven years of age. But before this he was known as the author of some pamphlets which had made political London reel. The writer was at once seen to be a man of remarkable learning and marvelous intellect, and the work secured Milton a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... sir," he said, finally, glowing upon the impassive face before him, "like a tight ship, can weather a little bad weather. Perhaps you noticed our troupe? The old lady is Mrs. Adams. She is nearly seventy, but can dance a horn-pipe or a reel with the best of them. The two sisters are Kate and Susan Duran, both coquettes of the first water. Our juvenile man is a young Irishman who thinks much of his dress and little of the cultivation of mind and manners. Then," added the old man ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... sewing table under the trees, when the ladies' aid was at work with needle and tongue, should be the principal incident of this reel devoted to ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... else tell all the village news, How madam did the squire refuse; How parson on his tithes was bent, And landlord oft distrain'd for rent. Thus do they talk, till in the sky The pale-eyed moon is mounted high, And from the alehouse drunken Ned Had reel'd—then hasten all to bed. The mistress sees that lazy Kate The happing coal on kitchen grate Has laid—while master goes throughout, Sees shutters fast, the mastiff out, The candles safe, the hearths all clear, And nought from thieves or fire to fear; Then both to bed together ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... together his rod. He was much amused at the looks of the men when they saw the thin supple point of the rod. They shook their heads gravely, and said, "He cannot hold a big fish with that." They were right so far, but they did not understand the use of the reel and the running line. Presently Fred cast, and almost immediately a large salmon took his fly, the rod bent like a hoop, and the reel whizzed furiously as ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... American capital in his big colony overseas. "I like America and Americans," he said, "and I hope that your country will not forget Europe." There was a warm clasp of the hand and I was off on the first lap of the journey that was to reel off more than twenty-six thousand miles of strenuous travel before I saw my little domicile in New ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... the boy began again, in a tired voice. "I hardly know. There was such an uproar, such confusion, such an outburst of frenzy, that the mere recollection of it makes my brain reel. All I saw was a vortex of arms and flags, and the breath was almost knocked out of me by a thundering blow on the chest. After a while, I got out of the thick of it, and plunged into one of the streets ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... the contents of the cask, if they should prove not to be water. I soon bored the hole above and below, following Jackson's directions, and the liquor, which poured out in a small stream into the pannikin, was of a brown colour and very strong in odour, so strong, indeed, as to make me reel as I walked back to the rocks with the pannikin full of it. I then sat down, and after a time tasted it. I thought I had swallowed fire, for I had taken a good mouthful of it. "This cannot be what Jackson called spirits," said I. "No one can drink this—what can it be?" Although ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... whole body, the room seemed to reel; she pressed her hands more tightly to her eyes, as if to shut out the sight of him, and the next instant all was dark, and she pitched heavily forward into the arms ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... She minds her dairy, While I go a-hoeing and mowing each morn. Merrily runs the reel And the little spinning-wheel While I am singing and mowing ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... blushing shyly. And later on he had a sketch he prized very much: Connie sitting on the stool before the wheel, her flowing mane of red hair on her rusty black frock, her red mouth shut and serious, running the scarlet thread off the hank on to the reel. ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... windy gust, Rise and reel like dancing girls, Float like strange transparent pearls, Fall ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... into the eyes of the latter, as he replied: "de Soto, my imagination is not—" when suddenly the roar of cannonading again commenced, drowning the remainder of the sentence. Then came a shock that made the stately vessel reel throughout the whole of her massive fabric. There was a rending and grinding of timber, and a frightful crash on deck announced that one of the masts had ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... Speed, "you don't mean to say you are going to read it right off the reel, like that, when we have been bothering ourselves with it so long, and ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr
... seem to see the square most readily in the Scotch mist which so often filled it, loosening the stones and choking the drains. There was then no rattle of rain against my window-sill, nor dancing of diamond drops on the roofs, but blobs of water grew on the panes of glass to reel heavily down them. Then the sodden square would have shed abundant tears if you could have taken it in your hands and wrung it like a dripping cloth. At such a time the square would be empty but for one vegetable-cart left in the care of a lean collie, which, tied ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... was weighed. There was no breath of wind from any quarter, so that it was necessary to lower boats and tow the old girl out to her field of duty. Before she was fairly clear of the harbour, though, there came a "snifter" from the hills that caught her unprepared, making her reel again, and giving us a desperate few minutes to scramble on board and hoist our boats up. As we drew out from the land, we found that a moderate gale was blowing, but the sky was clear, fathomless blue, the sun rose kindly, a heavenly dream of ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... cross between a news reel moving picture theatre and a real estate broker's office. There is a projection room, a small moving picture machine, and an extensive file of films of various properties that are on the market. Here the prospective buyer is shown shorts of all those listed with that ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... heartily to that Being whose existence they were before hardly willing to acknowledge. I can give you no better description of the scene than is found in the Psalm, which is so often quoted by those who are at sea; for the ship did indeed "reel to and fro ...
— Hurrah for New England! - The Virginia Boy's Vacation • Louisa C. Tuthill
... whence, as Gavinia said, Miss Ailie produced the presents she gave to Mr. McLean, stood near the door of the blue-and-white room, with a reel of thread between, to keep them apart forever. Except on washing days it was of a genteel appearance, for though but a wooden kist, it had a gay outer garment with frills, which Gavinia starched, and beneath this was apparel ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... Thus, with the touch of nimble fingers on the ivory keys and the tap of feet and the whirl of skirts over the unwaxed floor, mingled with jest and mirth, the evening passed gayly on, the old-fashioned Virginia reel closing the ball and bringing the day's busy reign of festivity ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... through wood and wild, Far from his lordly home, to be Lord of the forest's fairest child." It was as when a thunder peal Bursts, crashing from a cloudless sky, It caused my brain and heart to reel And throb, with speechless agony: Yet, when wild Passion's trance was o'er, And Thought resumed her sway once more, I breathed a prayer that she might be Saved from the pangs that tortured me; That her young heart might never prove The sting of unrequited love. My task ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... sixth form at Rugby when he was only thirteen years old. He was a brilliant scholar at Balliol, but had been compelled to give up study and leave the University temporarily owing to brain trouble. He never published anything, but would reel off brilliant short poems or essays for friends at a moment's notice. I used always to remark that in whatever company he was, he was always deferred to as an authority in anything approaching classics. He could read and quote ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... as he spoke, but in trying to keep his balance, removed his hand from his side. A torrent of blood gushed forth, and dyed the ground a scarlet hue; he strove to keep upon his feet, but his strength was ebbing fast, and with a reel and lurch, like some strong ship before foundering, he fell to the ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... old-fashioned Virginia reel. We had cider and apples and cake and pie for our treat and we went home at ten o'clock! David walked home with me in the moonlight and I guess we liked each other from the first. We were married the next year, then ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... drive to the village came the trip up the stream to trout-pools. Gwendolyn's father led the way with basket and reel. She trotted at his heels. And beside Gwendolyn ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... mak' de speech—ole Cure Ladouceur! He say de girl was spark de boy too much on some cornerre— An' so he's tole Bateese play up ole fashion reel a quatre An' every body she mus' dance, dey can't get ...
— The Habitant and Other French-Canadian Poems • William Henry Drummond
... ["I could reel out such a list of notorious Yorkshire criminals ... as would put every other county utterly out of the running."—Extract from recent letter to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... girl and, with obvious intent, pictured to her mind's eye a warrior stricken and left unburied or uncared for on the field. Whatever his reasons, he stabbed and meant to stab, and for just one moment she seemed almost to droop and reel in saddle; then, with splendid rally, straightened up again, her eyes flashing, her lip curling in scorn, and with one brief, emphatic phrase ended the interview and, whirling Harney about, smote him sharply with ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... taste my pleasures through thy lips, To sail with thee o'er foaming waves and feel Our spirits rise together with the reel Of waters and the wavering land's eclipse; To see thy fair hair damp with salt sea-spray And in thine eyes ...
— A Woman's Love Letters • Sophie M. Almon-Hensley
... Almanac," and disapproved of the aimless way in which I had been bred. He began to suggest the desirableness of my learning to do something to make a living. I thought of certain mechanical tastes which had moved me in former years to whittle and to make a reel on which to wind yarn, and to mend things generally. So I replied that I thought the trade of a carpenter was the one I could most easily learn. He approved of the idea, and expressed the intention of finding a carpenter who would want my services; but before he did so, I was started ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... it was only a scrap of paper. If there was any treaty binding Britain with Teutonism it is, to say the least of it, a lost scrap of paper—almost what one might call a scrap of waste paper. Here again the pedants under consideration exhibit the illogical perversity that makes the brain reel. There is obligation and there is no obligation; sometimes it appears that Germany and England must keep faith with each other; sometimes that Germany need not keep faith with anybody and anything; sometimes that we, alone among European peoples, are almost entitled to be ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... one moment that there was any danger of my becoming a Cicero or any other Latin worthy I'd go drown myself!" Van cried, startled at the mere thought. "I'm not so worse, though, am I? I'd no idea I could reel it off like that." ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... said, "will be back on the afternoon you receive this. Will hit the town on the three o'clock boat. Get seats for the best show going—my treat—and arrange to assimilate nutriment at the Poodle Dog—also mine. I've got miles of talk in me that I've got to reel off before midnight. ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... expressed an alarm that was more than half simulated, and the task of manoeuvring her into position beside the mounting block, was comparable only to an endeavour to extract a kitten from under a bed with the lure of a reel of cotton. An apple took the place of the reel of cotton, and its consumption afforded Christian just time enough to settle herself in her saddle. Since the days of Harry the Residue Christian had ridden many and various horses, and she ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... where the wheat stood straight, but also where it had become tangled and beaten down by wind and rain. In 1831, he produced his first practicable machine, making every part of it himself by hand. Its three essential features have never been changed—a vibrating cutting-blade, a reel to bring the grain within reach of the blade, and a platform to receive the falling grain. The ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... himself, because the smaller ship can run close ashore to explore. To keep up the spirits of the men, there is much merrymaking. Becalmed off Cape Breton, Sir Humphrey visits the big ship Delight, where the trumpets and the drums and the pipes and the cornets reel off wild sailor jigs. "There was," says the old record, "little watching for danger." Wednesday, August 26, the sounding line forewarned the reefs of Sable Island. Breakers were sighted. The Delight ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... notorious profligacy of his character; nothing of the reckless extravagance with which he has wasted an ample fortune; nothing of the disgusting intemperance which has sometimes caused him to reel in our streets;—but I aver that he has not been faithful to our interests,—has not exhibited either probity or ability in the important office which ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... beauty. The usual design consists of a dado of upright slabs surmounted by panelling to the cornice level, the panels being outlined with plain or carved beads. In the Diaconissa the notched dentil form is used for the beads; in the Chora, a 'bead and reel.' The arches have radiating voussoirs, or, in the Diaconissa, a zigzag embattled design, found also in S. Demetrius of Salonica, though two hundred years must have separated the buildings. In the Chora the arch spandrils and cornice are inlaid with scroll and geometrical designs ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... the wireless operator, has the wireless apparatus fitted about his seat. This consists of a receiver and transmitter fitted inside the car, which derives power from accumulator batteries. The aerial reel is fitted outside the car. During patrols signals can be sent and received up to and ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... amazedly have seen Essex's great fall, Tyrone his peace to gain, The quiet end of that long living Queen, This King's fair entrance, and our peace with Spain, We and the Dutch at length ourselves to sever; Thus the world doth and evermore shall reel; Yet to my goddess am I constant ever, Howe'er blind Fortune turn her giddy wheel; Though heaven and earth prove both to me untrue, Yet am I still ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... while the smoke cut deeper into protesting lungs, in spite of every effort to evade it, while Old Andy on the engine seat twisted and writhed with the agony of fading breath, at last to reel from his position and stumble about in the throes of suffocation. At last, from ahead, came the welcome signal, the three long-drawn-out blasts, and the engineer waved ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... for Maudina, too. Being, as I said, kind of green concerning men folks, and likewise taking to poetry like a cat to fish, she just fairly gushed over this fraud. She'd reel off a couple of fathom of verses from fellers named Spencer or Waller, or such like, and he'd never turn a hair, but back he'd come and say they was good, but he preferred Confucius, or Methuselah, or ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... that, another time another way. Fact is, I got off a little speech by heart, but I never got a chance to reel it off, so I made up my mind to just ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... farmer, meditatively, "I remember when them bunnits was considered reel hahnsome. Marm Lucy had one when she was a gal; I mind it right well. A white straw it was, with blue ribbons on top of it. It come close round her pooty face, an' I used to hev to sidle along and get round in front of her before I could get a look at her. ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... itself was a great success; the supper in the marquee, with the romp to follow, was even a greater. Moncrieff himself opened the fun with Aunt Cecilia as a partner, Donald and a charming Spanish girl completing the quartette necessary for a real Highland reel. The piper played, of course (guitars were not good enough for this sort of thing), and I think we must have kept that first 'hoolichin' up for nearly twenty minutes. Then Moncrieff and aunt were fain ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... burning in the various places, just seized the opportunity to run out and hide himself, when he unawares rushed, head foremost, into lady Feng's arms. Lady Feng speedily raised her hand and gave him such a slap on the face that she made the young fellow reel over and perform a somersault. "You boorish young bastard!" she shouted, "where are ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... plain; I draw deep breaths of the dawn and thunder, And the whole of my heart grows young again. For our Chiefs said "Done," and I did not deem it; Our Seers said "Peace," and it was not peace; Earth will grow worse till men redeem it, And wars more evil, ere all wars cease. But the old flags reel and the old drums rattle. As once in my life they throbbed and reeled; I have found ray youth in the lost battle, I have found my heart on the battlefield. For we that fight till the world is free, We are not easy in victory: We have known each other too long, my brother, And fought each other, ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... and looked at her wistfully in pity for the little weak figure that would reel beneath the blow of ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... cover the water, and a longer rod requires in the fisherman the strength of a SANDOW. You need wading-breeches, which come up nearly to the neck, and weigh a couple of stone. The question has been raised, can one swim in them, in case of an accident? For one, I can answer, he can't. The reel is about the size of a butter-keg, the line measures hundreds of yards, and the place where you fish for salmon is usually at the utter ends of the earth. Some enthusiasts begin in February. Covered with furs, they sit in the stern of a boat, and are pulled in a funereal manner up and down Loch ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... Jupiter will have his way, despite how much we worry,— Some will hang on for many a day, and some die in a hurry. The wisest thing for you to do is to embark this diem Upon a merry escapade with some such bard as I am. And while we sport I'll reel you off such odes as shall surprise ye; To-morrow, when the headache ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... It's what the English call the Virginia Reel. But why do you ask? I thought we were talking about your reading. I don't see how you could get an old file of a daily newspaper, but if it amuses ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... figures about the doorway, they were tittering to each other in some tongue I did not know, a strange sound like the rasping of corn husks under squeaking wagon wheels. Suddenly the whole palace shook terribly, the floor seemed to reel, an unbearable sound raged at my ears. I cringed from the pain of the sound. When I opened my eyes, the whole mass of the Jivro medicals was jammed in the doorway, struggling to get over each other, and the squeaking and rasping increased into a bedlam of sound. I laughed, a deep "ha ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... Another stroke he lent him on the brow, So great that loudly rung the sounding steel; Yet pierced he not the helmet with the blow, Although the owner twice or thrice did reel. The prince, whose looks disdainful anger show, Now meant to use his puissance every deal, He shaked his head and crashed his teeth for ire, His lips breathed ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... long been silent That could send an answer back; And the spur, all broken and rusted, Has forgotten its rider's track! I only know that the pulses Leap hot, and the senses reel, When I think that the Spur of Monmouth May have clasped ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... thicket of blossoming pomegranate darkening on a sunburst of creamy dogwood, or a wild fig-tree sending its roots down to drink, with a sweet-scented and gorgeous epiphyte weaving a flowery enchantment about-them, and making the whole atmosphere reel with richness. But all this verdant beauty, the lush luxuriance of grape-vines, of dark myrtle-masses, of swinging curtains of convolvuli almost brushing her head as she floated by,—nothing of this was new to Flor, nothing precious; she could have given all the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... to Galileo's judgement ow), The palsie earth it self is every jot As frail, inconstant, waveing, as that blot We lay upon the deep, that sometimes lies Chang'd, you would think, with 's botoms properties; But this eternal, strange Ixion's wheel Of giddy earth ne'er whirling leaves to reel, Till all things are inverted, till they are Turn'd to that antick ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... lay back in the cushions of her invalid chair in the sun parlor of the great Blake mansion on Riverside Drive, facing the Hudson with its continuous reel of maritime life framed against the green-hilled background ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... Davis in the cross-trees, the lagoon continued to expand its empty waters, and the long succession of the shore-side trees to be paid out like fishing line off a reel. And still there was no mark of habitation. The schooner, immediately on entering, had been kept away to the nor'ard where the water seemed to be the most deep; and she was now skimming past the tall grove of trees, which stood on that side of the channel and denied further view. Of the ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... banished me on pain of death, and the constables led me onward from village to village, toward the wilderness. A strong and cruel hand was wielding the knotted cords; they sunk deep into the flesh, and thou mightst have tracked every reel and totter of my footsteps by the blood that followed. As ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... replied, "You bet! The playin' 's reel nice, and good 'nough fer anybody—outside o' ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... a creature in this condition, or ask explanations or apologies from him, was absurd. I left Mr. Will to reel to his lodgings under the care of his young friends—who were surprised to find an old toper so suddenly affected and so utterly prostrated by liquor—and limped home to my wife, whom I found happy ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... spider, Fairhurst quotes the following from Orton's "Zoology." "Spiders are provided at the posterior end with two or three pairs of appendages called spinnerets, which are homologous (correspond structually) [tr. note: sic] with legs. The office of the spinnerets is to reel out the silk from the silk-glands, the tip being perforated by a myriad of little tubes through which the silk escapes in excessively fine threads. An ordinary thread, just visible to the naked eye, is the union of a thousand or more of these delicate streams ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... new thought made him reel backward. Was the entire American army marching away from camp, leaving him behind who ...
— A Little Dusky Hero • Harriet T. Comstock
... particularly why my pulse beat such a furious ratan, when I looked and fingered over her little hand to pick out the cruel nettle-stings and thistles. Among her other love-inspiring qualities, she sung sweetly; and it was her favourite reel to which I attempted giving an embodied vehicle in rhyme. I was not so presumptuous as to imagine that I could make verses like printed ones, composed by men who had Greek and Latin; but my girl sung a song which was said to be composed by a small country laird's son, on one of his father's ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... third, the young heir and his party passed down the whole length of the room, and retired through an upper door. As soon as they were gone the negro fiddlers, six in number, led by Jovial, entered, took their seats, tuned their instruments, and struck up a lively reel. ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... you been to see little sister?—Anne Lewis, you know. Mother said she was to be my little sister—and I must be good to her. She's a number one little chap. Can throw a ball straight and can reel off dandy tales that she makes up herself. Don't you ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... glancing up at that moment, I saw the French flag still flying. Believing that the only way to avoid the catastrophe was to haul it down, followed by Toby, I ran aft to do so. I was too late. The Frenchmen fired, and another crushing broadside struck the lugger, and made her reel with the shock. The companion-hatch was knocked to pieces. We should have been killed had we remained at ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... All its motions seem to indicate and, to be regulated by the utmost delicacy of sentiment! I have placed it between the highest sentiment of the human mind, sublmity, that no rules can teach, and the highest sentiment that rules can teach, exact beauty, the two extremes of the vrai reel and the vrai ideal. Grace seems, as it were, to hang between the influence of both; the irregular sublime giving character and relief to the negative and determined qualities of beauty; and beauty, i.e. truth, confining within due bounds the eccentric qualities of sublimity, ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste, and of the Origin of - our Ideas of Beauty, etc. • Frances Reynolds
... exquisite that sobs rose in his throat and choked him. Perspiration matted his hair; every breath he took was a knife thrust, and the rise and fall of the horse, gentle as it was, caused the earth to reel and ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... magnetic tape. See also {macrotape}. Modern cartridge tapes no longer actually flap, but the usage has remained. (The term could well be re-applied to DEC's TK50 cartridge tape drive, a spectacularly misengineered contraption which makes a loud flapping sound, almost like an old reel-type lawnmower, in one of ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... adversary is down—backward, on his elbows. Then the penniless man is up again; they close and struggle, the night-watchman's club falls across his enemy's head blow upon blow, while the sufferer grasps him desperately, with both hands, by the throat. They tug, they snuffle, they reel to and fro in the yielding crowd; the blows grow fainter, fainter; the grip is terrible; when suddenly there is a violent rupture of the crowd, it closes again, and then there are two against one, and up sparkling St. Charles street, the street of all streets for flagrant, ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... without a flaw or mistake in the execution of the work she had struggled so hard to teach them, the first scene of the first act drew to its close, and Margaret struck the final chords of the music and felt that in another minute she must reel and fall from that piano-stool. And yet she sat and watched the curtain fall with a face as controlled as if nothing at all were ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... my enthusiastic admiration. Results obtained by you in so short a time make my head reel. ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... make her senses reel, This mystery, or dim her zeal, Till by degrees she seems to feel Her broken lot; She roams aloof, she grows depressed; And then, her broody sorrow guessed, Men lure her to a well-filled nest ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various
... name, In him are blended portents three, Their glories blended sung shall be: There's Oswain, meteor of the glen, The head of princely generous men; Owain the lord of trenchant steel, Who makes the hostile squadrons reel; Owain, besides, of warlike look, A conqueror who no stay will brook; Hail to the lion leader gay! Marshaller of Griffith's war array; The scourger of the flattering race, For them a dagger has his face; Each traitor false he loves to smite, ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... sweeps round to the nightward; and heavy and hard the waves Roll in on the herd of the hurtling galleons; and masters and slaves Reel blind in the grasp of the dark strong wind that shall dig ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne |
