"Skein" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rising tide lapped up the sands at the back of the Bar. The faint yellow-pink after-thought of sunrise and pencillings of tarnished cloud alike had vanished into the all-obtaining misty blue of the upper sky. Heading for the French coast, a skein of wild geese passed in wedge-shaped formation with honking cries and the beat of strong-winged flight. The barrow creaked again, wheeled some few yards further along ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
 Read full book for free!
... In the first place, the work is not scientific, facts are not "observed and noted with scrupulous care," and conclusions are drawn without warranted data to support them. On the whole then, one must say that this work fails to unravel some "knots in this tangled skein of human endeavor and error." When after a survey of the history of the Negro during the last fifty years an investigator concludes that the Negro has shown an incapacity for commerce and finance, and that he must not struggle to equip himself in ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
Read full book for free!
... sleeping-nights that come only to the town-tired when they have first fled. She ran to the glass to know if the restoration she felt might also be seen. With unbiassed calculation the black-fringed lids drew apart and one hand pushed back of the temple, and held there, a tangled skein of hair that had thrown the dusk of a deep wood about her eyes. Then, as she looked, came the little dreaming smile that unfitted critic eyes for their office; a smile that wakened to a laugh as she looked—a little womanish ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
Read full book for free!
... Dangerfield Hall"? How my fingers trembled as I untied the thread and unfolded the paper; after all, it was nothing but a packet of worsteds! To be sure, I hadn't ordered any worsteds, but there might possibly be a note to explain; so I shook every skein carefully, and turned the covering inside out, that the document, if there should be one, might not escape my vigilance. How could my presentiments deceive me? Of course there was a note—after all, where was the harm? Captain Lovell had most politely sent me all these worsteds for ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
Read full book for free!
... lurking fiends which, in times of peace and order, society spurns.... Every one of us is entangled in the tentacles of the octopus. Every one of us discovers in himself the same confusion of good and of bad impulses, knotted and intertwined. A tangled skein. Who shall unravel it?... Thence comes the feeling of inexorable fate by which, in such crises, men are overwhelmed. Nevertheless this feeling derives merely from their own despondency in face of the efforts necessary to free themselves, efforts manifold ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
Read full book for free!
... Mr. Crawford in the construction of a complicated plot and the skilful unravelling of the tangled skein."—Chicago Record-Herald. ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
Read full book for free!
... man of her own order that went about distributing wool to spin for his master, a wool-monger. Love being thus, with the pleasant image of her beloved Pasquino, admitted into her soul, mightily did she yearn, albeit she hazarded no advance, and heaved a thousand sighs fiercer than fire with every skein of yarn that she wound upon her spindle, while she called to mind who he was that had given her that wool to spin. Pasquino on his part became, meanwhile, very anxious that his master's wool should be well spun, and most particularly about that which ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
Read full book for free!
... are." Cleek's voice was absent-minded, for his thoughts were working, and already he was beginning to tie the broken threads of the skein that he had gathered into a rough cord, with here and there a gap that must—and should—be filled. It was strange enough, in all conscience. Here were these underground tunnels leading, "if you kept to the right," from a field out Saltfleet way, to ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
Read full book for free!
... of some gay young lieutenant of the regiment Carignan-Salieres, who came out with De Tracy, or Courcelles. An amour with the daughter of a habitant,—a name taken at random,—who can unravel the skein? But here's the old thread of chivalry running through all the tangles, tarnished ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
Read full book for free!
... the swan, Pale, sad memories, gleaming wan From the garment's purple fold Where Troy's tale is twined and told. Well may Helen, as with tender Touch of rosy fingers slender She doth knit the story in Of Troy's sorrow and her sin, Feel sharp filaments of pain Reeled off with the well-spun skein, And faint blood-stains on her hands From the shifting sanguine strands. Gently, sweetly she doth sorrow: What has been must be to-morrow; Meekly to her fate she bows. Heavenly beauties still will rouse Strife and savagery in men: Shall the lucid ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
Read full book for free!
... cords of silk the whirling spoles reveal, If smiling Fortune turn the giddy wheel; But if sweet Love with baby-fingers twines, 130 And wets with dewy lips the lengthening lines, Skein after skein celestial tints unfold, And all the silken tissue shines ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
Read full book for free!
... we were at table everybody suddenly stood up, my mother and myself reverently with the rest, when the whole company drank my health, and I collapsed down into my chair as red and as limp as a skein of scarlet wool, and my mother with some confusion expressed my obligation and her own surprise at the compliment. I talked a good deal to Captain Shelley, who is a nice lad, and, considering his beauty, and the admiration ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
Read full book for free!
... organ-grinders, playing interminably under your window; and a man with a bassoon and a monkey, who takes your pennies and pulls off his cap in acknowledgment; and wandering minstrels, with guitar and voice; and a Highland bagpipe, squealing out a tangled skein of discord, together with a Highland maid, who dances a hornpipe; and Punch and Judy,—in a word, we have specimens of all manner of vagrancy that infests England. In these long days, and long and pleasant ones, the promenade is at its liveliest about ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
Read full book for free!
... tangled skein of politics and party principles. This Boer farmer was a very typical character, and represented to my mind all that was best and noblest in the African Dutch character. Supposing he had been conducting Mr. Morley to Pretoria, not as a prisoner of war, but ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
Read full book for free!
... wind that weaves; it is a multitude of small spiders. Here is one close to my face, out at the tip of a slender grass-stem, holding on with its fore legs and kicking out backward with its hind legs a tiny skein of web off into the air. The threads stream and sway and lengthen, gather and fill and billow, and tug at their anchorage till, caught in the dip of some wayward current, they lift the little aeronaut from his hangar and bear him away ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
Read full book for free!
... he was regarded by superior persons as a writer of "shockers," he had a large and increasing public who were fascinated by the wholesome and thrilling stories he wrote, and who held on breathlessly to the skein of mystery until they came to the denouement ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
Read full book for free!
... of her small white hands, those splendid threads whose naturally ardent brightness was doubled in the sunshine. When the pretty lady's-maid pulled a comb of ivory into the midst of the undulating and golden waves of that enormously magnificent skein of silk, one might have said that a thousand sparks of fire darted forth and coruscated away from it in all directions. The sunshine, too, reflected not less golden and fiery rays from numerous clusters of spiral ringlets, which, divided upon Adrienne's forehead, fell ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
Read full book for free!
... not surprising that the ancients gave up the exploration of the Nile when they came to the countless windings and difficulties of the marshes; the river is like an entangled skein of thread. Wind light; course S. 20 degrees W. The strong north wind that took us from Khartoum has long since become a mere breath. It never blows in this latitude regularly from the north. The wind commences at between 8 and 9 A.M., and sinks at sunset; thus the ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
Read full book for free!
... had flung out a skein of broken threads to the wind of Chance. In mid September she chose to ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
Read full book for free!
... awoke, she related all the particulars of her ill-omened vision to her husband; and the latter, after a short pause, informed her and his friend that a terrible calamity was about to befall them. He then drew from his travelling wallet a skein of thread. This he divided into three parts, one for each, and told his companions that in case of grievous bodily injury, the bit of thread wound round the wounded part would instantly make it whole. After which he taught them the Mantra,[FN158] or mystical word ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
Read full book for free!
... skein I have made of my yarn, While Susan's arranging and changing the plates, And running all round old Robin Hood's barn, Like puzzles at school that we made on our slates; But talking of puzzles, no one that we made, While playing the fool we played as a ...
— Nothing to Eat • Horatio Alger [supposed]
Read full book for free!
... Knapp. And she? I hoped and feared, and ran over in my mind every incident of my later visits that might tell in what regard I was held—the tones, the words, the manner, that ran from deep interest to indifference. And trying to untangle the skein, I was a good deal startled to feel a touch on my arm ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
Read full book for free!
... another way. It was jus' as clear, to look through, but it was another case altogether, no more like the other one than a apple-pie is like a mug o' cider. An' then they both took it up, an' they swung it around between them, till it was all twisted an' knotted an' wound up, an' tangled, worse than a skein o' yarn in a nest o' kittens, an' then they ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
Read full book for free!
... the hill, where it hung out its sign, in company with several others of the same character, which professed to supply all the wants of the community. Here everything was to be had from a gallon of molasses to a skein of thread, or a quintal of codfish, to a pound of nails. On one side, as you entered, were ranges of shelves, protected by a counter, on which were exposed rolls of flannels of divers colors, and calico and broadcloth, and other "dry goods," ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
Read full book for free!
... the direction of his religious experiences, he has his axioms, his common-sense formulas, his irreproachable coolness, and, at times, a noisy show of distrust, under which it is easy to see an eager groping after the ends of that great tangled skein of thought within, which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
Read full book for free!
... interest the reader, but rather in the successive steps whereby his analytic observer is enabled to solve a problem that might well be dismist as beyond human elucidation. Attention is centered on the unraveling of the tangled skein rather than on the knot itself. The emotion aroused is not mere surprize, it is recognition of the unsuspected capabilities of the human brain; it is not a wondering curiosity as to an airless mechanism, but a heightening admiration for the analytic acumen capable ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
Read full book for free!
... with a big lump in her throat. She had not meant to rebel openly, but she had lost her temper, and the words had flashed out. Beatrice's threat alarmed her. Through all the tangled skein of Gwen's character there ran, like a thread of pure gold, the intense passionate love for her father, and the desire to preserve his good opinion. She could not bear to see the grieved look that came into his ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
Read full book for free!
... Priscilla the spinner!" Straight uprose from her wheel the beautiful Puritan maiden, 885 Pleased with the praise of her thrift from him whose praise was the sweetest, Drew from the reel on the table a snowy skein of her spinning, Thus making answer, meanwhile, to the flattering phrases of Alden: "Come, you must not be idle; if I am a pattern for housewives, Show yourself equally worthy of being the model of husbands. 890 Hold this skein on your hands, ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
Read full book for free!
... of tangled floss they lie, (You always said they should have been a girl's.) The tears will come—you cannot quite tell why— They fall unheeded on that mass—his curls. Poor little silken skein, so dear to you. "'Twere better short," the wiser father said, "He's getting older now."—Alas, how true! And yet you wonder where the years ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
Read full book for free!
... drifts the fallen skein Of some tired spider, looped and blown, As fragile as a strand of rain, Across the air, and upward thrown By breaths of hayfields newly mown— So glimmering it is and fine, I doubt these ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
Read full book for free!
... at the clear night above the hills, and to listen to the very distant music, and to wonder whether or not, in this strange southern country, there might not be snakes gliding about in the undergrowth. Caught in such a skein of influence I was soothed and ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
Read full book for free!
... it cost seven shillings and six-pence," replied Nicholas, pulling out, not a skein of blue silk, but a yard of ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
Read full book for free!
... Germany possesses a special talent for adding new complications to a difficult situation, so as to render it impossible of solution. He has now so completely tangled up the parliamentary skein, that in a little while it will be impossible for Parliament to govern. Can one conceive of a majority of the Chamber rallying around the Catholic centre, or the socialists, for the same reason, increasing in number at the bye-elections? In such ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
Read full book for free!
... flatness and its white paint. Then down the wind came the boom of the great stanchion-gun; and after that sound another sound, louder as it neared; a cry as of all the bells of Cambridge, and all the hounds of Cottesmore; and overhead rushed and whirled the skein of terrified wild-fowl, screaming, piping, clacking, croaking, filling the air with the hoarse rattle of their wings, while clear above all sounded the wild whistle of the curlew, and the trumpet note of the great ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
Read full book for free!
... because you have interrupted me. Ah! there, you have tangled my hair. How provoking you are! It will take me an hour to put it right. You are not satisfied with being a prodigy of impiety, but you must also tangle my hair. Come, hold out your hands and take this skein of wool. ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
Read full book for free!
... did foes more deadly wait Than Saladin's fierce crew. The lamp of love Was changed for one of hate, which threw Its false and fatal skein of light above. A shuddering shock, a fearful ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
Read full book for free!
... fowl or turkey for your dinner. On such occasions I would recommend the following method:—First, draw the fowl, reserving the gizzard and liver to be tucked under the wings; truss the fowl with skewers, and tie it to the end of a skein of worsted, which is to be fastened to a nail stuck in the chimney-piece, so that the fowl may dangle rather close to the fire, in order to roast it. Baste the fowl, while it is being roasted, with butter, or some kind of grease, and when nearly done, sprinkle it with a little flour and salt, ...
— A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes • Charles Elme Francatelli
Read full book for free!
... something like the eye of a needle so that any knots or rough places can be detected. If the threads are found to be strong and without flaws two to half a dozen of them are put together in a loose skein and they are twisted in a doubling machine. Afterward the thread is polished, cleaned, and run off on spools or bobbins. That is the road Mother's spools of cotton have to travel before they get to her. How seldom we think of this or ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
Read full book for free!
... on a white background in a good light. Select, as a test color, a skein of light green color, such as would be obtained by mixing a pure green with white. Ask the examinee to select and pick out from the heap all those skeins which appear to him to be of the same color, whether of lighter or darker shades. A color-blind person will select amongst others some of ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
Read full book for free!
... a ball of yarn, with which kittens have been making cobwebs, has always seemed to me a much easier task than to unknot the tangled skein of confused influences, that trip up our feet at every step in life's path. Here was I, who but a month ago had a supreme contempt for guile and a lofty confidence in uprightness and downrightness, transformed into a crafty trader with all the villainous tricks of the bargain-maker ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
Read full book for free!
... their gossamer bands, Unite, like love, the sea-divided lands, And slowly, thread by thread, Draw forth the folded strands, Than which the trembling line, By whose frail help yon startled spider fled Down the tall spear-grass from his swinging bed, Is scarce more fine; And as the tangled skein Unravels in my hands, Betwixt me and the noonday light, A veil seems lifted, and for miles and miles The landscape broadens on my sight, As, in the little boll, there lurked a spell Like that which, in the ocean shell, With mystic sound, Breaks down the narrow walls that hem us round, And turns ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
Read full book for free!
... mockery. He is said to have found fault with the man formed by Hephaestus, because a little door had not been left in his breast, so as to enable his fellows to look into his secret thoughts." (See Lucian's Hermotimus, cap. xx.) There was a proverb, [Greek: To| Mo/mo| a)re/skein] Momo santisfacere; vide Adagia Variorum, 1643, p. 58. Byron describes Suwarrow as "Now Mars, now Momus" (Don Juan, Canto ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
Read full book for free!
... now, the Busking was apace, And soon, from every corner place The girls came with the skein of their own making To wind up ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
Read full book for free!
... First he exchanged a few cents for a tin pan to be filled with water and placed on top of the stove, for the comfort of Virginia who had been oppressed by the dry heat. Then a few cents more went for two buttons his coat lacked, a skein of thread to sew them on with, and a skein of silk with which Virginia would mend a rent in his trousers made by too close contact with a nail ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
Read full book for free!
... Cecil Rhodes for wishing to present the Boer side of the case. It would, indeed, have been wiser on the part of Mr. Hofmeyr and other Bond leaders to have forgotten the past and given a friendly hand to the one man capable of unravelling the tangled skein of affairs. ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
Read full book for free!
... to reign? Is my White Rose King still abroad in Burgundy?' And as Sir Giles replied to each inquiry in turn, and told all he could of political matters, she exclaimed: 'Ah! that is better than the hearing whether the black hen hath laid an egg, or the skein of yellow silk matches. I am weary, O! I am weary. Moreover, young Hal, I know as matters are that could I see George Nevil face to face I could do somewhat with him, and I laid my plans to obtain a meeting, but therewith, what with vexation and weariness and ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
Read full book for free!
... chance to work here," laughed his uncle. "There is variety enough to please you, too. We have throwing mills; a place where we dye silk in the skein; a winding and weaving plant; another plant for dyeing goods in the piece; and a big printing and finishing plant. If you do not find something to suit you by the time you have worked through all these it will be your own fault. Of course women have the monopoly of certain ...
— The Story of Silk • Sara Ware Bassett
Read full book for free!
... shone like heaps of rubies at his feet. Wonderful birds and butterflies were darting hither and thither amongst the loveliest flowers. And on a grassy nook not far from a waterfall he perceived some white marble steps on which two little girls sat. The one was holding a great skein of wool, and the other was winding it. There was a great heap of wool of all ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
Read full book for free!
... whisper: "There our cuckoo clock used to hang, and there our father's discharge from the army. And there the hanks of yarn that mother spun used to hang—she could spin even better than Black Marianne—Black Marianne has said so herself. She always got a skein more out of a pound than anybody else, and it was always so even—not a knot in it. And do you see that ring up there on the ceiling? It was beautiful to see her twisting the threads there. If I had been old enough to know then, I ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
Read full book for free!
... a mortal like the barbarians, for you have been a force ruling the sea, and the flowers, and the winds, and twisting the blood of man and woman in your fingers like a living skein of soft red silk. They will always worship you. It may not be in temples any longer, not with a studied liturgy, but wherever the sap rises in a flower, or the joy of life swims up in the morning through the broken film of dreams, or a young man perceives ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
Read full book for free!
... heir obey weight bare their prey freight fare there weigh neigh hair where sleigh veins fair stair reign whey chair pear skein rein pair ...
— How to Teach Phonics • Lida M. Williams
Read full book for free!
... you." But Violet's sisters could no longer bear this behaviour, and they plotted together how to get rid of her. Now, one of the windows looked into the garden of an ogre, so they proposed to drive the poor girl away through this; and letting fall from it a skein of thread with which they were working a door-curtain for the queen, they cried, "Alas! alas! we are ruined and shall not be able to finish the work in time, if Violet, who is the smallest and lightest of us, does not let herself ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
Read full book for free!
... and the Mississippi's flow to the man in Kansas. But the American kept thinking about it; and he wanted the Kansans to think about it, too. When he was about to meet Sir John Jellicoe he envisaged the tall column in Trafalgar Square, surmounted by the one-armed figure turned toward the wireless skein on ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
Read full book for free!
... to one than to the other, so that the reader, carried away by the evident legitimacy of many of your claims, may say to himself, "Really all that is very just." Let us unravel if you please this skein of red worsted so ingeniously tangled. The vote of the Communal budget, receipts and expenses, the levying and division of taxes, the administration of the Communal property, are rights which certainly belong to the Commune; if it had not got them ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
Read full book for free!
... paper will convince us of the weakness of the other. Decay appears to have seized on the organ of popular government in every land; and this just at the moment when we begin to bring to it, as to an oracle of justice, the whole skein of our private affairs to be unravelled, and ask it, like a new Messiah, to take upon itself our frailties and play for us the part that should be played by our own virtues. For that, in few words, is the case. We cannot trust ourselves to behave with decency; we cannot trust our consciences; and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
Read full book for free!
... stands on a high hilltop above the city, gazing across at Monte Rosa and lifting its own fine dome against the sky with no contemptible art. But when you have seen the Superga from the quay beside the Po, a skein of a few yellow threads in August, despite its frequent habit of rising high and running wild, and said to yourself that in architecture position is half the battle, you have nothing left to visit but the Museum of pictures. The Turin ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
Read full book for free!
... to rain it back on him some day," cried Don Ippolito with willful levity, and the stream leaped into the moonlight and seemed to hang there like a tangled skein of silver. "But how shall I shut it off when you are gone?" asked the young girl, looking ruefully at the floating threads ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
Read full book for free!
... of potash, and then with water, and after drying dipped them in the acids. The acid mixture used consisted of 3 parts by weight of sulphuric to 1 part of nitric acid, and were prepared some time before use. The cotton was dipped one skein at a time, stirred for a few minutes, pressed out, steeped, and excess of acid removed by washing with water, then with dilute potash, and finally with water. Von Lenk's process was used in England at Faversham (Messrs Hall's Works), but was given up on account of ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
Read full book for free!
... a skein of yarn for Aunt Lois; and she went on winding in silence, putting the ball through loops and ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
Read full book for free!
... days his brain was a swarm of paradoxes, subtleties and hair-splittings, a skein of rules as complicated as the articles of the codes that involved the sense of everything, indulged in puns and ended in a most tenuous and singular celestial jurisprudence. The abstract side vanished, in its turn, ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
Read full book for free!
... opening a skein of silk, and, extending it to M. de Bois, she said: "Will you assist me? It is for Bertha I am working. Will you hold this skein? It will ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
Read full book for free!
... noticing that London had discovered the secret which made his intellectual life a torment. The streets were more than a mere assemblage of houses, London herself was more than a tangled skein of streets, and overhead heaven was more than a meeting-place of individual stars. What was this secret that made words into a book, houses into cities, and restless and measurable stars into an ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
Read full book for free!
... among the chronicles of Normans and Saxons; Stubbs no less laboriously excavated the charters of the Plantagenets; Froude hewed his path through the State papers of the Tudors; while Gardiner patiently unravelled the tangled skein of Stuart misgovernment. John Richard Green, one of the youngest of the school, took a wider subject, the continuous history of the English people. He was fortunate in writing at a time when the public was prepared to find the subject ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
Read full book for free!
... have the red dress in my trunk, but they will meddle with my other things and look at Susie's blue dress, and then roll it up in such bad wrinkles," she said to herself. "Just like they will drop a skein of feather-stitching silk and tramp it with their feet till it is very dirty. Then some girl will pick it up to sew her doll clothes, and there will not be enough ...
— Big and Little Sisters • Theodora R. Jenness
Read full book for free!
... much as I thought I did about the bigness of London, I found that morning that I never had any idea of what an everlasting town it is. It is like a skein of tangled yarn—there doesn't seem to be any end to it. Going in this way from Nelson's Monument out into the country, it was amazing to see how long it took to get there. We would go out of the busy streets into a quiet rural ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
Read full book for free!
... read little and the only subject of which, barring sport and society, they had any real knowledge, was politics, and this they vowed too fatiguing for the tropics. They preferred the language of compliment, they loved to dawdle, to hold a skein of worsted, to read a novel aloud, or "The Yellowplush Papers" or selections from "Boz"; when tired of female society, or when it was too hot to hunt or fish, they retired to the gaming tables. Anne had never dreamed that the genus man could be ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
Read full book for free!
... of needlework amongst her ladies. In the days of her disgrace and solitude, Catherine turned to her embroidery for solace and occupation. She came forth to meet the Cardinals Wolsey and Campeggio with a skein of red silk round her neck.[603] ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
Read full book for free!
... the mere postscript to the letter I have just sent away. By a few minutes too late, comes what I have all day been waiting for, ... and besides (now it is just too late!) now I may have a skein of silk if I please, to make that knot with, ... for want of which, two locks meant for you, have been devoted to the infernal gods already ... fallen into a tangle and thrown into the fire ... and all the hair of my head might have followed, for I was losing my patience and temper fast, ... and ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
Read full book for free!
... other half, which I hold in my hands at last, is finished off in the same way ... so I shall be able to see if it has a hiding-place too and what's inside it.... But look, my friend, isn't it cleverly made? And so simple! All you have to do is to take a skein of red cord and braid it round a wooden cup, leaving a little recess, a little empty space in the middle, very small, of course, but large enough to hold a medal of a saint ... or anything.... A precious stone, for ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
Read full book for free!
... yarns or skeins, these are hung on sticks resting on the edges of the tub or vat. These sticks are best made of hickory, but ash or beech or any hard wood that can be worked smooth and which does not swell much when treated with water may be used. The usual method of working is to hang the skein on the stick, spreading it out as much as possible, then immerse the yarn in the liquor, lift it up and down two or three times to fully wet out the yarn, then turn the yarn over on the stick and repeat the dipping ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
Read full book for free!
... of the People. There can, indeed, be no right conception of Washington that does not accord him a great and extraordinary genius. I will not say he could have produced a play of Shakespeare, or a poem of Milton, handled with Kant the tangled skein of metaphysics, probed the secrecies of mind and matter with Bacon, constructed a railroad or an engine like Stephenson, wooed the electric spark from heaven to earth with Franklin, or walked with Newton the pathways of the spheres. ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
Read full book for free!
... tangled skein to unravel," rejoined Mr. Percival. "I do not see how anything can be done for the sister, ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
Read full book for free!
... good-bye without more ado, and I set off for the castle, troubled for my unreadiness in woman nature, the most puzzling, calling, captivating skein in all the universe, because it holds, behind the silken veil of its treasure-house, the eternal mystery of creation, that something divine which is ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
Read full book for free!
... went and sat down on the floor before an easy-chair, through a rent in the old covering of which the hair was escaping, and drawing from her pocket a needle and a skein of worsted, she set to work to mend it. For three days past she had been waiting for an hour's time to do this piece of ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
Read full book for free!
... perforating the cliff, like bubbles in Gruyere cheese, have been occupied consecutively to the present day. Opposite to Les Eyzies, hanging like a net or skein of black thread to the face of the precipice, is a hotel, part gallery, part cave—l'Auberge du Paradis; and a notice in large capitals invites the visitor ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
Read full book for free!
... situation, I said: As you seem so well aware that you are crazy, perhaps you can inform me what caused you to become so. "Oh yes," replied he, "I can soon tell you that: first my father died, then my mother, and soon after my only sister hung herself to the limb of a tree with a skein of worsted yarn; and last, and worst of all, my wife, Dorcas Jane, drowned herself in Otter Creek." Wondering if there was any truth in this horrible story, or if it was only the creation of his own diseased mind, I said, merely ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
Read full book for free!
... pasha. His feet were bare, after the fashion of tailors who sit at work; and the first thing which caught the eye was his thumb, with a deformed nail thick and strong as a turtle's shell. About Petrovitch's neck hung a skein of silk and thread, and upon his knees lay some old garment. He had been trying unsuccessfully for three minutes to thread his needle, and was enraged at the darkness and even at the thread, growling ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
Read full book for free!
... good chances for humor, particularly the funny story, for humor with a genuine point is not trivial. But do not spin a whole skein of humorous yarns with no more connection than the inane and threadbare "And that reminds me." An anecdote without bearing may be funny but one less funny that fits theme and occasion is far preferable. There is no way, short of sheer power of speech, that so surely leads to the heart of an audience ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
Read full book for free!
... towards Guildea. Strangely enough, it was a sentiment of pity. He pitied this hard-working, eminently successful man of big brain and bold heart, who never seemed depressed, who never wanted assistance, who never complained of the twisted skein of life or faltered in his progress along its way. The Father pitied Guildea, in fact, because Guildea wanted so little. He had told him so, for the intercourse of the two men, from the ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
Read full book for free!
... malicious jades. They delight in playing ill-natured pranks upon us. Not content with spinning and measuring and cutting the threads of our lives to suit themselves, they must also tangle the skein, causing us to cut ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
Read full book for free!
... they began supper, which was already laid on a side-table. Ere they had finished there was a jerk in the fire-smoke, the rising skein of which bulged out into the room, as if some giant had laid his hand on the chimney-top for a moment. It had been caused by the opening of the outer door. A heavy step was now heard in the passage, ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
Read full book for free!
... going to be very different from what it proved to be. Fresh from the study of the older men and also of Mr. Darwin himself, I failed to see that Mr. Darwin had "unravelled and illuminated" a tangled skein, but believed him, on the contrary, to have tangled and obscured what his predecessors had made in great part, if not wholly, plain. With the older writers, I had felt as though in the hands of men who wished to understand themselves ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
Read full book for free!
... quiver with the faltering light; Some airy skein draws in the shadows from The broken forest where the war has passed, The Forest Terrible, the grey despair, The forest broken in the withering blight Of the lean years,—the blight, the years, have passed, Leaving a solitary ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
Read full book for free!
... which resulted pleased the citizen-fancy; the notion of "evolution succeeded to that of revolution"; one said civilization, progress, culture, instead of liberty. "Louis Philippe realized the citizen ideal.... The problem was solved, the skein untangled. God might rest.... The supernatural was not believed, but it was explained and respected. One did not accept Christ as divine, but a human Christ was exalted to the stars; religion was spoken of with earnestness, and the ministers of God ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
Read full book for free!
... guidance, protecting care, the necessities, the extras that love ever thinks of, service—all these are included in God's loving thought for us. That is His will. It is modified by the degree of our consent, and further modified by the circumstances of our lives. Life has become a badly tangled skein of threads. God with infinite patience and skill is at work untangling and bringing the best possible out of the tangle. What is absolutely best is rarely relatively best. That which is best in itself is usually not best under certain circumstances, with ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
Read full book for free!
... can hold the gate long skein When 'tis tangled and askew; Never wanting to compain[A]— ...
— Funny Little Socks - Being the Fourth Book • Sarah. L. Barrow
Read full book for free!
... a skein o' worsted stretched out on her hands," Sanders continued, "and a young leddy was winding it. I didna see her richt, but she wasna a ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
Read full book for free!
... seldom look for any laborious work of authorship from a general in active service. Men of action exhaust their energies in doing, and are usually impatient of the slow process of unwinding the tangled skein of events which at the moment they had been compelled to cut with the sword. It is by no means every campaign which furnishes the Commentaries of its Caesar. To Sir William Napier, however, we are indebted for a work which has taken its place as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
Read full book for free!
... wear her Precious Toy, And I 'll rejoice to see her joy: Her bauble 's only one degree Less frail, less fugitive than we, For time, ere long, will snap the skein, And ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
Read full book for free!
... man stretched out as if he slept, but he has that close flattening against the ground which distinguishes a dead man from a sleeper. He is a dinner-fatigue man, with a chaplet of loaves threaded over a belt, and a bunch of his comrades' water-bottles slung on his shoulder by a skein of straps. It must have been only last night that the fragment of a shell caught him in the back. No doubt we are the first to find him, this unknown soldier secretly dead. Perhaps he will be scattered ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
Read full book for free!
... the boy employed, the good woman had borrowed a reel of a neighbor, and set him to work winding thread. The contrivance greatly delighted him. He examined it with the utmost care, pushing it up and down, to fit it for a larger or smaller skein, much to the amusement of the ...
— Bertie and the Gardeners - or, The Way to be Happy • Madeline Leslie
Read full book for free!
... for comfort, while she confessed herself. Oh! what a fool she had been. Why, pray, had she been paying all these visits to the farm, and spending all these hours in this young fellow's company? Her quick intelligence unravelled all the doubtful skein. Yearning towards her kindred?—yes, there had been something of that. Recoil from the Bannisdale ways, an angry eagerness to scout them and fly them?—yes, that there had always been in plenty. But she dived deeper into her self-disgust, ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
Read full book for free!
... caking snow, and the yells came after them, Bolles looked seriously at Dean Drake; but that youth wore an expression of rising merriment. Bolles looked back at the dusk from which the yells were sounding, then forward to the spreading skein of night where the trail was taking him and the boy, and in neither direction could he discern ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
Read full book for free!
... about her. I am not supposed to know that she is a visitor to Rickwell. He'll suspect our game if I chatter about her, Ware. We must be cautious. This is a difficult skein to unravel." ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
Read full book for free!
... the Baron. Here is my master's passport, which we used to get the post-horses, and as my master has gone in the direction of Bordeaux with Monsieur the Baron's passport, and as Monsieur the Baron goes toward Geneva with my master's passport, the skein will probably be so tangled that the police, clever as their fingers are, can't easily ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
Read full book for free!
... riding-habit, after a hunting breakfast, from which Robert had absented himself, preferring a cup of tea in my lady's boudoir; "but this year I don't know what has come to you. You are good for nothing but to hold a skein of silk or read ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Read full book for free!
... ten to the sound of rain lashing against the garret window. As he picked his way out of the mazes of sleep and recovered the skein of his immediate past, he found to his disgust that he had lost his composure. All the flock of fears, that had left him when on the top of the Glasgow tram-car he had made the great decision, had flown back again and settled like black crows on his spirit. He ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
Read full book for free!
... perused the document, over and over again; and the more she read it, the more was she confused by the mixture of the first and third person; the substitution of the 'i' for the 'T. I.;' and the transition from the 'I. T.' to the 'You.' The writing looked like a skein of thread in a tangle, and the note was ingeniously folded into a perfect square, with the direction squeezed up into the right-hand corner, as if it were ashamed of itself. The back of the epistle was pleasingly ornamented with a large red ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
Read full book for free!
... find her neck entwined; she clutched at the threads about her throat, only to find her hands entangled; she tore at the cobweb, she bent her body, she slipped away; she beat with her fists, she raged, and only enmeshed herself the more tightly in the horrible skein; finally she lay fast bound. During this last phase of the dance, her artist audience stood there rigid, breathless, suffocating ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
Read full book for free!
... skein to unravel; but, as it happens, I really believe I can throw a little light upon the matter. You say Rona told you that somebody came into her bedroom last night, and presumably hid the pendant in her ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
Read full book for free!
... subject can in justice be termed irrelevant. In the detours often lie invaluable data, for one with a mind for research—whether author or reader. This is especially true in connection with our present task, which involves unravelling some of the threads from the tangled skein of religion, dancing, music, sculpture and painting—that mass of bright and sombre colour, of gold and silver threads, strung with pearls and glittering gems strangely broken by age—which tells the ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
Read full book for free!
... moment is hidden from us by a band of clouds, that stretches, right above our head, from one end of the sky to the other, like a long skein of white wool. It is alone in the blue void, and seems to make more peaceful, and even a little mysterious, the wonderful light of the fields we traverse—these fields intoxicated with life and vibrant with the music of birds; while, by contrast, the distant landscape, unshaded by clouds, is ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
Read full book for free!
... where I could not hinder them nor see what only husbands are permitted to behold. In spite of my feelings, I had to sit in the dining-room and converse with Pimenovna, one of the poor relations. Sasha, looking worried and excited, kept running by me with a thimble, a skein of wool or ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
Read full book for free!
... think of it, and soon brought a skein as thick as four persons, yet composed of thread so fine, that it broke if you only blew upon it, and so tangled that it had neither beginning nor end. Grognon, delighted, sent for her ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
Read full book for free!
... Lizzie Gordon, who was seated at the window winding up a ball of worsted, the skein of which was being held by Miss Puff, who was at that time ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
Read full book for free!
... of disengaging the two monstrous misconceptions from the tangled skein of inherited beliefs and framing them in words, I have already repeatedly performed. Let us keep the results in mind. Here they are in their nakedness: (1) Human beings—men, women, and children—are animals (and so they are ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
Read full book for free!
... the web, there were openings in it, or, at least, very weak spots.—And first, of the consequences flowing from these three principles in their hands, two of them had hindered the third from unwinding its skein to the end: owing to the fact that the King was formerly Count de Paris and Abbot of St. Denis, he could not become a veritable Augustus, an authentic Diocletian: his two French titles limited his Roman title. Without regard to the laws, so-called fundamental, which imposed his heir ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
Read full book for free!
... hollow, scheming [Greek: Hypokrites], or Play-actor that he was! This is a radical perversion; all but universal in such cases. And think for an instant how different the fact is! How much does one of us foresee of his own life? Short way ahead of us it is all dim; an unwound skein of possibilities, of apprehensions, attemptabilities, vague-looming hopes. This Cromwell had not his life lying all in that fashion of Program, which he needed then, with that unfathomable cunning of his, only to enact dramatically, scene after scene! ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
Read full book for free!
... persistence of which he was unaware. The effort became hopeless when the biography in 1889 published papers which upset all that Henry Adams had taken for diplomatic education; yet he sat down once more, when past sixty years old, to see whether he could unravel the skein. ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
Read full book for free!
... A spider web, revealing its geometric perfection, hung half across one corner of the rude casement; the moonbeams without were individualized in fine filar delicacy, like the ravellings of a silver skein. The boughs of a tree which grew on a slope close below almost touched the lintel; the leaves seemed a translucent green; a bird slept on a twig, its head beneath ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
Read full book for free!
... suddenly to find themselves de trop, scattered away to other parts of the room. Now Miss Maria was a fast girl, and Harry knew it. She looked wicked, as if determined upon a coup d'etat; and he began to perspire all over. The skein fared badly. At this moment some slight diversion was made in his favour by a servant appearing with a message regarding somebody in the back-parlour; whereupon Mrs Blackmore went hastily down stairs; and Harry's eyes followed ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
Read full book for free!
... me the gray days and rare, The threads from his bountiful skein, And many, as sunshine, are fair. And some are as dark as the rain. And I think as I toil to express My life through the days slipping by, Shall my tapestry prove a success? What sort of ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest
Read full book for free!
... to and fro between the windows which looked out upon the street and the second row which gave upon the garden. His wife lay the sleeping Abel on her knee, and little Moina lay in untroubled slumber in the low chair, like a bird in its nest. Her older sister stared into the fire, a skein of silk in one hand, a needle in ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
Read full book for free!
... blue thread manufactured at Coventry and formerly much used for embroidery, &c. cf. Greene's James IV (1592), IV, iii, where Slipper ordering a doublet cries: 'Edge me the sleeves with Coventry blue.' Ben Jonson, Gipsies Metamorph. (1621), speaks of 'A skein of Coventry blue'. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
Read full book for free!
... Your Majesty to come here," said the Nome King, "to show you a curious skein of golden thread which my workmen have made. If it pleases you, I will make you a present ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
Read full book for free!
... lying to Your Honor. He has said that the British are helpless. He brought Your Honor a report from Palestine that was a skein of falsehood hung up on little pegs of truth. He told you the British are not able to defend themselves, he knowing better; for he is one of those men who say always what the hearer ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
Read full book for free!
... pain through the lips: red lips and well cut. Her brown eyes were tearless, not alluring or beseeching or repelling; they did but look, much like the skies opening high aloof on a wreck of storm. Her reddish hair-chestnut, if you will—let fall a skein over one of the rugged brows, and softened the ruggedness by making it wilder, as if a great bird were winging across a shoulder of the mountain ridges. Conceived of the mountains, built in their image, the face ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
Read full book for free!
... mother I sat on a rug, with a scrap of buckskin in one hand and an awl in the other. This was the beginning of my practical observation lessons in the art of beadwork. From a skein of finely twisted threads of silvery sinews my mother pulled out a single one. With an awl she pierced the buckskin, and skillfully threaded it with the white sinew. Picking up the tiny beads one by one, she strung them with the point of her thread, always ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
Read full book for free!
... of scrolls," said the Earl testily. "What! is it some order for saying mass,—or to get some new Popish image or a skein of silk? I wear my eyes out reading such as that, and racking my brains ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
Read full book for free!
... something worth even more, though that was a loss he was not yet ready to admit. Worst of all, she had him convinced that he was a failure, a weakling and misfit, a sort of green fool who had asked for the moon and been properly punished for his temerity. And that was a skein even fairies would find hard ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
Read full book for free!
... sense of colour, a picture on which various colours are painted is placed before the patient, as well as a skein of wool of the same shade as one of the colours in the picture, which he is requested to ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
Read full book for free!
... are more superstitious than any one else. Hanging to her neck by a skein of plaited horse-hair was the polished shell of a minute turtle—smaller ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
Read full book for free!
... encircled by your Southern bowers, And weave, amid the incense of the flowers, The skein of fair romance—the gain ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
Read full book for free!
... and will wash; still, as you are never sure of getting the best, it is well to unwind your skeins, pour scalding water on the wools, and rinse them well in it, squeeze out the water, shake the wools thoroughly, and hang them up. When dry, cut the skein across where it is tied double, and with a bodkin and string, or with a long hair-pin, draw the crewel into its case. This case (see Fig. 1) is made by folding together a long piece of thin cotton cloth a foot wide, and running parallel ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
Read full book for free!
... required of him under the new policy; that his sovereign was seriously annoyed at what he conceived to be wilful procrastination in the withdrawal of the army; and that he was now sending his own aide-de-camp to cut the Gordian knot in the tangled skein of Mexican politics. ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
Read full book for free!
... eccentricities was of grand use to him. His tinder-box enabled him to strike a light: it showed him two things that made his heart bound with delight, none the less thrilling for being somewhat vague. Attached to the arrow was a skein of silk, and on the arrow itself ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
Read full book for free!
... the mystery!" cried Elfreda, pointing toward the northern end of the campus, where considerable headway had been made in digging what appeared to be the cellar of a house. "But Sherlock will unravel the tangled skein!" ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
Read full book for free! |
