"Yarn" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the trawl capstan, while our old landlord, with half-a-dozen pipes within a foot of his face, droned out some long sea-yarn about Ostend, and muds, and snow-storms, and revenue- cruisers going down stern foremost, kegs of brandy and French prisons, which I shall not repeat; for indeed the public has been surfeited with sea-stories of late, from many sufficiently dull ones up to the genial wisdom of 'Peter Simple,' and ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... end, though the effect upon me was not only to raise my hair, but at times to stop the beating of my heart. I left him next morning, and have never seen or heard of him since; but there is strong reason to believe that he never went to sea again, or told that yarn in shipping circles. And it is because I have not seen that old Commodore since the evening in the restaurant, and because I cannot recall the name of the ship, or secure full data of marine happenings of the year 1875, that I am giving that story to the world in ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... started a long yarn about the MS. having come out of the Marchese di Somebody-or-other's library, where it had lain undisturbed for several thousand years. "Signor," said he, "the book is of inestimable value, and I cannot part with it for ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... to enter into details respecting the progress of the trades of Belfast. The most important is the spinning of fine linen yarn, which is for the most part concentrated in that town, over 25,000,000 of pounds weight being exported annually. Towards the end of the seventeenth century the linen manufacture had made but little progress. ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... of the yarn," said the proprietor glibly. "Pete had the nerve to shoot the gent down in cold blood, but when he seen him fall he lost his nerve. He didn't wait to grab the money, but ran out and jumped on his hoss and tried to get away. So there you are. But it pretty often ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... 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 ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... detained you longer than I intended with my yarn," said the Captain. "It will soon be dark and that moon is too young to ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... for her father, she would hold her tongue, and I packed her up, and put her into her nursery. She'll mind me when she sees I will be minded; and as for little Owen, nothing would satisfy him but his promising not to go away. I saw that chap asleep before I came down, so there's no fear of the yarn beginning again; but you see what chance there is of his mending while those children are at ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not care to see it. I go miles on end about it to visit my sick folk, and mostly in a day's riding I see nobody but a stray shepherd, a flash pedlar twanning his way across country with his gewgaws, and now and then a weaver scouring the outlying cottages for yarn." ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... handsome pair of moccasins, using an old flour sack for the uppers and a pair of skin mittens for the feet. George did some neat work on his moccasins and clothing, and I made my trousers look quite respectable again, and ripped up one pair of woollen socks to get yarn to darn the holes in another. Altogether it was rather a pleasant day, even though Hubbard's display of his beautiful new moccasins did savour of ostentation and thereby excite much heartburning on the part ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... mind telling you about it now. When Mellish had me up after school today, I'd got my yarn all ready. There wasn't a flaw in it anywhere as far as I could see. My idea was this. I told him I'd been to Yorke's room the day before the exam, to ask him if he had any marks for us. That was all right. Yorke was doing the two Unseen ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... part, had a deeply interested auditor in his mother, as he spun the yarn that equaled anything he had ever read in ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... with a gravity that would move some people to the same sort of laughter and wonder that is excited by the human doings of a trained chimpanzee. But Craig—the wild man, the arch foe of effeteness, the apostle of the simple life of yarn sock and tallowed boot and homespun pants and hairy jaw—Craig accepted the service with heartfelt thanks in his shaking ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... shrubberies of mulberry trees, and white and sulphur yellow cocoons were lying in the sun along the road in flat trays. Numbers of women sat in the fronts of the houses weaving cotton cloth fifteen inches wide, and cotton yarn, mostly imported from England, was being dyed in all the villages—the dye used being a native indigo, the Polygonum tinctorium. Old women were spinning, and young and old usually pursued their avocations with wise-looking babies tucked into the backs ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... then what remains? Now last night when you told us that amazing yarn of yours, you said something about a mountain full of gold, and houses full of gold, among your people. Jeekie, do you think——" and he paused, looking ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... the field, the man had to pick three hundred pounds of cotton, and the women had to pick two hundred pounds. I used to hear my mother talk about weaving the yarn and making the cloth and making clothes out of the cloth that had been woven. They used to make everything they wore—clothes ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... ... did purchase it a supereminent name above all other towns, whereby grew this common proverb—as fine as Kirton spinning ... which spinning was very fine indeed, which to express, the better to gain your belief, it is very true that 140 threads of woollen yarn spun in that town were drawn together through the eye of a tailor's needle; which needle and threads were, for many years together, to be seen in Watling-street, in London, in the ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... he had the feeling that if he removed his gaze from those straining and quivering strands for a single instant they would snap, and he would go plunging downward to destruction. Then, as he watched, another yarn parted, and another. A catastrophe was now inevitable, and the lad began to speculate curiously, and from a singularly impersonal point of view, what the sensation would be like when the last yarn had snapped. He had read ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... with a grimace so much like his own, that it brought on a contest in which the yarn winding was laid aside for a time, while they stood before a mirror, each trying to outdo the other in making ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... has gone the way of the first two," he replied: "and the yarn about the pillar of fire was not so ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... off in one, Josiah in one also nigh by with Tommy. One side of it comes off so you can git in and set on a high cushion and read or knit. I took my knittin' and most knit one of Josiah's heels whilst I rid by palaces and elephants and camels and fakirs and palm trees. Oh, Jonesville yarn! you never expected to be knit amid seens like this. I can knit and admire scenery first rate, and my blue and white yarn seemed to connect me with Jonesville in some occult way, and then I knew Josiah would need his socks ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... autumn evenings were darkening. It was later than the usual bed time, but Patience had a piece of spinning which she was anxious to finish for the weaver who took all her yarn, and Stead was reading Dr. Eales's gift of the Morte d'Arthur, which had great fascination for him, though he never knew whether to regard it as truth or fable. He wanted to drive out the memory of what Mrs. Lightfoot had told him about the Henshaw household, where the youngest of ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... editor and the author, it appealed to his sense of humor, and the published story was the result. If it mattered, it is possible that Brander Matthews could accurately reveal the originator of the much-published yarn. ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... round, and looking full at his audience, while a bright smile lit up his sunburnt countenance, as if a sudden idea had occurred to him, "I'll do my best to palaver. Here goes, then, for a yarn." ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne
... men yonder be Jonathan Tubbs, Captain Kirkby his man, and he was just a-telling of us how Mr. Cludde, when he's in his cups (which is pretty often) tells a bragging yarn as how there's a mighty pretty girl out in Jamaicy a-waitin' to be spliced as soon as he comes to port; and she's a cousin of his, with a fine property; and he'll invite all the officers of his ship to the wedding and take 'em teal shooting next ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... could not understand. These people had never seen a ship or a white man before. They wore no clothing, but painted their bodies with bright colors. The Spaniards made them presents of strings of glass beads and red caps. In return they gave the Spaniards skeins of cotton yarn, tame parrots, ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery
... past her Anderson reading the Bible to Jack Anderson reading the news of the Battle of the Nile Jack's Father landing after the Battle of the Nile Jack in Nanny's Room Jack and Bramble aboard the Indiaman The Fore-peak Yarn "How's her head, Tom?" Bramble saving Bessie Jack heaving the lead Nanny relating her story Jack and his Father under the Colonnade A Surprise Bramble and Jack carried into a French Port The Leith Smack and the ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... the filly and some sheep; and mother shears and cards, and Lurindy spins,—I can't spin, it makes my head swim,—and I knit, knit socks and sell them. Sometimes I have needles almost as big as a pipe-stem, and choose the coarse, uneven yarn of the thrums, and then the work goes off like machinery. Why, I can knit two pair, and sometimes three, a day, and get just as much for them as I do for the nice ones,—they're warm. But when I want to knit well, as I did the day Aunt Mimy was in, I take my best blue needles ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... most all de year 'round. In summer, shirts, and pants wuz made out of coarse cotton cloth. Sometimes de pants wuz dyed gray. Winter time us had better clothes made out of yarn and us allus had good Sunday clothes. 'Course I wuz jes' a plow boy den and now I done forgot lots 'bout how things looked. Our shoes wuz jes' common brogans, no diff'unt on Sunday, 'ceppin' de Nigger boys what wuz shinin' up to de gals cleaned up ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... there was none, excepting, possibly, a little of very poor quality in small skeins. The small wheel that we see in the far corner of the garret—just like Marguerite's—was used for spinning the fine thread. A larger wheel was used to spin the tow into yarn for the coarse clothing for boys and negroes or for "filling" in the coarser linens. All the boys, and very often the men—perhaps even our M.C. himself—wore in summer trousers made of linen cloth, for which the yarn was spun at home by the maids, and was then taken to the weaver's to be made ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... very words. Am I amusing you? No! Then I must go and find that funny little Pole and beseech him to tell us his best before breakfast story. Gad! He has some rippin' after dinner ones. He had us all roaring last night, and the funniest thing was to hear him spinning the same yarn in the local lingo, so that Nesimir and the other Serbs could share in the festivities. Prince Michael and Alec had the pull of me there, because they could laugh twice. By the way, Princess, Monsieur Poluski was well acquainted with your husband ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... wandering, or what? 'There she is!' Who is she—and where? We don't want to hear your old fish yarn anyway." ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... got to be homing, Though I grant it's unwise to continue your roaming, But the evening's to spare ere you drop me astern, So come up to my room and indulge in a yarn. ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... prolific in wonders. The march of intellect is abroad with a vengeance. But since these good people have been disappointed of their expected morning's amusement, perhaps you will favor them and myself with this yarn, I think they call it; and Lambert, order some ale to be served round, and let them bring a cup of brandy for our maritime friend here; he must wet his whistle, I suppose, or he will never be able to spin a yarn in true, orthodox, sailor ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite
... called, a rotund and jovial-faced Nova Scotia Irishman, and a very sociable fellow, prone to talk as long as he can find a listener. In the afternoon, while the cook was below asleep and I was peeling the everlasting potatoes, Louis dropped into the galley for a "yarn." His excuse for being aboard was that he was drunk when he signed. He assured me again and again that it was the last thing in the world he would dream of doing in a sober moment. It seems that he has ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... is a beautifully soft, fine Wool fabric, containing no size or balsam. From the fineness of the yarn and of the individual fibres I have no doubt that the wool has been imported from India, or, more likely, that the cloth was made in Cashmere. The texture is a plain weave, has a selvedge edge, the warp yarns are doubled, while the weft ...
— Ancient Egyptian and Greek Looms • H. Ling Roth
... old Nat Ricks, the station master," said Sam. "Remember how you nearly scared him to death once by putting a big fire-cracker in the waste paper he was burning and then telling him a yarn ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... No, Elise, nothing like that happened,—I'm sure. I see it as Bill does, now. It is a heavenly day,—and Zaly felt pretty sure I wouldn't let her take Baby out by herself, without the nurse,—and she does love to do that,—and so she sneaked off, and made up that yarn about the food in order to get Fleurette's hat and coat ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... the brain-ball, and he died. And if God Almighty would not take Conchobar MacNessa, pagan as he was, into heaven for a thing like that,—sure, God Almighty was not half such a decent kindly creature as the Irish monk who invented the yarn. ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... to enable some half dozen fabricantes of Barcelona to keep less than half-a-dozen steam-engines at work, which shall turn some few thousands of spindles, spinning and twisting some few millions of pounds of yarn, by which, after nearly three quarters of a century that the cotton manufacture has been planted, "swathed, rocked, and dandled" with legislative fondness into a rickety nursling, some fifty millions of yards of cotton cloths are said to be painfully brought forth in the year; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... yarn is Dr. Gregory, F.R.S., Professor of Chemistry in the University of Edinburgh. After studying for many years the real or alleged phenomena of what has been called mesmerism, or electro-biology, or hypnotism, Dr. Gregory published in 1851 his Letters to a Candid Inquirer ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... invited, I consented to spin them a yarn. The old gentleman settled himself in his chair, my mother smoothed her apron, folded her hands, and looked meekly into my face. Tom Lokins filled his pipe, stretched out his foot to poke the fire ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... Boston paper and read them some of the news. Miss Eunice went on with her fringe. Elizabeth was knitting a sock for Chilian out of fine linen yarn, spun by herself, and she put pretty open-work stitches all up the instep. For imported articles were still dear, and there was a pride in the women to do all for themselves that they could. Cynthia leaned her head on ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Now, for instance, Ellen, if anybody is sick within ten miles round, the family are too happy to get Mrs. Vawse for a nurse. She is an admirable one. Then she goes out tailoring at the farmers' houses; she brings home wool and returns it spun into yarn; she brings home yarn and knits it up into stockings and socks; all sorts of odd jobs. I have seen her picking hops; she isn't above doing anything, and yet she never forgets her own dignity. I think, wherever she goes and whatever she is about, ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... vicious indolence, the tailor sickened and died. Alaeddin continued in his former ill courses and, when his mother saw that her spouse had deceased, and that her son was a scapegrace and good for nothing at all[FN66] she sold the shop and whatso was to be found therein and fell to spinning cotton yarn. By this toilsome industry she fed herself and found food for her son Alaeddin the scapegrace who, seeing himself freed from bearing the severities of his sire, increased in idleness and low habits; nor would he ever stay ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Brahman began the whole story over again, not missing a single detail, and spinning as long a yarn as possible. ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... the fellow commanding the Military Police detachment at Ranga Duar was nearly killed by a rogue lately," remarked an engineer named Goddard. "Our mahout had the story from one of the mahouts of the Fort. He had a cock-and-bull yarn about the sahib being saved by his tame elephant, a single-tusker, which drove off the rogue. But, as the latter was a double tusker, it's not a very ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... best to share with your boon companions, that's as plain to me as two and two make four. You've come to think a little the same way as Bandy-legs, perhaps, and suspect Obed of being more than he lets on? Is that it, Max? Do you really believe he's playing some sly trick on us? Is that yarn about Mr. Coombs all moonshine? Does this fur farm belong to some company, that Obed is working for? I wish you'd tell me what you've ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... women in the Poorhouse sitting-room gathered about her. Old Mrs. Forbes, who dearly loved a story, unwound a length of yarn with peculiar satisfaction, and put her worn shoe up to the fire. Everybody knew when Sally Flint was disposed to open her unwritten book of folk-tales for the public entertainment; and to-day, having tied on a fresh apron and bound a new piece of red flannel about her wrist, she ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... cheap—the women spin the yarn from the wool of their own sheep, and it is then woven by a weaver in Kilronan for fourpence a yard—the men seem to wear an indefinite number of waistcoats and woollen drawers one over the other. They are usually surprised at the lightness ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... themselves to blame. It's easy enough to keep from having the plague," Miss Penelope added confidently. "Anybody can keep from having it, if they will only take the trouble to blow real hard three times on a blue yarn string before breakfast." ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... fall foul. The British captain then braced back his yards, remarking that if he did fall aboard it would be purely accidental. "Well," said Porter, "you have no business where you are; if you touch a rope-yarn of this ship I shall board instantly." [Footnote: "Life of Farragut," p. 33.] The Phoebe, in her then position, was completely at the mercy of the American ships, and Hilyar, greatly agitated, assured Porter that he meant nothing hostile; and the Phoebe backed down, ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... honor of his coming. After it was over and the old times were fully discussed he was about to take his leave when Mrs. Weeks disappeared from the room and then returned, bearing upon her arm a beautiful yarn spread which she held out before her and, in her nervous, feeble way getting the attention of the ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... that she must follow the Indians. They took such things as they could conveniently carry, and with their captive set off on foot through the forest, in a northwestern direction. The shrewd girl had brought a ball of yarn with her, and from this she occasionally broke off a bit and dropped it at the side of the path, as a guide to her father and friends, who she knew would soon ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... the mill ready for spinning. The wool is carded very fine, and then, by curious machinery, it is rolled out into rolls about three feet long, and as large round as a whip-handle at the middle. These rolls Isabella used to spin into yarn, at ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott
... of trade restrictions, but the restrictions which those Glasgow merchants were anxious to remove were restrictions on the import of raw materials for their manufactures, such as iron and linen yarn, and manufacturers, of course, are not necessarily free-traders because they want free import of raw materials. That was advocated as strongly from the old mercantilist standpoint as it is now from the free-trade one; it was merely sanctioning a little addition to our imports in order ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... Another well-written yarn by Kingston, with a background of Indian territory in the Red River area of North America. Plenty of action, ambushes, shootings, fast rides on horseback, and other incidents apparently typical of the life of those days and ...
— The Frontier Fort - Stirring Times in the N-West Territory of British America • W. H. G. Kingston
... not considered well furnished in those days without these useful implements, nor was a housewife considered accomplished who could not card, spin, and weave. Angeline carded her own wool, spun her own yarn, and weaved the best homespun made in the settlement; and had enough for their own use and some to sell at the store. In addition to that there was no housewife more expert at the flax-wheel, and her homemade linen was famous from one end to the other of the ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... feathers, often with colored yarn at the ends, attached to sticks. These are worn in the hair during the Palaan and Sayang ceremonies, to please the spirits ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... always implicitly believed the marvelous tales of yarn spinners, and his soul had been fired by the thought of a life of adventure on the deep. He had talked to the little girls until they had accounted him somewhat of a hero and looked to him to ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... assented Nichol, with a sort of grimace of resignation. "Fire away, old man, an' git through with yer yarn so Jackson kin come back. I wish this woman wouldn't take on so. Hit makes me orful ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... buzz saw," he said, "I could see only one way out, and that was to put you into a position where even the disembodied spirit of Calumny itself could not pretend to believe old Napper Tandy's yarn. You know Tandy is fond of playing tricks, especially upon me, and as the president and controlling spirit of a rather strong bank, he has been able to give me a good deal of trouble now and then. A year ago Stafford and ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... exchange with the yarn belt from his waist, for a fillet made of kangaroo hair. The muskets were kept at hand in the boat, to be prepared against any treachery; but, every thing seeming to go on well, the natives appearing rather shy than otherwise, Mr. Flinders joined his companion, taking his gun with him. By making ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... like a beast of burden, with an enormous bag of hanked yarn on her back. She entered her hut, dropped the burden on the floor, and stopped ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... which is interesting and valuable. James Phillips, Jr., is a prominent woolen manufacturer and operates the three following concerns: a large woolen manufactory in West Fitchburg, producing suitings, etc.; the Star Worsted Company, and the Fitchburg Worsted Company, producing yarn and worsted. Mr. Phillips has met with marked success, and his goods take high rank in the best markets. There is a woolen mill in Rockville, a village in the westerly part of Fitchburg, operated by James ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... "I must get yarn to finish Elsie's stockings," she said to herself. "Duncan will have her old ones that she's grown out of. A fine lassie she'll be in a few more years, growing like this; but it's hard work to keep them without a man's ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... been drifting about the world so long, that I speak a little of everything, finding it convenient when I stand in need of victuals and drink. The old lady on the hill and I overhauled a famous yarn between us, sir. It seems she has a niece and a brother at Naples, who ought to have been back night before last; and she was in lots of tribulation about them, wanting to know if our ship had seen ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... her hostess and of Ashford in general, had set herself to the difficult task of gayety. Cousin Harriet looked on at a succession of ingenious and, on the whole, innocent attempts at pleasure, as she might have looked on at the frolics of a kitten who easily substitutes a ball of yarn for the uncertainties of a bird or a wind-blown leaf, and who may at any moment ravel the fringe of a sacred curtain-tassel in preference ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... were still. The huge legs of the wauk-mill took no more seven-leagued strides nowhither. The rubbing-boards with their thickly-fluted surfaces no longer frothed the soap from every side, tormenting the web of linen into a brightness to gladden the heart of the housewife whose hands had spun the yarn. The terrible boiler that used to send up from its depths bubbling and boiling spouts and peaks and ridges, lay empty and cold. The little house behind, where its awful furnace used to glow, and which the pungent chlorine used to fill with its fumes, stood open to the wind and the rain: he ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... that yarn old Cap'n Harris was telling the other day about the skipper he knew having a warning one night to alter his course, an' doing so, picked up five live men and three dead skeletons in a open ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... Mrs. McMurtrie, flinging her gesture upward with a cluck of the fingers. "I wouldn't give that for your yarn! You're a hussy, from the looks of the whole business, and I've a mind to be suing the railroad station for the sending of you to me. You mentioned the husband of your own free will. Your husband! Faith, and not so much as a relation turning up to be with you in your trouble. Husband! ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... rose bird that at once talked, though we could not understand his words. Two older men had balls, as large as melons, of some wound stuff that we presently found to be cotton loosely twisted into yarn. The Admiral's eyes glowed. "Now if any bring spices or pepper—" But they did not, nor did they ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... need their New England constant market, and that our true policy is to take care of ourselves. Certainly there is a great variety of opinion here about free trade, and I hear gentlemen debate strongly against it. The reciprocity of England is a queer thing. All this yarn, Charley, grows naturally out of my ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... Commercial there before I 146 began to travel for the publishing department of the concern. So you're Hilgarde's brother, and here I've run into you at the jumping-off place. Sounds like a newspaper yarn, doesn't it?" ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... Be sure I'll be delighted to give any help I can. Look here! there's a friend of mine staying at the White Hart in Lewes: Captain Arnutt, of the Royal North-west Mounted Police. Go and look him up and have a yarn with him about how he made his start. He nearly broke his heart trying to pass into Sandhurst without getting the necessary stuff into his hard head. But, begad! there isn't a finer man in the North-west ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... her ball of yarn viciously, causing it to roll upon the floor, and when she had stiffly followed it and picked it from the corner her face was very red, either from the exertion of stooping or from the insult ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... on my feet. I saw Silk Hat pick out a lady from a bunch of people, who seemed to be taking the view with sandwiches, and it was simple as falling off a log to follow the position of affairs— Silk Hat urging lady to come with him, lady astonished, not able to size up exact bearings of the yarn, but finally yielding. Now, if Miss Forbes hadn't told us that her mother had written saying she was going to Beachy Head with a picnic party this afternoon I would have gotten off at the wrong address, because I could hardly have ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... wonder roundly At any astounding yarn, By darning their dear eyes roundly ('T was all they had to darn). They "hoisted their slacks," adjusting Garments of plantain-leaves With nautical twitches (as if they wore breeches, Instead of a dress ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... serious. But at length the Queen took upon herself to grant patents of monopoly by scores. There was scarcely a family in the realm which did not feel itself aggrieved by the oppression and extortion which this abuse naturally caused. Iron, oil, vinegar, coal, saltpetre, lead, starch, yarn, skins, leather, glass, could be bought only at exorbitant prices. The House of Commons met in an angry and determined mood. It was in vain that a courtly minority blamed the Speaker for suffering the acts of the Queen's Highness to be called in question. The language of the discontented ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Christy. "When I saw my duty there was no alternative but to do it; and that was all I did. You have been decorating your yarn, Charley." ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... Quarter where the rich students read their reviews. He says sweet things to her. He weeps, she weeps. They drink; and when they are drunk, they fight. He loves her. He calls her his chaste one, his cross and his salvation. She was barefooted; he gave her yarn and knitting-needles that she might make stockings. And he made shoes for this unfortunate girl himself, with enormous nails. He teaches her verses that are easy to understand. He is afraid of altering her moral beauty by taking her out of the shame ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... loose, shackling air," wrote a contemporary. "A laxity of manner seemed shed about him ... even his discourse partook of his personal demeanor. It was loose and rambling." With his blue coat and red waistcoat, his green velveteen breeches, yarn stockings, and slippers down at the heels, he seemed to an English visitor, who saw him in 1804, "very much like a tall, large-boned farmer." Jefferson would have been the last to resent this epithet. No man had a ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... some sort of foot-gear before long, too," promised Mrs. Stoddard. "I have enough wool yarn in the house to knit you a good pair of warm stockings. 'Tis an ugly gray; I wish I could plan some sort of dye for it to ...
— A Little Maid of Province Town • Alice Turner Curtis
... rabbits, martins and squirrels,' &c. Hemp and flax grew more naturally there than elsewhere, which, being well regarded, would give provision for canvas, cables, cording, besides thread, linen cloth, and all stuffs made of linen yarn, 'which are more fine and plentiful there than in all the rest of the kingdom.' Then there were the best materials of all sorts for building, with 'the goodliest and largest timber, that might compare with any in his majesty's ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... that yarn? Well, it's worth hearin', too; I got it from a Britisher last time I was here. Ye see, there was a young middy aboard one o' Nelson's ships in the old war, who was always in some scrape or other; and one day the third officer, Mr. Thorpe, got riled ...
— Harper's Young People, May 4, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... a girl, and we spun our own wool yarn . . ." began Cousin Hetty, trotting beside him and turning her ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... a yarn of talk which, when it comes to likings and dislikings, might last to almighty crack: I'll ask you to do nothing that Lord L'Estrange does not sanction. Will ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... definite study or observation of the mode of doing it, is almost unknown! It is really no exaggeration to say that many teachers bungle in their work as egregiously as would a woman who should put yarn into a churn, and expect, after a proper amount of churning, to draw ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... of our personal equipment I may mention that each man had a suit of sealskin from Greenland. Then there were such things as darning-wool, sewing-yarn, needles of all possible sizes, buttons, scissors, tapes — broad and narrow, black and white, blue and red. I may safely assert that nothing was forgotten; we were well and amply ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... the cause of a lot of trouble," he said, dispassionately. "In the Morayshire, I remember, we had once a passenger—an old gentleman—who was telling us a yarn about them old-time Greeks fighting for ten years about some woman. The Turks kidnapped her, or something. Anyway, they fought in Turkey; which I may well believe. Them Greeks and Turks were always fighting. My father was master's mate on board one of the three-deckers ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... prospered. In the mornings and evenings, and on rainy days, the wheel had been busy; and now the yarn, dyed and ready, lay in the house of weaver McLean, waiting to be woven into heavy cloth for the boys; and the flannel for shirts and gowns would not be long behind. So Shenac made a pause, and took time to ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... round ball, about the size of a cricket-ball, which the Aborigines carry in a small net suspended from their girdles of opossum yarn. The women are not allowed to see the internal part of the ball; it is used as a talisman against sickness, and it is sent from tribe to tribe for hundreds of miles on the sea-coast, and in the interior; one is now here from Moreton Bay, the interior of which a black showed me privately ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... chipper, chip! come, clear the way! We must be at work to day. See us swiftly fly along, Hear outbursts of merry song; Watch us in our busy flight Glancing in your window bright; Save your bits of yarn for me; Just think what a ...
— The Nursery, No. 165. September, 1880, Vol. 28 - A Monthly Magazine For Youngest Readers • Various
... with his trip, that nothing would satisfy him till he was allowed to enter his father's noble profession, to which he promises to be an ornament, and is now a lieutenant of two years' standing. Among other accomplishments, he is a first-rate hand at spinning a yarn, and often amuses his shipmates with an account of his father's adventures in chase ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... dear Kate, you didn't see him at all, as I understand the yarn. He was here alone with you, was he ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... like a steam boiler, one end is entirely closed, while the other is made to open and be closed tightly and hermetically. The cottage is fitted with the necessary steam inlet and outlet pipes, drain pipes for condensed water, pressure gauges. The yarn to be steamed is hung on rods placed on a skeleton frame waggon on wheels which can be run in and out of the steaming cottage as is required. The drawing shows well the various important parts of the machine. In the case of piece goods these ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... brown suit exploded. "Stop being a dadblasted fool, Tom! You expect us to swallow a yarn like that? We know you don't drink. How can you expect us to believe you ran the Sea Belle ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... a smock before the fire at the close of the feast, and sit up all night concealed in one corner of the room, expecting the apparition of the lover to come down the chimney and turn the shimee: they throw a ball of yarn out of the window, and wind it on the reel within, convinced that if they repeat the Paternoster backwards, and look at the ball of yarn without, they shall then also see his apparition. Those who celebrate this feast ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... said Jack, with affected hesitation, "thet's another yarn. I don't know mebbe ez I oughter tell it. Et ain't got anything to do with this advertisement o' the Pet, and might be rough on old man Withholder! ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... weavers. I hate to give out the yarn to them. It was another story in my day! I'd have caught it finely from my master for work like that. The business was carried on in different style then. A man had to know his trade—that's the last thing that's thought ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... the woman in her rich attire no otherwise than her wont, nor did she say aught to me; but looked at the yarn that I had spun, to see that I had done my task, and nodded sternly to me as her wont was, and I went to bed amongst my goats as I was used to do, but slept not till towards morning, and then images of dreadful things, and of miseries that I may not tell thee ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... her rocking-chair, picked up a gray yarn sock, and began to knit unconcernedly; but in a significant tone, she added, nodding ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... must here give a word about them. How many hours, forenoons and afternoons—how many exhilarating night-times I have had—perhaps June or July, in cooler air-riding the whole length of Broadway, listening to some yarn, (and the most vivid yarns ever spun, and the rarest mimicry)—or perhaps I declaiming some stormy passage from Julius Caesar or Richard, (you could roar as loudly as you chose in that heavy, dense, uninterrupted street-bass.) Yes, I knew all the drivers then, Broadway Jack, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... medley, mess, hotchpot^, pasticcio^, patchwork, odds and ends, all sorts; jumble &c (disorder) 59; salad, sauce, mash, omnium gatherum [Lat.], gallimaufry, olla-podrida^, olio, salmagundi, potpourri, Noah's ark, caldron texture, mingled yarn; mosaic &c (variegation) 440. half-blood, half-caste. mulatto; terceron^, quarteron^, quinteron^ &c; quadroon, octoroon; griffo^, zambo^; cafuzo^; Eurasian; fustee^, fustie^; griffe, ladino^, marabou, mestee^, mestizo, quintroon, sacatra zebrule [Lat.]; catalo^; cross, hybrid, mongrel. V. mix; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... do hope not! It would be such a pity to make a mistake right at the outset in telling a story. For truth to tell, I am not a bit proud, but just a good-natured chap that has decided to spin a sea-yarn for the amusement, and I hope the instruction, it may be, of young Folks, being perfectly willing the older Folks should hear it, too, if they like. And I don't believe the smaller Folks will object to the title, even if they don't have "lords" in this country. It must ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... to produce a work of art is to take a drummer's story and tell it in dusty English, we might try our luck with the modern smoking-car yarn about the traveling-man who came to the country hotel late at night, and see how far we can get with it in the manner of James Branch Cabell imitating ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... Continued she, "Inform me what became of Moses' Rod and Noah's Ark, and where now be they?" He answered saying, "They are at this tide sunken in the Lake of Tabariyyah,[FN206] and both, at the end of time, will be brought out by a man hight Al-Nasiri.[FN207] She pursued, "Acquaint me with spun yarn, whence did it originate and who was it first practised spinning the same?" He answered, saying, "Almighty Allah from the beginning of mankind ordered the Archangel Gabriel to visit Eve and say to her, 'Spin for thyself and for Adam waistcloths wherewith ye may veil your persons.'"[FN208] ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... Gabriella went into the hail, and passing her room, noiselessly pushed open the door of the nursery, where the children were sleeping. A night lamp was burning in one corner under a dark shade, and the nurse's knitting, a pile of white yarn, was lying on the table in the circle of green light, which was as soft as the glimmer of a glow-worm in a thicket. In their two little beds, separated by a strip of white rug, the children were sleeping quietly, with a wonderful freshness, like the dew of innocence, on ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... his yarn a sight more interesting than mine, and said so, and he looked sort of blank, as if he didn't see how you could get the stories of an Avila and a Yankee seaman near enough together to compare them, more than a dozen eggs with a parallel of ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... repeated from time to time; if the thread stretches and reaches its due length again, the danger is removed. The wise woman must never ask money for her trouble, but take what is given." In another part of Germany, "a woman is stript naked and measured with a piece of red yarn spun on a Sunday." Sembrzycki tells us that in the Elbing district, and elsewhere in that portion of Prussia, the country people are firmly possessed by the idea that a decrease in the measure of the body is the source of ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... spinning of mop-yarn was introduced, which might, with attention, have turned to account; but unfortunately, the yarn proved of less value ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... last of the Congress, when the Merrimac—or rather the Virginia, to give her her Confederate name—wasted time murdering a ship already dead, aground and on fire. He often afterwards spun me the yarn; for I liked the old man, and not infrequently went to see him in later days. He had borne good-humoredly the testiness with which a youngster is at times prone to assert himself against what he fancies interference, and I had appreciated the rebuke. The Congress disaster was a ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... am running ahead of my yarn. We shared the hatch cover between us. We took turn and turn about, one lying flat on the cover and resting, while the other, submerged to the neck, merely held on with his hands. For two days and nights, spell and spell, on the cover and in the water, we drifted ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... was enveloped in the scarf which his hostess had lent him when he set forth upon his walk. It—the scarf—was tied under his chin and the fringed ends flapped in the wind. His round face, surrounded by the yarn folds, looked like that of the small boy in the ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... with the real big ones, the kind I'm going to write. Then I'll make them sit up and take notice. They can't stop me now. This money gives me a chance to sit back and do what I please for a while. And I haven't told you the best part. The editor wrote saying how much he liked the yarn and asked me for more ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... comfortable feeling that the prize was well earned. You will rightly judge that most of The House of Courage is rather more frankly sensational than Mrs. RICKARD'S previous war-work; but it remains an excellent yarn. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 12, 1919 • Various
... not slept well on the train; so he took off his boots, put his yarn-stockinged feet in one chair, and sitting up in another took a nap. An hour later the Pope called for him. The last telegram reported that he was so far ahead that none others would be sent until the ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... what you want of Mercy, my dear. I put some runs of yarn in your trunk, dear nephew, you may give them with my love to sister Abigal, and tell her the wool is from white Kitty. She will remember the sheep. Give my love to brother ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... one of the most important industries of any Indians within our domain. The greater portion of the wool from their hundreds of thousands of sheep is used in weaving, and in addition a considerable quantity of commercial yarn is employed for the same purpose. The origin of the textile art among the Navaho is an open question. It is probable that they did not learn it from anyone, but that it developed as a part of their domestic culture. It is contended by some that the early Spanish missionaries ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... obliged to buy cotton to prevent stoppage of his mill, a sale of yarn is impossible for the moment and he decides on a "hedge" transaction. He buys "goodmiddling" at 22 cents, and sells at the same time in New-York 200 December "futures" at 20 cents. Later on, the market advances ...
— Bremen Cotton Exchange - 1872/1922 • Andreas Wilhelm Cramer
... pigna oncques That she kembyth neuer Laine si bien; Wulle so well; Pour ce lui payera on bien. Therfor men shall paye her well. Cecile la fyleresse Cecyle the spinster 24 Vint auecques elle. Cam with her. Elle prise moult vostre fylet She preyseth moche your yarn Qui fu filee a le keneule; That was sponne on the dystaf; Mais le fil But the yarne 28 Quon fila au rouwet That was sponne on the whele A tant de neuds Hath so many cnoppes Que cest merueille a veoir. ...
— Dialogues in French and English • William Caxton
... general, as well as to raw silk, PROCOPIUS says:—[Greek: "Ahute de estin he metaxa, ex hes eiothasi ten estheta ergazesthai, hen palai men Hellenes mediken, tanun de seriken onomazousi."]—PROCOP. Persic. I. Metaxa, or anciently mataxa, "thread," "yarn," seems to be Latine rather than Greek. The metaxarius was a "yarn-broker;" and the word having got possession of the market, was extended to the woven stuff. The modern Greeks call ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... a yarn that'll make their eyes stand out," he thought with a smile as he saw the old man sit down ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... occasion was too great to permit them to sleep. There was a great deal of "skylarking" done in the cabin, as well as on deck, during the next hour, but one by one the boys below dropped asleep, and those on deck were soon tired of play, and called upon Captain Gordon to "spin a yarn." He was good-natured enough to comply ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... New England, arousing the women to new effort. These might be seen, young and old, rich and poor, bearing bundles of blue flannel through the streets, and unaccustomed fingers knitting the coarse yarn, while the heart throbbed with anxiety for the dear ones gone to the war. A noble band of nurses volunteered their services, and the strife was as to which should go soonest and do the hardest work. Hannah E. Stevenson, Helen Stetson, ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... whom the Kings and Princes of Greece had gone to war. Her maids were with her, and they set a chair for her near where Menelaus was and they put a rug of soft wool under her feet. Then one brought to her a silver basket filled with colored yarn. And Helen sat in her high chair and took the distaff in her hands and worked the yarn. She questioned Menelaus about the things that had happened during the day, and as she ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum
... women were grouped together in their sitting-rooms, sometimes three or four, sometimes a larger number, classified by their spontaneous affinities, I suppose, and all busied, so far as I can remember, with the one occupation of knitting coarse yarn stockings. Hardly any of them, I am sorry to say, had a brisk or cheerful air, though it often stirred them up to a momentary vivacity to be accosted by the governor, and they seemed to like being noticed, however slightly, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... news. You can't scace'ly get folks excited by a yarn about a shark's bitin' a cripple—but if you was to give in a yarn about a cripple bitin' a shark—well, there'd be some point to that. If you told where somebody had got a dollar away from Eben, now, we'd call you a liar, I s'pose—and be right ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... to put it like that," said Archie, gratefully. "I mean to say, makes it easier and so forth. What I mean is, you know how rotten you feel telling the deuce of a long yarn and wondering if the party of the second part is wishing you would turn off the tap ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... so stung up about that book? Tell you fellows? Well, I don't mind knocking off a bit and giving you the yarn. That Bible belonged to Fenwick Major. Never heard of Fenwick Major! What blessed ignorant chickens you must be! Where ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... kerry yer bones down the mounting ter Sister Mirandy's house, an' ax her ter fotch me a cake o' her yeast when she kems up hyar ter-day ter holp me sizin' yarn. Arter that I don't keer what ye does with yerself. Ef ye stays hyar along o' we-uns, ye'll haul the roof down nex', I reckon. 'Pears like ter me ez boys an' men-folks air powerful awk'ard, useless critters ter keep in a house; they oughter hev pens ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Like tangled yellow yarn wound spirally about the herbage and shrubbery in moist thickets, the dodder grows, its beautiful bright threads plentifully studded with small flowers tightly bunched. Try to loosen its hold on the support it is climbing up, and the ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... have the goody sort! By the poker! they sell their sermons dearer than we sell the rarest and realest thing on earth—pleasure.—And they can spin a yarn! There, I know them. I have seen plenty in my mother's house. They think everything is allowable for the Church and for—Really, my dear love, you ought to be ashamed of yourself—for you are not so open-handed! You have not given me two hundred ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... an old "yarn," repeated from generation to generation. We find in a Chinese work quoted by Amyot: "The palace of the king (of Japan) is remarkable for its singular construction. It is a vast edifice, of extraordinary height; it has nine stories, and presents on all sides an exterior shining with the purest ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Ainsworth, Scott, Lever, Marryat, James Grant, G. P. R. James, Dumas, and Whyte Melville gave me additional material for storytelling; and so, concocting wonderful blends of all sorts of fiction, I spun many a yarn to my schoolfellows in the dormitory in which I slept—yarns which were sometimes supplied in instalments, being kept up for a ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... vie, Perforce I say,—"Thus be it mine to die, If Heaven to me so fair a doom intends!" But, ah! those sounds whose sweetness laps my sense, The strong desire of more that in me yearns, Restrain my spirit in its parting hence. Thus at her will I live; thus winds and turns The yarn of life which to my lot is given, Earth's single siren, sent to ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... sermons that he preached during the festival had much the same value. You are aware that these friars never fail to go begging for their Easter eggs, and receive not only eggs, but many other things, such as linen, yarn, chitterlings, hams, chines, and similar trifles. So when Easter Tuesday came, and the friar was making those exhortations to charity of which such folks as he are no ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... York, that body of scientists, near-scientists and adventurers linked together for the purpose of awarding the yearly Woolman prizes for the most spectacular addition of empiric facts to various branches of science. One of the members of the club, an explorer, had told a wild yarn about a tribe of Brazilian Indians, headed by Sir Basil Addington, an English scientist, who was conducting secret experiments in biochemistry in his jungle laboratory. The explorer had said that the scientist, half-crazed by a powerful narcotic, had seemingly ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... and had got caught in Rat Portage when the Canadian Pacific Railway was a-building; a man who, in addition to his unparalleled knowledge of wood-craft and bush-lore, could also sing the old voyageur songs and tell a capital hunting yarn into the bargain. He was deeply susceptible, moreover, to that singular spell which the wilderness lays upon certain lonely natures, and he loved the wild solitudes with a kind of romantic passion that amounted almost to an obsession. ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... doing laborious work, it was customary with The Lifter, as well as with our hero, to sit among the women and assist them in such offices as the peeling of turnips or potatoes; and holding the yarn skein whilst one of the women rolled the thread into a ball; or in scouring the knives and forks. One afternoon while all the men save The Lifter were absent, the group was seated round a small open fire. Hanging from the crane was a pot of fruit ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... Game.—The ball, which is 9-9-1/4 in. in circumference and weighs 5-5-1/4 oz., is made of yarn wound upon a small core of vulcanized rubber and covered with white leather, which may not be intentionally discoloured. The bat must be round, not over 2-3/4 in. in diameter at the thickest part, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... scratch their faces with your beard, as papa sometimes does—just for fun, you know. Besides which, my dear friend, they will give you a mitten apiece. How would you like that? They make lots for the soldiers, out of skeins of long yarn; mamma says you are a famous fellow for spinning splendid yarns yourself. Ours is dark blue; but mamma says, yours are all the colors of the rainbow, and a great deal of black besides; and everybody is delighted with them, and all the soldiers love ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... and she threaded her needle and snipped off the yarn before she answered, "No, thank you, Becky. Mother couldn't do without me, and I hate going to school. I can read and write and cipher as well as anybody now, and that's enough for me. I'd die rather than teach school for a living. The winter'll ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and forgot them again—clean forgot them, until, a week later, Jenks came to me in Number Seven with a yarn about a crater and a sniper, and might ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various
... yarn it might be managed," he said to himself that night, when he was alone in his bedroom. "Kitwater is clever, I'll admit that, and Coddy is by no manner of means the fool he pretends to be. But I'm Gideon Hayle, and that counts for ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... the gallon amongst the villagers, the donkey rides upon the curragh. But what it best pleases him to remember are the times when, seated in the ingle-nook, he used to listen to his grandmother telling fairy stories, as she sat at her black oak spinning-wheel, bending low over the whirling yarn. "Hommybeg"—it was a pet name she had given to him—"Hommybeg," she would say, "I will tell you of the fairies." And the story that he liked best to listen to, though it so frightened him that he would run and hide his face in the folds of the blue Spanish cloak which Manx women have worn since ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... on the young lady's part, and of rather listless knitting on the part of the mother, whose eyes went wistfully to the window without seeing anything. And this lasted till a step was heard at the front door. Mrs. Dallas let fall her needles and her yarn and rose hurriedly, crying out, 'That is not Mr. Dallas!' and so speaking, rushed into ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... consent we both walked aft to the binnacle and peered into it. The schooner had swung several points while the gunner had been spinning his somewhat long-winded yarn, for the bearing which he gave now lay about a point over the starboard quarter. I stared into the blackness in that direction, but could see nothing. Then I got the night glass and, setting it to my focus, ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... great machines cleaned from the freshly dried fleeces. Indeed, she would have lingered long before the big chute, through which compressed air forced the cleansed fibres to the height of four stories and the apartment where began its real manufacture into yarn. ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... Doctor. "If agreeable to all, I don't mind spinning a war yarn. Let me see; I left off at our entrance into Chattanooga. Well, Bragg's army was sitting upon the surrounding hills and mountains, watching us with eagle eyes. They cut off our lines of communication and supplies, and we soon began to feel the pangs ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... of titles, and it is a ripping good tale from Chapter I to Finis—no weighty problems to be solved, but just a fine running story, full of exciting incidents, that never seemed strained or improbable. It is a dainty love yarn involving three men and a girl. There is not a dull or trite situation ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... do so still," replied Aunt Sarah, with a merry twinkle in her kind, clear, gray eyes, "for that pale-green suesine skirt, slightly faded, will make an excellent lining, with cotton for an interlining, and pale green Germantown yarn with which to tie the comfortable. At small cost you'll have a dainty, warm spread which will be extremely pretty in the home you are planning with HIM. I have several very pretty-old-style patchwork quilts ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... bee line to the place from the foot of the mountain, Frank. And unless I'm away off in my guess, the farmhouse lies over yonder beyond the trees; so nobody's apt to see us come down; and we can make any sort of yarn we want, to explain just ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... God! Last Sunday in the parish crutch, if my own ars may be trusted, the clerk called the banes of marridge betwixt Opaniah Lashmeheygo, and Tapitha Brample, spinster; he mought as well have called her inkle-weaver, for she never spun and hank of yarn in her life — Young 'squire Dollison and Miss Liddy make the second kipple; and there might have been a turd, but times are changed with Mr Clinker — O Molly! what do'st think? Mr Clinker is found to ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... Damietta or Rosetta, as our ships would station themselves in the Bay of Aboukir, and so threaten Alexandria that the French would not care to weaken their force there by sending any considerable number of men to act against the Turks. There, that is all that has happened. Now let us hear your yarn." ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... has sent me a copy of your paper containing an article of which you do me the honor to make me the subject. What can have put such an extravagant yarn into the head of so amiable and good-natured a fellow? I never said the thing which you attribute to me in any interview, caucus or anywhere else. I never inherited any wealth or had any. My father was a lawyer in very large practice for his day, but he was a very ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... Such a portrait gallery as Typee makes out of the Julia's crew, beginning with Chips and Bungs, the carpenter and cooper, the "Cods," or leaders of the forecastle, and descending until he arrives at poor Rope Yarn, or Ropey, as he was called, a stunted journeyman baker from Holborn, the most helpless and forlorn of all land-lubbers, the butt and drudge of the ship's company! A Dane, a Portuguese, a Finlander, a savage from Hivarhoo, sundry ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... to state right at the start that I am writing this story twenty years after it happened solely because my wife and Senor Buck Johnson insist on it. Myself, I don't think it a good yarn. It hasn't any love story in it; and there isn't any plot. Things just happened, one thing after the other. There ought to be a yarn in it somehow, and I suppose if a fellow wanted to lie a little he could make a tail-twister out of it. Anyway, here goes; and if you don't like it, you know ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... hatches on. We sailed after nightfall, I recollect, with hatches off, and had the seas slopping in before the morning. He remembered it, he said. And he asked me if it was true that I was goin'—well, to the port I was bound for. And I said it was God's truth. Then he told me a long yarn of two cases outshipped that was lying down at the wharf. Transshipment goods on a through bill of lading. And the bill of lading gone a missing in the post. A long story, all lies, as I ought to have known ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... lie," said Quincy hotly; "the stock did go down, but my father told me yesterday it had rallied and would soon advance from five to ten points. What's the next confounded yarn?" ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... the other, immediately. "While it theemth to be a fish yarn, yet it ith all to the good. I really believe you've gone and figured it out, Elmer. And if that ith tho, it ith going to be another big feather in your ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... them on the other. The former becomes the positively charged body and the latter the negative. A film of moisture stops this action. When wool is spun in factories it tends to become in certain stages of the process too dry and too free from grease; the yarn then becomes electrified as it passes over the leather rollers, and when the machine tries to spin the threads together they fly apart and refuse to join up the minute hooks with which the wool fibres are furnished. ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various |
