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Reel   Listen
noun
Reel  n.  
1.
A frame with radial arms, or a kind of spool, turning on an axis, on which yarn, threads, lines, or the like, are wound; as, a log reel, used by seamen; an angler's reel; a garden reel.
2.
A machine on which yarn is wound and measured into lays and hanks, for cotton or linen it is fifty-four inches in circuit; for worsted, thirty inches.
3.
(Agric.) A device consisting of radial arms with horizontal stats, connected with a harvesting machine, for holding the stalks of grain in position to be cut by the knives.
Reel oven, a baker's oven in which bread pans hang suspended from the arms of a kind of reel revolving on a horizontal axis.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Reel" Quotes from Famous Books



... he wouldn't send me two quid off the reel without wanting to know all about it, and why I couldn't get on to the holidays with five bob, and I'd either have to fake up a lot of lies, which I'm not ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse

... the katydids seemed to keep time to their heart-beats; the fiddles began tuning for another reel, and the horses, tethered near, stretched out their ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote

... the square most readily in the Scotch mist which so often filled it, loosening the stones and choking the drains. There was then no rattle of rain against my window-sill, nor dancing of diamond drops on the roofs, but blobs of water grew on the panes of glass to reel heavily down them. Then the sodden square would have shed abundant tears if you could have taken it in your hands and wrung it like a dripping cloth. At such a time the square would be empty but for one vegetable-cart left in the care of ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie

... Swift without stop: the old bashaws click time, As if on polish'd ice; in trance sublime The iman hoar with some spruce courtier slides. Nor rank nor age from capering refrain; Nor can the king his royal foot restrain! He too must reel amid the frolic row, Grasp the grand vizier by his beard of snow, And teach the aged man once more to bound amain!" WIELAND, ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber

... middle age, old age, and all, are almost carried away of this flood. O debauchery, debauchery, what hast thou done in England! Thou hast corrupted our young men, and hast made our old men beasts; thou hast deflowered our virgins, and hast made matrons bawds. Thou hast made our earth 'to reel to and fro like a drunkard'; it is in danger to 'be removed like a cottage,' yea, it is, because transgression is so heavy upon it, like to fall and rise no more (Isa 24:20). O! that I could mourn for England, and for the sins that are committed therein, even while ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... needed that the art of the film is a dangerous rival to that of the stage, we would point to the five-reel drama, The Call of the Thug, of which a private trade view was given last week. Miss Flora Poudray, who is here featured—her name is new to us—proves to be a screen actress of superb gifts. We have seen nothing quite so subtly perfect ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various

... won't be. Jest polished up. Skin slicked up, hair fixed to the style, nails trimmed an' shined. Culchured. Inside you'll be yore real self. You can't take the gold out of a bit of ore any more than you can change iron pyrites inter the reel stuff. But, if the gold's goin' to be put into proper circulation, it's got ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... show, he did. Couldn't stand it no longer, he couldn't. The tune it got on his narves, it did! If it hadn't 'a been for a sort o' reel ease he got takin' of it quick and slow—like the Hoarperer—he'd have gave in afore; so there was no pretence. It's all werry fine to say temp'ry insanity, but I tell you it's the contrairy when a beggar comes to his senses and drownds hisself. Wot'd the Pope ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... Talbot's house, the resemblance became more real. The flags stuck here and there in the earthen floor, the form of the chairs and tables, the press-beds, large red-checked linen curtains, the 'rock and its wee pickle tow,' the reel, the bowls on the shelves—each and all recalled my native country; and I positively should have ended by believing myself there in a dream, if not in reality, had not a glance at the fireplace undeceived me: there was no fire—all was dim, dusky, and dark; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various

... think Ah would have sech fine troosos fer my marritch. When Ah married Bill Ah diden have nawthin' but a new cambric dress and a sun-bunnet. But this marritch will be the reel thing, what with all the ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... ain't the valley of the moon," agreed Billy, and he said it on the evening of the day he hooked a monster steelhead, standing to his neck in the ice-cold water of the Rogue and fighting for forty minutes, with screaming reel, ere he drew his finny prize to the bank and with the scalp-yell of a Comanche jumped and clutched it ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... prosaique de Walter Scott il lestera un autre roman a creer, plus beau et plus complet encore selon nous. C'est le roman, a la fois drame et epopee, pittoresque mais poetique, reel mais ideal, vrai mais grand, qui enchassera Walter Scott dans Homere. - Victor Hugo on ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... applause from the Christians themselves. Muza received on the small surface of his shield the ponderous spear of Alonzo, while his own light lance struck upon the helmet of the Christian, and by the exactness of the aim rather than the weight of the blow, made Alonzo reel in his saddle. ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... B. Yes; reel about, not able to stand—every symptom as if on board. Express your surprise at the strange effect, pretend not to explain it, leave that to medical men, it being sufficient for you ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat

... parapet, but they were soon hurled from thence. The fire of the redoubt and the batteries being aided by a well-posted armed brig flanking the right of the British lines, made the whole column stagger and reel like drunken men; and Colonel Maitland, seizing the critical moment, issued forth with a mixed corps of grenadiers and marines, and charged them at the point of the bayonet. This charge decided the contest. The French and Americans were driven far beyond the ditch, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... I see my high spires reel; My breast is scarred by the Hun's hoofed heel. What was, shall be! I read Thy sign: Thy ocean ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers

... dear scheme Of our life doth seem Shivered at once like a broken dream And our hearts to reel Like ships that feel A sharp rock grating ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... his elbows. Then the penniless man is up again; they close and struggle, the night-watchman's club falls across his enemy's head blow upon blow, while the sufferer grasps him desperately, with both hands, by the throat. They tug, they snuffle, they reel to and fro in the yielding crowd; the blows grow fainter, fainter; the grip is terrible; when suddenly there is a violent rupture of the crowd, it closes again, and then there are two against one, and up sparkling St. Charles street, the street of all streets for flagrant, ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... when rivers or brooks are somewhat beyond their usual bounds, a well scoured lob worm will take the best of fish. For worm fishing you must have a yard of good gut attached to your cast line, which line ought to be of the same thickness from the gut to the loop of your reel line, your hooks may be a trifle larger in the Spring than in the Summer, and should be tied on to the gut with good strong red silk; two No. 4 or 5 shot corns, partially split, and then fastened upon the gut about five or six inches from the hooks, ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland

... deserted her. Resolving to die by herself in some lonely spot, she got down from her chariot to horse, and fled out of the field. Rinaldo saw the flight; and though one of the knights that remained to her struck him such a blow as made him reel in his saddle, he despatched the man with another like a thunderbolt, and ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt

... interest. The theodolite having been put together, Mr. Franklin opened another box and took out a wooden tripod, such as are used to support such instruments. He also took out a fine steel ribbon, or measuring tape, neatly wound up on a reel. ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... the flower of Stoke's red field, When Martin Swart on ground lay slain; In raging rout he never reel'd, But like a rock ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... my inward vision when I turn to retrospect. Even now I mark it as a day of great adventure. Since then I have battled with salmon in northern waters, I have felt my line strain under the tarpon's despair, I have heard my reel sing with the rushes of the bass, yet I do not believe that a whale with my harpoon in his side, as he thrashes the sea, would give me the same exulting thrill that came with a tiny trout's first tug at my hook. Filled with so exciting a prospect, I did not look back as we swung ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd

... the edge passed the critical point. Some 480 feet of sail surface were thus spread to the wind, working on a radius of fifteen feet. The horizontal drive wheel had a diameter of ten feet, carried eighty-eight wooden cogs which engaged a pinion with fifteen leaves, and there were nine arms on the reel at the other end of the shaft which drove the chain. The boards or buckets of the chain pump were six by twelve inches, placed nine inches apart, and with a fair breeze the ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King

... the oaks ye cleave, And moved as soon to fear and flight, Men of the glade and forest! leave Your woodcraft for the field of fight. The arms that wield the axe must pour An iron tempest on the foe; His serried ranks shall reel before The arm that lays the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... time to turn his rein, and drawing his sword, galloped forward. The next moment the dragoons fired. The weapons of all four were clashing together. Both were tolerably skilful swordsmen. Stephen wounded his antagonist in the sword-arm. Andrew gave the other a plunge in the side which made him reel in his saddle, and dashed on to encounter the other three, who were now spurring forward to meet them. They had some hope of success, and their courage was high, though their horses were not equal to those of their opponents. They ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston

... two fine steel wires wound on reels in the torpedo, the reels being geared to the propeller shafts. The wires are led to corresponding reels on shore, and these are rapidly revolved by means of an engine. A brake on each shore reel controls the torpedo. The speed of all these torpedoes is about 19 knots, and their effective ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various

... is one thing, endurance another. A man who doesn't reel on receipt of his death-warrant may yet break down when he has had time to think it over. How did the Duke acquit himself when he came to the end of his cigarette? And by the way, how was it that after he had read the telegram you didn't give him ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... ever knew Could "yodel" half as well as COO, And Highlanders exclaimed, "Eh, weel!" When COO began to dance a reel. ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert

... Captain Oughton; "well done! that broadside was a staggerer—right into his ribs. Hurrah now, my hearts of oak! this fellow's worth fighting. Aim at his foremast—another broadside will floor it. It's on the reel. Newton, ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat

... out in the stables, came in with a black boy he found there, who had his fiddle; and as the Colonel Mansfield party came in from the dining-room, Steve screamed out, "Take your partners for a Virginia Reel." No! I do not know whose partner was who; only this, that there were seventeen boys and men and seventeen girls or women, besides me and Mrs. Van Astrachan and Colonel Mansfield and Pauline's mother. And we danced till for one I was almost dead, and then we went to bed, to wake ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale

... tiny shallop and picked up an oar. The brilliant sunshine streamed about her, burnishing the rich tints of her hair into ruddy gold. She balanced herself to the swaying of the dory with the grace of a sea bird. The man looking at her felt his brain reel. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... done towards producing our own silk. The mulberry is being distributed in large numbers, eggs are being imported and distributed, improved reels were imported from Europe last year, and two expert reelers were brought to Washington to reel the crop of cocoons and teach the art ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... their winter trails, which would hold them prisoners for months to come in the interior wilderness. A fiddle was brought out, and Dick Blake tuned up its squeaky strings, and, keeping time with one foot, struck up the Virginia reel. ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace

... distinguished foreigner, and that he had about him an indefinable suggestion of death clinging with an eager, haggard hope to life,—a suggestion which melted the heart of the beholder, as if it were the mute appeal of a drowning sailor. She was stirred to pity; and when he suddenly appeared to reel from weakness, she stepped out to him on an overwhelming impulse, laid a steadying hand on his arm, and asked what ailed him. He turned on her a pair of wonderful dark eyes, which were animal-like in their simple, direct appeal, and their moist softness. He begged her to lead him aside into a ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban

... passed within it. It was his friend himself, tripping merrily with the fairies. The accused man succeeded in catching him by the sleeve and pulling him out. "Why could you not let me finish my reel, Sandy?" asked the bewitched man. "Bless me!" rejoined Sandy, "have you not had enough of reeling this last twelvemonth?" But the other would not believe in this lapse of time until he found his wife sitting by ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... fam'd for a reel or a jig, Tom Sheridan there surpasses Tom Bigg.— For lam'd in one thigh, he is obliged to go zig- Zag, like a crab—for no dancer is Bigg. Those who think him a coxcomb, or call him a prig, How little they ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... Barlow felt himself reel at this sudden confirmation of his fears—the blow. The cry "Kurban" that he had heard on the bridge was ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser

... faces dim. In the mines; in the mills Where the ceaseless thunder fills Spaces of the human brain Till all thought is turned to pain. Where the skirl of wheel on wheel, Grinding him who is their tool, Makes the shattered senses reel To the numbness of the fool. Perisht thought, and halting tongue— (Once it spoke;—once it sung!) Live to hunger, dead to song. Only heart-beats loud with wrong Hammer on,—How long? ... How ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... courage, but both had been strained too severely at first. Montacute struck the spurs into him with a savage blow over the head; the madness was its own punishment; the poor brute rose blindly to the jump, and missed the bank with a reel and a crash; Sir Eyre was hurled out into the brook, and the hope of the Heavies lay there with his breast and forelegs resting on the ground, his hindquarters in the water, and his neck broken. Pas de Charge would never again see the starting flag waved, or ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... frugal fare, they subdued a harsh and stubborn soil and made it yield its yearly toll of harvest; they took tribute of wool and mutton from the moorland and the hillside, and of hide and beef from the fallow lea; they levied on loch and sea to support their fisher-folk; and kept the rock and the reel and the flying shuttle busy to clothe themselves with homespun, so that the old Arbroath toast became a very epitome of the vocations of that primitive time: "The life o' man, the death o' fish, the shuttle, and the plough; corn, horn, linen, yarn, lint, and tarry 'oo." Nay more, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... Barrister-at-Law, and become simply Uncle James. This alone is a tonic. To-day as I ascended the steps of the temple there floated down to me the voices of the priestesses chanting, evidently in a kind of frenzy, and to the air of a famous Scottish reel, this rhyme—— ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 8, 1916 • Various

... look to see if the sign of a white flag can be seen. At this instant it seems to gleam in the sun-light, and sends a pang to our hearts. But no; it is the white smoke of their guns, while cannoneers and infantry simultaneously fire on the confident assaulters, who stagger, reel under their death-dealing volley, and in a moment the Federal lines are broken and they retreat in masses under cover. A loud and wild cheer succeeds the breathless stillness that prevailed amongst us, and is answered exultingly by the heroic little garrison in fort Gregg. But reinforcements ...
— Lee's Last Campaign • John C. Gorman

... goes on around them: they collect anecdotes and generalize events without the fumes of evil, among which they seek for materials in the dark places of national or local history, ever going to their imagination, ever making their heart sicken and faint, and their fancy stagger and reel. The life of these righteous, or at least, not actively sinning men, may be hampered, worried, embittered, or even broken by the villainy of their fellow-men; but, except in some visionary monk, life can never be poisoned by ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee

... "Danger reel, mais balance par l'ambition ardente du coeur maternel, qui presque toujours place sur l'enfant une esperance infinie, et brule de la realiser. Toute mere de quelque valeur a une ferme foi, c'est que son fils doit etre un heros—dans l'action ou dans ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... is in what we do not know that our hope and our religion lies. Thrice blessed are we in the certainty that here our range is infinite. This infinite that makes our brains reel, that begets the feeling that makes us 'shrink,' is perhaps the most portentous argument in the logic of the sceptic. Since the days of Laplace, we have been haunted in some form or other with the ghost of the MECANIQUE CELESTE. ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... I ken ye weel! Avaunt, or I your saul sall steal, An' send ye howling through the wood A wild man-wolf—aye, ye maun reel An' cry upon your ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... their stepmother might not treat them well and might do them harm, he put them in a lonely castle that stood in the middle of a wood. It lay so hidden, and the way to it was so hard to find, that he himself could not have found it out had not a wise-woman given him a reel of thread which possessed a marvellous property: when he threw it before him it unwound itself and showed him the way. But the King went so often to his dear children that the Queen was offended at his absence. She grew curious, and wanted to know what he had to do quite alone in ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various

... country-lasses find a pleasing care In soft, warm wool their snowy flocks have bred; The distaff, skein and spindle they prepare, And reel, with firm-set thumb, the ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus

... the great recall! Swift, O swift, for the squadrons break, The long lines waver, mazed in the gloom! Hither and thither the blind host blunders. Stand thou firm for a dead Man's sake, Firm where the ranks reel down to their doom, Stand thou firm in the midst of the thunders, Stand where the steeds and the riders fall, Set the bronze to thy lips and sound A rally to ring the whole world round. Trumpeter, rally us, rally us, rally us! ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes

... the crowded Southern ranks. The Winchesters were on the flank of the defenders, where they could get a better view, and although they also were firing as fast as they could reload and pull the trigger, they saw the great column pause and then reel. ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler

... they pass between the line and are met a short distance from the other end of the line by Hasjelti and Hostjoghon, who dance up to meet them, the movement resembling closely the old-fashioned Virginia reel. The couple then dance backward between the lines to their starting point, then down again, when they separate, the man taking his place in the rear of the male line and the woman hers in the rear of the female ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various

... of my heart grows young again. For our Chiefs said "Done," and I did not deem it; Our Seers said "Peace," and it was not peace; Earth will grow worse till men redeem it, And wars more evil, ere all wars cease. But the old flags reel and the old drums rattle. As once in my life they throbbed and reeled; I have found ray youth in the lost battle, I have found my heart on the battlefield. For we that fight till the world is free, We are not easy in victory: We have known each other too long, my ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton

... quadrilles and country dances, and now and then a reel- -nobody thought of waltzes—and the three couples changed and counterchanged partners. Clarence had the sailor's foot, and did his part when needed; Emily generally fell to his share, and their silence and gravity contrasted with the mirth of the other pairs. ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... as sound, may be joined in a rosebud feast without thorns or strife." The dances may be of the simplest kind, such as "Ring Around a Rosy," "Here We Go, To and Fro," "Old Dan Tucker" and the "Virginia Reel." The old-fashioned singing plays, such as "London Bridge," "Where Oats, Peas, Beans, and Barley Grow," and "Pop Goes the Weasel" have their place and value. Several collections of them have been made and published, but usually quite enough material may be found ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne

... to reel and stagger as he plunged with a bound out into the matted cactus, without his tattered hat, like a wolf flying from the hounds? Had he trodden on a snake, or seen his compadre, or had that white finger waved him away? Yes, ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise

... was poisoned by their breath, and the larger animals were devoured in the flap of a bird's wing. With them came terrific lightnings that rent the trees and cleft the solid rock, and thunders which caused the earth to reel like a man who had drank many times of fire-water. Nearer and nearer they approached, and now the chosen residents of this fair plain were filled with alarm for their lives, and at once began to build fortifications ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam

... steady in earnest determination, broke the current of his denunciation as a knife severs a straining cord. The suddenness of her declaration almost made the prosecutor reel. She was sitting up, straight and outwardly calm, pushing her cloak and other detached belongings away from her with an unconscious movement of disencumbering herself ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... curtains are drawn, Yet I see their shadows suddenly kneel To pray, or laughing and reckless as drunkards reel ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps

... enthewsiasm in the cause of Whales may be xcused when I reweals the fack that I am myself arf a Welchman, as my Mother was a reel one before me, and so, strange to say, was my Huncle, her Brother. There was sum idear of dressing me up as a Bard with a Arp, and I was to jine in when the rest on us struck up "The March of the Men of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 7, 1891 • Various

... the disease it will be noticed that an animal is disinclined to move, and when made to do so there is manifest loss of power over the hind quarters, somewhat simulating a slight partial paralysis, and the hind quarters of the animal reel from side to side. In connection with this it may be noted that frequently there is paralysis of the sphincter ani and a dilated condition of the anus. These symptoms taken together point to some interference with the normal functions of ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... in the cushions of her invalid chair in the sun parlor of the great Blake mansion on Riverside Drive, facing the Hudson with its continuous reel of maritime life framed against the green-hilled ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... from one 8-inch reel around the periphery of a pulley (with guide flanges) mounted above the V-pulleys on the main vertical shaft, where it comes in contact with the recording or reproducing stylus. It is then taken up on the ...
— Development of the Phonograph at Alexander Graham Bell's Volta Laboratory • Leslie J. Newville

... blushing shyly. And later on he had a sketch he prized very much: Connie sitting on the stool before the wheel, her flowing mane of red hair on her rusty black frock, her red mouth shut and serious, running the scarlet thread off the hank on to the reel. ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence

... him, as you know, in Mrs. Taylor's back chamber, making tops for the children. In a few days he was able to go down stairs. The first use he made of his liberty was to make a reel for Mrs. Taylor ...
— Bertie and the Gardeners - or, The Way to be Happy • Madeline Leslie

... despair I should reel for a breathing space away from the fight, with no heart for battle-cries, and with only a desire to pray, I could do it in no better manner than to lift my arms above the river and cry out into the big spaces: "You who somehow ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt

... shared our sufferings with such fidelity and devotion. Both crossed the river on horseback, and the army uttered shouts of admiration as they saw that the chiefs were the first to set the example of intrepidity. They braved enough dangers to make the strongest brain reel. The current forced their horses to swim diagonally across, which doubled the length of the passage; and as they swam, blocks of ice struck against their flanks and sides, ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... an invitation to a crossroads tavern, frequented by poor whites and enlisted men, or when the nights were warm, to a moonlit sward, on which he would invite his audience to a reel which left all breathless. While there was a rollicking element in the strains of his fiddle which a deacon could not resist, he, with the intuition of genius, adapted himself to the class before him. In the parlor, he called off the figures of a quadrille with a "by-yer-leave-sah" air, selecting, ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe

... chamber of an outbuilding where she was weaving a carpet, or cloth. I used to help do some of the quilling—running the yarn or linen thread upon spools to be used in the shuttles. The distaff, the quill-wheel, the spinning-wheel, the reel, were very familiar to me as a boy; so was the crackle, the swingle, the hetchel, for Father grew flax which Mother spun into thread and wove into cloth for our shirts and summer trousers, and for towels and sheets. Wearing those shirts, when new, made a boy's ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus

... and lifting keel, And smoking torch on high, When winds are loud and billows reel, She thunders foaming by; When seas are silent and serene, With even beam she glides, The sunshine glimmering through the green That skirts ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... desire, can certainly drive away all kinds of woe. Desire is, indeed, ignorance and darkness and hell in respect of all creatures, for swayed by it they lose their senses. As intoxicated persons in walking along a street reel towards ruts and holes, so men under the influence of desire, misled by deluding joys, run towards destruction. What can death do to a person whose soul hath not been confounded or misled by desire? ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... rest, Believ'd there was wisdom in wine, And thought that a cup of the best Made reason the better to shine. With wine he'd replenish his veins, And make his philosophy reel, Then fancy'd the world, like his brains, Turn'd ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus

... entirely forgot it until it was forced out of place by a violent effort. The ball was seven inches in circumference, and covered with mucus, but otherwise unchanged. Breisky is accredited with the report of a case of a woman suffering with dysmenorrhea, in whose vagina was found a cotton reel which had been introduced seven years before. The woman made a good recovery. Pearse mentions a woman of thirty-six who had suffered menorrhagia for ten days, and was in a state of great prostration and suffering from ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... for a moment of time, I was flying through space, and clouds, and fire!—groping through dark caverns, millions of miles long, crying wildly for light and air; now a giant, entangled in myriads of chains that I could not break; now a reptile, writhing away from footsteps that made the earth reel and tremble beneath their tread; and at last waking, as if out of sleep, a poor, puny thing, with limbs like shadows, laughing or crying by ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... Oh, I implore you to crush out that fatal habit while it may yet be time! You must not, you shall not be deaf to my supplications longer!" My struggling Conscience showed sudden signs of weariness! "Oh, promise me you will throw off this hateful slavery of tobacco!" My Conscience began to reel drowsily, and grope with his hands—enchanting spectacle! "I beg you, I beseech you, I implore you! Your reason is deserting you! There is madness in your eye! It flames with frenzy! Oh, hear me, hear me, and be saved! See, I plead with you on my very knees!" As she sank before ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... crackling of breaking brushwood within a few yards of him; his horse bounds to one side and it is with difficulty he retains his seat in the saddle; then he flashes a look in the direction whence the noise proceeds, only to reel back as though to ward off a blow. He is looking into the muzzle of a heavy "six" with Arizona's blazing ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum

... England is at war With any foreign nation, We fear not wound or scar; Our roaring guns shall teach 'em Our valour for to know, Whilst they reel on the keel, And the stormy winds do blow. And the ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various

... transmigration, and final repose; Nirvana awaits the Buddhist high and low alike; Islamism sternly sends all mankind across the sharp-edged Bridge, which the righteous only cross in safety, while wicked caliph and wicked slave together reel into the abyss below. The apotheosis of pagan heroes rested on personal merit alone. No eschatology but that of High Calvinism anticipates, in the unseen world, anything resembling the injustice ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... the floor, and he stood before me the exact counterpart of myself. Stunned by the transformation, I gazed at him speechless; it was like looking in a mirror, feature for feature identically the same! For a few seconds my brain seemed to reel from the shock, but his tones recalled me ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour

... remove the cat. But alas! my Nannine was an unusually dull-witted girl, and she would never be able to do a thing she had not rehearsed. My next impulse was to pick up the creature and carry it off myself; but I was playing a dying girl, and the people had just seen me, after only three steps, reel helplessly into a chair; and this cat might easily weigh twelve pounds or more; and then at last my plan was formed. I had been clinging all the time to the bureau for support, now I slipped to my knees and with a prayer in my heart that this fierce old Thomas ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris

... Nevertheless it was a delightful feeling to win the blue ribbon of England, especially as my opponent in the final, Miss Jackson, had led 5-love in both sets! By some good fortune I was able to win seven games off the reel in ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers

... Diavolo Antonio went through his truly astonishing evolutions on the corde volante. The Duke of Gloucester's fine military band occupied the grand orchestra; an excellent quadrille band played throughout the night in the long room, while a Scottish reel band in the rotunda, and 415 a Pandean band in the gardens, played alternately reels, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... cloud on the face of the sky. In the space of a breath, thick darkness overspread the earth, rendering it as dark as the darkest night, and the thunders rolled so awfully, that the very earth seemed to reel like a man who has drunken twice of the fire-eater, which the brothers of our friend sell us in the Village of the High Rock.[A] But what astonished our people most was, that no lightning accompanied the thunder. In a few minutes the darkness ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... furlong on—why, there! What bad use was that engine for, that wheel, 140 Or brake, not wheel—that harrow fit to reel Men's bodies out like silk? with all the air Of Tophet's tool, on earth left unaware, Or brought to sharpen its ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... one to another." Having read it with a return of the former trembling, and paused, his brain suddenly seemed for a moment to reel under a wave of extinction that struck it, then to float away upon it, and then to dissolve in it, as it interpenetrated its whole mass, annihilating thought and utterance together. But with a mighty effort of the will, in which ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... revived glories of British prowess—Wellington in the midst of his staff, smiling benignantly on the facetious pleasantries of a Fitzroy Somerset—Sergeant M'Craw of the Forty-Second delighting the elite of Brussels by the performance of the reel of Tullochgorum at the Duchess of Richmond's ball—the charge of the Scots Greys—the single-handed combat of Marshal Ney and the infuriated Life-Guardsman Shaw—and the final retreat of Napoleon amidst a volley of Roman candles and the flames of an arsenicated Hougomont. Nor is our gratification ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun

... Osterman's, and to Broderson's. During a flurry in the Chicago wheat pits in the August of that year, which had affected even the San Francisco market, Harran and Magnus had sat up nearly half of one night watching the strip of white tape jerking unsteadily from the reel. At such moments they no longer felt their individuality. The ranch became merely the part of an enormous whole, a unit in the vast agglomeration of wheat land the whole world round, feeling the effects of causes thousands of miles distant—a drought on the ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... come awa', And leave your southland hame, lassie; The kirk is near, the ring is here, And I 'm your Donald Graeme, lassie! Rock and reel and spinning-wheel, And English cottage trig, lassie; Haste, leave them a', wi' me to speel The braes 'yont Stirling ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... head and blanched face To him whose senses reel at such rare grace And piercing sweetness, she prefers her lips; But stooping close, his ardent eyes behold In those deep eyes, sewn thick with points of gold, A hazardous sea bestrewn ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... breaths, and the internal steam humming through its bowels; and I came out in time to see Billy Lusk climb its front with callow, enterprising shouts. That was child's play; and the universal yell now raised by the horsemen was their child's play too; but the whole thing could so precipitately reel into the fatal that my thoughts stopped. I could only look when I saw that they had somehow recognized the man on the engine for a sheriff. Two had sprung from their horses and were making boisterously toward the cab, while Lin McLean, neither boisterous nor joking, was going to the cab from my ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister

... heartstrings thrill like an Aeolian harp; and particularly why my pulse beat such a furious ratan, when I looked and fingered over her little hand to pick out the cruel nettle-stings and thistles. Among her other love-inspiring qualities, she sung sweetly; and it was her favourite reel to which I attempted giving an embodied vehicle in rhyme. I was not so presumptuous as to imagine that I could make verses like printed ones, composed by men who had Greek and Latin; but my girl sung a song which was said to be composed by a small country laird's son, on one of his father's maids ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various

... Kate. "You won't go out of this house till you've danced a reel with me, and now sit down at the table next to me; and, Peter, you sit on the other side of him, so that he won't ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore

... he would not detect her, she repeated it. Once or twice now, indeed, the beast stirred uneasily, turned, and made the bough sway at his movement. As she ended, he snapped his jaws together, and tore away the fettered member, curling it under him with a snarl,—when she burst into the gayest reel that ever answered a fiddle-bow. How many a time she had heard her husband play it on the homely fiddle made by himself from birch and cherry-wood! how many a time she had seen it danced on the floor of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various

... a genuine sailors' reel or hornpipe, one should see it danced by men who for a whole year at a time have been battling with the waves and storms in every corner of the world, and who during all that time have hardly set eyes ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie

... hear you say that, old weather bureau prophet," laughed Alec; for the scout who had just made that bold assertion had long been looked up to as an authority on the subject of changes of the weather, and could reel off a dozen reasons for the prediction he was making, all founded on a good ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler

... confided Barclay. "But there are things you can learn by looking on." They had reached the edge of the track; Barclay clapped his hands. "No, no, Roberts!" The boy who was practising the start for a sprint looked up. "You mustn't reel all over the track that way when you start; you'd make a foul. Keep your ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier

... get her home, where the drunken rollers comb, And the shouting seas drive by, And the engines stamp and ring, and the wet bows reel and swing, And the Southern Cross rides high! Yes, the old lost stars wheel back, dear lass, That blaze in the velvet blue. They're all old friends on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail, They're God's own guides on the Long Trail—the ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... one! I have one!—a fish! What kind is it?" screamed Bess Bangem, who was the Professor's companion, as her light trout-pole bent from a sudden tug, and the reel whirred as the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various

... to buy, Their phantoms round me waltz and wheel, They pass before the dreaming eye, Ere Sleep the dreaming eye can seal. A kind of literary reel They dance; how fair the bindings shine! Prose cannot tell them what I feel,— The Books that never ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang

... at libbaty to divulj the reel names of the 2 Eroes of the igstrawny Tail which I am abowt to relait to those unlightnd paytrons of letarature and true connyshures of merrit—the great Brittish public—But I pledj my varacity that this singlar story of rewmantic love, absobbing pashn, and likewise of GENTEEL LIFE, is, in the ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... way lay through the leafy wonderland of West Sussex, when the Mercury crept softly through Midhurst and Petersfield into Hampshire, and so to Winchester, where Cynthia, enraptured with the cathedral, used up a whole reel of films, and bought some curios carved out of oak imbedded in the walls when the Conqueror held ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy

... distance. They speedily grow nearer. A horse is galloping, galloping towards me along the broad carriage drive. Nearer, nearer and nearer it comes! Who is it? WHAT is it? A deadly nausea seizes me, I swerve, totter, reel, and am only prevented from falling by the timely interference of a pine. The concussion with its leviathan trunk clears my senses. All my faculties become wonderfully and painfully alert. I would give my very ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell

... of a reel, line, toggle and chip. Usually a second glass is used for measuring time. The chip is the triangular piece of wood ballasted with lead to ride point up. The toggle is a little wooden case into which a peg, joining the ends of the two lower lines of the bridle, is set in such a way that a ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper

... across the floor of the little basin, watching Morgan and wondering at the seeming absence of Deveny's men, when he saw a smoke streak issue from one of the windows of the house, saw Morgan reel in the saddle, and ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer

... the Three should catch at last Thy serenader? While there's cast Paul's cloak about my head, and fast Gian pinions me, Himself has past His stylet thro' my back; I reel; And... is it ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning

... I should hardly be inclined to say that she's the complete thing. When she's up in one of her vagaries she'll sit with the ladies and make up pretty things out of her head as fast as sticks a-breaking. They will run off her tongue like cotton from a reel, and if she can ever be got in the mind of telling a story she will bring it out that serious and awful that it makes your flesh creep upon your bones; if she's only got to say that she walked out of one door into another, she'll tell it so that there ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... host entertaineth us with no loves of Strephon and Phillis, nor leads beneath shady arcades to a vine-clad cottage, wherein is love and rich cream and homemade butter. The three sisters, the dread Moirae, in their darksome cavern, spinning the golden thread of destiny, reel from their distaff no bright soft film of wedded happiness. The polished metal, many times refined, would never show half its qualities were it not subject to unwonted tests. We suffer according to our powers of endurance, and are tried according to our gifts. Else why are ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... or dance as others do, Or ply my rock or reel? My heart will still return to dreams of you ...
— The Fairy Changeling and Other Poems • Dora Sigerson

... and the road. There was much hesitation at first, ardent coaxing and bashful withdrawal, until Martha broke the ice by boldly choosing Mark as her partner, apportioning Sally to Gilbert, and taking her place for a Scotch reel. She danced well and lightly, though in a more subdued manner than was then customary. In this respect, Gilbert resembled her; his steps, gravely measured, though sufficiently elastic, differed widely from Mark's springs, pigeon-wings, and curvets. Giles ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor

... stout-hearted apologist for the worm. His apparatus is most singular. It consists of a very long, cheap rod, stout enough to smash through bushes, and with the stiffest tip obtainable. The lower end of the butt, below the reel, fits into the socket of a huge extra butt of bamboo, which R. carries unconcernedly. To reach a distant hole, or to fish the lower end of a ripple, R. simply locks his reel, slips on the extra butt, and there is a fourteen-foot rod ready for action. He ...
— Fishing with a Worm • Bliss Perry

... did not say that? You did not know, then, that I could reel off the ages of every Lorraine of them all. No, M. de Mar, I am not so simple as you think. You will come along with me ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle

... to the attention of those careless bards who pronounce real as reel, and ideal as ideel. The correct quantities, as there given, will serve as examples. Verse of deeper quality is furnished by amateurdom's foremost expressionist, Anne Tillery Renshaw, two of whose poems appear. "The Singing Sea" contains an error of technique, ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... with a mighty beautiful young crather; but the mirinit I laid my eyes upon her I knew her at once for a neighbour's daughter, one Anty Dooley, who had died a few months before, and who, when she was alive, could beat the whole county round at any sort of reel, jig, or hornpipe. The music struck up 'Tatter Jack Walsh,' and maybe it's she that didn't set, and turn, and thrush the boords, until the young prince hadn't as much breath left in his body as would blow out a rushlight, and he was forced ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... wetted his line, but had attached a dyed casting line to it, on which was a large but light thin wired hook. He then sent the boys hunting for grasshoppers and fernwebs, and letting out so much of the reel line as, with the casting line, would be as long as his rod, he let the grasshopper that he had put on the hook fall lightly on the water, and be carried down by the sluggish stream; there was a swirl in the water, and Hardy was fast ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary

... hear the fiddled notes of a reel proceeding from some building in the rear; but no sound of dancing was audible—an exceptional state of things for these parts, where as a rule the stamping drowned the music. The front door being open she could see straight ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... tendency downward; her truant needle-work escaped from her fingers, and lay lazily on her lap. She snatched it up with a start, and sewed with severe resolution until her thread was exhausted. The reel was ready at her side; she took it up for a fresh supply, and innocently rested her head against the leafy and flowery wall of the arbor. Was it thought that gradually closed her eyes again? or was it sleep? In either case, Susan was lost ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins

... only A steed of dapple grey; But saw the Britons riding Their stately queen that way. The bugles sound the rally! The Britons backward turn—to fight, The Romans backward reel—in flight, Before ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones

... seen to reel under the blow, and instantly there was a commotion on board. Biskaine leapt to his feet with a half-cry of astonishment; even Asad's eyes kindled with interest at so unusual a sight as that of a galley-slave attacking a corsair. Then with a snarl ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... catch the gale Round veered the flapping sail, Death! was the helmsman's hail, Death without quarter! Mid-ships with iron keel Struck we her ribs of steel; Down her black hulk did reel Through ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... mornin'. He went to Sothern and Lee's and Leonard and Call's and Godfrey's—'nd then I guess he must 'ev quit discouraged. They wouldn't none of them give him nothin'. Leastways, thet's what they said after he'd gone out. He didn't give anybody a reel chance to say anythin'. I was in Leonard and Call's and he came in an' asked for a job, but the minute Len looked at him he turned right round and slunk out without a-waitin' for Len to say a word." Hiram smoked in huge enjoyment of the ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance

... hour with Lucy Lee and you're apt to need an elastic hat band. You never knew you could reel off such entertainin' chat. Why, without half tryin' I could start that ripply laugh of hers going and get the dimples playin' tag with her blushes. By the time we gets home I ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford

... happiness of that moment was too great for reality, as if it were but some dream of bliss; scarcely was he conscious of the warm greeting he received; the uncontrollable emotion of the old Admiral, who, as he wrung his hand again and again, wept like a child. His brain seemed to reel, and every object danced before his eyes, he was alone sensible that he held his sister in his arms, that sister whom he had loved even more devotedly, more constantly in his hours of slavery, than when she had ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar

... and what he didn't 'low was perfectly well known to every darky. For instance, "he didn't 'low no singin' uv week-er-day chunes uv er Sunday," nor "no singin' uv reel chunes" (dance music) at any time; nor did he "'low no ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle

... common things as he left her, beyond those common things was the miracle that Gertie had grown into the one perfect, divinely ordained woman, and that he would talk to her again. He danced the Virginia reel. Instead of clumping sulkily through the steps, as at other parties, he heeded Adelaide Benner's lessons, and watched Gertie in the hope that she would see how well he was dancing. He shouted a demand ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... son-in-laws. He was such a good son, too; jest worshipped his mother; couldn't bear her out o' his sight. He humored her high an' low. That's jest the way Sidonie does with me. I'm gettin' cranky 's I get older, an' sometimes I'm reel cross an' sassy to her; but she jest laffs at me, an' then comes an' kisses me, an' I'm all right ag'in. It's a blessin' right from God to have ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell

... was brought to him he took her into a room which was quite full of straw, gave her a spinning-wheel and a reel, and said, "Now set to work, and if by to-morrow morning early you have not spun this straw into gold during the night, you must die." Thereupon he himself locked up the room, and left her in it alone. So there sat the poor miller's ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... was such a startling one, that her head seemed to reel, and she doubted whether the shock of last ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Barnstaple. Yes; reel about, not able to stand—every symptom as if on board. Express your surprise at the strange effect, pretend not to explain it, leave that to medical men, it being sufficient for you to ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... a violent twitch at the end of the rod, the reel spun round with a sharp whirr-r, and every nerve in Mr Sudberry's system received an electric shock as he bent forward, straddled his legs, and made a desperate effort to fling ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne

... him in a transport of fury, and thrust my weapon into his mouth, which it enlarged on one side to his ear. Whether the smart of this wound disconcerted him, or the unevenness of the ground made him reel, I know not, but he staggered some paces back: I followed close, and with one stroke cut the tendons of the back of his hand, Upon which his cutlass dropped, and he remained defenceless. I know not with what cruelty my rage might have inspired me, if I had not at that instant been felled to the ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... are pitilessly flashed into the dark places of the earth, which have been wrapped around by the old-time dim religious light, since first the world began. The people in whose eyes these rays beat so mercilessly, reel and stumble blindly on in their march through life, taking wrong turnings at every step, and going woefully astray. Let us hope that succeeding generations will become used to the new conditions, and will fight their way back to a truer path; for there is no blinking the fact that the first, immediate, ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... saw him reel. Then, in a moment, she saw that both men were down on hands and knees, and, almost at the instant, she, herself, was hurled flat upon the ground beside the body ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... of Milton's poems was issued in Sixteen Hundred Forty-five, when he was thirty-seven years of age. But before this he was known as the author of some pamphlets which had made political London reel. The writer was at once seen to be a man of remarkable learning and marvelous intellect, and the work secured Milton a few friends and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... he connected a small reel with the steam-engine of the factory in which he is occupied, and putting it in motion, at the rate of 150 feet per minute, found that the spider would thus continue to afford an unbroken thread during from three to five minutes. The specimen of this silk, which accompanies ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 553, June 23, 1832 • Various

... ilka country dance and reel Wi' her he wad be babbin'; When she sat down, then he sat down, And till her wad be gabbin'; Where'er she gaed, or butt or ben, The coof wad never leave her, Aye cacklin' like a clockin' hen, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... opened the single sheet of paper, and ran his eyes slowly down the lines of writing. Hamlin, feeling his head reel giddily, reached out silently and grasped the back of a chair ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish

... groans the ground, Earth heaves and labors with the shuddering sound; Columns of smoke, that cap the rumbling height, Roll reddening far thro heaven, and choke the light; From tottering steeps descend their cliffs of snow, The mountains reel, the valleys rend below; The headlong streams forget their usual round, And shrink and vanish in the gaping ground. The sun descends; but night recals in vain Her silent shades, to recommence her reign; The bursting mount gapes high, a sudden glare Coruscates wide, till ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... to explore. To keep up the spirits of the men, there is much merrymaking. Becalmed off Cape Breton, Sir Humphrey visits the big ship Delight, where the trumpets and the drums and the pipes and the cornets reel off wild sailor jigs. "There was," says the old record, "little watching for danger." Wednesday, August 26, the sounding line forewarned the reefs of Sable Island. Breakers were sighted. The Delight signaled that her captain wanted to shift southwest to deeper water, but Gilbert wanted ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... polite of you, but you must excuse me. I was never anything great in quadrilles; but if a reel or a jig—" ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... the aboriginal sense of humour was a failure. Two of the crew who were Scotch, commenced to dance a reel for the amusement of the blacks. "For want of music," it is related, "they made a very bad performance, which was contemplated by the natives without much amusement or curiosity." The joke, like Flinders' gun, ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... from the restraining clutch of Gladys, who, following her closely, saw her reel backward as if in shrinking affright from a shadowy figure standing in the ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock

... what Claude had feared came to pass. He had been riding behind Mimi for some time, so as to watch her better, when suddenly he saw her slender frame reel to one side. A low cry came from her. In an instant Claude was at her side, and caught her in his arms in time to save her ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille

... pride have said By right now shall we seize Gods houses, and will now invade *Their stately Palaces. *Neoth Elohim bears both. 13 My God, oh make them as a wheel No quiet let them find, 50 Giddy and restless let them reel Like stubble from the wind. 14 As when an aged wood takes fire Which on a sudden straies, The greedy flame runs hier and hier Till all the mountains blaze, 15 So with thy whirlwind them pursue, And with thy tempest chase; 16 *And ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... of spearmen. Then came the charge of the cavalry, which—notwithstanding they were thrown into some disorder by the fire of Pizarro's arquebusiers, far superior in number to their own—was conducted with such spirit that the enemy's horse were compelled to reel and fall back before it. But it was only to recoil with greater violence, as, like an overwhelming wave, Pizarro's troopers rushed on their foes, driving them along the slope, and bearing down man and ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... are all that need be described in that line. The next articles that I look after are knapsack (or pack basket), rod with reel, lines, flies, hooks and all my fishing gear, pocket-axe, knives and tinware. Firstly, the knapsack; as you are apt to carry it a great many miles, it is well to have it right and easy-fitting at the start. Don't be induced to carry a pack basket. ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears

... gamefish which swarmed in the depths. Rarely did such an evening pass without a long fight with a leaping pampano or a sea bass: with thirty or forty pounds of desperate muscle at the other end of a hundred-yard line, the song of reel was sweet. One night he brought in an eighty-pound barracuda but usually the larger fish cost ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson

... Shoes grow red in a thousand fords; Now for the flint, and the cartridge bite; Darkly gathers the breath of the fight, Salt to the palate and stinging to sight; Muskets are pointed they scarce know where, No matter: Murder is cluttering there. Reel the hollows: close up! close up! Death feeds thick, and his food is his cup. Down go bodies, snap burst eyes; Trod on the ground are tender cries; Brains are dash'd against plashing ears; Hah! no time has battle for tears; Cursing ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt

... cases the best and most expeditious method of marking out the garden is by the use of the garden line, which is secured to a reel (Fig. 96), but various other devices are often useful. For very small beds, drills or furrows may be made by a simple marking-stick (Fig. 115). A handy marker is shown in Fig. 116. A marker can be rigged to a wheel-barrow, as in Fig. 117. A rod is secured underneath the ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey

... this period were surprisingly brilliant. The spacious halls of the mansions afforded ample room for a large company and frequently scores of guests would be present to take part in the stately minuet or the gay Virginia reel. The visitors were expected to remain often several days in the home of their host resuming the dance at frequent intervals, and indulging in other forms of amusement. Fithian thus describes a ball given by Richard Lee, of Lee ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... breath, as though talking exhausted him, and the Cardinal in his turn gave some details. "We had just finished our meal," said he, "I was giving Don Vigilio some orders for this afternoon, and was about to rise when I saw Dario get up and reel. He wouldn't sit down again, but came in here, staggering like a somnambulist, and fumbling at the doors to open them. We followed him without understanding. And I confess that ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... to the Son, And to the Holy Spirit," rang aloud Throughout all Paradise, that with the song My spirit reel'd, so passing sweet the strain: And what I saw was equal ecstasy; One universal smile it seem'd of all things, Joy past compare, gladness unutterable, Imperishable life of peace and love, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... me feel; I open the line, now clutch Your spit, Sir Scullion—slow your zeal! At the envoi's end, I touch. (He declaims solemnly): Envoi. Prince, pray Heaven for your soul's weal! I move a pace—lo, such! and such! Cut over—feint! (Thrusting): What ho! You reel? (The viscount staggers. Cyrano salutes): At ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand

... of electric lights. The pictures are taken in succession on a narrow strip of celluloid film, of the same nature as those in any camera. The strips are of a standard length of one thousand feet, though some plays may "split," and take only half a "reel" while others ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope

... click of the latch the new-comer turned and looked across the road, and as she looked Huldah felt her head reel, and her heart almost stop beating, for the tramp was Aunt Emma! Aunt Emma, come to cross her path once more. Aunt Emma, shabbier and dirtier than ever, and with a pinched, starved look, which showed that things had not been ...
— Dick and Brownie • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... carves the casques of men, My tough lance thrusteth sure, My strength is as the strength of ten, Because my heart is pure. The shattering trumpet shrilleth high, The hard brands shiver on the steel, The splinter'd spear-shafts crack and fly, The horse and rider reel. ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty

... campus as graduation presents. Petey explained that each boulder marked the resting place of some student whose career had been foreshortened accidentally, and he described several of the tragedies—invented them right off the reel. Pubby was so interested he didn't care who saw his notebook. When Petey told him how a pack of timber wolves had besieged the school for nine days and nights, four years before, he almost cried because there was no photograph ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch

... hula ohe had some resemblance to one of the figures of the Virginia reel. The dancers, ranged in two parallel rows, moved forward with an accompaniment of gestures until the head of each row had reached the limit in that direction, and then, turning outward to right and left, countermarched in the same manner to ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... most sad To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood? Who but the Being unblest, alien from good, Sabbathless Satan! he who his unglad Task ever plies 'mid rotatory burnings, That round and round incalculably reel— For wrath divine hath made him like a wheel— In that red realm from which are no returnings; Where toiling, and turmoiling, ever and aye He, and ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... and lower, and he looked at the ground, suffering as he had never suffered and yet indescribably happy in speaking with her, and in seeing the interest she felt in him. But his brain was beginning to reel. He did not know ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford

... enthusiastic over anything it ain't any flash in the pan. It's apt to be done, and done right. She tells me what to do right off the reel. And you should have seen me blowin' that five hundred like a drunken sailor. I charters a five-piece orchestra, gives a rush order to a decorator, and engages a swell caterer, warnin' Tessie by wire what to expect. Vee ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford

... drunken Goths reel upon Rome and heard the careless Negroes yodle as they galloped to Toomsville. Paris, she knew,—wonderful, haunting Paris: the Paris of Clovis, and St. Louis; of Louis the Great, and Napoleon III; of Balzac, and her own Dumas. She tasted the mud and comfort of thick old London, and the ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois



Words linked to "Reel" :   dance music, roll, reeler, walk, gyrate, shuttle, tackle, wrap, spin, whirligig, eightsome, revolve, winder, swag, unreel, stagger, keel, highland fling, filature, fishing gear, wind, longways dance, reel off, go around, Virginia reel, fishing rod, lurch



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