netting-pin

Updated: May 26, 2025

I have known a lady take up the candlestick to search for her netting-pin, in the midst of Cato's soliloquy; or stoop to pick up her scissors while Hamlet says to the ghost, 'I'll go no further. I remember another who would whisper across the table to borrow thread while Lear has been raving in the storm, or Macbeth starting at the spirit of Banquo; and make signs for a thread-paper while cardinal Beaufort 'dies, and makes no sign. Nay, once I remember when I was with much agitation hurrying through the gazette of the battle of Trafalgar, while I pronounced, almost agonized, the last memorable words of the immortal Nelson, I heard one lady whisper to another that she had broken her needle."

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