to bristle a thread

The Qur'anic teaching is that...

[Thomas] Hood also presented his treatises in such a way that conveniently accessing specific lessons was difficult, if not impossible, for the reader-practitioner. For example, his book entitled The Vse of Both the Globes, Celestiall and Terrestriall... (1592) was roughly two hundred pages long but did not include such helpful tools as an index, a table of contents, or even folio numbers. In order to refer to some lesson that he might need, the reader would have to leaf through the text until the passage in question was found, or else rely upon his own marginal notes.

He would also have been exposed to the coughings and shufflings, comings and goings, questions and answers, wailings and slammings, snivellings and sneezings, etc., which figured so prominently in the reference room […]