"Tangle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... response was to pick up his end of the canoe, and they went cautiously down through the tangle of grasses to the stream. The buoyant craft rested lightly on its surface; they stepped aboard, Henry Burns in the bow, his companion, Jack Harvey, in the stern, dipped their paddles joyously together, and went swiftly ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... and longed to sleep on. At last the snowdrops came up and looked shiveringly about; and a primrose leaf peeped through the ground, and died of cold. Then some violets opened their blue eyes, and, hidden beneath the tangle of the wood, listened to the twittering of the birds. The little ragged boy came by; he saw the tender flowers, and, stooping down, gathered them one by one, and put them into a wicker basket that ...
— Very Short Stories and Verses For Children • Mrs. W. K. Clifford
... part of the woods Dick parted a tangle of bushes through which the trail led. Then, in a voice vibrant with ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... night and their foreheads reeked with sweat. Dim shapes on the walls of the room indicated what by day was a tangle of clockwork and recording instruments, connected by electricity with various buttons and switches upon the table. The brother of the big clock in the wireless operating room hung nearby, its face illuminated by a tiny electric lamp, showing the hour to be eleven-fifty. ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... in hand they had toiled in joy and sorrow, when no rain fell for eight long months, and their cattle died; or when increase was good, and flocks and herds fat. Side by side they had stood alone in the wild tangle of the wilderness. And now, when riches had been gathered and comfort could be had, his "lassie" had left him, and "Oh! he grudged her sair to the land o' the leal!" Being so far removed from his fellows, he had been compelled to perform the sacred offices of burial himself. ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... the tender leaves to atoms. - This morning at the end of my watch, about 4 o'clock, we came to the buoys, proving our anticipations right concerning the crossing of the cables. I went to bed for four hours, and on getting up, found a sad mess. A tangle of the six-wire cable hung to the grapnel which had been left buoyed, and the small cable had parted and is lost for the present. Our hauling of the other day ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for warmth, and a peasant coat and cap. Physically he had changed much during this time. He no longer seemed stout, though he still had the appearance of solidity and strength hereditary in his family. A beard and mustache covered the lower part of his face, and a tangle of hair, infested with lice, curled round his head like a cap. The look of his eyes was resolute, calm, and animatedly alert, as never before. The former slackness which had shown itself even in his eyes was now replaced by an energetic readiness ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... and unexpected interruption made a grievous tangle in his day's work. Arrived at the store he flew about in eager haste, and then rushed with more than usual speed to the bank. Just five minutes too late; the last shutter was being closed as he reached the steps. "The ...
— Three People • Pansy
... continents, we find great quantities of floating seaweed, the entangled fronds of which often form a mass sufficiently dense to slightly restrain the speed of ships. When the men on the caravels of Columbus entered this tangle, they were alarmed lest they should be unable to escape from its toils. It is a curious fact that these weeds of the sea while floating do not reproduce by spores the structures which answer to the seeds ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... got into his car and took the wheel; and Stull watched them threading a tortuous path through the traffic tangle of Broadway. ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... rain of the night before the garden was cool and sweet. The drops yet lay on the tangle of old-fashioned flowers, on the box and honeysuckle and the broad leaves of the trees where all the birds were singing. The gravel paths were wet and shining. Rand walked slowly, here and there, between the lines of box or under arching boughs, his mind now trying to bring back ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... the tangle of undergrowth, of flowering vines in which frightened mocking-birds and catbirds were darting, to the side of the island nearest the ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... long, by your counting, I have been up here at my spinning. I spin the round of the clock at this window, then I turn my wheel—to get the light, you see—and spin the round again at the other. If you saw the tangle it comes to me in! And the threads I send down! It is not often such little people as you come up here themselves, but it does happen sometimes. And there is plenty ready for you—all ready ...
— The Tapestry Room - A Child's Romance • Mrs. Molesworth
... hands in front of her, and stood with her chin drawn in, looking at him from under a tangle ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... assured Vincent would be sure to burn, and was a real English medicine, imported with great trouble and expense, and certain to cure the ailment from which he was suffering. How Vincent would have got out of the tangle, or convinced the chemist's assistant that he was not in need of medical aid, is uncertain, but at that moment Irene, who was walking with Lorna in the square, spied him through the window, and brought her chum to the rescue. Lorna's Italian was excellent; she ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... motionless figure on the ground not one could have told. Death was no stranger to them. For years it had lurked behind every chance shrub they passed, in the depths of every ravine, in the darkness of night, from every tangle of rank prairie grass in broad daylight. To it from long familiarity they had become callous; but death such as this, deliberate, cold-blooded, self-inflicted—it awed them while it fascinated, held them ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... Dense woods were its chief feature. And by dense I mean well-supplied not only with trees (excellent things in themselves, but for the most part useless to the nest hunter), but also with a fascinating tangle of undergrowth, where every bush seemed to harbour eggs. All carefully preserved, too. That was the chief charm of the place. Since the sad episodes of Morton-Smith and Ainsworth, the School for the most part had looked askance at the Dingle. Once a select ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... country, little grebes leave, in the "rains," those tanks that do not afford plenty of cover, and betake themselves to a jhil where vegetation is luxuriant. The nest, like that of other species that build floating cradles, is a tangle of weeds and rushes. When the incubating bird leaves the nest she invariably covers the white eggs with wet weeds, and, as Hume remarks, it is almost impossible to catch the old bird on the nest or to take her so much by surprise as not to allow her time ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... hopefulness, she was sure of fame and worldly success, perhaps of wealth too. She seemed to see a rich harvest-field before her as she sat listening to the rain beat on the roof that summer afternoon. But, after all, she was not happy. Somehow, life was all so hollow! So much tangle and confusion! Her young feet were weary. It was not simply that her love was unreturned. That pained her far less than she would have thought. It was that her idol was shattered. Only in the last few weeks had she begun to see Clarence Mayfair as he really was. It was a wonderfully deep insight ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... closed room behind the pulpit where the rest of the Sunday school was assembled. In front of the pulpit was a stand bearing tall white geraniums in luxuriant blossom. The light fell through the stained-glass window in a soft tangle of hues upon the floor. Salome felt a sense of peace and happiness fill her heart. Even Judith's anger lost its importance. She leaned her head against the window-sill, and gave herself up to the flood of tender old recollections ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... impose on it. This ideal itself, however, has often been expressed in some mythical figure or Utopia. So to express it is simply to indulge an innocent instinct for prophecy and metaphor; but unfortunately the very innocence of fancy may engage it all the more hopelessly in a tangle of bad dreams. If we once identify our Utopia or other ideal with the real forces that surround us, or with any one of them, we have fallen into an illusion from which we shall emerge only after bitter disappointments; and even when ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Austria politically, and his Holiness would welcome the Duke of Wirtemberg to the fold. For the rest, Eberhard Ludwig talked wildly of approaching Louis XIV. and throwing in his lot and his army with his old adversaries. The Pope was indeed informed of the whole tangle, and had entered into secret negotiations with ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... and plans had brought it home to her keenly. All the same, she could take no new stand just to please him; it would not be true, she could not keep up to it, could not act it out. Was she ready, for other reasons, to take such a stand? The old tangle of perplexed questions seemed closing her in again; and now and then, between whiles, when Rollo was looking away, the brown eyes studied him; as if studying his face would magnetize her out of her difficulties,the ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... the traveller found refreshment, and the mosquitoes were blown away by the keen breeze that seemed to come from off some glacier. And the birds sang loud, and the wild-flowers starred the birch-grove, and the briar-roses wove a tangle on ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... This unintelligent tangle is seen in Congress. Republican and Democratic Senators and Representatives, believing alike on broad measures affecting the whole Republic, find it hard to vote together because of the nominal difference of their party membership. When, sometimes, under ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... Conference at Paris over Greek supplies in the autumn of 1917—the subject has already been mentioned on p. 216, and it will be referred to again farther on in this volume—without knowing what the business was about. Greek supplies and our connection with them were consequently in a shocking tangle for ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... its distinctly-marked profile of a French soldier of the days of the Empire lying with crossed hands, the head and feet cutting the sky-line sharp and clear, or the bolder outlines of blue Mount Ory or cloud-capped Pieter Both. Our path always lies through a splendid tangle of vegetation, where the pruning-knife seems the only gardening tool needed, and where the deepening twilight brings out many a heavy perfume from some hidden flower. Above us bends a vault of lapis-lazuli, with globes of light ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... doubt it can easily be "explained away." In fact, the rationalistic explanation of the whole thing is patent and on the surface. There is only one little difficulty, and that, I fancy, is by no means insuperable. In any case this one knot or tangle may be put down as a queer ...
— The Angels of Mons • Arthur Machen
... Eleanor's pride revolted against such a course, and yet what else was there to do? She had not even arrived at Betty's half answer to the problem when she undressed in the silence of the great, sleeping house and, thoroughly tired with her long vigil, forgot the difficult tangle until morning. ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... moment. He was scanning his memory for old impressions and also, in his mild surprise over the pertinency of reviving them, wondering whether he had better pass them on. Or would they knot another tangle in the snarl he and Dick seemed to be, ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... tree-trunks, all of which "bled," giving out a milky sap; and then again the sign failed. About them were the trees in endless columns, overhead was the roof of leaves, and on the ground was a tangle of undergrowth and decaying vegetation, that gave out a moist earthy smell, which set the lungs labouring for oxygen. The boys were uncomfortable. Their skins were clammy, their eyes were heavy, and their limbs languid. Mr. Hume was glad ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... long before the prudent bishops had made of it the Liverpool of medieval times. The Lynn of older days, later known as "King's Lynn," with its little crowded market shut in between Guildhall and Church, the booths then as now leaning against the church walls, and a tangle of narrow lanes leading to the river-side, was in no way fit for the great demands of an awakened commerce; its life went on as of old, but the sea was driven back by a vast embankment, and the "Bishop's Lynn" rose on the newly-won land along the river-bank, ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... Life to her seemed an inexplicable tangle, from which one fact stood out with insistent prominence. This, that although Windebank's thoughtless words about the safety of a woman with the man who truly loved her had awakened considerable apprehension in her heart, she realised how necessary it was to trust Perigal ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... with no dependence! like the plantain or the bubble. Then, on the third eventful watch, he entered on the deep, true apprehension; he meditated on the entire world of creatures, whirling in life's tangle, born to sorrow; the crowds who live, grow old, and die, innumerable for multitude. Covetous, lustful, ignorant, darkly-fettered, with no way known for final rescue. Rightly considering, inwardly he reflected from what source birth and death proceed. He was assured that age and death must come ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... viewpoint it was to the boy, and as he regarded the complicated web, he found himself wondering how much of all this tangle was known to the men, and whether they were always fair to their employer. He had frequently overheard conversations at his father's when they had proclaimed how easy and care-free a life the rich led, and while they had envied and criticized ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... a great deal of tripping and floundering through soft mud and mire, with slippery moss-stones sandwiched in, and dwarfed bushes which ran along the ground, and twisted themselves in an almost impassable tangle. These had a knack of catching a fellow's feet, and causing him to sprawl forward on his face and hands, whereupon his knapsack would hit him an astounding ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... consciousness of a nature like Beaton's and was chiefly a torment to itself; he could not have conceived of the wayward impulses indulged at every moment in little things till the straight highway was traversed and well-nigh lost under their tangle. To do whatever one likes is finally to do nothing that one likes, even though one continues to do what one will; but Kendricks, though a sage of twenty-seven, was still ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... place I must state that there never were four men in the dingey,—the number was three. Constans, who was "seen by the captain to jump into the gig,"{1} luckily for us and unluckily for himself did not reach us. He came down out of the tangle of ropes under the stays of the smashed bowsprit, some small rope caught his heel as he let go, and he hung for a moment head downward, and then fell and struck a block or spar floating in the water. We pulled towards him, but he ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... refuses to honor Sanderson's check. Claim money belongs to Bransford estate. Legal tangle. Must have cash ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... eager to get back to our work after breakfast, neither of us referred to the dirty dishes, and I did not remember them again until dinner time. Tom got into a tangle with our heroine about one o'clock, and said he would get the lunch by way of relaxation. I presume he relaxed sufficiently without attending to the plates. At least, I found them untouched when I went out to look after ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... than the others, so that its features remained comparatively perfect, and about them hung a tangle of golden hair. Moreover, a broad battle-axe appeared ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... like running home. Somehow the situation broke upon her with a most embarrassing effect. She did not take Clark's arm, and she began to tremble. He appeared unconscious of this, and probably was, for his mind had a fine tangle of great schemes in it just then; but he turned toward his office, and bidding her follow him, walked away ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... expressed in his words for his crime. He speaks of his "transgressions" and of his "sin." Looked at in one way, he sees the separate acts of which he had been guilty—lust, fraud, treachery, murder: looked at in another, he sees them all knotted together, in one inextricable tangle of forked, hissing tongues, like the serpent locks that coil and twist round a Gorgon head. No sin dwells alone; the separate acts have a common root, and the whole is matted together like the green growth on a stagnant pond, so that, by whatever filament it is grasped, the whole ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... nothing to Eileen. She knew not how the woman she faced was concerned in the tangle in which she herself was involved. She saw only a slim, beautifully dressed woman, whose age might have been somewhere between thirty and forty, and who still laid claim to a gipsy-like beauty. The dark eyes of the Princess dwelt ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... the two was a child with bare, brown legs and tattered gingham dress who limped painfully along beside the man, her sunny hair in a tangle half across her pinched ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... chasm. For a moment it looked as though the smooth disc, falling from its place in the sky upon the earth, had rolled to the bottom of that precipice: its ascending movement was like a leisurely rebound; it disengaged itself from the tangle of twigs; the bare contorted limb of some tree, growing on the slope, made a black crack right across its face. It threw its level rays afar as if from a cavern, and in this mournful eclipse-like light the ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... as his work was concerned he could go without regrets. He left his career behind him with no frayed edges that could tangle. He had fulfilled all his ambitions. He had "bought back Kilmoriarty and got a title too," as he promised his aunt he would while still a boy in his teens. He had collected an almost unprecedented number of ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... he had gone like the wind, but now he rushed like a thoroughbred standing a challenge in the homestretch. His nose, and his flying tail were a straight line and the flash of his legs was a tangle which no eye could follow as he shot east on the back trail, straight toward the posse. For a mile or more that speed did not slacken, and at the end of that distance he began to ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... saw the man, for whose reappearance I was so earnestly waiting, step casually out on to the pavement. He attempted to cross the street and was quickly lost to sight in a tangle of vehicles. A second later I could have sworn that I saw him back again at the entrance to ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the afternoon, we were overtaken by a sudden squall, which carried away our mast (we found afterwards that it had rotted in the step), and put us for some minutes in no little danger; for my brother and I, being inexpert seamen, did not cut the tangle away, as we should have done, but made a bungling attempt to get the mast on board, with the rigging and drenched sail; and thereby managed to knock a hole in the side of the boat, which at once began to take in water. This compelled us to desist and fall ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... and strode through flowery tangle and woody thicket like a giant in sudden strength, snapping all that offered to detain his feet. He sought, he knew not why, the murmur and the motion of the river; and where young trees stood thickest, as spearsmen to guard the loneliness of its bank, he sat down upon a rock and ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... a perilous hoax played upon him by the Irish servant, Daniel Hill; or whether, as he himself surmised, the crime was instigated by an unfriendly neighbour, it is impossible to say. Strange adventures of this kind, blending fact and fancy in a now inextricable tangle, are of no unfrequent occurrence in Shelley's biography. In estimating the relative proportions of the two factors in this case, it must be borne in mind, on the one hand, that no one but Shelley, who was alone in the parlour, and who for some unexplained reason had loaded ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... wilful, my girl?" asked her father, who had a keen taste for music. "Why this tangle? Let us ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... progress, which now and then only ran over into a loud tittering, when some old lady slipped into the circle and tried her skill at a redowa, then altogether unknown to the young people. In the very midst of the tangle of dancers was to be seen the bride in a heavy silk wedding-gown. The point of her golden hood hung far down over her face. She danced continuously. She danced with every one that asked her. Had one, however, observed the actions of the young woman, ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... and those I most particularly didn't want. Still, I could not see any means of getting the weapon into my own hands without its going off. It was impossible to "rush" him. The dozen yards which separated us was one solid tangle of scrub-bushes interwoven with brambles. It would have taken at least forty seconds to tear through them, and in that time he could most assuredly snap off all six chambers, however big a duffer he might be. This ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... in Paris. They know nothing of the beauty of the pattern being woven. They work on the "wrong" side, the under side of the web. They miss the inspiration of seeing the rare beauty they themselves are making. All the weaver sees is the apparent tangle of many coloured threads and thread ends, while he thrusts in his needles according to the card of instructions. The more faithfully and skilfully he can follow the directions the better a piece of weaving ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... regular pass—a fortunate thing for him, as it afterwards turned out, for he thus escaped falling into an ambush of five hundred Cherokees who were encamped along it.[62] After in vain trying to penetrate the tangle of gloomy defiles and wooded peaks, he returned to the middle towns at Canucca on September 18th. Here he met Williamson, who had just arrived, having been delayed so that he could not leave Fort Rutledge until the 13th.[63] The South Carolinians, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... leevin' woman, and that's no a'; he didna feenish wi' ae set an' begin wi' the next, but if he didna mix them a' thegither. Fower set o' heads a' in a tangle; noo ye hae some kin' o' idea o' what a' hed tae face." And Mrs. Macfadyen paused that I might take in ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... crew, put on our diving suits, and soon we were walking the slippery decks once trodden by Spanish grandees and soldiers, and the scene of many a bloody fight I'll be bound. Their skeletons lay about the deck, wrapped in sea-tangle, and from every crevice of the galleon, tall, red, and green, and yellow, and purple weeds had sprung, that waved and shivered with the motion of the sea. Her decks were strewn with shells and sand, and ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... merely as is necessary to account for the actions of the characters in this or that case; when also the incidents are so accumulated, that little room is left for display of character; when the plot is so wrought up, that the motley tangle of misunderstandings and embarrassments seems every moment on the point of being loosened, and yet the knot is only drawn tighter and tighter: such a composition may well be called a Play of Intrigue. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... error cannot stand agitation. Whoever espouses the cause of error must evade facts, falsify figures, libel logic, tangle his tongue or pen with contradictions and ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... the wire! It was strewn in every direction, with seeming aimlessness. Heavily barbed it was, and bad stuff to get caught in. One of the great reasons for the preliminary bombardment that usually precedes an attack is to cut this wire. If charging men are caught in a bad tangle of wire they can be wiped out by machine gun-fire before ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... Mugridge kicked savagely, till the Kanaka, hanging on with one hand, seized the Cockney's foot with the other. Black duplicated the performance a moment later with the other foot. Then the three writhed together in a swaying tangle, struggling, sliding, and falling into the arms of their mates on ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... the bayou and his legs shook under him; but the path wound deeper still into what appeared to be an untouched solitude, wound on between the crowding tree forms, a little back from the shore, with an intervening tangle of vines and bushes. He scanned this closely as he hurried forward, scarcely conscious that he was searching for some trampled space at the water's edge; but the verdant wall preserved its unbroken continuity, and twenty minutes later he came ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... the white jacket, and with that wonderful tangle of black whiskers, like a patch cut ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the spring, when the garden was bursting into bloom in the warm southern sunshine, Grandmother and Lindsay would sit in the arbor, where the vines crept over and over in a tangle of bloom, and listen to a serenade. Music, music everywhere! Over their heads, behind their backs, the little brown bees would fly, ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay
... oftener called by their name than by her own. The whole family connection was composed of people so little given to letters that it is hard to determine the proper names and relationships of the younger members amid the tangle of traditional cousinships. [Footnote: The Hanks family seem to have gone from Pennsylvania and thence to Kentucky about the same time with the Lincolns. They also belonged to the Communion of Friends.—"Historical Collections of Gwynnedd," ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... trembled for a moment—then tottered and fell—while the gallant Captain, struck in the chest by a flying piece of shell, fell dying upon the deck. Du Guay-Trouin again attempted to board, at this moment, but the third mast was shaking and he was forced to sheer off lest the tangle of yards and rigging should fall and crush his vessel. He hung within hailing distance of the crippled sea-warrior, and, seeing that his antagonist was now helpless, cried ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... rope and jam it into the door through which pretty soon Eva would run to take refuge from the pursuing Automaton. Then they slunk back through a rear door, with muttered taunts to Locke, who struggled in the tangle of rope as he felt the stinging ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... flash and a jerk of one hand up, and the other down, the eye riveted to the nicety of a hair's breadth, the stroke downward gauged to the cup of a thimble, to settle over the point of the spindle's end; for the missing of a thread's breadth would send a spindle blade through the hand, or tangle and snap a thread which was turning with a thousand revolutions ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... over, and rejoice in nothing so much as in possessing means and ability to indulge these tastes. From this hotbed is engendered in the state a spirit of blind folly (24) and cowardice, and in the hearts of the citizens spreads a tangle of hatred and mutual hostility which, as I often shudder to think, will some day cause some disaster to befall the state greater than ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... in the grass. Presently a faint squeak showed that the game was astir. Vix rose up and went on tip-toe into the grass—not crouching, but as high as she could stand, sometimes on her hind legs so as to get a better view. The runs that the mice follow are hidden under the grass tangle, and the only way to know the whereabouts of a mouse is by seeing the slight shaking of the grass, which is the reason why mice are hunted ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... His joy passes into His servant's heart. I saw, not long since, in a wood a mass of blue wild hyacinths, that looked like a little bit of heaven dropped down upon earth. You and I may have such a tiny bit of heaven itself lying amidst all the tangle of our daily lives, if only we put our trust in Christ, and so get into our hearts some little portion of that joy that is unspeakable, and that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... to have had a fine view from the pass over the trackless mountain tangle to the north, some of the peaks towering almost eighteen thousand feet into the sky, but again the clouds and mist veiled everything from sight. All the rest of the day we were making our way down the steep east side, picking our steps laboriously along ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... Javanese past "was reached by a ladder of realities," for the exploits of gods and mythical heroes were afterwards attributed to native Rulers, until the medley of truth and fiction, history and mythology, became an inextricable tangle. The birds' beaks, and hooked noses of the masks in the topeng, and of the puppets in the shadow-play, were made compulsory after the Arabic conquest, in order to reconcile the national pastime with the creed of ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... Charley was quicker. He dug his spur cruelly into his little pony's flank. With a neigh of pain the animal leaped forward. For a moment there was a tangle of striking hoofs and wriggling coils of the foiled reptile, while Charley leaning over in his saddle struck with the butt-end of his riding whip at the writhing coils. Though it seemed an eternity to the helpless watchers ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... falling—fairly in the center of the clearing. It was almost a fairylike spot. On every side it was hedged in by the densest jungle vegetation, the solid walls being broken here and there by elephant paths leading off into the green tangle. ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... also in a small orchard of another neighbor, who reports that Success does best. The trees owned at one time by Dr. Stubbs seem not to be cultivated at all, but are grazed and mowed, and the orchard is now rather a tangle of ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... Robbers'. But what is most noteworthy of all, Klinger and Leisewitz give us simply dynastic tragedies. In both the outlook is limited to the fortunes of a single house. In both we miss the great dramatist who looks upon life with a roving eye and intertwines his tale of private woe with the larger tangle of ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... of the field was a patch where the soil was neither rammed solid, as on the footpath, nor thin, as where the rock cropped out, but where there had been a tangle of thorns, which grow luxuriantly in Palestine. These had been cut down, but not stubbed up, as is plain from the very fact that the seed reached the ground, as also from the description of them as 'springing up.' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... strange figure was confronting them. It was kneeling up in the prow of the nearest vessel. A wild, straining, desperate light shone feverishly in eyes looking out of a face lost in a tangle of beard and whisker. The brows were fiercely depressed, suggesting a bitter defensive spirit. The eyes were lost in cavernous sockets, and the cheeks were sunken and scored with lines of ravening hunger. The whole was clad in the discoloured buckskin of a Northern Indian, ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... buried the ears, and no one would have been the wiser. That is what she would have done if she had wished to shield the criminal. But if she does not wish to shield him she would give his name. There is a tangle here which needs straightening out." He had been talking in a high, quick voice, staring blankly up over the garden fence, but now he sprang briskly to his feet and ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... attract the attention of the maidens, who could only follow with their eyes, so closely guarded were they by the elder women. Old men jogged along in groups, talking to each other, their lariats dragging through the grass, now and then snapping off the head of a wild flower or catching in a tangle of weeds. Boys made the air ring with their laughter, as they slipped off their ponies to shoot their small arrows at some imaginary game. It was a scene full of careless pleasure and happy ...
— Indian Story and Song - from North America • Alice C. Fletcher
... steep hill out of Guildford, now known as The Mount. For miles the old road is now grass-grown and forms a most delightful walk, with magnificent views from the Thames Valley to the South Downs. The days of the coaches have, alas! passed, and the new road, with its tangle of telegraph wires, is beloved by every motorist and motor-cyclist who ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... did this mischievous, daring little dog do but stand perfectly still and watch the tramp come after him, wading through the tall, wet marsh grass, stumbling as he came. He was within five feet of Zip and was just thinking, "One more step and I can reach him!" when the long tangle grass caught one foot and threw him face down in the ...
— Zip, the Adventures of a Frisky Fox Terrier • Frances Trego Montgomery
... is generally that the inaptitude of men for clear thinking and the difficulties of the issues involved will render any decision save the sheer clash of physical force impossible; that the field of foreign politics is such a tangle that the popular mind will always fall back ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... Above Coole, and about two miles farther on, lies Aghyohillbeg, the residence of Madam O'Connor, that terrible descendant of one of Ireland's kings; whilst below, nestling among its firs and beeches, is Kilmore, where the Halfords—a merry tangle of boys and girls—may be seen ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... time. The tide would be out before we got there, and it's a perfect tangle of oar-weed unless the water's high. Never mind! There'll be elbow-room in the sea at any rate. There's a corner here where we can undress. Come along! O-o-h! ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... or ever having had the experience of salvation, Frank did not know how to unravel the tangle of thought that he had woven within Edwin's mind, and he was at a loss ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... battle with the look we so admire in the picture called The Soul's Awakening. He was going to glory. There are no dead. There are only memorial crosses for heroes and the Last Post. The opinions of most civilians on the War were as agreeable as stained-glass windows. The thought of a tangle of a boy's inside festooned on rusty wire would naturally have spoiled the soul's awakening and the luxury of the sigh. I heard of a civilian official, on his way to Paris after the Armistice, who was just saved by ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... increased my pace, then halted and half-raised my rifle as there came a shuffling of feet above me, accompanied by a tiny avalanche of forest mold and rotten chestnuts. I rested the rifle over the saddle and endeavored to peer through the tangle of beech and inferior growth which masked the ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... where he had been laid; killed by the man who now asked for his presence. Ellinor shut her eyes, and lay back in despair. She wished she might die, and be out of this horrible tangle of events. ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... down into the clear depths where the long tangle of marine plants swayed with the motion of the light current. Upon the rocky bed below she saw many ruby-coloured sea anemones, with emerald mosses, and pearly shells, and silver-scaled fish. From the water she looked to ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... that the sale of surgical instruments which can be used for the purpose of procuring abortions, such as catheters, Bougies, and sea-tangle tents, be prohibited, except on the prescription of a medical practitioner, and that if possible their ...
— Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Various Aspects of the Problem of Abortion in New Zealand • David G. McMillan
... in celebration of her return home—a ball whose invitation list was precisely coincident, even down to the detective, with the persons who had appeared in the first two acts. One minute before the last curtain, Dick and Sylvia manage to thread their way out of the tangle of scandal and misconception, and satisfy each other as to the disinterested quality of their mutual adoration, falling into each other's arms just as ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... different. The linnet has a little twittering song with breaks in it and small chirping sounds, and when a great multitude of birds sing together the sound at a distance of fifty or sixty yards is as of a high wind among the trees, but on a nearer approach the mass of sound resolves itself into a tangle of thousands of individual sounds, resembling that of a great concourse of starlings at roosting time, but more musical in character. It is as if hundreds of fairy minstrels were all playing on stringed and wind instruments of various forms, every one intent on his own performance ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... dreary muddle, cold, wind-swept, and filthy, with the accumulated dirt incident to the passage through of many divisions. Their train came in at seven one night, and they waited in line until one while a military tangle was straightened out somewhere ahead. Officers ran up and down ceaselessly, calling orders and making a great uproar. It turned out that the trouble was due to the colonel, who was in a righteous temper because ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... the giant Dillon twins—Chad and Yankee Jake afoot. Up Lonesome they went toward the shaggy flank of Black Mountain where the Great Reaper had mowed down Chad's first friends. The logs of the cabin were still standing, though the roof was caved in and the yard was a tangle of undergrowth. A dull pain settled in Chad's breast, while he looked, and as they were climbing the spur, he choked when he caught sight of the graves ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... right in the midst of the mess, with a camel on either side trying to get its teeth into me, and what with Grim's shouting to get the tangle straightened, and our all trying to obey at once, it was some minutes before I got the hang of things. In fact, I ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... the Corridor Restaurant Elaine had returned to Manchester Square (where she was staying with one of her numerous aunts) in a frame of mind that embraced a tangle of competing emotions. In the first place she was conscious of a dominant feeling of relief; in a moment of impetuosity, not wholly uninfluenced by pique, she had settled the problem which hours of hard thinking and ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... house; no wife could brook such interference. She knows this, and it is her interest to prevent him from marrying. All this is clear enough; but in the case of poor Gladys?' But here again was the old tangle ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... murdered Christians. Could that be reconciled with what is right? A little later he saw the Kaiser once again pushing himself into Mediterranean politics, where no direct German interest lay, and endeavoring to tangle up the French developments in Northern Africa by provocative personal appearances at Morocco, and, later, by sending a gunboat to intrude upon a scene of action which had already by the Treaty of Algeciras been allotted to France. How could an honest German ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... Shibli Bagarag, 'Praise my discretion! I have even this day entered the city, and it is to thee I offer the first shave, O tangle of glory!' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... loosened a whole tangle of wreckage, and had straightened herself up with a long, triumphant "Ah-h!" of relief, as the current rushed it away, when a shadow fell over the mouth of the cave. Looking about in quick, instinctive fear, she saw Warren ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... which it was only divided by a few evergreen shrubs and an iron railing; but it was picturesque, nevertheless, with creepers—magnolia, wisteria, and ivy—clustering on the dark red bricks. At the back there was a good garden, and in front, across the road, were green meadows with hedgerows—a tangle of holly, hawthorn, and bramble—and old trees, surviving giants of a forest long uprooted and forgotten. It was a rich and placid scene, infinitely soothing to one fresh from the turmoil of the city, and weary of the ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... breezes, I charge you, forbear To wantonly tangle The braids of her hair; Breathe not o'er her rudely, Nor sigh on her breast, Nor kiss you the sweet lip Of her ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... good-humoredly in the laugh the others found it impossible to suppress. "It's an old trick of my age, that increases with my advancing youth, till I sometimes wonder what I'm coming to; the words will tangle themselves up in the most troublesome fashion; but if you know what I mean, I suppose it's all ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... rather slowly to the appointed place Dolly came along and with a fell swoop, unable to control her direction, she crashed right into Dotty and the two girls went down in a heap. The impact was so sudden and unexpected that neither had a chance to save herself in any way and there was a tangle of waving arms and legs, and skate-rollers as the ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... which seemed alive with pleasant things. As he stood with his head thrown back, taking a good draught of the delicious mountain air, a bluebird shot, like a bit of the sky, in and out among the solemn pines and delicate aspens. He looked down on the tangle of blossoming vines and bushes that latticed the borders of the brook, which came dashing down from the canon, still rioting on its way. The water would soon have another cause for clamor, in the big stone that had so long cumbered the road. He should ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... by a span of grass rope, had been thrown overboard from the pursued vessel, in the hope that the submarine would foul her propellers in the tangle of line. Once a blade picked up that trailing rope, the latter would coil round the boss as tightly as a band of ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... their privations and their misery. That which sickens the stoutest heart, and causes many of our bravest and best to fold their hands in despair, is the apparent impossibility of doing more than merely to peck at the outside of the endless tangle of monotonous undergrowth; to let light into it, to make a road clear through it, that shall not be immediately choked up by the ooze of the morass and the luxuriant parasitical growth of the forest—who ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... irritably, I looked up—and a second shower dropped fully upon my face and filled my eyes with dust. I drew back, checking an exclamation. What with the depth of the embrasure, due to the great thickness of the wall, and the leafy tangle above the window, I could see for no great distance up the face of the building; but a faint sound of rustling and stumbling which proceeded from somewhere above me proclaimed that some one, or something, was ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... thread here which we had not yet grasped and which might lead us through the tangle. Cheer up, Watson, for I am very sure that our material has not yet all come to hand. When it does we may soon leave our ...
— The Adventure of the Devil's Foot • Arthur Conan Doyle
... flush stole over her face, going up to the tangle of rings on her forehead. What ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... the drops trembling on those long, golden lashes, and staining the warm flush of her cheeks! One arm, from which the muslin sleeve had fallen back, lay under her head, half-buried in a tangle of curls; sobs broke at intervals through her parted lips, ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... too. I couldn't lift her up and kiss her as I used to do, but I felt as if I should like to do it all the same. She was the only creature in the whole world, I think, that liked me better than Jim. I'd been trying to drive all thoughts of her out of my heart, seeing the tangle I'd got into in more ways than one; but now the old feeling which had been a part of me ever since I'd grown up came rushing back stronger than ever. I was surprised at myself, and ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... said Rnine, refusing to be put out of countenance, "I have submitted all these cases to a comprehensive survey, which hitherto no one else had done. This enabled me to discover their general meaning, to put aside all the tangle of embarrassing theories and, since no one was able to agree as to the motives of all this filthy business, to attribute it to the only class of persons ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... was an ancient broken sun-dial, which was in these days in the midst of a sort of thicket, where a bold tangle of the finest red roses clambered, and, defying neglect, flaunted their rich colour in ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... be learned in a snowy field than volumes could tell. There is the tangle of footprints to unravel, the history of the pastimes and foragings and tragedies of the past night writ large and unmistakable. Though the sun now shines brightly, we can well imagine the cold darkness of six hours ago; we can reconstruct the whole ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... fishing bear of enormous bulk, as large as polar bears, and when the salmon are spawning in the upper waters of the coast rivers, they become so fat they can hardly move. Certainly I have never been in a country where bear signs were so plentiful. The wood was an almost impassable tangle of vines and undergrowth, and the thought of really finding ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... fellow-countrymen have laid down their lives, you will scrape and scrape and scrape, you will go in old clothes, and old boots, and old ties until such a mass of treasure be garnered into the coffers of the Government as to secure at the end of all this tangle of misery a real and lasting settlement ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser |
