"Tangle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 looked queer ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... scientifically trained reader to be of an all too elementary kind compared with the complexities of thought in which he is used to engage in order to settle a scientific problem. It is therefore necessary to state here that anyone who wishes to help to overcome the tangle of modern theoretical science must not be shy in applying thoughts and observations of seemingly so simple a nature as those used both here and on other occasions. Some readiness, in fact, is required to play where necessary the part ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... stifling. An immense flock of crows, foreseeing a storm, flew cawing over the garden. The paths were more overgrown, darker, and narrower as they got nearer the kitchen garden. In one of them, buried in a thick tangle of wild pear, crab-apple, sorrel, young oaks, and hopbine, clouds of tiny black flies swarmed round Olga Mihalovna. She covered her face with her hands and began forcing herself to think of the little creature . . . . There floated through her imagination the figures ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... glade, and waving his hat, evidently having had good luck; and when he reined in his small, wiry cow-pony, we saw that he had packed behind his saddle the fine, glossy pelt of a black bear. Better still, he announced that he had been off about ten miles to a perfect tangle of ravines and valleys where bear sign was very thick; and not of black bear either, but of grizzly. The black bear (the only one we got on the mountains) he ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... then we turn, thou sadder sage, To thee! we feel thy spell! —The hopeless tangle of our age, Thou too ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... a puzzling and at times a fearful thing. It seems so noble, and it starts as one with morality. But it is a dangerous guide, and can lead us away not only from what is gracious, but also from what is good. Agnes, in this tangle, had followed it blindly, partly because she was a woman, and it meant more to her than it can ever mean to a man; partly because, though dangerous, it is also obvious, and makes no demand upon the intellect. She could not feel that Stephen had full human rights. ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... child! Did I seem cross? What a brute you must think me. But to get you into this infernal tangle!—If this old woman is out in the boat she'll have to come back some time. She can't stay out on the lake ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... bending over a hot stove, and that is easy to understand, but bending over nature ought to have quite the opposite effect, but it doesn't always. The lady gardener who laid out the garden that finally replaced our wild-flower tangle, proved that. She had a voice that would be wonderful in a shipyard, a firmness and determination that would be an asset to Congress and a very kind heart, also much taste and infinite knowledge of the preferences and peculiarites of California plants. Her ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... Carolinians came up, and three regiments, led by Colonel Jenkins, made a flank movement, and by a desperate assault, took the redoubt on the left, with six pieces of artillery. When Rhodes' North Carolina Brigade got sufficiently through the tangle and undergrowth and near the opening as to see their way clear, they raised a yell, and with a mad rush, they took the fort with a bound. They were now within the strong fortress on the left and masters of the situation. Colonel Jenkins was highly complimented by the commanding General ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... into life under the scarification of a disreputable ancestor. He is drinking up their happiness, their prospects for this life, and, perhaps, for the life to come. Sometimes an appreciation of what he is doing comes upon him. His nervous system is all a tangle. From crown of head to sole of foot he is one aching, rasping, crucifying, damning torture. Where is he? In hell on earth. ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... pleasure of my company to this carnival at the Blankshire Hunt Club, I smiled behind my mask. Nerves! I ought to have been a professor of clinics instead of an automobile agent. But the whole affair appealed to me so strongly I could not resist it. I was drawn into the tangle by the very fascination of the scheme. I was an interloper, but nobody knew it. The ten of hearts in my pocket did not match the backs of those cards regularly issued. But what of that? Every one was ignorant ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath
... only stand out for me, though these in the highest relief. Love, or the Countess and the Serf, by J. Sheridan Knowles—I see that still as the blazonry of one of them, just as I see Miss Emily Mestayer, large, red in the face, coifed in a tangle of small, fine, damp-looking short curls and clad in a light-blue garment edged with swans-down, shout at the top of her lungs that a "pur-r-r-se of gold" would be the fair guerdon of the minion who ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... dog; he paused and eyed the animal for a moment, and then turned to the right along a road which diverged just at that point, and which led to the railroad station. I followed, thinking the drake would soon lose his bearings, and get hopelessly confused in the tangle of roads that converged ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... which he vehemently 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 ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... pitcher-plants and sun-kisses and andromeda; now fording the broad bend of Peter's Creek where it flows, sapphire in the sunshine, out from the moss-draped live-oaks between high banks of red and yellow clays and soft gray sand, to lose itself in a tangle of flowering shrubs; now losing and finding our way among the intricate cross-roads that lead by Bradley's Creek and Darbin Savage's tramway and the "new-blazed road" of the county clerk's itinerary. Suddenly the sky grew dark: thunder began to roll, and—were we in the right road? It ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... brilliantly-coloured gigantic ground-beetles crawled lazily to and fro. Moreover, on the causeways and terraces, large-headed creatures similar to the greater winged flies, but wingless, were visible, hopping busily upon their hand-like tangle ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... the tangle of the thicket, made direct for the spot occupied by his masters—thus directing the ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... said Lupin to himself. "What I want is a domestic docket, a police docket, which will tell me about the gentleman's private life and enable me to work more easily in this darkness and to know if I'm not getting myself into a tangle by bothering about the Daubrecq bird. And time's ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... at 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 serious heart-searching had brought ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... great, surly, fogheaded Englishman, who made love to her till she was nearly driven crazy. For though Warrender had married again before she could stop him, she wasn't free. But she couldn't tell him so for the other woman's sake. It doesn't matter now. It was a dreadful tangle once. And she felt real bad about it. But it's come out quite simply. And no ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... tales that a privileged listener may hear around the fisherman's night-haunts, telling of the antics of their many and various fares, when a strike has been made. Some become so excited that they tangle up their lines, and one boatman assures me that, on one occasion a lady was so "rattled" that she finally wrapped her line in such a fashion around both elbows that she sat helpless and he had to come to her rescue and ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... mannerisms, gives a greater and greater share of the work to his pupils. The later Stanze are either pompous or confused, or both, until we reach the higgledy-piggledy of the "Burning of the Borgo" or that inextricable tangle, suggestive of nothing so much as of a dish of macaroni, the "Battle of Constantine," a picture painted after the master's death, but for which he probably left something in ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... whip like body slashed hither and thither, and the scout had to do some lively sprinting to keep from getting a tangle ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill
... you come back into such a tangle as this. I did my best but you see I didn't have a minute to get out and take ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... avoid the Galleries. But beshrew your paintings! My eyes make pictures—not like Coleridge's when they're shut, but when they 're open. Who would not rather lie with me in the podere in the shade of the cypress trees, under the blue, blue sky, and behold through a tangle of olive-boughs the marvellous Dome of Florence, as satisfying as the sea, or under a starry heaven the loveliest of cities glittering like a rival firmament with answering constellations? And yet I recant. For if ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... in the grass. Presently a faint squeak showed that the game was astir. Vix rose up and went on tiptoe 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 ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... and their flashing battle-gear Cast they about them: forth the ships they poured Clad in the rage of fight as with a cloak. Then front to front their battles closed, like beasts Of ravin, locked in tangle of gory strife. Clanged their bright mail together, clashed the spears, The corslets, and the stubborn-welded shields And adamant helms. Each stabbed at other's flesh With the fierce brass: was neither ruth nor rest, And all the Trojan ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... 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
... my eager patron first introduced what became a wearisome tangle, lasting a whole generation, concerning my claims to a certain post, which gradually became in my life what the French call une scie, an irritating puzzle, in which I myself took no part, but which attached itself to ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... 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 spins westward ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... was no desecration of a hallowed spot. When the past has been dead and buried a long while ago there is no sweeter decking for its grave than a rich autumn tangle, all yellow and brown and pale and hectic red, with glossy evergreens and soft, damp moss to keep up the illusion of spring and summer ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... be best; send him back to the Brothers and to the wise Bishops. They can unravel this tangle. I cannot; I cannot be sure ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... not be so cruel!" said Zouche, pushing his grey hair back from his brows, while his wild eyes glittered under the tangle, like the eyes of a beast in its lair; "Think for a moment! I do not come here and bore you with my poems, though I might very well do so! Some of them are worth hearing, I assure you;—even the King— curse him!—has condescended to think so, or else why should he offer me pay ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... seconds. Finally Bernard, with an abrupt gesture that seemed to express exasperation, turned sharply on his heel and without a word re-entered the room in which he had left Tessa asleep, and fastened the window behind him. He left the tangle of beard on the matting, and Scooter stopped and nosed it sensitively till Everard stooped and ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... the path, however, and found himself in a desperate tangle, with the blackness of a dismal night settling down ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... concerned. That reads queer, but you know what I mean. I mean that women puzzle me, and I'm apt to take them too literally. If I found your wife, and she wasn't as straightforward as you are, Jack Gladney, I'd as like as not get things in a tangle. You know I thought it would be better to let things sleep—resurrections are uncomfortable things mostly. However, here I am to do what's possible. What have I done? Nothing. I haven't found her yet. You didn't want me to advertise, and ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... and twisted, and, always threading their way amid a tangle of flowers, the children suddenly passed a corner and found themselves in a forest clearing, where there were a lot of pointed huts—the huts, as they knew at once, ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... country, and for that matter the whole civilized world, has to deal, is the problem which has for one side the betterment of social conditions, moral and physical, in large cities, and for another side the effort to deal with that tangle of far-reaching questions which we group together when we speak of "labor." The chief factor in the success of each man—wage-worker, farmer, and capitalist alike—must ever be the sum total of his own individual qualities and abilities. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... went to the door. She was just disappearing into a tangle of weeds that had once been an orange grove. He set off after her at ...
— Collectivum • Mike Lewis
... a tool in his hand to do work, and he had so used it. The habit of bigness, once caught, possesses one as quickly as the habit of drink; Johnny McLean was as unhampered by the net of smallnesses which tangle most of us as a hermit; the freedom gave him a power which was fast making ...
— The Courage of the Commonplace • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... understand that. I take life simply. I love, or I do not love. Well Stella, the world is so cleverly constructed, and God is so good that there is nothing more easy than to be happy. But one must not make a tangle of God's affairs. Be calm. You are very much in love indeed. ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,
... appeared like a demon, carrying him on to destruction. Its gurgle and ripple sounded in his ears like mocking laughter, and the great brooding forest in its intense silence seemed in league with the stream. Of what avail were all his mighty efforts? He had escaped from the tangle of the forest, only to be lured to ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... do so. Do you see that silver flash through the tangle of foliage? Don't you think it comes from the waters ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... saw the bushes stir a few rods in front of her, and raised her gun into position, still hiding in the tangle. Albert discovered a movement in front of him, and he took ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... people up to the level of their own high conception. They must partake of the best things in the civilization of Europe and show them unto their own people. The task of the educated American Negro is the same as theirs, intensified, perhaps, by the more difficult and intricate tangle of circumstances and conditions with which he ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... in his 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 and perplexity. ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... and above a new penetrating argument in the mind—a new and wonderful vitality in the blood. The unbeliever, near by, still muddled by his cold theories, will argue and debate till his intellect is in a tangle. He fails to see that a man of intellectual agility might frame a theory and argue it out ably, and then suddenly turn over and with equal dexterity argue the other side. Do we not have set debates with speakers appointed on each side? That is dialectic—a trick ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... so all my life. So's Meg! Well, suppose we say ormering then, if congering's too lively. Hennie Penny's an awful dab at ormering. If you'd seen her the other night when she came home! A tangle of vraic was an old lady's best cap ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... you have reduced me to silence because you have interrupted me. Ah! there, you have tangled my hair. How provoking you are! It will take me an hour to put it right. You are not satisfied with being a prodigy of impiety, but you must also tangle my hair. Come, hold out your hands and ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... rather curious tangle, as Primrose Henry was to learn afterward. Philemon Henry was older than his brother James, and in trade in the city that William Penn had planned and founded in an orderly manner. And though it is the common belief that Philadelphia was born at right angles and on a level, at its early inception ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... this we rowed between tangle-covered ridges up to the wrought-iron landing-place. The keepers looked surprised as we drew near. It was evident that visitors were not "common objects ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... sketched, so far 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. The French critics have made it fashionable ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... not likely to be mistaken for any other," said their governess, "and it does not look very dark and gloomy in that forest, where everything seems to be crowded close and in a tangle, because South American vegetation grows so thickly and rapidly. This is the country which supplies the largest quantity of India-rubber. Immense cargoes are shipped from the town of Para, on the river Amazon, and obtained from ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... that of Greece, [2] we are able to trace the profound influence of geographical conditions. In the first place, the peninsula of Italy is not cut up by a tangle of mountains into many small districts. Hence it was easier for the Italians, than for the Greeks, to establish one large and united state. In the second place, Italy, which has few good harbors but possesses fine mountain pastures and rich lowland plains, was better adapted to cattle raising ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... basin that stood on a bench by the back door. He felt a relief. He had come through the first test casually enough. A slightly sardonic grimace wrinkled his tight-lipped mouth. There was a grim sort of humor in the situation. Those three, whose lives had got involved in such a tangle, forgathered under the same roof in that lonely valley, each more or less a victim of uncomprehended forces both within and exterior to themselves. Yet it was simple enough. Each, in common with all humanity, pursued the elusive shadow of happiness. The diverging paths along ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... and the breeze so light that the old patched sails were taking the schooner along at a gentle three knots per hour. A sail or two shone like snow in the offing, and a gull hovered in the air astern. From the cabin to the galley, and from the galley to the untidy tangle in the bows, there was no sign of anybody to benefit by the conversation of the skipper and mate as they discussed a wicked and mutinous spirit which had ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... rocks, some drenched with the fulness of the glorious bath, others catching now and again a sprinkling shower. On each side of the river the sea, clear to its depths where alternate sand and rock made a tangle of capriciously mingled light and shade; its surface, here blue as the still waters of the Grotta Azzurra, there green as the olive, here again red-brown as Carthaginian marble, lay waveless, as with a sense that the beauty was too perfect to be disturbed. Suddenly the scene was changed; the ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... think whether it would bear him or not, seized hold of the twisted vine trunks of the old Virginia creeper that partly covered the house from ground to roof. Fortunately they held, and up he went like a young squirrel, his bare toes clutching like claws in the tangle of the stems and twigs. He gained the roof, crawled rapidly along, and reached the bath-room window, only to find he could barely clutch the sill with the tips of his fingers. Standing on tiptoe, he got a little grip, then his bare toes and knees started to work; inch by inch up they went over ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... brothers, lying low in a dense tangle of ferns and creepers, saw a number of the younger men, headed by Horoeka, streaming down the track leading to the lake. But after a little time they returned, somewhat sobered and crestfallen, and rejoined the others, who had meanwhile gone inside ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... after Reb Sender got through a celebrated tangle with me, arousing my admiration by the ingenuity with which he discovered discrepancies and by the adroitness with which he explained them away, he said: "I do enjoy reading with you. Sometimes, when I read by myself, I feel ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... destination; but he had no guide, and missed the 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 Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... tangle, v. snarl, entangle, interweave; embroil, insnare, entrap, involve, perplex, enmesh. Antonyms: disentangle, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... only his private part in the struggle down in the murky tangle of the scaffold base. But there was fighting up on the Platform itself. A savagely grinning Mohawk wrestled furiously with a man on one of the rocket tubes. An incendiary device in the saboteur's pocket ignited, and it flamed red-hot and he screamed as ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... tangle, and a tight one, my boy. Yet, by God's blessing, we may see our way out. Let us take one point at a time. These debts of yours—will you tell me, are they ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... Capitol, on the south side of the hill, and commanded an extensive view. The slope of the hill, which was a wild tangle of verdure in summer, debouched into a wide plain extending to the Potomac. Through this lowland wandered a little stream, once known as Goose Creek but now dignified by the name of Tiber. The banks of the stream as well as of the Potomac were fringed with native flowering shrubs and ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... the house where three Bears lived; there was a great Bear, a little Bear, and a middle-sized Bear; and they had gone out for a walk. Goldilocks went in, and she saw"—the little girl is very still; she would not disturb that story by so much as a loud breath; but presently the comb comes to a tangle, pulls,—and the little girl begins to squirm. Instantly the voice becomes impressive, mysterious: "she went up to the table, and there were three plates of porridge. She tasted the first one"—the little girl ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... himself, 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 to know what ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... hard work and like running in a nightmare to get back to our starting-place, for there was always some thorn or tangle that we had not noticed in our careful advance seeming to stop us on our way; but at last we came within sight of the spot where we had left Jack Penny, but he was ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... afternoon and found her helping the maid at straightening his rooms. As he lay on the lounge smoking he watched her lazily. She handled his books with a great deal of awe. She opened one of them and sat on the floor in the childlike way she often had. She read several sentences aloud. It was a tangle of technical words on the subject ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... her home. The prison camps in Germany were not without Allied dispatch-riders who had become "rattled" and had blundered into the enemy's arms, but Thatchy had a kind of uncanny extra sense, a bump of locality, if you will, and that is why they had sent him into this geographical tangle where maps became out of date as fast ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... never, within my memory, told a deliberate lie. My cheeks burned like fire; my eyes dropped guiltily. My tongue did not trip or tangle. ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... Commander Walters, Captain Strong, Professor Hemmingwell, and Dave Barret stared unbelievingly at the tangle of wires and smashed tubes on the main deck of ...
— Sabotage in Space • Carey Rockwell
... clover-blossoms his babyhood knew? I never set eyes on a clover-field now, Er fool round a stable, er climb in the mow, But my childhood comes back jest as clear and as plane As the smell of the clover I'm sniffin' again; And I wunder away in a bare-footed dream, Whare I tangle my toes in the blossoms that gleam With the dew of the dawn of the morning of love Ere it wept ore the graves that ...
— Riley Farm-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... get used to this curious inversion it is as if the mist was no longer a wall but a growth; the garden is the heart of a jungle bleached by enchantment and struck with stillness and cold; a tangle of grey; a muffled, huddled and stifled bower, all grey, and ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... carelessly. "Well, Mr. Coulson, I won't take up any more of your time. I am convinced that you have told me all that you know, and I am afraid that I shall have to look elsewhere to find the loose end of this little tangle." ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... You see, the lumber company has got in some sort of a tangle with the owner of the timber on this tract, and consequently work is at a standstill. That's why you see so many ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... glistening fish hung from the fine patent rod which I carried over my shoulder. I never could undo the tangle of how it all came about; but, in my embarrassment, I must have handled things not quite so gracefully as I intended—the line had become unwound, and the hook dangling at the end of it as I attempted to lower the rod caught in my coat collar behind, and the more I tugged the more ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... mildewy inside of the coach, with its damp and dirty straw, its disagreeable smell, and its obscurity, was rather like a larger dog-kennel. Mr. Lorry, the passenger, shaking himself out of it in chains of straw, a tangle of shaggy wrapper, flapping hat, and muddy legs, was rather like a ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... bad to have to look forward to a life of it. And it'll get worse, not better; or if it doesn't get worse it'll mean that I'm getting worse, and that'll be worse than all." She smiled forlornly. "What a tangle of 'worses' I've tied ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... lost himself in a tangle of thought that he did not observe how closely Monsignor Gherardi was studying every expression of his face, and he started as if he had been awakened from a dream when Sylvie's song ceased, and Sylvie ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... efforts to reach the dog he overbalanced, the barrel tipped over and rolled from side to side, and for a few minutes all that could be seen was a kicking tangle of boy, dog, and rat, for Jock would not let go ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... bread and dried meat. This detained them but a short time, and they then started forth upon the trail which led along the river not far from the shore. They swung rapidly on their way, up hill and down, leaping small brooks, and crossing swamps overgrown with a tangle of alders, rank grass, and succulent weeds. Small game was plentiful. Rabbits scurried across the trail, and partridges rose and whirred among the trees. But the travellers never paused in their onward march. Although they had been on the way since early morning, ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... torment from under his ruff. At the edge of the jungle he was joined by another monster, like himself, but smaller—probably one of his mates—and together they disappeared, with heavy crashings, in the rank tangle of ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... David. "Then Sam has ruined our lives." He stood a moment in dazed horror, striving to grasp the terrible tangle. Then he burst forth. "This is some of your cursed Rabbinical laws, it is not Judaism, it is not true Judaism. God ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... had subsided, and faces were in a glow, and curls in a tangle, and Mr. Pickwick, after kissing the old lady as before mentioned, was standing under the mistletoe, looking with a very pleased countenance on all that was passing around him, when the young lady with the black eyes, after a little ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... He lay in a great tangle of bedclothes, snoring hideously and making little motions with his hands and arms like a beached whale. Malone padded over to him and dug him fiercely ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the hard road with the shock of a railway collision; rolled over and over like dogs in a scrap, only there wasn't any growling or yelping. It was deadly quiet; not for an instant could you tell which was which, or whether the whirling, pelting tangle of arms and legs was man, beast or devil. That's why, even when I got near enough, I didn't dare plant a large, thick-soled ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... fiery spirit left by the whalers the preceding year was exhausted, and Teneskin was issuing an inferior brand of his own brewing, concocted much in the same way as the "gun-barrel water" of the Eskimo and even more potent, if possible, than San Francisco "Tangle-foot." This is made by mixing together one part each of flour and molasses with four parts of water and then letting the mixture stand for four days in a warm atmosphere until it ferments. The distillery consists of a coal oil tin, an old gun-barrel, and a wooden tub. The mash is put in the coal ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... been like that," she ended simply, "for months before he died." She sank into the corner of a sofa by the window, as though relaxing her body after an effort. For a few moments both were silent. Trent was hastily sorting out a tangle of impressions. He was amazed at the frankness of Mrs. Manderson's story. He was amazed at the vigorous expressiveness in her telling of it. In this vivid being, carried away by an impulse to speak, talking with ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... He soon found one of the paddles, but in getting it became entangled in the long grass, until he was in great danger of drowning. By lying lengthways on the paddle, keeping his legs extended and swimming with long over-hand strokes, he got out of the tangle. He had been pretty well frightened, and swimming to the shore, climbed up on some mangrove roots. After looking for a long time, Ned made out the bow of the submerged little canoe sticking out from a bunch of moss in the eel-grass. It was about ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... "There, I've got the tangle all out," he said, with a sigh of relief; "and here comes Tony with some bait. What is it you've got? Bully for you, Tony! My! what a nice assortment of fat grubs. I just bet you the bass will grab at 'em like hot cakes. And strange to say, I'm actually feeling a little hungry ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... for no land That tramples on its kin; My heart once bled for Poland And groaned for Russia's sin; But, if to clear the tangle WINSTON is given his head, I feel that General WRANGEL ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... regarded it as an act of treason on the part of his four-footed favourite. When my arms were tired with nursing, I had only to lay my baby on my cloak on deck, and tell Oscar to watch her, and the good dog would lie down by her, and suffer her to tangle his long curls in her little hands, and pull his tail and ears in the most approved baby fashion, without offering the least opposition; but if any one dared to approach his charge, he was alive on the instant, ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... you yet," she exclaimed with something like a smile. "I only know you as two eyes over a tangle of hair that I don't believe you ever either brush or comb. Do you know, sometimes I ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... hope to find a man in such a dense tangle of boughs and underbrush, yet I ran forward, nevertheless; but, though I sought eagerly upon all sides, he had made good his escape. So, after a while, I retraced my steps to where I had left my irons and brackets, and taking them up, turned aside to that precipitous path ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... foundation and explained to the boys just how it should be built, and even sacrificed his appetite to his impatience by going a quarter of a mile to where he remembered seeing some old barbed wire strung along a fence to keep it off the ground so that stock could not tangle in it. He got the wire and brought it back with him to guy out the uprights for the diffusers. So on the whole he began the day as well as ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... water. A physician struggled from his pew across the sittings of three stout dowagers, and knelt, with practiced finger on the little fluttering pulse. The bride's stepmother roused to solicitous and anxious attention. The organ came smartly up again in a hopeless tangle of chords and modulations, trying to get its poise once more. People climbed upon their seats to see, or crowded out in the aisle curiously and unwisely kind, and in the way. Then the minister asked the congregation to be seated; and amid the rustle of wedding finery into seats suddenly grown ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... 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 tireless motion, the incessant sound and tumult of the sea. When Beth ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... gamut of colors consisting only of pink, crimson, green, olive, tan, and brown. There I saw again, but not yet pressed and dried like the Nautilus's specimens, some peacock's tails spread open like fans to stir up a cooling breeze, scarlet rosetangle, sea tangle stretching out their young and edible shoots, twisting strings of kelp from the genus Nereocystis that bloomed to a height of fifteen meters, bouquets of mermaid's cups whose stems grew wider at the top, and a number of other open-sea plants, all without flowers. "It's ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... through the needle, care being taken not to tangle the piece of "rope" from which they have been detached. There need be no waste if this operation is carefully done, as good silk will always divide into strands ...
— Handbook of Embroidery • L. Higgin
... kindliness he supposed that the pretended willingness of the nobles meant something; but the serf-owning caste, without openly opposing, twisted up bad consequences with good, braided impossibilities into possibilities: the whole plan became a tangle, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... federal government in adopting restrictive railway legislation was followed by the states, on a nation-wide scale. Hours of labor were regulated, liability for accidents defined, railroad commissions given larger powers, and freight and passenger rates determined. The result was a tangle of local regulations, many of which were designed to embarrass the roads and others of which were passed with slight knowledge ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... of the sea nymphs, Myriad fiery globes, swam heaving and panting, and rainbows, Crimson and azure and emerald, were broken in star-showers, lighting Far through the wine-dark depths of the crystal, the gardens of Nereus, Coral and sea-fan and tangle, the blooms and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... viviendi," Penfentenyou murmured, and tiptoed along the hall to a back door, which he opened quite silently. We passed into a tangle of gooseberry bushes where, at his statesmanlike example, we crawled on all fours, and regained ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... I almost despaired of escaping from this tangle of spongy banks, and of hazy creeks, and reed-fringe, my horse heard the neigh of a fellow-horse, and was only too glad to answer it; upon which the other, having lost its rider, came up and pricked his ears at us, and gazed through the fog very steadfastly. Therefore I encouraged ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... tangle of impure whimsies has this notion of an immaculate conception, an Ebionite tradition, as I think, brought into the Christian Church! I have sometimes suspected that the Apostle John had a particular view to this point, in the first half of the first chapter of his Gospel. Not that ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... tangle of barbed wire—barbed wire from Switzerland to Belgium—to welcome visitors from that direction, which, to say the least, would be an impolitic direction of approach ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... everywhere, and I don't deny I have, according to your point of view. But the fact is, I didn't follow you to annoy you; I'm a half-way decent fellow. You have simply got to trust me until I've seen you through this tangle. After that, if you like you need ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... being quick, but it was hard work to get the line free from the tangle that it had dragged ashore. There was no other line handy, and it began to seem as if the brave young fellow, who was a favourite with all but Terry, would be carried off to sea to a horrible lingering death, for all knew that it was impossible ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... neared the ford Terry heard a sharp out-cry from one of the guards, followed by the sharp crack of a rifle. Whirling, he saw the brush on his right agitated by the movements of a figure that crashed unseen through the tangle of vegetation. Two soldiers flung themselves off their ponies and leaped in pursuit, pausing fruitlessly for sight of the fleeing form and dashing on with trailed rifles. The aggressive Mercado ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... and went upstairs to her own room where for a little she tried to concentrate her wandering thoughts upon a book. But in the end she flung the volume aside impatiently and went to her window, staring down into the neglected tangle of the front yard and the glimpse of the street through the straggling branches of the pear trees. She tried to see only that men like Kid Bedloe and Buck Thornton were not to be thought of as men, but rather as some rare species ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... sitting there, Ed began to feel uneasy. The timber was big here, and open underneath, almost parklike. The nearest cover was fifty or sixty yards off to his left, a little tangle of brush where a tree had fallen and let a ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams
... of Thackeray, A little bit of Scott, A modicum of Dickens just To tangle up the plot, A paraphrase of Marryat, Another from Dumas— You ask me for a novel, sir, And I say, ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... the perfection of order of the British Marine: at, perhaps, Hong Kong, sold to a native firm, she would be refitted under an extravagant flag, and slowly the order would depart until, in a slovenly tangle of rigging and defilement, she'd be seen yawing on ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the brine. Forests at the bottom of the sea—the branches and leaves, Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds—the thick tangle, the openings, and the pink turf, Different colours, pale grey and green, purple, white, and gold—the play of light through the water, Dumb swimmers there among the rocks—coral, gluten, grass, rushes—and the aliment of the swimmers, Sluggish existences grazing there, suspended, ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... now—more!—more, I'll be bound! O 'Dosia," with a sudden renewal of tenderness, "don't talk this hyar cur'ous way! I dunno what's witched ye. But let's go home ter the mountings, ter yer mother, an' see ef she can't straighten out any tangle yer feelin's ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... the heavens for revelations of the divine will and wisdom, and who, by pursuing accurate observation and mathematical calculation together with the wildest dreams, made astronomy and astrology the inextricable tangle of scientific truth and fantastic speculation that we see it in the great work (in seventy tablets) prepared for the library of Sargon II. at Agade. That the ancient system of conjuring and incantations remained in full force and general use, is sufficiently ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... you dropped and let die A bruised black-blooded mulberry; And that other sort, their crowning pride, With long white threads distinct inside, {380} Like the lake-flower's fibrous roots which dangle Loose such a length and never tangle, Where the bold sword-lily cuts the clear waters, And the cup-lily couches with all the white daughters: Such are the works they put their hand to, The uses they turn and twist iron and sand to. And these made the troop, which our Duke saw sally Toward his castle from out of ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... 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 dare hope for that? At present, alas, it would seem as though no one dares even to ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... hyar," prompted Rowlett, and he led the way to the back of the house where half-buried in the tangle that had overrun the place stood the ruins of a heavy ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... want to undo the whole of this horrible tangle. It's absurd and undignified. Can nothing be done without Miss ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... of a few heart-beats there was only a tangle of whirling forms with the sound of fist on flesh, then the blot split up and forms plunged outward, falling heavily. Again the sailors rushed, attempting to clinch. They massed upon Dextry only to grasp empty air, for he ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... from a ramble over the headland, his observant eye was caught by the sight of a narrow foot-track that, crossing the main pathway of the cliff, wound steeply upward and seemingly lost itself in a tangle of gorse and bracken. Stirred by a boyish desire for exploration, he paused, turned into this obscure track, ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... lodestone which draws the wandering Washingtons back to the old haunts," I was greatly shocked on visiting the house to see the shameful state of dilapidation into which it has been allowed to pass. The porches and steps have fallen down, the garden is a disreputable tangle, and the graves in the yard are heaped with tumble-down stones about which the cattle graze. The only parts of the building in good repair are those parts which time has not yet succeeded in destroying. The drawing-room, containing a mantelpiece given to Washington by Lafayette, and the ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... funny friend try running into a cow just for 'speriment. Just let him try it once. They tangle up in your bogies, all slippery bones and hide, slither along with you a yard or two, and the next thing you know is you're over an embankment and your widder is putting in for insurance. Tell your ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... for me. I know how much I care for you, and how much this effort is costing me. We were too late. No other course in honor presents itself. God knows how eagerly and hopelessly I have sought a way out of this tangle of duty." ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... undergrowth and tangle of berry bushes, breaking through the wild grape vines that slapped him in the face and caught his pole; and, creeping and ducking under them, at last he struck the little path to the Cherry Brook, that gurgled its way along Farmer Brown's meadow. Underneath the cool ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... a deserted tangle of fruit trees and bushes, fallen statues, arbours and grass lawn brown with fallen leaves, was walled in by a high wall which kept it from every eye but heaven's. The house was large, the staircase wide and low, the rooms square ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... also bought travelling necessities. His intention was to wander for a couple of months. It would help him to clear his brain from the tangle of financial matters which still obsessed it against his will. He wanted to sweep out the Hudson Bay scheme, Lars Larssen, Olive, and many other matters from the living-room of his mind. He wanted a couple of months in which to settle himself in the new personality; plan out his future work in ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... above the deck, had seen every detail of the horror, from the moment when the upper sails of the doomed ship had appeared to him above the fog to the time when the last tangle of wreckage was cut away by his watchmates below. When relieved at four bells, he descended with as little strength in his limbs as was compatible with safety in the rigging. At the rail, ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... bitter note in Allyn's voice. He was a reservist, which made it all the worse. Reservists have ten times the outside contacts we regulars do. In general when a regular and reservist tangle, the Academy men close ranks like musk-oxen and meet the challenge with an unbroken ring of horns. But somehow I ...
— A Question of Courage • Jesse Franklin Bone
... sloping, mossy bank close by, there where the marble terrace yielded to the encroaching shrubbery: a tangle of pale pink monthly roses made a bower overhead. She was just sufficiently conscious to enable him to lead her to this soft green couch. There he laid her amongst the roses, kissed the dear, tired eyes, her hands, her lips, her ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Behind, where their feet had sped the moment before, the ice broke up and turned turtle. Through this opening the river rushed out upon them to their waists, burying the sled and swinging the dogs off at right angles in a drowning tangle. But the men stopped their flight to give the animals a fighting chance, and they groped hurriedly in the cold confusion, slashing at the detaining traces with their sheath-knives. Then they fought their way to the bank through swirling water and grinding ice, where, foremost in leaping ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... but they kept the pistols, for the sake of show in case any peons of the jungle should offer trouble, and pressed forward, with all the speed possible in so dense a tangle of forest. In the deep shade of trees and bushes Ned continually saw the shadows of immense black jaguars. He knew that it was only nerves and imagination, but he did not like to be in a condition that enabled fancy to play him such tricks. ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... earnestly in the lad's agitated countenance, for his brow was one tangle of deeply ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... sat Delight. She had on a Japanese quilted kimona of light blue silk, and little blue Turkish slippers. Her hair was pure golden, and was just a tangle of fluffy curls topped ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... a fist, but the tangle of bodies immediately became confusing beyond belief as the ...
— Satellite System • Horace Brown Fyfe
... down with the rising of the moon, and the intense stillness of the place was such that I could hear about me in the tangle the lifting of a trampled weed and the moving of the insects as my boots disturbed them. The silence was uncanny. Under the brilliancy of the moon all things gleamed clear in a mystic light, their shadows as black as the sunken ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... think with calmness on the experience I had passed through. Bolting the door securely, I threw open one of the window blinds. To my surprise the first light of dawn was visible in the sky. My room was in the rear of the house. Between me and the high wall was a dense tangle of underbrush, barely visible in the dim light. Hastily undressing, I went to bed without further delay, and was soon in deep sleep. When I awoke it was near midday. Dressing as quickly as possible, I proceeded at ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... anxious to let her go, they did not find so much want of it as Mrs. Lander talked on. It was one of her necessities to talk away her emotions before arriving at her ideas, which were often found in a tangle, but were not without a certain propriety. She was now, after her interview with Clementina, in the immediate presence of these, and it was her ideas that she began to produce for the girl's father and mother. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... direction of Vintimille and Italy, as it were swimming noiselessly on the smooth surface of the road among the palms of an intense green, against the bright blue background of the sea; and another tram advanced, a spot of orange, to meet it out of the variegated tangle of tinted houses composing the Old Town. High upon the summit of the Old Town rose the slim, rose-coloured cupola of the church in a sapphire sky. The regular smiting sound of a cracked bell, viciously rung, came from it. ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett |
