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More "Unravel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... excitement rose to its zenith,—and amidst the tempest of applause, the King himself stood quiet, watching the turbulence with the thoughtful eyes of a student who seeks to unravel some difficult problem. Raising his hand gently, he, by this gesture created immediate silence,—and so, in this hush remained for an instant, leaning slightly against the Committee Table, draped as it was in its funereal black,—the lights at either end of it, and the red lamp in its centre ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... come for the first time in her life a staggering doubt as to its nature. She did not suspect that she was submitting one of those knotty problems to her unpracticed judgment that philosophers and theologians delight in disagreeing upon, and her inability to unravel it staggered her. She tried to convince herself that a very insistent sting of remorse which she felt, came from selfishness—from the pain that her own heart suffered in the knowledge of Hosmer's unhappiness. She was not callous enough to quiet her soul with the balm of having ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... must remain in the shade, because time alone can unravel the mystery by which I am surrounded; and many important passages in my life, prudence forces me to conceal. But, my dear fellow, if my trials and sufferings will in any way reconcile you to your lot, and enable you to bear with fortitude your own, your friend ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... lay on the grass, whiling away the time by alternately playing with Watch and trying to unravel the mysteries of a flower of golden-rod, until the hermit should have finished his prayers and be ready to attend to him, Piers came through the wood, evidently sent on a message, and made him understand that he was ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... practical projects that loom so large to the unreflecting, are but the result of the application of thought to things. The mechanical powers and forces of Nature are open secrets for all who will undertake to unravel the mystery. And so it is with essential and moral principles. The one who will have himself rooted and grounded in the fundamental principles of things can look with complacence upon the panorama of the world's progress. The Negro ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... favourite methods for practising drawing was to devote herself to thoroughly studying the sketches of some one master, in order to try and unravel the special principles on which he had worked, and then to copy his drawings. She pursued this plan with some of Chinnery's curious and effective water-colour sketches, which were lent to her by friends, and she found it a very useful one. She made copies ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... detect some physical discrepancy in her performance, or elicit some blush of mental confusion by his naive and startling remarks. But there was nothing which could be detected, and the professor candidly confessed that the matter was beyond his philosophy to unravel." ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... yet, previous to the trial, the belief was prevalent in the community generally, as well as among the members of the Bar, that however guilty the prisoner might be, she would not be convicted. In this belief the prosecutor did not share, but at once went to work with his accustomed energy to unravel the evidences of the great crime; and for many weeks, with an energy that never flagged, himself and his assistant, H. B. DeWolf, Esq., patiently and persistently explored the dark secrets of her life, examined ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... form and regulate sound opinion upon the ancient inhabitants of that quarter, and their state of arts. There can be no doubt that evidences exist in buried antiquities which will tend to connect the arts and religion, mythology and astronomy of the eastern and western hemispheres—to unravel the difficulties in the way of comparative philology, and to reconstruct and connect the links in the broken chain ...
— Incentives to the Study of the Ancient Period of American History • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... our sharp points, and unravel the complications of things; we should attemper our brightness, and bring ourselves into agreement with the obscurity of others. How pure and still the Tao is, as if ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... The ridiculous quibble was also used that, in the preachings other religious exercises were not included, whereas it was notorious that they had never been separated. It is, however, a gratuitous task, to unravel the deceptions of tyranny when it hardly deigns to disguise itself. The dissimulations which have resisted the influence of centuries are more worthy of serious investigation, and of these the epoch ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... a tangled skein to unravel; but, as it happens, I really believe I can throw a little light upon the matter. You say Rona told you that somebody came into her bedroom last night, and presumably hid the pendant ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... find no contradiction in the union of old and new; to contemplate the Ancient of Days and all his works with feelings as fresh as if all had then sprung forth at the first creative fiat, this characterizes the mind that feels the riddle of the world, and may help to unravel it. To carry on the feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood; to combine the child's sense of wonder and novelty with the appearances which everyday for perhaps forty years had ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... awake a few nights later, at Midlands, when the clock struck two. She was thinking of her second novel, now nearly ready for Mr. Roseleaf's hand. There was a hitch in the plot that she could best unravel in the silence. As she lay there she heard a slight noise, as of some one moving about. At first she paid little attention to it, but later she grew curious, for she had never known the least motion in that house after its occupants were once abed. She thought ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... in colors more or less vigorous: but where all is calm without and around, to dive into the profoundest abysses of character, trace the affections where they lie hidden like the ocean springs, wind into the most intricate involutions of the heart, patiently unravel its most delicate fibres, and in a few graceful touches place before us the distinct and visible result,—to do this demanded power of another and a ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... Amand, and Buona Varilla; Great Britain—Sir William Crookes, Sir Francis Soddy, and Mr. H. G. Wells, celebrated for his "The War of the Worlds" and The "World Set Free," and hence supposedly just the man to unravel a scientific mystery such as that which confronted this ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... books. It is a phenomenon among phenomena. Its origin and growth in this world can be studied as those of any other natural object can be studied. The old apple-tree growing in my garden is the witness to me of some transcendent truths, the shrine of mysteries that I cannot unravel. What the life is that was hidden in the seed from which it sprang, and that has shaped all its growth, coordinating the forces of nature, and producing this individual form and this particular variety of fruit,— ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... Vin de Bourgogne had its allotted hour, and there were appropriate moments for the Cotes du Rhone. With him Sauterne was to Medoc what Catullus was to Homer. He would sport with a syllogism in sipping St. Peray, but unravel an argument over Clos de Vougeot, and upset a theory in a torrent of Chambertin. Well had it been if the same quick sense of propriety had attended him in the peddling propensity to which I have formerly ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... had heard old Hoff speak of something that he called the "wonder-worker." As soon as Carter returned with the other advertisements that had been appearing he felt positive that he would be able to unravel the cipher. Two words he was sure of—"passports" and "wonder-working." One footprint does not lead anywhere, but two do, and given three footprints, ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... work itself out is lost sight of, becomes invisible, amid the jostling activities of a national life like the American. Moreover, several causes were contributing to the same end and, had any one stopped to endeavour to do it, it would not have been at any time easy to unravel the threads and show what proportion of the fabric was woven by each; but if it had been possible to affix an intellect-meter to the aggregate brain of the American people during the last twenty years, of such ingenious mechanism that it would have shown not only what the increase in total mental ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... entreated that there might be no divided counsels. Dowdeswill said: "On the repeal of the Stamp Act, all America was quiet; but in the following year you would go in pursuit of your peppercorn—you would collect from peppercorn to peppercorn—you would establish taxes as tests of obedience. Unravel the whole conduct of America; you will find out the fault is at home." Pownall, former Governor of Massachusetts and earnest advocate of American rights, said: "The dependence of the colonies is a part of the British Constitution. I hope, for ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... runs through the book is so disjointedly arranged, mixed up with doctrinal parts, and repeated, that it is not easy to unravel it. The following summary of it is contained in a letter to Colonel John Wentworth of Chicago, signed by Joseph Smith, Jr., which was printed in Wentworth's Chicago newspaper and also in the Mormon Times and ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... and gazed down at the priest. "I don't know," he answered slowly. "My head is not clear enough to think it out. Mrs. Cleary might help unravel it. She saw her and will remember. Shall I sound her when I go home—not to excite her suspicions, of course, but so as to find out whether her visitor were ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... to make any opposition till both are safe, and then he is appeased by one of the ordinary divine interpositions. This device has been so used and abused by Euripides, that in nine out of his eighteen tragedies, a divinity descends to unravel ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... several communications. The lawyer confessed himself baffled as to the purpose and basis of the Land Office investigation. The whole affair appeared to be tangled in a maze of technicalities and a snarl of red-tape which it would take some time to unravel. In the meantime Taylor was enjoying himself; and was almost extravagant in his delight over the climate and attractions of ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... more leaf, and are lost again. At last comes a third call in tones so imperative that it cannot be longer ignored, and we lay the book down, but open to the place where we left off, and where we hope soon to begin further to unravel the delightful mystery. Was it an effort to attend to the reading? Ah, no! it took the combined force of our will and of mother's authority to drag the attention away. This is ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... dancing, card playing and theatre-going rank side by side with lying, stealing and idolatry. As I sat there I tried to reconcile my opinion of these worldly pleasures with the conduct of my new friends. The tangle is too complicated to unravel at once. I could feel blushes of shame staining my cheeks as the game progressed. What would Aunt Maria say, what would daddy say, what would even tolerant Mother Bab say, if they knew I sat passively by ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... of whom wearing a white band, the distinguishing mark of the pilgrims who have visited the tomb of Iman Reza, at Meshed, informed me that the caravan came from the province of Khorassan. I waited to see it gradually unravel from the maze of the narrow streets, and, after a due allowance of wrangling and abuse between the mule and camel drivers, I saw it take up its abode in the square ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... our Poet, in the management of his moral, is certainly superior to his great ancient predecessors. The moral of their fables, if any they have, is so interwoven with the main body of their work, that in endeavouring to unravel it, we should tear the whole. Our Author has very properly preserved his whole and entire for the end of his poem, where he completes his main design, the Reformation of his ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... baptized by a woman, some by a fisherman. Painful it was to witness, or be certified of, such complications and irregularities, more so to be in any degree answerable for them, most of all to be expected to unravel and rectify them in one visit of a few hours' duration, knowing too that they must all be renewed and repeated. This is the only harbour in White Bay where there are any French, and these, it is worthy of notice, have come here within the last five years, since the two English families established ...
— Extracts from a Journal of a Voyage of Visitation in the "Hawk," 1859 • Edward Feild
... Arabin might be able to suggest something which would put them all on a track towards discovery of the truth. But he found that she had the clue in her hand, and that the clue was one which required no further delicacy of investigation. There would be nothing more to unravel; no journey to ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... sweet cousin; I have loved you deeply, but silently, long before my heart could unravel the mystery of the feelings with which it glowed. But this—all this—it were now idle to repeat. I know that I have no hope of return; that the heart whose possession would have made my whole life a dream, a transport, is given to another. ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Who will unravel this tangle? Nature confutes the sceptics, and reason confutes the dogmatists. What then will you become, O men! who try to find out by your natural reason what is your true condition? You cannot avoid one of these sects, nor ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... again count only three kinds of foxes—the Field-fox, the Man-fox, and the Inari-fox. But many confound the Field- fox or wild fox with the Man-fox, and others identify the Inari-fox with the Man-fox. One cannot possibly unravel the confusion of these beliefs, especially among the peasantry. The beliefs vary, moreover, in different districts. I have only been able, after a residence of fourteen months in Izumo, where the superstition is especially strong, and marked by certain unique ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... or uprooted by every darkness in what is revealed to them. In the present day it is not easy to find a well-meaning man among our more earnest thinkers, who will not take upon himself to dispute the whole system of redemption, because he cannot unravel the mystery of the punishment of sin. But can he unravel the mystery of the punishment of NO sin? Can he entirely account for all that happens to a cab-horse? Has he ever looked fairly at the fate of one of those beasts as it is dying,—measured the work it has done, ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... that undertaking, as an architect or engineer would obtain data and apply his devices to a task in his art, a fallacy is included which is radical and mischievous beyond measure. We have, as yet, no calculus for the variable elements which enter into social problems and no analysis which can unravel their complications. The discussions always reveal the dominion of the prepossessions in the minds of the disputants which are in the mores. We know that an observer of nature always has to know his own personal equation. The mores are a societal equation. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... more and more at the atrocious nature of our crime which could thus avail to intercept even his last adieus. I, for my part, never saw him again; nor, as I have reason to think, did Lord Westport. Neither did we ever unravel the mystery. ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... old man. "You're beginning to use your brain a little. You're beginning to realize the value of money—and you don't like it. Well, you can unravel your own tangle. ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... the men in black, who wished to carry her off, and that she had promised him nothing. He considered himself an outraged, betrayed, and ridiculed lover. Blood and anger mounted to his face; he was resolved to unravel the mystery. ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... endure the discussion of dull presuppositions, without much pawing of the ground and champing on the bit: "What I want," he says, "is a plain answer to a plain question." And when you explain to him that for an answer he must go back very far and become a little child again, and must unravel his mind to the very beginning like an ill-knit stocking, he looks at once incredulous and triumphant as who should say: "There, I told you so!" Yet the same critical incompetence that makes these simple folk quite obtuse to the true and adequate solution of their problems (I am speaking of ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... left a deeper impression upon his mind than they ought, considering the circumstances; and the small victory which his reason had thence gained over this weak imposture, remarkably increased his reliance upon his own powers. The facility with which he had been able to unravel this deception appeared to have surprised him. Truth and error were not yet so accurately distinguished from each other in his mind but that he often mistook the arguments which were in favor of the one for ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... incessant growth. Men should be intelligent and earnest. They must also make us feel that they have a controlling happy future opening before them, whose early twilights already kindle in the passing hour. The hero is misconceived and misreported; he cannot therefore wait to unravel any man's blunders; he is again on his road, adding new powers and honors to his domain and new claims on your heart, which will bankrupt you if you have loitered about the old things and have not kept your relation ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... up in the hall a great loom, and day by day she wrought there at the web, for she was a marvellous spinner, patient as Arachne, but dear to Athena. All day long she would weave, but every night in secret she would unravel what she had wrought in the daytime, so that the web might never be done. For although she believed her dear husband to be dead, yet her hope would put forth buds again and again, just as spring, that seems to die each year, will ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... his "Manuel d'Architecture Musulmane," after attempting to unravel the influences which went to the making of the mosque of Kairouan, the walls of Marrakech, the Medersas of Fez—influences that lead him back to Chaldaean branch-huts, to the walls of Babylon and ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... done the murder. Unfortunately, when I had read a few pages more, I found that I had picked the wrong person. Then I accused another character on perfectly good circumstantial evidence, and he was not the man. After that I decided to withdraw from the detective business and let Miss SILBERRAD unravel her mystery for herself. If you are of the opinion that a woman cannot keep a secret read The Mystery of Barnard Hanson and become convinced that Miss SILBERRAD at least is an exception. If I have ever read ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various
... bringing him to so desperate a state. At that time by far the most popular form of light literature was the Romances of Chivalry,—huge interminable fictions, filled with the most extravagant visions that ever visited the slumbers of a mad poet. Merely to unravel the story of one of these gigantic romances is a task which would tax the strongest brain. They dealt with the adventures of Knights-Errant, who wandered about the earth redressing grievances and succoring the oppressed. Those who venture into these vast ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... a difficult sentence for the most clear-headed person to unravel, and Helen was, at that moment, trying to write a letter to an aunt whom she had never seen and for whom she had no sort of affection, so ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... he thought his men could unravel that message and that I should wait a while," panted Roy, breathless from running up the stairs. "And they did get it. It's what they call a transposition cipher. ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... will be your engaging task to unravel, and to this end will be your opportunity of closely watching Fuh-sang's unsuspecting movements in my absence through ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... Lydia, meditatively. "But I think their dissimilarity owes its emphasis to some lurking likeness. Otherwise how could he have reminded me of her?" Lydia, as she spoke, sat down with a troubled expression, as if trying to unravel her thoughts. "And yet," she added, presently, "my theatrical associations are so complex that—" A long silence ensued, during which Alice, conscious of some unusual stir in her patroness, watched her furtively and wondered what would ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... thread to unravel!" he exclaimed. "I should like to aid in it; but unless you have a clue, it is not likely that her son will ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... could only have been by passing behind her very quietly while she was bumping with the iron. But this notion did not satisfy her: it was surely impossible that she should not have seen him come in through a room so small. She could not unravel the mystery, and felt very queer and uncomfortable about it. However, she would not disturb him to question him then, ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... the distracted Jew was no longer visible. It seemed plain that the person or the event he had awaited with such obvious nervousness had arrived and passed; one more of the problems, anxieties or crises that join and unravel moment by moment in the human ant-hill of London, had perhaps closed for good or ill within the past half-hour; ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... not think any useful purpose can be gained by discussing my brother's death," Austin interposed, turning to him. "It is a very painful subject, and does no good. The police are endeavouring to unravel the mystery—let ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... arrived in New York, in answer to an urgent telegram, she went directly to work with her usual executive ability to unravel the mystery. After obtaining the full facts in the case, she was able to make a satisfactory explanation to the officers at headquarters. Then she sent the girls to their respective homes, and turned her full ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... discourse: The causes of the decay of eloquence are by no means difficult to be traced. They are, I believe, well known to you, Maternus, and also to Secundus, not excepting my friend Aper. It seems, however, that I am now, at your request, to unravel the business. But there is no mystery in it. We know that eloquence, with the rest of the polite arts, has lost its former lustre: and yet, it is not a dearth of men, or a decay of talents, that has produced this fatal effect. The true causes are, the dissipation of our young ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... them as one; repeat to the end of the row; thus continue to knit as many rows as you please, and when the stripe is of sufficient length, fasten off, letting from four to ten stitches fall off the needle to unravel for ...
— The Ladies' Work-Table Book • Anonymous
... from the very first I declined having anything to do with this matter. It is now all over, and we can never, by our conjectures, unravel the mystery; let ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... of the chairs recently occupied by the other two agents and tried to unravel thoughts. He said finally, "I suppose my question should be, why do Ross Metaxa and Sid Jakes send an agent of supervisor rank to act as assistant to a probationary agent? But that's not what I'm asking yet. First, Lippman just called ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... solv'st my doubt, That ignorance not less than knowledge charms. Yet somewhat turn thee back," I in these words Continu'd, "where thou saidst, that usury Offends celestial Goodness; and this knot Perplex'd unravel." He thus made reply: "Philosophy, to an attentive ear, Clearly points out, not in one part alone, How imitative nature takes her course From the celestial mind and from its art: And where her laws the Stagyrite unfolds, Not many leaves scann'd o'er, observing well Thou shalt discover, that your ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... he acted with a prudence which was certainly not one of his general characteristics. He was quite aware that he might put himself under the protection of the police, but this he knew would be to imperil the honor of the Mussidan family. He was sure that with time and patience he should be able to unravel the plots of the villains who were at work. But he had not time to do so by degrees. No, he must make a bold dash at once. The hideous sacrifice of which Sabine was to be the victim was being hurried on, and it seemed to him as if his very existence ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... any Afghan army that could possibly be opposed to it, and good and sufficient transport to admit of its being kept together, with the definite object in view of rescuing our besieged countrymen and defeating Ayub Khan; instead of, as at Kabul, having to begin to unravel a difficult political problem after accomplishing the defeat of the tribesmen and ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... as a theological dogma, but as a human fact, man knew himself to be an all but infinite power, whether for good or for ill. The drama towered into sublimity as it painted the strife of mighty forces within the breast of Othello or Macbeth. Poets passed into metaphysicians as they strove to unravel the workings of conscience within the soul. From that hour one dominant influence told on human action: and all the various energies that had been called into life by the age that was passing away were seized, concentrated, ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... developed. In particular, that potent instrument called the infinitesimal calculus, which Newton had invented for the investigation of nature, had become so far perfected that Laplace, when he attempted to unravel the movements of the heavenly bodies, found himself provided with a calculus far more efficient than that which had been available to Newton. The purely geometrical methods which Newton employed, though they are admirably adapted for demonstrating in a general way the tendencies of forces ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... the window. "I am not very wise," Matthiette said, looking out upon the gardens, "and it appears that God has given me an exceedingly tangled matter to unravel. Yet if I decide it wrongly I think the Eternal Father will understand it is because ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... each width six inches longer than necessary. Then unravel the ends and tie the cords together. When the matting is taken up to be cleaned it cannot unravel and there ...
— Fowler's Household Helps • A. L. Fowler
... the whole together in spite of all the evil; and now the old librarian had brought him close up to the good in the other side of the cleft too. He had settled down to his shoemaking again and refused to be roused by the others' impatience; but he looked as if he had an eternity in which to unravel his affairs. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... one might ask, What in the name of anything and everything but the "Modern School of Nature Study" do orioles know about strings fraying in the wind and the use of knots to prevent it? They have never had occasion to know; they have had no experience with strings that hang loose and unravel in the wind. They often use strings, to be sure, in building their nests, but they use them in a sort of haphazard way, weaving them awkwardly into the structure, and leaving no loose ends that would ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... and once more shook his head. "You don't know all," he said again, and kissed her reverently. "What if to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow brings no light to unravel ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... have said, you are quite mistaken. There's a mystery somewhere. Keep his letter and show it to me. I may, perhaps, be able to unravel the tangle. I'm more than ever convinced that what I said to you last night was perfectly true. We ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... told me he had no authority for this, but had done it "Zubbur-dustee." They also say that the occupant of the Barahduree has just come from England. He is a being shrouded in mystery, and I shall endeavour to unravel it. My first step will be to report the occurrence to the officials at S—— when I get there. I took a swim in the Jhelum, whose course I have now followed for eighty-four crooked miles, and on whose bosom I ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... worthy of attention. They are the result at least of severe and conscientious labour at the original sources of history, but the subject is so complicated and difficult that it may well be feared that the ability to depict and unravel is unequal to the earnestness with which the attempt has ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... broken, its closest links dissevered? There is a double influence often felt by gifted temperaments when upon the eve of some event which is to decide their fate. The eager heart, urged on by a desire to unravel the mystic secrets of the unknown Future, contradicts the colder, the more timid intellect, which fears to plunge into the uncertain abyss of the coming fate! This want of harmony between the simultaneous previsions of the mind and heart, often causes ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... a one-eyed man may be king among the blind. With uneducated people a mock-proof has force which a school of philosophers dismisses with scorn. Many are the offences of the adversary under this head; but his case is made out by four fallacies chiefly, fallacies which I would rather unravel in the University than in a popular audience. The first vice is [Greek: skiamachia], with mighty effort hammering at breezes and shadows. In this way: against such as have sworn to celibacy and vowed chastity, because, ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... with her request, and she made such a cunning knot in the garment as only she could unravel. For his part Gugemar gave the Queen a wonderfully fashioned girdle which only he could unclasp, and he begged her that she would never grant her love to any man who could not free her from it. Each promised the other solemnly to respect the ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... the questions that may arise from the reading of the Bible, and the finite mind should not be discouraged if it fails to fathom the reasons of the Infinite Intelligence. If there are mysteries in the Bible that we cannot unravel they are not greater than the mysteries in nature with which we must deal whether we understand them ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... day after to-morrow, when thou'lt ride him into the town. And now say it, Joseph: ye are a wee bit tired, isn't that so? Nay, Father, not a bit. We have come but twenty miles from the last halt, and as for the telling of my story, maybe the loose ends which I've forgotten for the moment will unravel themselves while we're talking of fish-salting—of the many extra barrels you've sent out. Now, Father, say how many? At it, Joseph, as beforetimes, rallying thy old father! Well, I've not done so badly, but a drop in the year's trading is never a pleasant thought, though ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... perplexed mankind, Still spread a healing mist before the mind; And, lest we err by wit's wild dancing light, Secure us kindly in our native night. Or, if to wit a coxcomb make pretence, Guard the sure barrier between that and sense; Or quite unravel all the reasoning thread, And hang some curious cobweb in its stead! 180 As, forced from wind-guns, lead itself can fly, And ponderous slugs cut swiftly through the sky; As clocks to weight their ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... Butler has give 'em back their childhood an' a chance to live. It means," he said triumphantly, "that Cap'n Tom's gwinter have the chance he's been entitled to all these years—an' that means that God'll begin to unravel the tangle that man in his meanness has wound up. It means, Tabitha, that you'll not have to wuck anymo' yo'self—no mo', as ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... were reproduced on earth, until a web of fiction and allegory was woven, partly by art and partly by the ignorance of error, which the wit of man, with his limited means of explanation, will never unravel. Even the Hebrew Theism became involved in symbolism and image-worship, borrowed probably from an older creed and remote regions of Asia,—the worship of the Great Semitic Nature-God AL or ELS and its symbolical representations of JEHOVAH Himself were not ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... son. But, to acknowledge her fault, to blush before her own child, to weep while taking from him the right to console her, was more than she could do. No, there was nothing for her but death. To die as soon as possible, to escape shame by a complete disappearance, to unravel in this way an inextricable situation. But where to die! How? There are so many ways of departure! And she called them all up mentally while she walked. Life flowed around her, its luxury at this time of the year in full flower, round ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... post-office, that the names are disguised on purpose."—"Do you think then, that they amuse themselves at the post-office by opening and reading all the letters of business which pass through? They could not get through them. I have attempted to unravel the correspondence carried on under the disguise of banking transactions, but I could never succeed. The post-office is like the police, only fools are caught; yet think of any other method: ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... the evolution movement will have to unravel a certain number of divergent directions, and to appreciate the importance of what has happened along each of them—in a word, to determine the nature of the dissociated tendencies and estimate their relative proportion. Combining these tendencies, then, we shall get an approximation, or rather ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... WHICH THE Negro is dealt with in these courts. Is the criminal Negro justly dealt with in the courts of the South? is a question that I think is more frequently asked than words can answer, language describe, or man's wisdom unravel. Our woes have gone out to the ends of the earth and, the stagnant waters can no longer contain its contaminating germs, and now, even on the other side of the globe, we hear the re-echo of our cries from this damnable cruelty wafted back to us by the zephyrs that sustain ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... emotion which is defenceless against passion. I suspected that Blanche Stroeve's violent dislike of Strickland had in it from the beginning a vague element of sexual attraction. Who am I that I should seek to unravel the mysterious intricacies of sex? Perhaps Stroeve's passion excited without satisfying that part of her nature, and she hated Strickland because she felt in him the power to give her what she needed. I think she was quite sincere when she struggled against her husband's desire to bring him into ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... so many tales of lions which have carried away oxen from a kraal, that I have endeavoured to unravel what appears to be a mysterious impossibility. An experienced friend of mine was present when, during the night, a lion bounded over the fence of thorns which formed a protection to the camp, and seizing a full-grown ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... with this riddle. He slept through a troubled and unrestful hour, then unconsciousness began to shred away, and presently he rose drowsily to a sitting posture. "Now what was that dream?" he said, trying to recall it. "What was that dream? It seemed to unravel that puz—" ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... one, shall never try to read it," said Sir Norman. "I am about tired of this labyrinth of mysteries, and shall save time and La Masque to unravel them ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... some other note that chords, so as to produce the effect of a marvellous complication and variety, and yet with the most perfect time, and rarely with any discord. And what makes it all the harder to unravel a thread of melody out of this strange network is that, like birds, they seem not infrequently to strike sounds that cannot be precisely represented by the gamut, and abound in 'slides from one note to another, and turns and cadences not in ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... conversation, stories, pictures, and experiences of evil. The trouble is that his facts are partial, distorted, and unbalanced by positive errors; his knowledge is gained from the street and the school-yard. Only a personal teacher can help him unravel the good from the bad, the true from the false. Do not trust to your own general knowledge; take time to read one of the simple and sane books on this subject.[42] Be ready to lead him aright. Remember this subject has ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... more that's nice," he announced, pointing to an item on the front page. It was the announcement that a general grand jury was to be convened late in the summer and that one of its tasks probably would be to seek to unravel the mystery of the murder of ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... every difficult mathematical problem seemed to shelter some unknown fellow who took pleasure in teasing me and daring me to find him. It was the same mischievous fellow, in fact, who used to laugh in my face when I had a difficult bit of Talmud to unravel ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... pedestal would have been jerked out from under him without compunction or mercy. Eva cautioned him to be more than silent on the subject for the child's sake as well as for their own, and Anderson saw wisdom in her counselling. He even lagged in his avowed intention to unravel the mystery or die in the attempt. A sharp reminder in the shape of an item in the Banner restored his energies, and he again took up the case with a vigour that startled even himself. Anything in the shape of vigour startled ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... up at a blowhole a few yards ahead of the team, and they are all on top of him before one can say "knife"! Then one has to rush in with the whip—and everyone of the team of eleven jumps over the harness of the dog next to him, and the harnesses become a muddle that takes much patience to unravel, not to mention care lest the whole team should get away with the sledge and its load, and leave one behind.... I never did get left the whole of this depot journey, but I was often very near it, and several times had only time to seize a strap ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... old man was standing with both hands clutching his long rifle, the butt of which rested upon the ground. He held the piece near the muzzle, partially leaning upon it, while he appeared gazing intently into the barrel. This was one of his "ways" when endeavouring to unravel a knotty question; and Garey and I knowing this peculiarity on the part of the old trapper, remained silent—leaving him to the ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... renewed energy; I did not suffer my thoughts to dwell on the dreary wonders that had haunted me, from the evening I first met Sir Philip Derval to the morning on which I had quitted the house of his heir; whether realities or hallucinations, no guess of mine could unravel such marvels, and no prudence of mine guard me against their repetition. But I had no fear that they would be repeated, any more than the man who had gone through shipwreck, or the hairbreadth escape from a fall down a glacier, fears again to be found in a similar peril. Margrave had departed, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... pope, to the emperor, and to other Christian lords, accusing each other of breach of faith, and treachery. The ambassador carrying the letters of the prince was the clever Mikolaj of Rzeniewa, a man of great ability who could unravel the thread which was woven by the artifice of the Knights of the Cross, convincingly demonstrating the great wrongs done to the lands of ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... vehement depth of feeling, the cause of which I could not fathom, made his grey eye glitter with pale light, and his lips contract, and his delicate cheek whiten on certain occasions. But all had been so open and above board at home, that I had no experience to help me to unravel any mysteries among those who lived under the same roof. I understood that I had made what Madame Rupprecht and her set would have called a great marriage, because I lived in chateau with many servants, ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... constellations have nothing to do with the origin of the names by which the Zodiacal divisions are indicated, we have to seek for some other source which might have given rise to these appellations. It becomes my object to unravel a portion of the mystery connected with these Zodiacal signs, as also to disclose a portion of the sublime conception of the ancient Hindu philosophy which gave rise to them. The signs of the Zodiac have more than one meaning. From ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... some childish play, some childish books. But they also need, and need more, difficulties to overcome, and a sense of the vast mysteries which the progress of their intelligence shall aid them to unravel. This sense is naturally their delight, as it is their religion, and it must not be dulled by premature explanations or subterfuges of any kind. There has been too ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... calculated to flatter a deep, subtle spirit like that of Odysseus. To know all! to read all secrets, and unravel the tangled skein of human destiny! What a bribe was this to this restless and eager mind! Then the voices of the witch-women were so liquid, and the music so lovely, that they took the very air with ravishment, and melted the hearer's soul within him. Odysseus struggled to break his ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... singular circumstance of the morning, and demanded an explanation. Her wonder was as great as his own, however; and she remained silently gazing at the sunset, and pondering. A shake of the head betrayed her want of success in this attempt to unravel the mystery, especially the lawyer's indignation at the words written ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... great haste. Though it is Wednesday, I have been down at the House almost all day to unravel a device of Disraeli's about the manner in which the question is to be put, by which he means to catch votes; and I think after full consultation with Mahon and Wilson Patten, that this will be accomplished. ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... Australian when first seen by white men, will make it impossible hereafter for anyone whose reasoning powers exceed a native Australian's to maintain that it was the whites who corrupted these savages. It takes an exceptionally shrewd white man even to unravel the customs of voluntary or obligatory wife sharing or lending which prevail in all parts of Australia, and which must have required not only hundreds but thousands of years to assume their present extraordinarily ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... they protruded through his eyes, whenever he was sure he had to perform a dooty. I would willingly turn burglar to get hold of the whole of the correspondence between him and Toorak. I feel satisfied I would therein unravel the ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... breaking stone on the road would be called hard rather than difficult work; that is difficult which involves skill, sagacity, or address, with or without a considerable expenditure of physical force; a geometrical problem may be difficult to solve, a tangled skein to unravel; a mountain difficult to ascend. Hard may be active or passive; a thing may be hard to do or hard to bear. Arduous is always active. That which is laborious or toilsome simply requires the steady application of labor or toil till ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... chance to her, she was ready for thee. But if this is all she knows, it goes not far. Still it may help—it may help. In a tangled web, no one may say which will be the thread which patiently followed may unravel ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... discovery, but now that I looked down upon the great inland sea lying nestled in the very heart of Africa, and thought how vainly mankind had sought these sources throughout so many ages, and reflected that I had been the humble instrument permitted to unravel this portion of the great mystery when so many greater than I had failed, I felt too serious to vent my feelings in vain cheers for victory, and I sincerely thanked God for having guided and supported us through all dangers to the good end. I was about ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... but went out like a human being. It is a plot, that is clear. They are conspiring with the Electoral Prince, and profit by the mask to obtain safe access to the castle; or it may be Nietzel, come to confess what he has done to the Prince—maybe even to bring him a remedy. I must unravel it! I am sure the illusion succeeded so well last night that the apparition will be repeated. I shall make my regulations accordingly, and if it is so, then let the White Lady beware of me, for I am a good conjurer. I shall go to the castle myself to-night, and when the sentinels ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... remembered an interesting fact about Diana's Grove—there is, I have long understood, some strange mystery about that house. It may be of some interest, or it may be trivial, in such a tangled skein as we are trying to unravel." ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... refined to be possibly communicated to others. Yet these I love to cherish, and sometimes still fondly clutch them, when I can escape from the throng to do so. To give way to our feelings before company, seems extravagance or affectation; and on the other hand, to have to unravel this mystery of our being at every turn, and to make others take an equal interest in it (otherwise the end is not answered) is a task to which few are competent. We must "give it an understanding, but no tongue." My old friend C——, however, could do both. He could go on in ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... man, thus far, has been able to make has not revealed just who it was that first discovered music in a lifeless instrument. This fact will always be deeply veiled in mystery. All attempts to unravel the threads have failed. None knows yet just ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover
... tangle, you will say, one it would be impossible for a man to unravel quickly and in the frantic chaos of a wild Stock Exchange day. Yet the influence of the mysterious state of my nerves, which I have described above, was so marvelous that, incredible though it seems, the moment the Exchange closed, I knew exactly, ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... it a happy coincidence that, having met him first under Old Glory, then floating in the trade wind that blew over southern seas, I should find him last in the lone land that gave name to the ship that brought him over. Can the theosophists unravel this mystery, or see aught in it that verges upon the mystic philosophy? As we steamed out of Wood's Cove that night, with the echoes of a parting salute filling the heavens to overflowing, we saw a cluster of small, dark islets ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... come back to the sun and the rain, The sweetness, the strife, the thing we call pain, And then unravel life's ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... to the instances cited by Mr. Walcott, hoping that the slightly varied form may furnish a clue by which some of your readers may be able to unravel the meaning of such allusions more satisfactorily than any ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various
... room. The honest warrior was dismayed to find such a thing could have happened, and although he was unable to read the lettering, he turned the missive over and over in his hand as if he expected close scrutiny to unravel the skein. He then departed and questioned the guards closely, but was assured that no one had ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... dissipation.... Cruelty in the penal code and the tendency to exaggerate punishment are sure signs of a low civilization and of an imperfect educational system.... It seems to me that we can no more expect to unravel the mechanism of associative memory by histological or morphological methods than we can expect to unravel the dynamics of electrical phenomena by microscopic study of cross-sections through a telegraph wire or by counting and locating the telephone connections in a big city. ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... which may serve to stand among those memories of small but strange incidents with which I have sometimes filled this column. The thing has really some of the dark qualities of a detective-story; though I suppose that Sherlock Holmes himself could hardly unravel it now, when the scent is so old and cold and most of the ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... probably has something more important to do than to unravel the meaning of a flag in a ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... contemptuous glances no longer, I set out on a voyage of discovery to unravel the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various
... fellow liberated," said my cousin, "but the keys to all the outer gates and doors of the Hall have been stolen and carried away. Can you help me unravel this affair?" ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... an inoffensive young man, and he set to work to unravel the mystery of the ha'nt with visible delight at the unusual nature of the job. Radnor received him in a spirit of almost anxious hospitality. A horse was given him to ride, guns and fishing tackle were placed at his disposal, a box of the Colonel's best ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... in the neighbourhood, and I would unravel a few arguments with thee; a few quiddities about thy profession. I know thou art skilful at thy trade, which, though a vocation having its basis in fraud, finding countenance through the weakness ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... filled with these unpleasant thoughts, Grayson sat at his desk in the office of the ranch trying to unravel the riddle of a balance sheet which would not balance. Mixed with the blue of the smoke from his briar was the deeper azure of a spirited monologue in which Grayson ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... bears a certain resemblance to that of Moses, because both resisted the Divine will through inability to speak; but in other respects they are totally dissimilar. Ezekiel's stands altogether by itself, and is extremely difficult to unravel; but it is thoroughly characteristic of his sublime and intricate genius. Nowhere else could there be found a more telling illustration of the diversity of operation in which the Spirit of God delights, when He is touching the spirit ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... is a strange thing," said Goethe, as they descended the hill, arm in arm, "and above all a woman's heart! It is a sacred riddle, which God has given Himself to solve, and that only a God could unravel!" ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... the Bonners, Anderson once more revived his resolution to unravel the mystery attending Rosalie's birth. For some months this ambition had lain dormant, but now, with the approach of the man she loved, the old marshal's devotion took fire and he swore daily that the mystery should be cleared "whether it wanted to ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... waiting respectfully. Care and hard work had already imprinted their insignia upon his fresh young face; for evidently he had not been in the Service for nothing. As a matter of fact, his greatest joy was to labour at a tangled case, and successfully to unravel it. ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... between London and Amsterdam in a singularly audacious manner. My second was the case of the celebrated Russian swindler, who called herself the Countess Demikoff. This case alone took me nearly six months to unravel, but I did not grudge the time, seeing that I was well paid for my labours, and that I managed to succeed where the police had failed. From that time forward I think I may say without boasting that I have been as successful as any man of my age has a ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... a dozen feet in diameter, and five or six in height, we could see Monadnock, in simple grandeur, in the northwest, rising nearly a thousand feet higher, still the "far blue mountain," though with an altered profile. The first day the weather was so hazy that it was in vain we endeavored to unravel the obscurity. It was like looking into the sky again, and the patches of forest here and there seemed to flit like clouds over a lower heaven. As to voyagers of an aerial Polynesia, the earth seemed like a larger island in the ether; on every side, even as low as we, ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... up the parcel myself at Barbet's, I should have missed seeing it; or if Barbet had picked up any other piece of paper, it would not have come under my eye. A curious concatenation of very trivial circumstances had ended in putting into my hands a clew by which I could unravel all the mystery about my Sark patient. What was I ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... that he hath taken money for several bargains that have been made with the Crown; and did instance one that is already complained of: but there are so many more involved in it, that, should they unravel things of this sort, every body almost will be more or less concerned. But these are the two great points which he thinks they will insist on, and prove against him. Thence I to the Chapel, and there heard the sermon ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... in, unravel the mystery, prove it to be a mere innocent mistake, collect about ten or fifteen thousand dollars reward, divvy up with you, and the decks will be cleared for what turns up next," said this wonderful player of dangerous games. ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... was some mystery I could not unravel at present, and fearing to involve myself in some trouble, refrained from further questioning on the subject. I nevertheless kept a close observance of all that passed, and seized every opportunity to investigate a mystery that began to ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... does Pope apply his good sense to morality? His favourite doctrine about human nature is expressed in the theory of the 'ruling passion' which is to be found in all men, and which, once known, enables us to unravel the secret of every character. As he says ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... have happened under a Parliamentary government. But, then, many members of Parliament, the entire Opposition in Parliament, would have been active to unravel the matter. All the principles of finance would have been worked and propounded. The light would have come from above, not from below—it would have come from Parliament to the nation instead of from the nation to Parliament ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... theme. It had indeed perplexed her, and she was glad to unravel her impressions to this understanding listener. 'No, that's just what it wasn't; it might have been if one hadn't felt her a person so easily affected. She had—how can I put it?—it seems brutal when she is such a dear—but she had so little stuff ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... long thread triumphantly to the end—out it flew, and away the button hopped again as if glad to be released. And then the thread kinked horribly, and got all twisted up in disagreeable little snarls that took all Polly's patience to unravel. ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... herniae, which may occasionally give a good deal of trouble. Symptoms of strangulation have been well marked, yet when the sac is opened nothing is to be seen except a mass of omentum, perhaps tolerably healthy-looking. To reduce this en masse would be very unsafe; it is necessary carefully to unravel it, and disengage the knuckle of bowel which is almost certainly included in it, and which has given rise to ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... prominence. Not, however, without abandoning the soul of the gospel; for the soul of the gospel, though expressed in the language of Messianic hopes, is really post-rational. It was not to marry and be given in marriage, or to sit on thrones, or to unravel metaphysical mysteries, or to enjoy any of the natural delights renounced in this life, that Christ summoned his disciples to abandon all they had and to follow him. There was surely a deeper peace in his self-surrender. It was not a new thing even among ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... dreads them, for many a longer day—but he has one main theme to make clear to his hearers and must respect the modern canons of the Story-telling Art. Among the many things therefore he could tell, an he would, he selects that only which will unravel a particular thread of fate in the tangle of endless consequences; which will render plausible the growth of passions on which, in a continuous life-drama, is based one ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... judging that the discussion had gone far enough, the coroner intervened and said that Mr Inspector had done his best to unravel a very difficult case. That he had not succeeded was the fault of the case and not of Mr Inspector, and for his part, he thought that the thanks of the Beorminster citizens were due to the efforts of so zealous and intelligent an officer as Tinkler. This sapient ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... for Dryads, to haunt the woods again; More welcome were the presence of hungering, thirst- ing men, Whose doubts we could unravel, whose hopes we could fulfil, Our wisdom tracing backward, the river to the rill; Were such beloved forerunners one summer day restored, Then, then we might ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... needed only the sixteenth of a hint to rush armed with full fervour into the mysteries of his system. Mrs. Gunilla took up a packet of old gold thread, which she set herself to unravel, whilst the Candidate ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... cried. All the way up in the train, whenever I was awake, an idea had been haunting me—a possible clue to this trickery of Lord Southminster's. Petty details cropped up and fell into their places. I began to unravel it all now. I had an inkling of a plan to ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... is all very well to write an "absorbing" story, in which the excitement and expectation are sustained up to the very last scene, but be sure that the theme is essentially such that in the last scenes, if not before, your action will unravel the knot that has become so tantalizingly tangled as the play proceeded. No matter how promising a theme may be in other respects, it is foredoomed to failure if from it comes a plot of which the spectator will ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... between these two extremes; the fact being that the personal and social causes of poverty act and react upon each other, changing places as cause and as effect, until they form a tangle that no hasty, impatient jerking can unravel. The charity worker and the settlement worker have need of each other: neither one can afford to ignore the experience of the other. Friendly visitors and all who are trying to improve conditions in poor homes should welcome the experience of those who are studying ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... the two secretaries, lords Townshend and Carteret, who were counted able negotiators. The affairs of the continent had begun to take a new turn. The interests and connexions of the different princes were become perplexed and embarrassed; and king George resolved to unravel them by dint of negotiation. Understanding that a treaty was on the carpet between the czar and the king of Sweden, favourable to the duke of Holstein's pretensions to Sleswick, the possession of which the elector of Hanover had guaranteed to Denmark, his majesty ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... "that he should leave to men the exercise of arms, and return to his proper station among the maidens of the palace, where a distaff should be again placed in the hand of the eunuch." "I will spin her such a thread as she shall not easily unravel!" is said to have been the reply which indignation and conscious virtue extorted from the hero. Instead of attending, a slave and a victim, at the gate of the Byzantine palace, he retired to Naples, from whence (if any credit is due to the belief of the times) Narses invited the Lombards ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... like myself? or is she disguised, and perilling her life to save mine? or can she be—Patience! To-night may unravel the mystery. ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... toward the window. "I am not very wise," Matthiette said, looking out upon the gardens, "and it appears that God has given me an exceedingly tangled matter to unravel. Yet if I decide it wrongly I think the Eternal Father will understand it is because ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... to unravel wool before the mast. I suppose your mother taught you when you were small—if you ever ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... treasure in his new acquaintance, returned to the charge; but I was not more docile. A few days after, I was surprised by an attack of the same kind from M. de Beauvilliers. How or when he had formed an intimacy with Maisons, I have never been able to unravel; but formed it, he had; and he importuned me so much, nay exerted his authority over me, that at last I found I must give way. Not to offend M. d'Orleans by yielding to another after having refused to yield to him, I waited until he should again speak ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... to Selim. Outwardly he abandoned scepticism and heresy; he professed himself a Mussulman. At heart he was anxious that Selim should be set aside; that Khuzru, the eldest son of Selim, should succeed him to the throne. It is impossible to unravel the intrigues that filled the court at Agra. At last Akbar was smitten with mortal disease. For some days Selim was refused admittance to his father's chamber. In the end there was a compromise. Selim swore to maintain the Mussulman religion. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... back of a chair, and so often looking up to revel in the contemplation of Harry's face, that her skein was in a wild tangle, which she studiously concealed lest the sight should compel Richard to come and unravel it with those wonderful fingers ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... request, and she made such a cunning knot in the garment as only she could unravel. For his part Gugemar gave the Queen a wonderfully fashioned girdle which only he could unclasp, and he begged her that she would never grant her love to any man who could not free her from it. Each promised the other solemnly to respect the ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... true, a woman with a wounded heart to nurse, an aching misery to bear; but she left her with a sanity of purpose which can take up the tangled threads and, however blinded be the eyes with weeping, with fingers feeling their way, can unravel the knotted mass that ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... I shall tell them, that in this case the Messiah announced by the Jewish prophets was destined for the Jews, and that he ought to have been their liberator, instead of destroying their worship and their religion. If it be possible to unravel any thing in these obscure, enigmatical, and symbolical oracles of the prophets of Judea, as we find them in the Bible,—if there be any means of guessing the meaning of the obscure riddles, which have been decorated with the pompous name of prophecies, we shall ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... and now felt its first attacks. It had not been in his power to look upon the young lady without being dazzled; and the uneasiness he felt at following the muleteer at a distance, and the fear lest any accident might happen by the way that should deprive him of his conquest, taught him to unravel his thoughts. He was more than usually delighted, when, being arrived safe at home, he saw the chest unloaded. He dismissed the muleteer, and having caused a slave to shut the door of his house, opened the chest, helped the lady out, gave her his hand, and conducted her to his apartment, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... plot,' said Nicholas, with the same violent rapidity with which she spoke, 'a plot, not yet laid bare by me, but which, with time, I might unravel; if you were (not knowing it) entitled to fortune of your own, which, being recovered, would do all that this marriage can ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... observe phenomena under varied circumstances, and endeavour to deduce the laws of their relations. Every natural phenomenon is, to our minds, the result of an infinitely complex system of conditions. What we set ourselves to do is to unravel these conditions, and by viewing the phenomenon in a way which is in itself partial and imperfect, to piece out its features one by one, beginning with that which strikes us first, and thus gradually learning how to look at the whole ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... are early; several are historical in subject and are probably of later date, though one may be as early as 1348; there are others of a religions nature which belong to the author's later years. The allusions in these poems are so obscure that it would in most cases be hopeless to seek to unravel the meaning had not the author left us a key in a letter to Martino da Signa, prior of the Augustinians. Many of the subjects are purely conventional, such as those of the early poems on the loves of the shepherds, the historical panegyrics and laments, and the satire ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... frigid indifference was not altogether assumed to serve a peculiar purpose, it was nevertheless certain that he bestowed not the slightest attention upon any of his questioners, not even upon Doe, who had previously endeavoured to unravel the riddle by seeking the assistance of Ralph Stackpole,—assistance, however, which Ralph, waxing sagacious of a sudden, professed himself wholly unable to give. This faithful fellow, indeed, professed to be just as ignorant of the person and character of the young Virginian; swearing, with a magnanimous ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... as the same or different, the best test to take is the plot. Identity exists where the Complication and Unravelling are the same. Many poets tie the knot well, but unravel it ill. Both arts, however, ...
— Poetics • Aristotle
... quiet, soft-spoken frontiersman. All Arizona knew not only the daredevil spirit that fired his gentleness, but the competence with which he set about any task he assigned himself. She did not see how he could unravel this mystery. She had left no clues behind her, she felt sure of that, and yet was troubled lest he guessed at her secret behind that mask of innocence he wore. He did not even remotely guess it as yet, but he was far closer to the truth than he pretended. The girl knew she should ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... in which Marvell was immersed during his last years are difficult to unravel and still more difficult to illuminate, for they had their dim origin in the secret thoughts and wavering purposes ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... returned to the buoy we had left at the end of the six-wire cable, and after much trouble from a series of tangles, got a fair start at noon. You will easily believe a tangle of iron rope inch and a half diameter is not easy to unravel, especially with a ton or so hanging to the ends. It is now eight o'clock, and we have about six and a half miles safe: it becomes very exciting, however, for the kinks are coming ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... unravel this mystery; but then, before she had gone far in her ruminations, she began to wonder if she wanted Nelson to change toward her? That question frightened her, and she would at once refuse to ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... friend, whose memory I have always held, and ever shall hold, in the highest veneration, Mr. Evans slightly apologized for having asserted that he had proof of my guilt; saying in excuse that it was his duty to do every thing in his power to unravel the mystery. "You may go Master Hunt," said Mrs. Evans; and in the kindest possible manner she endeavoured to console me for the injustice I had suffered, by telling me that the thief would certainly be ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... challenges, we must never give in to the belief that America is in decline, or that our culture is doomed to unravel. The American people know better than that. We have proven the pessimists wrong before — and we will do ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... things than give dinners. By the by William Ramsay [his brother the admiral] made a capital speech." On March 5, 1841, it is noted, Bishop Walker died—"a good man. His mind cast in a limited mould of strong prejudices; but a fair man, strictly honest in all his ways. He was not fitted to unravel difficulties in his episcopate, and scarcely suited to these times. He had been a furious opponent of the old evangelicals. A constant and kind friend to me. May his memory be honoured. Bishop Terrot elected bishop. I am very grateful to think that in all this business I can look with satisfaction ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... But in the case of miracles, as our inquiry is a question purely philosophical (namely, whether anything can happen which contravenes, or does not follow from the laws of Nature), I was not under any such necessity: I therefore thought it wiser to unravel the difficulty through premises ascertained and thoroughly known by the natural light of reason. I say I thought it wiser, for I could also easily have solved the problem merely from the doctrines and fundamental ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... called for another glass, and then set himself to the consideration of how far the disappearance of the boy would interfere with his obtaining payment of the various sums due by the Insurance Offices. This point was either more knotty and difficult to unravel than the previous one, or the grog began to render his intellect less capable of grappling with it. At all events it cost him an hour to determine his course of action, and required another glass of grog to enable him to put the whole matter fairly before his ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... communicated to others. Yet these I love to cherish, and sometimes still fondly clutch them, when I can escape from the throng to do so. To give way to our feelings before company, seems extravagance or affectation; and on the other hand, to have to unravel this mystery of our being at every turn, and to make others take an equal interest in it (otherwise the end is not answered) is a task to which few are competent. We must "give it an understanding, but no tongue." My old friend C——, however, could do both. He could go on in the most delightful ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... recollections bound up with the memory of this intelligent and original woman. Most of them are associated in my mind with my father's stories about her. He could always catch and unravel any interesting psychological trait, and these traits, which he would mention incidentally, stuck firmly in my mind. He used to tell, for instance, how Agafya Mikhailovna ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... entry of Mr. Giles Henderson of Kingston into the gubernatorial contest preceded, by ten days or so, the actual event. It is difficult for the historian to unravel the precise circumstances which led to this candidacy. Conservative citizens throughout the State, it was understood, had become greatly concerned over the trend political affairs were taking; the radical doctrines of one candidate—propounded for very obvious reasons—they turned ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... "No," she returned gently. "You are the chief one. Just as soon as your thought is surely right, don't you know that your heavenly Father is going to show you how to unravel this little snarl? You remember there isn't any personality to error, whether it tries to fasten on Ada, or ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... we have got to unravel in this tangle. First off, there's your little girl, to find if she is still alive. Second, we must locate Dave Henderson or his grave. Third, there's something due the scoundrel who is responsible for this. Fourthly, brethren, there's that ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... other, and called himself all kinds of a fool, but it did not the slightest particle of good. Underneath all the reasoning, he knew he was glad that he had found her once, and he determined to find her again, and to unravel the mystery. Then he sat looking long and earnestly into the depths of the beautiful white stone she had given to him, as if he might there read the way ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... sort of Universal Providence, exercising an authority and a discretion over matters upon which in any progressive community the people must decide for themselves. However near to the appearances such an impression might be, nothing could be further from the facts. If I have helped the reader to unravel the tangled skein of our national life, if I have sufficiently revealed the mind of the new movement to show that there is in it 'a scheme of things entire,' it should be quite clear that the deliberate intentions both of Mr. Gerald Balfour ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... arbitration is able to unravel the tangled skein of crime and hypocrisy among individuals can it be extended to communities and nations, as nations are only man in the aggregate, they are the aggregate of his crimes and deception and depravity, and so long as these constitute the basis of ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... but the poet's work remains, inviting a more intimate and a more extended scrutiny than it has hitherto received in this country. The reader who cares to make himself acquainted with the method of Byron's workmanship, to unravel his allusions, and to follow the tenour of his verse, will, it is hoped, find some assistance ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... was published at Dresden by M. I. F. Freyhere in which another endeavor was made to unravel the mystery. Mr. Freyhere's book was a pretty large one, and copiously illustrated by colored engravings. His supposition was that "a well-taught boy very thin and tall of his age (sufficiently so that he could be concealed in ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... to add these to the instances cited by Mr. Walcott, hoping that the slightly varied form may furnish a clue by which some of your readers may be able to unravel the meaning of such allusions more satisfactorily than any ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various
... Although Communist, his new government successfully steered its own path between the Warsaw Pact nations and the West for the next four and a half decades. In the early 1990s, post-TITO Yugoslavia began to unravel along ethnic lines: Slovenia, Croatia, and The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia all declared their independence in 1991; Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992. The remaining republics of Serbia and Montenegro declared ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... times less than an exceptionally delicate chemical balance will turn to" (Soddy, 1912). May not man be the radium of the Universe? At any rate let us not worry about his size. For us he is a very potent creature, full of interest, whose mundane story we are only beginning to unravel. ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... house blazed over their heads? where for Kari's dash and gallantry, the man who dealt his blows straightforward, even in the Earl's hall, and never thought twice about them? where for Njal himself, the man who never dipped his hands in blood, who could unravel all the knotty points of the law; who foresaw all that was coming, whether for good or ill, for friend or for foe; who knew what his own end would be, though quite powerless to avert it; and when it came, laid him down to his rest, and never uttered ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... malkuragxigi. Unoccupied neokupata, senokupa. Unpack elpaki. Unpardonable nepardonebla. Unpleasant malplacxa. Unpolished (surface) malglata. Unpretending neafektema, simpla. Unprincipled malhonesta, senprincipa. Unproductive senfrukta. Unpublished neeldonita. Unquiet malkvieta. Unravel maltordi. Unrecognisable nerekonebla. Unremitting sencxesa. Unreserved nerezerva. Unrestrained nedetena, libera. Unroll malruli, malfaldi. Unroof maltegmenti. Unruffled trankvila, nemaltrankvila. Unruly malgxentila. Unsaddle senseligi. Unsafe dangxerhava. Unsalable ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... more mal-apropos than usual, as if on purpose to appear at her ease. At last, just before her bed-time, when the tea was coming in, Mrs. Edmonstone engaged with that, Laura reading, Amy clearing Charles's little table, and Philip helping Mr. Edmonstone to unravel the confused accounts of the late cheating bailiff, Guy suddenly found her standing by him, perusing his face with all the power of her great blue eyes. She started as he looked up, and put her face into Amabel's ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... skein was too tangled for us to attempt to unravel it. They had seen vessels evidently, both sailing ships and steamers, but whether it was yesterday, or ten years back, there were no means of ascertaining; but to make certain that we were not being deceived, we instituted a strict overhaul of the gunyahs, in hopes of finding something that might ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... extensively developed. In particular, that potent instrument called the infinitesimal calculus, which Newton had invented for the investigation of nature, had become so far perfected that Laplace, when he attempted to unravel the movements of the heavenly bodies, found himself provided with a calculus far more efficient than that which had been available to Newton. The purely geometrical methods which Newton employed, though they are admirably adapted for demonstrating in a general ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... so perfectly natural, and yet of a kind so very difficult to unravel and explain, that if the story was invented by man, as poems or novels are, it must have been invented very late indeed in the history of the Jews; at a time when they had grown to be a far more civilised people, far more experienced in the cunning tricks of the human heart than they ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... retiring, secluded men, he had his vanity in pronounced degree. He saw himself now, the dominant figure in this city of thirty thousand people, the man who had been selected by the chief of police as the one able to unravel the web of mystery surrounding this startling murder. The thought pleased him, and he smiled. He began to think about himself and about life as a ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... told me he thought his men could unravel that message and that I should wait a while," panted Roy, breathless from running up the stairs. "And they did get it. It's what they call a transposition cipher. ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... Mr. Holmes," she said, "because you once enabled my employer, Mrs. Cecil Forrester, to unravel a little domestic complication. She was much impressed by ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... trade with the Vikings, and ran away because they were frightened at the bellowing of the cattle which Thorfin had brought with him in the ships. But what in the world could a Greek slave know of that affair? I wandered up and down among the streets trying to unravel the mystery, and the more I considered it, the more baffling it grew. One thing only seemed certain and that certainty took away my breath for the moment. If I came to full knowledge of anything at all, it would not be one life of the soul in Charlie Mears's body, but half a dozen—half ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... essais and his omelettes. In his seclusions the Vin de Bourgogne had its allotted hour, and there were appropriate moments for the Cotes du Rhone. With him Sauterne was to Medoc what Catullus was to Homer. He would sport with a syllogism in sipping St. Peray, but unravel an argument over Clos de Vougeot, and upset a theory in a torrent of Chambertin. Well had it been if the same quick sense of propriety had attended him in the peddling propensity to which I have formerly ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... as little comprehended the cause of the Prince's fury as all the rest they had seen, were at a loss to unravel this new circumstance. The young peasant himself was still more astonished, not conceiving how he had offended the Prince. Yet recollecting himself, with a mixture of grace and humility, he disengaged himself from Manfred's grip, ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... whole soul, had done it and must therefore be to blame. Then he would read her letter over, burning every word of it upon his brain, until the piteous minor appeal would torture him once more and he would begin again to try to get hold of some thread of thought that would unravel this ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... Bohemia and the Irene Adler photograph, but when I looked back to the weird business of the "Sign of the Four," and the extraordinary circumstances connected with the "Study in Scarlet," I felt that it would be a strange tangle indeed which he could not unravel. ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... said Lydia, meditatively. "But I think their dissimilarity owes its emphasis to some lurking likeness. Otherwise how could he have reminded me of her?" Lydia, as she spoke, sat down with a troubled expression, as if trying to unravel her thoughts. "And yet," she added, presently, "my theatrical associations are so complex that—" A long silence ensued, during which Alice, conscious of some unusual stir in her patroness, watched her furtively and wondered ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... present volumes may be thought worthy of attention. They are the result at least of severe and conscientious labour at the original sources of history, but the subject is so complicated and difficult that it may well be feared that the ability to depict and unravel is unequal to the earnestness with which the attempt has ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... undertaking, as an architect or engineer would obtain data and apply his devices to a task in his art, a fallacy is included which is radical and mischievous beyond measure. We have, as yet, no calculus for the variable elements which enter into social problems and no analysis which can unravel their complications. The discussions always reveal the dominion of the prepossessions in the minds of the disputants which are in the mores. We know that an observer of nature always has to know his own personal equation. The mores are a societal ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... lies the mystery!" cried Elfreda, pointing toward the northern end of the campus, where considerable headway had been made in digging what appeared to be the cellar of a house. "But Sherlock will unravel the tangled skein!" ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... could unravel the mystery of my unknown assailant! Have you any idea who watches your movements and revenges himself on ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... terminate in the second Empire. The letters constituted a sort of concise journal, narrating events as they occurred, and drawing hopes and suggestions from each of them. Eugene was full of faith. He described Prince Louis Bonaparte to his father as the predestined necessary man who alone could unravel the situation. He had believed in him prior even to his return to France, at a time when Bonapartism was treated as a ridiculous chimera. Felicite understood that her son had been a very active secret agent since 1848. Although he did not clearly explain his position ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... old conventional designs then in use have, with very little modification, persisted up to the present day. Probably the playing cards in common use were printed by the same crude method as were the images, and unfortunately history has failed to unravel just what that method was. They may possibly have been stenciled. All we have been able to learn is that cards, images (which were in reality religious pictures), and stenciled altar cloths—the first primitive printing on cloth—all appeared very early in southern ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... well as hindrance) to the human understanding; to attempt to refer every question to abstract truth and precise definition, without allowing for the frailty of prejudice, which is the unavoidable consequence of the frailty and imperfection of reason, would be to unravel the whole web and texture of ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... first seen by white men, will make it impossible hereafter for anyone whose reasoning powers exceed a native Australian's to maintain that it was the whites who corrupted these savages. It takes an exceptionally shrewd white man even to unravel the customs of voluntary or obligatory wife sharing or lending which prevail in all parts of Australia, and which must have required not only hundreds but thousands of years to assume their present ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... Myers and many others of his associates, had not engaged in psychical research from the hope that the truths of the Bible might thereby be demonstrated. His motive was that of the detective eager to unravel mysteries. From his boyhood he had had a singular fondness for solving tricks and puzzles of all sorts; and when, in 1878, he came to England to complete his education at Cambridge, he naturally ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... Think of the number of stays that could be furnished from the whalebone plates of one whale! It is true, they were not exactly designed for this purpose originally. At the tips and on the edges of these plates, the elastic fibres of which they are composed unravel and peel off, and hang down from the lip like tufts of horsehair. The Arctic seas, which the whale inhabits, are, like other seas, full of innumerable troops of various little sea-animals, and it is these which ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... as Hal lay on the grass, whiling away the time by alternately playing with Watch and trying to unravel the mysteries of a flower of golden-rod, until the hermit should have finished his prayers and be ready to attend to him, Piers came through the wood, evidently sent on a message, and made him understand that he was immediately ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... knows not. And next, that he hath taken money for several bargains that have been made with the Crown; and did instance one that is already complained of: but there are so many more involved in it, that, should they unravel things of this sort, every body almost will be more or less concerned. But these are the two great points which he thinks they will insist on, and prove against him. Thence I to the Chapel, and there heard the sermon and a pretty ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... will set a knot, and make this covenant with you, that never will you put your love on dame or maiden, save only on her who shall first unfasten this knot. Then you will ever keep faith with me, for so cunning shall be my craft, that no woman may hope to unravel that coil, either by force or guile, or even ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... completed, and I looked forward to the fresh enterprise of exploring new rivers and lower latitudes, that should unravel the mystery ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... Sabeism was, as its etymology indicates,[6] baptism—that is to say, the religion of many baptisms—the origin of the sect still existing called "Christians of St. John," or Mendaites, which the Arabs call el-Mogtasila, "the Baptists."[7] It is difficult to unravel these vague analogies. The sects floating between Judaism, Christianity, Baptism, and Sabeism, which we find in the region beyond the Jordan during the first centuries of our era,[8] present to criticism the most singular problem, in consequence of the confused accounts of them which have ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... to say so, we admit it," I told him. "Go ahead with your story. What do you want us to do? Light a camp-fire so you can unravel your yarn?" ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... it should end in disappointment! But the plan was ever before him. Why should he look for an elderly lady for his housekeeper? There was Bessie Allison! With Bessie's strong heart and capable hand the tangles of his home-life would unravel, and all would go well. Besides, ...
— The Hero of Hill House • Mable Hale
... every darkness in what is revealed to them. In the present day it is not easy to find a well-meaning man among our more earnest thinkers, who will not take upon himself to dispute the whole system of redemption, because he cannot unravel the mystery of the punishment of sin. But can he unravel the mystery of the punishment of NO sin? Can he entirely account for all that happens to a cab-horse? Has he ever looked fairly at the fate of one of those beasts as it is dying,—measured the work it has done, and the reward ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... Company; and spoke several Things to him, that might (if Love had not made him blind) have reclaimed him from the Pursuit of his Ruin. But whatever they trusted him with, she had the Art to wind herself about his Heart, and make him unravel all his Secrets; and then knew as well, by feign'd Sighs and Tears, to make him disbelieve all; so that he had no Faith but for her; and was wholly inchanted and bewitch'd by her. At last, in spite of all that would have opposed it, he marry'd this famous Woman, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... ignorant. The first edition, on the failure of his attempt to raise a Catholic crusade against his country, had been withdrawn from circulation; the world had not received it favourably, and there was a mystery about the publication which it is difficult to unravel. In the interval between the first despatch of the book into England as a private letter in the summer of 1536, and the appearance of it in print at Rome in the winter of 1538-9, it was re-written, as I have already stated, enlarged, and divided into parts. ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... I met you. But always since that moment I could stake my life on this, that any—any mystery that might seem to exist was not of your making or choosing. And I want to assure you of something, to make you believe it if necessary; and that is, dear, dear Marcia, if you never choose to unravel the tangle I shall ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... sleep, and found that the neck-band of his shirt had become entangled with the cord by which he kept his precious emerald and a written charm suspended round his neck. He tried to disentangle the knot, but in vain, so he left the complication as it was, purposing to unravel it by daylight. He did not fall asleep; but, after lying quiet for a little, he determined to attempt once more whether he could undo the knot, when he found that everything was clear, and the stone under his armpit. "This sign showed me an unhoped-for solution of certain weighty ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... without many words,—far more than Mr. Jowett's sentences commonly deserve.—Sometimes he strings together several heads of thought; of which enumeration the kindest thing which can be said is that it betrays an utter want of intellectual perspective. To unravel even a part of this tangled web so as to expose its argumentative worthlessness, soon fills a page.... But there is another kind of fallacy which the same gentleman wields with immense effect, and in the use of which he is a great master; which, because ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... and giving the watchman a quarter to look out for his skiff until morning, Billy Brackett, weary and disheartened, sought such accommodation as the only hotel of the little town afforded. All night he tossed sleeplessly on his uncomfortable bed, striving in vain to unravel the mystery in which the fate of his nephew and of Major Caspar's raft had ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... the producer hears what the consumer paid, and then somebody gets to thinking and talking. Discussions lead to investigations, and investigations lead to conferences. Just lately a large conference was held in Chicago, and certain plans were formulated to attempt to unravel some of the evils that exist in marketing. So much has been said that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has begun certain investigations, and we hope that the workers will find ways to solve some of the troubles in a logical and, we hope, ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... enough to wish to go out and unravel the mystery of the west now walked in chains from a Spanish ship to a Spanish prison! It was monstrous ingratitude, all declared; and they did not hesitate to show their sympathy. The story of his disgrace ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... dim hope that Mr. Corbin might in some way manage to unravel the mystery, and yet she could not see that he had anything more tangible to work upon than she ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... owe our knowledge of hieroglyphics. The Greeks of Alexandria, and after them the Romans, who might have learned how to read this kind of writing if they had wished, seem never to have taken the trouble: it fell into disuse on the rise of Christianity in Egypt; and it was left for an Englishman to unravel the hidden meaning after it had been forgotten for nearly ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... who can loose the knot of these difficulties save only thy Wazir Haykar; and now that none shall offer an answer save Nadan, the son of his sister, whom he hath informed with all his subtilty and his science. Therefore, do thou summon him and haply he shall unravel for thee a tangled skein so hard to untwist." Sankharib did as they advised, and when Nadan appeared in the presence said to him, "Look thou upon this writ and comprehend its contents." But when the youth read it he said to the Sovran, "O ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... the Ancient of Days and all his works with feelings as fresh as if all had then sprung forth at the first creative fiat, this characterizes the mind that feels the riddle of the world, and may help to unravel it. To carry on the feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood; to combine the child's sense of wonder and novelty with the appearances which everyday for perhaps forty years had ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... Brooklyn have another | |murder mystery to unravel through the | |finding early today of the body of Peter | |Barilla on Lincoln road, near Nostrand | |avenue, Flatbush. There were two bullet | |wounds in the body and four stab wounds | |in the ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... still! The Saviour, indeed, does not now lead us forth, amid the scene of our trial, as He did the bereft sisters, to unravel the mysteries of His providence, and to shew glory to God, redounding from the darkest of His dispensations. To us the grand sequel is reserved for eternity. The grand development of the divine plan will not be fully accomplished till then; faith must meanwhile rest satisfied with what is ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... girl inquire recently, as she fingered a scrap of pink gingham of which her mother was making "rompers" for the baby of the family, "why are the threads of this cloth pink when you unravel it one way, and white when you ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... thought much about the murder and had tried to unravel the mystery connected with it. Who was there in the place likely to commit such a cowardly deed, and what would be his motive? Old David had not an enemy, as far as she knew, and he had injured no one. It was necessary for her ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... bore to each other, and tried to understand the meaning of the designs. At first the maze of these designs seemed a very difficult riddle to solve. Yet, we believed that if a human intelligence had devised it, another human intelligence would certainly be able to unravel it. It was not, however, until we had nearly completed the tracing and study of the mural paintings, still extant in the funeral chamber of Chaacmol, or room built on the top of the eastern wall of the gymnasium at Chichen-Itza, at its southern end, that Stephens mistook for ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... easy for us to criticise the man," remarked Beth, "and he may be sorry, now, that he did not act differently. But I think, in his place, I should have made the same attempt he did to unravel the mystery of his lost identity. So much ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... politely assisted his egress, he passed onward with a graceful gesture of acknowledgment. He had taken but a few steps, when the thought occurred to me that he must have come from within the perplexing structure by some secret door, and that he could unravel its mystery. I was impelled to follow him, and proceeded hastily to do so, when the indelicacy of my intrusion on one evidently connected with the grief which the monument was designed to commemorate, flashed upon me, and I suddenly paused. He probably observed ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... back to San Pasqual, and such was his perturbation that he sought to have "Doc" Taylor unravel the puzzle ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... mercy. Eva cautioned him to be more than silent on the subject for the child's sake as well as for their own, and Anderson saw wisdom in her counselling. He even lagged in his avowed intention to unravel the mystery or die in the attempt. A sharp reminder in the shape of an item in the Banner restored his energies, and he again took up the case with a vigour that startled even himself. Anything in the shape of ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... soil of the hill on which the observatory was situated. Other defects also existed, which seemed to preclude the likelihood that the future work of the instrument would be of a high class. I had also found that very difficult mathematical investigations were urgently needed to unravel one of the greatest mysteries of astronomy, that of the moon's motion. This was a much more important work than making observations, and I wished to try my hand at it. So in the autumn I made a formal application to the Secretary of the Navy to ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... his mind the secret that had been partly revealed to him, through the words of Grannie Thornton, could not make up his mind just what to do about it. He had almost decided to entrust what he knew to Lawyer Estes, for him to unravel, when the lawyer was called out of town for several weeks, on an important case. Again, another event intervened to cause delay. Miss Matilda Burns made a visit to her home in Massachusetts, and took Henry Burns with her; and it was well into ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... escape; and adds, that he had reason to believe him to have embarked for America. He describes him in general terms, as the most incomprehensible and formidable among men; as engaged in schemes, reasonably suspected to be, in the highest degree, criminal, but such as no human intelligence is able to unravel: that his ends are pursued by means which leave it in doubt whether he be not in league with some infernal spirit: that his crimes have hitherto been perpetrated with the aid of some unknown but desperate accomplices: ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... him nothing but a little gratitude for having delivered her from the men in black, who wished to carry her off, and that she had promised him nothing. He considered himself an outraged, betrayed, and ridiculed lover. Blood and anger mounted to his face; he was resolved to unravel the mystery. ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... illustrations which are after all only rough diagrams, the warp weights appear to hang from a single thread only, but this can not have been correct. The warp threads must have been bunched, because a single suspended thread with a tension weight immediately begins to unravel, and so loses the advantage of its having been spun, as any one can ascertain for oneself. As regards the same point on the Lake Dwellers looms, Cohausen was the first to surmise that the warp threads were bunched ...
— Ancient Egyptian and Greek Looms • H. Ling Roth
... this," I said to myself—"it was to hear such propositions as this that I came to Sicily! That Polizzi is simply a scoundrel, and his son another; and they made a plan together to ruin me." But what was their scheme? I could not unravel it. Meanwhile, it may be imagined how discouraged and ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... to prevent their utterance," cried Richmond, with a somewhat jealous look at his friend, "for I have determined to know more of this mystery, and shall require the earl's assistance to unravel it. I think I remember Morgan Fenwolf, the keeper, and will send for him to the castle, and question him. But in any case, I and Surrey ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... a very active-minded girl. It was not her way to sit wondering and puzzling over anything she could not understand. She had a knack of setting herself to unravel problems which required explanation in the most common-sense way. After giving her uncle time to leave the house—intuition told her that he would do so—she rose and rang the bell. Then she moved to the window while she waited ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... a century since Liebig and Lehmann and their pupils began to unravel the mystery of food. In recent years no subject has received more assiduous attention from scientific men, and none has been made the object of more constant or more profound research than the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... chieftains, 55 Our best, our noblest, are assembled around you, Their kinglike leader! On your nod they wait. The single threads, which here your prosperous fortune Hath woven together in one potent web Instinct with destiny, O let them not 60 Unravel of themselves. If you permit These chiefs to separate, so unanimous Bring you them not a second time together. 'Tis the high tide that heaves the stranded ship, And every individual's spirit waxes 65 In the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... for him such facts in the O'Donnel family history as I could unravel from the tangled web. The mystery of Angele de la Mole's Spanish-speaking Irish friends (which she must have refrained from explaining in order to play a joke upon Dick) was solved in a sentence. An O'Donnel grandfather had fought ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the balls. Put shucks around the spindle to slip it off easy. I have seen big balls this big (2 ft. in diameter) down on the floor and mama, knitting off of it right on. When the feet wore out on socks and stockings, they would unravel them, save the good thread, and reknit the foot or toe ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... a sigh, and when her aunt still pressed her on the subject, she begged to be spared, as she felt nervous and excited. So, leaving the sitting room, she retired to her own apartment, to gather up, and unravel, if possible, the tangled thread ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... found that I had picked the wrong person. Then I accused another character on perfectly good circumstantial evidence, and he was not the man. After that I decided to withdraw from the detective business and let Miss SILBERRAD unravel her mystery for herself. If you are of the opinion that a woman cannot keep a secret read The Mystery of Barnard Hanson and become convinced that Miss SILBERRAD at least is an exception. If I have ever read a more perfectly sustained mystery novel I cannot recall it. There is just a chance that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various
... questions of national finance and foreign policy. No account of him could be complete without reviewing his actions and estimating the results of his work in all these directions. But the difficulty of describing and judging him goes deeper. His was a singularly complex nature, a character hard to unravel. His individuality was extremely strong; all that he said or did bore its impress. Yet it was an individuality so far from being self-consistent as sometimes to seem a bundle of opposite qualities capriciously united in a single person. He might with ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... accumulations are not surprising under the operation of compound interest on sums of money loaned; but when effected by purchases of unproductive lands, they constitute a puzzle which the most intimate of Mr. McDonogh's friends have found it difficult to unravel. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... cares to know just how ridiculous and inconsistent the judicial system of the Philippines then was would do well to try to unravel the mixed details of the half dozen charges, ranging from cruelty through theft to murder, which were made against Mrs. Rizal without a shadow of evidence. One case was trumped up as soon as another ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... fish—and you get into a rowboat that you undertake to pull yourself and that starts out by weighing half a ton and gets half a ton heavier at each stroke. You pull and pull until your spine begins to unravel at both ends, and your palms get so full of water blisters you feel as though you were carrying a bunch of hothouse grapes in each hand. And after going about nine miles you unwittingly anchor off the mouth of a popular garbage dump and everything you catch is second-hand. The sun beats ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... we have done, even already, for Ireland, by giving her the blessings of a strong and honest Government; what a blow we have aimed at absenteeism, in a particular provision of our income-tax! Nil desperandum, gentlemen, give us a little time to unravel your long tissue of misgovernment; and, in the mean time, make haste, and go about in quest of a grievance, if you can find one, against the ensuing session. Depend upon it, we will ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... wishes to make a purchase. Talk about diplomacy!—there's not a man in any court in Europe who knows his position, his fulcrum, and his lever, and the use he can make of them, as this man knows. He can unravel any combination, penetrate any disguise, surmount any obstacle. Beyond all other men, he knows when to talk, and when to refrain from talking,—how to throw the burden of negotiation on the seller,—how to get the goods ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... librarian had brought him close up to the good in the other side of the cleft too. He had settled down to his shoemaking again and refused to be roused by the others' impatience; but he looked as if he had an eternity in which to unravel his affairs. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... up the floor-boards in the barn and Mr. O'Neill's digging up the lilac bush for the third time. And that's enough. It beats me how Mr. O'Neill can go on rememberin' so much now he's got his memory started. He just seems to unravel things out of it overnight. It keeps me all worked up. I feel as if I ought to whisper when I speak and every night the minute I get to sleep I find myself diggin' in first one outlandish place and then another. And if I'm not diggin' in my sleep, your father is, with jerks and starts ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... the hall a great loom, and day by day she wrought there at the web, for she was a marvellous spinner, patient as Arachne, but dear to Athena. All day long she would weave, but every night in secret she would unravel what she had wrought in the daytime, so that the web might never be done. For although she believed her dear husband to be dead, yet her hope would put forth buds again and again, just as spring, that seems to die each year, will come again. So she ever looked ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... own account and could afford to go to India on a voyage of discovery—yes, as much a voyage of discovery as that of Vasco de Gama or of Drake—that I got from the Madras agent the clue which enabled me, at the cost of infinite patience and infinite labour, to unravel the mystery of my birth. There is no need to enter now upon the details of that story. I have overwhelming documentary evidence—a cloud of witnesses—to convince the most sceptical as to who and what ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... was doing his utmost—it must be acknowledged, with indifferent success—to recall the lessons of his school-days. He would plunge into the wildest speculations in his endeavors to unravel the difficulties of the new situation, and struggled into a kind of conviction that if there had been a change of manner in the earth's rotation on her axis, there would be a corresponding change in her revolution round the sun, which would involve the ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... these circumstances it seems essential that the St. Petersburg Cabinet, whose desire to unravel this crisis peacefully is manifest, should immediately give their adherence to the British proposal. This proposal must be strongly supported at Berlin in order to decide [Secretary of State] Von Jagow to take real action at Vienna capable of stopping Austria and preventing her ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... symbols and parables, resulting in Chaldea in the highly artificial system which has been sketched above—(see Chapters V. and VI.)—a system singularly beautiful and deeply significant, but of which the mass of the people did not care to unravel the subtle intricacies, being quite content to accept it entire, in the most literal spirit, elementary nature-gods, astronomical abstractions, cosmogonical fables and all—questioning nothing, at peace in their mind and righteously self-conscious if they ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... Mrs. Massingberd, see 'Letters', vol. i. p. 100, at end of 'note' 3 [Footnote 1 of Letter 52]. Byron's pecuniary transactions, though not unimportant in their influence on his career, are difficult to unravel. The following statement, in his own handwriting, with regard to the Annuities was apparently prepared for some legal proceedings, and is dated ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... It is true that this recurrence may be in part due to the very potency of the personality of the first reformer and to the magic of the memory which he left behind him. Party-cries tend to become shibboleths and it is difficult to unravel the web that has been spun by the hand of a master. Even the hated cry for the Italian franchise, which had proved the undoing of Caius Gracchus, became acceptable to party leaders and to an ever-growing section of their followers, ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... ill-adapted to the movements of a dancer. Nor were the attitudes and movements of her companion so much those of the dance as of the pantomime. There was evidently a meaning in them, though Madame de Hell could not unravel it. The young figurante frequently extended her arms and threw herself on her knees, as if in ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... low or too high), or hitting some other note that chords, so as to produce the effect of a marvellous complication and variety, and yet with the most perfect time, and rarely with any discord. And what makes it all the harder to unravel a thread of melody out of this strange network is that, like birds, they seem not infrequently to strike sounds that cannot be precisely represented by the gamut, and abound in 'slides from one note to another, and turns and cadences not ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... men had not been less in a condition to mistake, so some others might not have been here to find fault. But it is better late than never; when the inquiry is set about heartily, it may be useful on several accounts, both to unravel past errors and to prevent new. For my part, as we have for many years past groaned for want of justice upon wilful mistakes, yet, in hopes some of the careful and mischievous designing gentlemen may come in for a share, I am glad the ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... to the theme. It had indeed perplexed her, and she was glad to unravel her impressions to this understanding listener. 'No, that's just what it wasn't; it might have been if one hadn't felt her a person so easily affected. She had—how can I put it?—it seems brutal when she is such a dear—but she had so little stuff in her; it was as if she ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... travail That groans for the light Till dayspring unravel The weft of the night, At the sound of the strings of the music of ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... who carry their niceties to an excess. It would be wrong to hold Rashi responsible for the abuse later made of controversy; while, on the other hand, praise is owing to him for the happy efforts he made to unravel the texts, not only for the purpose of explaining their meaning, but also to indicate possible objections and reply to them in a few words. One must marvel at the clearsighted intelligence, the sureness, the mastery ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... respectfully. Care and hard work had already imprinted their insignia upon his fresh young face; for evidently he had not been in the Service for nothing. As a matter of fact, his greatest joy was to labour at a tangled case, and successfully to unravel it. ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... do hear of your having misled me in this matter——" He did not finish the sentence in words, but playfully producing a revolver, he departed. The next moment he was dashing across the lawn, the mud flying in every direction, and himself thinking how useless it was to try to unravel a love quarrel. ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... eyes and began to unravel the tangle of the day's events. He could remember voices which had circled around him, babbling endlessly; two negroes who had taken off his wet clothes, put him in dry things and wrapped him in blankets; and Matty, the cook, who had soothed him and given him ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... always held, and ever shall hold, in the highest veneration, Mr. Evans slightly apologized for having asserted that he had proof of my guilt; saying in excuse that it was his duty to do every thing in his power to unravel the mystery. "You may go Master Hunt," said Mrs. Evans; and in the kindest possible manner she endeavoured to console me for the injustice I had suffered, by telling me that the thief would certainly be found out, and then those that had accused me ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... ocean paths the tangled clue He taught the nations to unravel; And mapped the track where safely through The lightning-footed thought ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... He has followed philosophy into the region of mythology, and pointed out the similarities of opposing phases of thought. He has also shown that extreme abstractions are self-destructive, and, indeed, hardly distinguishable from one another. But his intention is not to unravel the whole subject of knowledge, if this had been possible; and several times in the course of the dialogue he rejects explanations of knowledge which have germs of truth in them; as, for example, 'the resolution of the compound into the simple;' or 'right ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... of this people is just as strange as they are themselves. It is based on euphony, from which cause it is very complex, the more especially so as it requires one to be possessed of a negro's turn of mind to appreciate the system, and unravel the secret of its euphonic concord. A Kisuahili grammar, written by Dr. Krapf, will exemplify what I mean. There is one peculiarity, however, to which I would direct the attention of the reader most particularly, which is, that Wa prefixed to the essential word of a country, means men or ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... burghers who stood open-mouthed below. What could it be? In the name of all the vrows and devils in Rotterdam, what could it possibly portend? No one knew, no one could imagine; no one—not even the burgomaster Mynheer Superbus Von Underduk—had the slightest clew by which to unravel the mystery; so, as nothing more reasonable could be done, every one to a man replaced his pipe carefully in the corner of his mouth, and cocking up his right eye towards the phenomenon, puffed, paused, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... German expulsion in 1945. Although Communist, his new government and its successors (he died in 1980) managed to steer their own path between the Warsaw Pact nations and the West for the next four and a half decades. In the early 1990s, post-TITO Yugoslavia began to unravel along ethnic lines: Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina were recognized as independent states in 1992. The remaining republics of Serbia and Montenegro declared a new "Federal Republic of Yugoslavia" (FRY) in April 1992 and, under President Slobodan MILOSEVIC, Serbia led ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... For Mrs. Massingberd, see 'Letters', vol. i. p. 100, at end of 'note' 3 [Footnote 1 of Letter 52]. Byron's pecuniary transactions, though not unimportant in their influence on his career, are difficult to unravel. The following statement, in his own handwriting, with regard to the Annuities was apparently prepared for some legal proceedings, and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... subtract from the permanency of his reputation; he wisely considered posthumous fame as a vain and undesirable bubble, unless founded on utility, but when it is considered that no man was better qualified than himself to confound vice and ennoble virtue; to unravel the mazes of error, or vindicate the pretensions of truth, it must generally excite a poignant regret, that abilities like his should have been dissipated on one generation, which, by a different application, might ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... progress in discovering causes has been made in exactly the same way as that which I have detailed to you. A person observing the occurrence of certain facts and phenomena asks, naturally enough, what process, what kind of operation known to occur in Nature applied to the particular case, will unravel and explain the mystery? Hence you have the scientific hypothesis; and its value will be proportionate to the care and completeness with which its basis had been tested and verified. It is in these matters ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... if Barbet had picked up any other piece of paper, it would not have come under my eye. A curious concatenation of very trivial circumstances had ended in putting into my hands a clew by which I could unravel all the mystery about my Sark patient. What was I to ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... with decision. His task was to unravel these twisted threads of hatred and misunderstanding, and he ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... these to the instances cited by Mr. Walcott, hoping that the slightly varied form may furnish a clue by which some of your readers may be able to unravel the meaning of such allusions more satisfactorily than any ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various
... his return from California, the tangled web of my yarn began to unravel. Mat Bailey had reported that nothing had been heard of the highwaymen "from that day to this." But John Keeler's work had not been done in vain. O'Leary of You Bet, the Nevada City jail-bird, had been duly impressed with the handsome reward offered for ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... to San Pasqual, and such was his perturbation that he sought to have "Doc" Taylor unravel the puzzle for him. ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... Hadden, and once or twice he was shaken by so sharp a pang of remorse at the thought of his share in this tragedy, that he cast about in his mind seeking a means to unravel the web of death which he himself had woven. But ever that evil voice was whispering at his ear. It reminded him that he, the white Inkoos, had been refused by this dusky beauty, and that if he found a way to save him, within some few hours ...
— Black Heart and White Heart • H. Rider Haggard
... matters upon which in any progressive community the people must decide for themselves. However near to the appearances such an impression might be, nothing could be further from the facts. If I have helped the reader to unravel the tangled skein of our national life, if I have sufficiently revealed the mind of the new movement to show that there is in it 'a scheme of things entire,' it should be quite clear that the deliberate intentions both ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... Germany had sent Gasgabelaus, Leybach, and Wilhelm Lamszus; France—Sortell, Amand, and Buona Varilla; Great Britain—Sir William Crookes, Sir Francis Soddy, and Mr. H. G. Wells, celebrated for his "The War of the Worlds" and The "World Set Free," and hence supposedly just the man to unravel a scientific mystery such as that which confronted this ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... was our fate first to attempt to unravel the tangles of this attractive web. In the course of our readings, in 1865, our attention had been drawn to a passage in the life of Nelson by the Laureate of England, Robert Southey, [132] and enlarged on by Lamartine in the pleasant sketch he gave of the naval hero. ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... as if the golden age was dawning: the human mind seemed to be awakening from the slumber of centuries to con the world, to unravel the mysteries of life, and to discover the secrets of the universe. Confident that only a little thought would be necessary to free the world from vice, ignorance, and superstition, thinkers now turned boldly to ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... possession of his lodging, there was nothing to prevent our departure. He could have gone with us at that time of the year very well, but he was in the full novelty of his new position and was making most energetic attempts to unravel the mysteries of the fatal suit. Consequently we went without him, and my darling was delighted to praise ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... aboriginal Australian when first seen by white men, will make it impossible hereafter for anyone whose reasoning powers exceed a native Australian's to maintain that it was the whites who corrupted these savages. It takes an exceptionally shrewd white man even to unravel the customs of voluntary or obligatory wife sharing or lending which prevail in all parts of Australia, and which must have required not only hundreds but thousands of years to assume their present extraordinarily ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... the clients have been waiting, the lawyers have been training. It is the opportunity for them to display their attainments, to show their clients what brilliant lawyers they have retained; to let the judge know how well they have understood the case; to move and sway the jury to their side; to unravel the mysteries and by the power of oratory to bring justice where she belongs. When his lawyer is talking, the client watches him with admiration, but while the opposing lawyer speaks the client can hardly conceal his contempt. He feels that his case is secure and he does ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... man had given. When the two were placed face to face, Arnold du Tilh vehemently denounced the last arrival as an impostor in the pay of Peter Guerre, and expressed himself content to be hanged if he did not yet unravel the whole mystery. Nor did he confine himself to vituperation, but cross-questioned Martin as to private family circumstances, and only received hesitating and imperfect answers to his questions. The commissioners having directed Arnold ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... mystery which Maggie found herself unable to unravel; it was this: She felt perfectly certain the chimney was made for the winds to come down through, and still she knew it was intended for her to make a smoky kind of fire once in a while on its hearth, with which the winds quarrelled, and ...
— The Angel Children - or, Stories from Cloud-Land • Charlotte M. Higgins
... Protestantism was only tolerated, and the country distracted rather than impoverished by the civil war of the Fronde, with its intrigues and ever-shifting parties,—a giddy maze, which nobody now cares to unravel; a sort of dance of death, in which figured cardinals, princes, nobles, bishops, judges, and generals,—when "Bacchus, Momus, and Moloch" alternately usurped dominion. Those eighteen years of strife, folly, absurdity, and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... all hours of the night, debating what was the best thing to do. To tell you or not to tell you, that was the question I had to settle. This morning I decided and this is the result. You know everything. There is no need for you to speculate. There is nothing for you to unravel. You know who Viola is, you know why she was left out of your father's will. The point is this, when all is said,—she must never know. She must always,—do you hear me?—she must always look upon you as her brother. She must never know the truth about me. I put her happiness, ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... width six inches longer than necessary. Then unravel the ends and tie the cords together. When the matting is taken up to be cleaned it cannot unravel and there will be ...
— Fowler's Household Helps • A. L. Fowler
... feather it would be in my cap if I should succeed in making these automata reflect! if I could make them understand that their work is a Penelope's web, which they are condemned to unravel at one end as fast as they weave at ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... Peveril found leisure to revisit the place where he had seen the mysterious figure of the cliffs. He had thought often of her, and had so longed to return to that part of the coast that only a strict sense of duty had prevented him. Now that he was free to unravel the mystery if he could, he was as excited as a ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... the winds, the vapours, the waves. Nothing is so logical and nothing appears so absurd as the ocean. Self-dispersion is the essence of its sovereignty, and is one of the elements of its redundance. The sea is ever for and against. It knots that it may unravel itself; one of its slopes attacks, the other relieves. No apparition is so wonderful as the waves. Who can paint the alternating hollows and promontories, the valleys, the melting bosoms, the sketches? How render the thickets of foam, blendings of mountains and dreams? ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... great expectation of farther news from Genoa, which the last accounts left in the greatest confusion, and I think in the hands of the Genoese;,(1323) a circumstance that may chance to unravel all the fine schemes in Provence! Marshal Bathiani, at the Hague, treated this revolt as a trifle; but all the letters by last post make it a reconquest. The Dutch do all the Duke asks: we talk of an army of 140,000 men in Flanders next campaign. I don't know how the Prince of Orange ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... would be to a Gentleman? Land stands where it did before a Gentleman was calumniated, and the State of a great Action is just as it was before Calumny was offered to diminish it, and there is Time, Place and Occasion expected to unravel all that is contrived against those Characters; but the Trader who is ready only for probable Demands upon him, can have no Armour against the Inquisitive, the Malicious, and the Envious, who are prepared ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... strange mystery. But I would not seek to unravel it, Angelique," remarked Amelie, "I feel there is sin in it. Do not touch it: it will only bring mischief upon ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... for Athens, and arrived at the island of Ios, now Ino, where he fell extremely ill, and died. It is said that his death arose from vexation, at not having been able to unravel an enigma proposed by ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... too, even to the naked eye through the ports of the supply-ship the enemy rockets had become visible. They were a thin skein of threads of white vapor which seemed to unravel in nothingness. The vapor curled and expanded preposterously. It could just be seen to be jetting into existence from four separate points, two a little ahead of the others. They came out from Earth at a rate which seemed remarkably deliberate until one saw with what fury the rocket-fumes spat out ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... glorious revenge for France, to reduce the colonel to tears of pure affability, and to borrow the best horse in the squadron for the journey to Kami's studio, is a mystery that only special correspondents can unravel. ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... lies somewhere between these two extremes; the fact being that the personal and social causes of poverty act and react upon each other, changing places as cause and as effect, until they form a tangle that no hasty, impatient jerking can unravel. The charity worker and the settlement worker have need of each other: neither one can afford to ignore the experience of the other. Friendly visitors and all who are trying to improve conditions ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... best; send him back to the Brothers and to the wise Bishops. They can unravel this tangle. I cannot; I cannot ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... proper definition of Person is a matter of very great perplexity. For if every nature has person, the difference between nature and person is a hard knot to unravel; or if person is not taken as the equivalent of nature but is a term of less scope and range, it is difficult to say to what natures it may be extended, that is, to what natures the term person may be applied and what natures are dissociate from it. For one thing is clear, ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... not know what it meant. She could not keep it nor use it. She could not unravel its message nor rest upon its strength. It was gone almost while it came, but it did something for the lady of the feathers. It gave to her the little seed of expectation that, quite alone in a weary desert, yet makes of that desert the plot ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... these mainly true incidents (for such they are,) no further. Only to say that the murderer soon departed for a new field of action—that he is still living—and that this is but one of thousands of cases of unravel'd, unpunish'd crime—left, not to the tribunals of man, but to a wider ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... process of deciphering the papyri, which is very ingenious. The manuscript (which is like a piece of charcoal) is suspended by light strings in a sort of frame; gum and goldbeater's skin are applied to it as it is unrolled, and, by extreme delicacy of touch, they contrive to unravel without destroying a great deal of it, but probably they have been discouraged by the small reward which has attended their exertions; for there are several black-looking rolls which have never yet been touched, and very few men at work. The gentlemen who explained to ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... held by the Roman State. When so much land would be thrown into the market it would be sold very cheap and would be sold to those whom the "decemviri" might choose to favor. We can hardly now hope to unravel all the intended details, but we may be sure that the basis on which property stood would have been altogether changed by the measure. The "decemviri" were to have plenary power for ten years. All the taxes in all the provinces were to be sold, or put up to market. Everything supposed ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... true Roman carnival is one. You might as well seek to analyze champagne, or expound the mystery of melody, or tell why a woman pleases you. The strange web of colour, beauty, mirth, wit, and folly, is tangled so together that common hands cannot unravel it. To paint a carnival without blotching, to touch it without destroying, is an art given unto few, I almost might say to none, save to our own wondrous word- wizard, who dreamt the "dream of Venice," and told it waking. For my own part, the only branch of art to which, even as a child, I ever ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... some supper, too, Louisa Helen," said Everett quickly, and a smile lifted the corners of his mouth as the situation began to unravel itself to his sympathetic concern. "I guess I could take the bouquet and veil, too," he added ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... had evidently particularly delighted the poet. So much so, that he brought it in at the close of every succeeding verse. The "epick" went on, of course, to unravel the threads of the "adventure," and to intimate pretty plainly who "the youth" referred to was. To any one not interested in the poet or his epic the production was a dull one, and the moral at the end was not quite clear ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... influence of each of these items upon the mind of the seller of whom he wishes to make a purchase. Talk about diplomacy!—there's not a man in any court in Europe who knows his position, his fulcrum, and his lever, and the use he can make of them, as this man knows. He can unravel any combination, penetrate any disguise, surmount any obstacle. Beyond all other men, he knows when to talk, and when to refrain from talking,—how to throw the burden of negotiation on the seller,—how ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... might have happened under a Parliamentary government. But, then, many members of Parliament, the entire Opposition in Parliament, would have been active to unravel the matter. All the principles of finance would have been worked and propounded. The light would have come from above, not from below—it would have come from Parliament to the nation instead of from the nation to Parliament But exactly the reverse happened in America. Mr. Wells ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... end? There her brother Bjoern lay a-cold—Bjoern the justly slain of Brighteyes; yet how could she wed the man who slew her brother? From Ospakar she was divorced by death; from Eric she was divorced by the blood of Bjoern her brother! How might she unravel this tangled skein and float to weal upon this sea of death? All things went amiss! The doom was on her! She had lived to an ill purpose—her love had wrought evil! What availed it to have been born to be fair among women and to have desired that which might not be? And she herself had brought ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... would unravel the mysteries involved in present religious faiths, we should begin not by attempting to analyze or explain any existing system or systems of belief and worship. Such a course is likely to end not only in confusion and in a subsequent ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... they all came down on to the Doctor's ship; and they told him to unravel some pieces of long rope and make them into a lot of thin strings as quickly as he could. Then the ends of these strings were tied on to the front of the ship; and the swallows took hold of the strings with their feet and flew ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... "Where did he say he was going? Tell me everything. If you are calm and if we lose no time, we may unravel this mystery and clear Bertie altogether before any harm is done. As you say, there is no shadow of proof. Miss Nash may have gone away alone: school-girls have silly fancies. Or perhaps ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... reached the bottom he advanced to Ahubal, and, presenting him with a clue, he told him that, if he threw it before him, and followed it, the clue would unravel itself, and discover to him the path which led up the rocks to the castle of ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... up the note once more. "If I were a storybook hero, I'd stick this thing in my pocket and set out by myself to unravel the mystery behind it. But I've chucked the hero job for good and all. I'm going to hand this over to Dangloss. It's the sensible thing to do, even if it isn't what a would-be hero in search of a princess aught to do. What's more, I'll hunt the ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... the railway engines, and to provide these with steam-power? What, also, of the machinery in the factory, and of the factory buildings themselves, and, back of them, again, the tool makers and the providers of raw materials? It is obvious that no human intellect could ever unravel the tangled skein of human labor, and that in actual exchange there can be no calculation of the respective labor content of commodities. If the law of value holds good, it must operate mechanically, automatically. And this it does, through the incidence ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... mysteries," she whispered. "I love to unravel them. Some day I shall surprise you. I shall come walking into that secret room of yours." There was a look on her face that he had not seen there before. It was disturbing. It spoke of a quality which, he concluded, she had inherited from her father, the quality of firmness and ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... that—all great men have their weaknesses; but seriously, Ralph, don't you think if the good friend desired to keep it a secret it is hardly fair to try to find him out? No, from what you tell me, I hardly think you will unravel the mystery while the donor—lender, I mean—lives. Besides, even if you never do, you can repay it by assisting some hard-pressed comrade in distress. Yes, I should fancy the person who lent it would prefer that way. However, I want to ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... next, that he hath taken money for several bargains that have been made with the Crown; and did instance one that is already complained of: but there are so many more involved in it, that should they unravel things of this sort, every body almost will be more or less concerned. But these are the two great points which he thinks they will insist on, and ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... said De Skirlaw. "I will not be the one to try to unravel it. Let us away to the king and say what ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... which she has been so long excluded, takes her out of the region of shadows into that of realities". Poe's commentary is most to the point: "Why do some persons fatigue themselves in endeavours to unravel such phantasy pieces as the 'Lady of Shallot'? As well unweave the ventum textilem".—'Democratic Review', Dec., 1844, quoted by Mr. Herne Shepherd. Mr. Palgrave says (selection from the 'Lyric Poems of ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... polisher, he easily found regular employment in the palace, and he contrived to make a rough plan of the building. This plan, on which the dining-hall was marked with an ominous red cross, fell into the hands of the police, and they made what they considered a careful investigation; but they failed to unravel the plot and did not discover the dynamite concealed in the carpenters' sleeping quarters. Halturin showed wonderful coolness while the search was going on, and continued to sleep every night on the explosive, though it caused him excruciating headaches. When he was assured by the chemist of the ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... I ask her to marry me?" he thought. Aloud he said: "Listen, Winifred, and know that I am trying to tell you the white truth without reserve or evasion. I come to you because you are the only person who will need no explanation of the past, to unravel the evil of the present. I went with Brady this evening to a meeting of the Salvation Army at a slum post down on Berry Hill, where Nora Costello ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... incongruous collection I never saw, and I am sure that had it not been for the train of thought I was pursuing when the director called upon me, I should have returned the papers to him without troubling my head with any attempt to unravel ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... things, distrusted here. The mere introduction of human precaution and human weapons would sully faith and make of no avail the only sure means of winning light on this solemn problem. Reason, so employed, would be a hindrance—an actual danger. Only absolute faith can unravel ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... look at these challenges, we must never give in to the belief that America is in decline, or that our culture is doomed to unravel. The American people know better than that. We have proven the pessimists wrong before — and we will do ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... which Marvell was immersed during his last years are difficult to unravel and still more difficult to illuminate, for they had their dim origin in the secret thoughts and wavering purposes of ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... stone or quarry of glass, was the best of lionisers, and gave her much attention when he perceived how intelligent and appreciative she was. He showed her the plan of the old conventual buildings, and she began to unravel the labyrinth through which she had been hurried. The Close and Deanery were modernised, but he valued the quaint old corner where he lived for its genuine age. The old house now divided between him and Mr. Shapcote ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thus surging upon him, became a call to live, to fight, to unravel their mystery. The memory of that sweet-faced woman who had bent above him when the fever began its mastery, appealed to him now with the opportunity of service. He might be able to clear this, ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... a plan rapidly maturing in his mind as to what he would do if Eloise persisted in going to Florida. "Better leave your mother here," he said, when she told him of her determination to unravel the mystery. ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... To unravel the literary history of such a collection is difficult indeed, for it has drawn upon all civilizations and all literatures. But since Hammer-Purgstall and De Sacy began to unwind the skein, many additional turns have been given. The idea of the "frame" ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... from the lessons of History is that for some reason or another the international concern, whose unlucky affairs we are now trying to unravel, has always been carried on at a loss: the point of the argument from Self-government is that the loss would have been avoided if the Irish shareholders had for a certain number of the transactions been more ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... a noble one, and is worthily treated. * * * Mr. Motley has had the patience to unravel, with unfailing perseverance, the thousand intricate plots of the adversaries of the Prince of Orange; but the details and the literal extracts which he has derived from original documents, and transferred to his pages, give a truthful color ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... my surprise, I was in my stateroom. No doubt my companions had been put back in their cabin without noticing it any more than I had. Like me, they would have no idea what took place during the night, and to unravel this mystery I could count only on some ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... the exercise of arms, and return to his proper station among the women of the palace, where a distaff should be placed in the eunuch's hand." "I will spin her such a thread," Narses is said to have replied, "as she shall not unravel her life long." He forthwith invited the Lombards into Italy, an invitation which they were not both to accept. Alboin was their leader, who had married the beautiful Rosamond, daughter of the Gepid king whom he had slain. Narses repented of ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... dispair^; divorce, part, dispart^, detach, separate, cut off, rescind, segregate; set apart, keep apart; insulate, isolate; throw out of gear; cut adrift; loose; unloose, undo, unbind, unchain, unlock &c (fix) 43, unpack, unravel; disentangle; set free &c (liberate) 750. sunder, divide, subdivide, sever, dissever, abscind^; circumcise; cut; incide^, incise; saw, snip, nib, nip, cleave, rive, rend, slit, split, splinter, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... inquiry is a question purely philosophical (namely, whether anything can happen which contravenes, or does not follow from the laws of Nature), I was not under any such necessity: I therefore thought it wiser to unravel the difficulty through premises ascertained and thoroughly known by the natural light of reason. I say I thought it wiser, for I could also easily have solved the problem merely from the doctrines and fundamental principles of Scripture: in order that every ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... cap, which fact so infatuated his otherwise not ordinary brains, that they protruded through his eyes, whenever he was sure he had to perform a dooty. I would willingly turn burglar to get hold of the whole of the correspondence between him and Toorak. I feel satisfied I would therein unravel the mystery ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... and are lost again. At last comes a third call in tones so imperative that it cannot be longer ignored, and we lay the book down, but open to the place where we left off, and where we hope soon to begin further to unravel the delightful mystery. Was it an effort to attend to the reading? Ah, no! it took the combined force of our will and of mother's authority to drag the attention away. This is ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... bodies surely were. And it is from this position, as a starting point, that we must follow and unravel the whole mystery, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... depth of feeling, the cause of which I could not fathom, made his grey eye glitter with pale light, and his lips contract, and his delicate cheek whiten on certain occasions. But all had been so open and above board at home, that I had no experience to help me to unravel any mysteries among those who lived under the same roof. I understood that I had made what Madame Rupprecht and her set would have called a great marriage, because I lived in chateau with many servants, bound ostensibly to obey me as a mistress. I understood ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... fan-tan and pie-gow are constantly in operation; and the police either tolerate or are powerless to stop them. Tong wars are of frequent occurrence, crime and its punishment being so mixed up that an outsider cannot unravel them. The San Francisco police have struggled with the question, but have finally left the Chinese to settle their own affairs after their own fashion. Opium dens flourish as a matter of course, for opium and Chinese ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... horrors, if the admirable constancy with which this princess bore her reverses had not risen far above the crimes by which they were caused. But at the same time, Christians, I labor under another solicitude: what I meditate upon is no human work; I am not here a historian, about to unravel to you the mysteries of cabinets, or the order of battles, or the interests of parties; I must rise above man in order that every creature should tremble under the judgments of God. "I shall enter with David into the powers of the Lord," and I have to show ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... denouement, the setting all to rights: and our poet, in the management of his moral, is certainly superior to his great ancient predecessors. The moral of their fables, if any they have, is so interwoven with the main body of their work, that in endeavouring to unravel it we should tear the whole. Our author has very properly preserved his whole and entire for the end of his poem, where he completes his main design, the reformation of ...
— English Satires • Various
... all students of the German race. In France, nevertheless, his position as a saint was still obscure and doubtful, when Louis XI., towards the end of the fifteenth century, by some motive now difficult to unravel, but probably in order to take from his enemy, Charles the Rash, Duke of Burgundy, who was in possession of the fairest provinces of Charlemagne's empire, the exclusive privilege of so great a memory, ordained ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... cried. "I will answer for her innocence with my life. She could not do it. Your Majesty's patience is abused. It is Jennet who has done it—not she. But I will unravel the terrible mystery. You have the other two wretches prisoners, and can enforce the ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... very tempting, but must necessarily be incorrect—and why? Because White is much behind with his development. It is useless to analyse any kind of attack in face of this fact. The beginner finds it hard to get used to this way of thinking. He prefers to try to unravel a long string of variations and combinations, in which he will mostly lose his bearings. Even stronger players obstruct their own powers by refusing to see the value of judging a position on general merits. They lose valuable time in thinking out ...
— Chess Strategy • Edward Lasker
... ever reaps the harvest, building its own fate with tireless fingers, and finding nowhere in the measureless time and space around it any that can lift for it one weight it has created, one burden it has gathered, unravel for it one tangle it has twisted, close for it ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... miserable and cross. It is only by being in trouble that people can understand how far from easy it is to be the master of one's feelings and thoughts. Sofya Petrovna said afterwards that there was a tangle within her which it was as difficult to unravel as to count a flock of sparrows rapidly flying by. From the fact that she was not overjoyed to see her husband, that she did not like his manner at dinner, she concluded all of a sudden that she was beginning to ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... lady with you to the play. It will please her, whatever the bother to you. Besides, you will then be talked to. If you make a mess of it in trying to unravel the plot, she will essentially aid you in that direction. Nothing like a woman for a plot—especially if you desire to ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... meaning of the whole, or to follow the links of the connexion between its several parts. I am myself as little able to understand where the difficulty lies, or to detect any lurking obscurity, as these critics found themselves to unravel my logic. Possibly I may not be an indifferent and neutral judge in such a case. I will therefore sketch a brief abstract of the little paper according to my original design, and then leave the reader to judge ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... him with great eyes, but agreed at once, and they appointed time and place. He then bade her good night, and the moment she left him lay down on the bed to think. But he did not trouble himself yet to unravel the plot against him, or determine whether the violence he had suffered had the same origin with the poisoning. Nor was the question merely how to continue to serve his sister without danger to his life; for he had just learned what rendered it absolutely imperative that she should be removed ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... returning from the telegraph office later in the evening, finds me endeavoring to unravel the Gordian knot of the situation through the medium of a brown-study. My geographical ruminations have already resulted in a conviction that there is no possible way to unravel it and reach India with a bicycle; my ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... more furiously these Plotters carry'd on their Extravagances; at last they made a General push at a thing in which they knew if the other High Men joyn'd, they must throw all into Confusion, bring a Foreign Enemy on their Backs, unravel all the Thread of the War, fight all their Victories back again, and involve the whole Nation in Blood ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... cheerily, "that Shiloh an' the chillun will never go into that mill ag'in—that old Ben Butler has give 'em back their childhood an' a chance to live. It means," he said triumphantly, "that Cap'n Tom's gwinter have the chance he's been entitled to all these years—an' that means that God'll begin to unravel the tangle that man in his meanness has wound up. It means, Tabitha, that you'll not have to wuck anymo' yo'self—no mo', as long as ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... great Pacific Railroads, which, for better or worse, have settled the fate of the buffalo and Indian forever. There have been wars and conflicts since with these Indians up to a recent period too numerous and complicated in their detail for me to unravel and record, but they have been the dying struggles of a singular race of brave men fighting against destiny, each less and less violent, till now the wild game is gone, the whites too numerous and powerful; so that the Indian question has ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... been a difficult sentence for the most clear-headed person to unravel, and Helen was, at that moment, trying to write a letter to an aunt whom she had never seen and for whom she had no sort of affection, so she answered him ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... not complete my thought: the boars have muddied the clear stream; natural history, youth's glorious study, has, by dint of cellular improvements, become a hateful and repulsive thing. Well, if I write for men of learning, for philosophers, who, one day, will try to some extent to unravel the tough problem of instinct, I write also, I write above all things for the young. I want to make them love the natural history which you make them hate; and that is why, while keeping strictly to the domain of truth, I avoid your scientific prose, which too often, alas seems borrowed ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... is not scientific, facts are not "observed and noted with scrupulous care," and conclusions are drawn without warranted data to support them. On the whole then, one must say that this work fails to unravel some "knots in this tangled skein of human endeavor and error." When after a survey of the history of the Negro during the last fifty years an investigator concludes that the Negro has shown an incapacity for ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... who is really the only scholar who has tried to unravel the mystery of Radisson's last days, supplies new facts about his dealings ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... had not been received. This charge was fortified by showing a letter from the postmaster who mailed the missing letter, certifying that it was forwarded, and contained the $500. Detectives were at once set to work to unravel the iniquity, but all efforts proved unavailing. Finally the Post-office authorities, after weeks of hard work, called on the complaining merchant and asked if he had heard anything about the missing money. 'Oh,' replied the gentleman, with great vivacity, 'that's all right; ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... founder of Sabeism. Sabeism was, as its etymology indicates,[6] baptism—that is to say, the religion of many baptisms—the origin of the sect still existing called "Christians of St. John," or Mendaites, which the Arabs call el-Mogtasila, "the Baptists."[7] It is difficult to unravel these vague analogies. The sects floating between Judaism, Christianity, Baptism, and Sabeism, which we find in the region beyond the Jordan during the first centuries of our era,[8] present to criticism the most singular problem, ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... was all so meaningless, now he compared himself with others. As soon as ever he got into the cart, and the nag into its old trot, these sad thoughts would reappear, and his mind would go round and round the subject until he was worn out. He could not unravel it. Why was he called the rag and bone man, and treated as if he were unclean? He earned his living as honestly as any one else. Why should his children be jeered at like outcasts—and his home called the Crow's Nest? ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... in stern Promethean revolt against the decrees of Fate. The second spirit deliberately allies itself in wanton, bitter glee, with the humorous provocation of humanity, by the cruel Powers of the Air. The psychology of all this is not hard to unravel. The same abnormal sensitiveness that makes him pity the victims of destiny makes him also not unaware of what may be sweet to the palate of the gods in such "merry jests." These two tendencies seem to have grown upon him as years went on and to have become more and more pronounced. ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... between the time of Newton and the time of Laplace, mathematics had been extensively developed. In particular, that potent instrument called the infinitesimal calculus, which Newton had invented for the investigation of nature, had become so far perfected that Laplace, when he attempted to unravel the movements of the heavenly bodies, found himself provided with a calculus far more efficient than that which had been available to Newton. The purely geometrical methods which Newton employed, though they are admirably adapted ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... bloom—and they are, I suppose, in number beyond human computation—so you might express the history of a race in a symbol as simple as a bloom... And that there is a power, an unfolding faculty, in the soul, which, seeing such a symbol, could unravel from it, by meditation, the whole achievement of the race; its whole history, down to details; yes, even down to the lives of every soul that incarnated in it: their personal lives, with all successes, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... honest face. A little behind was Mary, winding one of Blanche's silks over the back of a chair, and so often looking up to revel in the contemplation of Harry's face, that her skein was in a wild tangle, which she studiously concealed lest the sight should compel Richard to come and unravel it with those ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... into the town. And now say it, Joseph: ye are a wee bit tired, isn't that so? Nay, Father, not a bit. We have come but twenty miles from the last halt, and as for the telling of my story, maybe the loose ends which I've forgotten for the moment will unravel themselves while we're talking of fish-salting—of the many extra barrels you've sent out. Now, Father, say how many? At it, Joseph, as beforetimes, rallying thy old father! Well, I've not done so badly, but a drop in the year's trading is never a pleasant thought, though it be but a barrel. ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... as I can unravel it; but besides the cipher no doubt much was left for the poor woman to tell that was lost ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was for this," I said to myself—"it was to hear such propositions as this that I came to Sicily! That Polizzi is simply a scoundrel, and his son another; and they made a plan together to ruin me." But what was their scheme? I could not unravel it. Meanwhile, it may be imagined how ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... confidence in that undertaking, as an architect or engineer would obtain data and apply his devices to a task in his art, a fallacy is included which is radical and mischievous beyond measure. We have, as yet, no calculus for the variable elements which enter into social problems and no analysis which can unravel their complications. The discussions always reveal the dominion of the prepossessions in the minds of the disputants which are in the mores. We know that an observer of nature always has to know his own personal equation. The mores are a societal equation. When the mores are the ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... this curious document, and with this brief introduction I submit it to those who will have the patience and skill to unravel its ...
— Rig Veda Americanus - Sacred Songs Of The Ancient Mexicans, With A Gloss In Nahuatl • Various
... aware that I can only imperfectly and unworthily do so. To treat the subject in the detail it merits would be a task beyond my opportunities; for, in spite of every endeavour, I have not been able to see several works and documents, without which it is useless to try and unravel the earlier history of the sanctuary. The book by Caccia, for example, published by Sessali at Novara in 1565, and reprinted at Brescia in 1576, is sure to turn up some day, but I have failed to find it at Varallo, Novara ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... that—to blame because this time there's a snarl to unravel! The thing is done often enough. It should not be done, but it is. Staff service with us is far too irregular. The officer stands to receive a severe reprimand—but there is no reason to believe that he did not give the order to the courier ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... that runs through the book is so disjointedly arranged, mixed up with doctrinal parts, and repeated, that it is not easy to unravel it. The following summary of it is contained in a letter to Colonel John Wentworth of Chicago, signed by Joseph Smith, Jr., which was printed in Wentworth's Chicago newspaper and also in the Mormon Times and ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... simple, too downright and unequivocal, in their explanations to children, otherwise they plant words rather than ideas in their minds, and create a confusion which it may take many a year of after-thought to unravel?" ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... and that from something innate and independent of all associations of ideas;—these I had set down as irrefragable, orthodox truths, until perusing your book shook my faith.—In short, Sir, except Euclid's Elements of Geometry, which I made a shift to unravel by my father's fire-side, in the winter evening of the first season I held the plough, I never read a book which gave me such a quantum of information, and added so much to my stock of ideas, as your "Essays on the Principles of Taste." One thing, Sir, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... any of the great states of Europe, as Britain, as France, as Spain, and jealously ever since have we individually regarded any infringement on our integrity. That, and not the mere tangle of race that in time must unravel itself, is the question of the age. Long ago it was said that our people, holding it by transmission, never having struggled for it, would some day cease rightly to value the one chief bulwark of liberty. Nothing is more true. They of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... all this, running in my mind like so many scribbly illustrations and annotations along the margin of Lorenzo dei Medici's poems, has made my studies of rustic poetry more clear or more confused. But this much I know as a certainty, that never should I have tried to unravel the causes of the Renaissance's horrible anomaly of improvement and degradation, had not that anomaly returned and returned to make me wretched with its loathsome mixture of good and evil; its detestable alternative of endurance ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... begins to tremble. 'Adam, where art thou?' says God; and now Adam is made to answer (Gen 3:7-11). But the voice of the Lord God doth not leave him here: no, it now begins to search, and to inquire after his doings, and to unravel what he had wrapt together and covered, until it made him bare and naked in his own sight before the face of God. Thus, therefore, doth the Word, when managed by the arm of God. It findeth out, it singleth out the sinner; ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... studied, and tried those letters every way I could think of until midnight, and was on the point of going to bed, when the whole thing flashed upon me. You know, Mr. Melville, that in trying to unravel a cipher, the first thing necessary is to find the key-word, for it must be there somewhere; and if you look sharp enough it will reveal itself. One single ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... Ambler, taking the letter from my hand. "This was written probably only a few days before her death. That man," and he glanced at the prostrate body, "was the only one who could give us the clue by which to unravel the mystery." ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... question is so interlinked with the rest, that an explanation of a part can never be considered final, so long as any problem remains unresolved. The latest experimentator, brooding over hitherto neglected details, may always hope to light upon some clue that shall unravel the entire entanglement in a different manner, and reform upon a new basis ideas now grouped in pretended fixity. The excitement caused by this possibility is amply sufficient to stimulate research. And there is no need to discover an immediate practical application ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... men, determined to resign) Let me, (with firmness, which becomes a king. Conscious from what a source my actions spring, Determined not by worlds to be withstood, When my grand object is my country's good) Unravel all low ministerial scenes, Destroy their jobs, lay bare their ways and means, 620 And track them step by step; let me well know How places, pensions, and preferments go; Why Guilt's provided for when Worth is not, And ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... allowed nothing to be touched," continued Gatton, "and I am going around there now to make a final attempt to unravel the mystery of how ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... shyly up to the old African and stood at his knee. The sorrows and perplexities of nearly a hundred years lay between them; and now, as always, the baffled eyes of age gazed into the Sphinx-like face of youth, as if by this means to unravel the mysteries of the past and solve the problems of ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... and life, and death, and love, were all a blended mystery which was but beginning to unravel for her and drew her ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... you shall be free, Father Absinthe. Only it is clear that if I unravel the mystery alone, I alone ought to pocket the reward that ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... practical purposes they took the animal-machine as given, and did not trouble about its mode of origin. They held indeed that form-production was due to a complex of physico-chemical causes, which they hoped some day to unravel;[464] but this future physiology ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... consciousness in which time and place as yet meant nothing, and only bodily suffering obtruded on a still partially clouded mind. Fragmentary waves of thought, disconnected and transitory, passed through his brain, leaving no permanent impression, and he made no effort to unravel them. Effort of any kind, mental or physical, seemed for the moment beyond him. He was too tired even to open his eyes, and lay with them closed, wondering feebly at the pain and discomfort of his whole body. He ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... Sophia, "that he should leave to men the exercise of arms, and return to his proper station among the maidens of the palace, where a distaff should be again placed in the hand of the eunuch." "I will spin her such a thread as she shall not easily unravel!" is said to have been the reply which indignation and conscious virtue extorted from the hero. Instead of attending, a slave and a victim, at the gate of the Byzantine palace, he retired to Naples, from whence (if any credit is due to the belief of the times) Narses invited ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... part of the territory cannot give rise to any constitutional questions, for the reason that the constitutions, like the land tenures, are in a state of such utter confusion that only a strong hand can unravel them, and the restoration will result in the establishment of a strong military government. If I go down with the expedition I have organized I shall be in full control of the situation and in a position to carry out ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... that he did not know any title Mr. Hastings had to seize upon the property of the Begums, except upon his hypothesis of the rebellion. He was asked if he knew any other. He answered, No. It consequently appears that Mr. Hastings, though he had before him his doctors of all laws, who could unravel for him all the enigmas of all the laws in the world, and who had himself shone upon questions of Mahometan law, in the case of the Nuddea Begum, did not dare to put this case to Sir Elijah Impey, and ask what was his opinion concerning ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... will doubtless remember, they had been robbed of some valuable gems between London and Amsterdam in a singularly audacious manner. My second was the case of the celebrated Russian swindler, who called herself the Countess Demikoff. This case alone took me nearly six months to unravel, but I did not grudge the time, seeing that I was well paid for my labours, and that I managed to succeed where the police had failed. From that time forward I think I may say without boasting that I have been as successful as any man of ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... illness, he hurried to town. It is impossible to describe his astonishment and distress at the sight which met his eyes. In the presence of the clerks he held anxious consultations with the detectives, who assured him that they had already taken the first steps to unravel the mystery, and that every possible effort would be made to discover the criminals. In the privacy of his own office he explained to the reporters that he had left in the bank four hundred thousand dollars in cash and bonds, every ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... that had been partly revealed to him, through the words of Grannie Thornton, could not make up his mind just what to do about it. He had almost decided to entrust what he knew to Lawyer Estes, for him to unravel, when the lawyer was called out of town for several weeks, on an important case. Again, another event intervened to cause delay. Miss Matilda Burns made a visit to her home in Massachusetts, and took Henry Burns with ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
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