"Tangle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and a half the Big Ravine is a narrow cut between perpendicular rock walls thickly clothed to their very summits with bamboo and a tangle of thorny vines. In the bottom of the gorge a mountain torrent foams among huge bowlders but becomes a gentle, slow moving stream when it leaves the cool darkness of the canon to spread itself over the terraced ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... joy and fear blended leapt the heart in my bosom, And I cried, "The last land, love; O hast thou abided?" But since then hath been turmoil, and sickness, and slumber, And my soul hath been troubled with dreams that I knew not. And such tangle is round me life fails me to rend it, And the cold cloud of death rolleth onward to hide me.— —O well am I hidden, who might not be happy! I see not, I hear not, my head groweth heavy. [Falls back ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... thinking; Rita, nursing her knee, brooded under the bright tangle of her hair, linking and unlinking her fingers as she gently swayed her ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... them of twigs, strips of bark, grasses and feathers, compactly woven together and located in bushes from one to four feet from the ground. They lay from three to five plain, unmarked, pure white eggs; size .75 x .54. Data.—Wrights, Cal. Nest in a tangle of vines in a deep ravine; composed of strips of bark, moss and grasses, lined with cattle hair; a ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... the same. The one who used to sell Corroded tangle-foot to us, is rotting now in hell. This one has got a plate-glass front, he combs his hair quite low, He looks just like the one we knew ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... side that I gazed behind me in terror lest I should never be able to return again the way I had come. My guide, seeing my alarm, assured me that our destination was not far off, and presently I perceived before me a huge overhanging cliff, from the upper ledges of which hung down a tangle of vines and branches that veiled, without wholly concealing, the yawning mouth ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... have been full of Arizona tangle-foot, to have fired as wild as he did," I ejaculated, and walked over to where the mail-car had stood, to see just how bad the shooting was. When I got there and faced about, it was really impossible to believe any man could ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... preservation of that uniformity and peace of the churches." [31] The desire of the Court grew in part out of the influx of new colonists, who did not like the strict church discipline, and in part out of the tangle of Church and State during the Roger Williams controversy. The Court had disciplined Williams as one, who, having no rights in the corporation, had no ground for complaint at the hostile reception of his teachings. These the authorities regarded ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... the apartment was in disorder. The mosquito wiring had been torn from the three windows and the door and now lay in a tangle on the floor. Bamboo chairs had been broken, and there was a faint odor of whisky in the room. Major Ross glanced casually over the interior and ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... to-morrow, he and I, early. The fellow has shot away thousands and thousands—been gallivanting among his foreign duchesses and countesses. There 's a petticoat in that bank-book of his; and more than one, I wager. Now he's for marrying a foreign princess—got himself in a tangle there, it seems.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... without listening to the tangle of exclamations from the other end, and walked quickly out of the shop. He ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... course, were going with it. A few yards away from the stern-post was the jolly-boat with the crew. I looked at them, and in my heart I could not condemn them for their sly departure; they were all there, arraiz, wife, children, and crew, so heaped together that they seemed only a meaningless tangle of arms and legs and heads; the water was half an inch from the gunwale, and the one man at the oars, hampered, paralyzed on all sides, was splashing helplessly while the craft pivoted like a top. There was no anger in my heart, yet I was not ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... forward, each dropping a man with a flying tackle. All four went down in a struggling, kicking tangle of ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... be indifferent and offended. Master Humfrey might do as he chose. She did not care if he did prefer pitch and tar, and whale blubber and grease, to hawks and hounds, and lords and ladies. She was sure she wanted no more great lubberly lads—with a sly cut at Diccon—to tangle her silk, and torment her to bait their hooks. She was well quit ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... whether her credit over her husband was great; but he appeared full of regard, of care, and of respect for her; at the time of their departure they were each about fifty and fifty-five years old. Law had made many acquisitions of all kinds and still more debts, so that this tangle is not yet unravelled by the committee of the council appointed to arrange his affairs with his creditors. I have said elsewhere, and I repeat it here, that there was neither avarice nor roguery in his composition. He was a gentle, good, respectable man, whom excess ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the lock-up, a new building in the rear of the town-house. There this tangle of humanity, torn from its rock and afloat on the social sea, drifted trailing into a bare brilliant room, and at its head, cast down but not destroyed, went heavy-laden Clare, with so much in him, but only his misery patent to eyes too much used to ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... up, in Courtier's face. She seemed to him very young, and touching, at that moment. Her eyes had a gleam of faith in them, like a child's eyes; as if she relied on him to straighten out this tangle, to tell her not only about Miltoun's trouble, but about all life, its meaning, and the secret of its happiness: ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Sybarite himself was at the window. A single glance through the curtains showed the grating untenanted; and boldly poking his head forth, he looked down to see the figure of the gunman, foreshortened unrecognisably, moving down the iron tangle already several flights below, singularly resembling a spider ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... was clogged with troops. Slowly, as supplies were choked off by the congestion, offices and factories and shops closed down and the people were on the streets strolling about as if on holiday, laughing and joking about the tangle of tanks and vehicles and military equipment that was ...
— I Was a Teen-Age Secret Weapon • Richard Sabia
... and I am very grateful to you." The relief was not overwhelming, for the burden of the debt had not been heavy. It was only the sting of his father's refusal that had hurt. He had always believed that the financial tangle would ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... great moral principles. He was trying to decide whether he should worm a secret out of Hubbard to throw as a sop to that vile cursed cad, Irons, to keep his foul mouth shut about Ninitta. Heavens! What a tangle he had got into simply because he wanted a decent model for his picture! The abominable prudery and hypocrisy of the time lay behind the whole matter. But this would never do. He must work now; not think of these exciting ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... were young, the Deckers had lived in a sagging old frame house (from which the original paint had long ago peeled in great scrofulous patches) on an unimportant street in Chippewa. There was a worm-eaten, russet-apple tree in the yard, an untidy tangle of wild-cucumber vine over the front porch, and an uncut brush of sunburned grass ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... toni? How far had he swum ere his strength gave out or, with sudden swirl, he was dragged under by the man-eating shark? Would he remove his long cotton shirt, velvet waistcoat and baggy cotton trousers? The latter would present difficulties, for the waist-string would tangle and the water would swell the knot and prevent the drawing ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... things which Cleena had made Fayette do was cut and smooth a path from the door of "Charity House" to that of the cottage below. She foresaw that there would be frequent errands to and fro, and the loose stones, with the tangle of running blackberry vines, were dangerous to life and limb. Then, because Hallam's lameness was also in her mind, she had persuaded the mill boy to add a row of driven stakes with rope strung ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... sun was still high in the heavens, far to the northward, they faintly heard or thought they heard two rifle shots. At four o'clock, as they toiled through a tangle of rock and stunted pine, Arnold, riding well to the front, came suddenly out upon a bare ledge from which he could look over a wild, wide sweep of mountain side, stretching leagues to north and south, and there his keen and practiced ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... Artaban spread a fair garden, a tangle of flowers and fruit trees, watered by a score of streams descending from the slopes of Mount Orontes, and made musical by innumerable birds. But all color was lost in the soft and odorous darkness of the late September night, and all sounds were hushed in the deep charm of ...
— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke
... to guess at what the policy will be. It is too big a problem, and must be worked out very carefully, with reference to a confusing tangle ...
— The Industrial Canal and Inner Harbor of New Orleans • Thomas Ewing Dabney
... English rather than Dutch, and indeed there were many men of English descent among them. But the others, the most formidable both in their numbers and in their primitive qualities, were the back-veld Boers, the sunburned, tangle-haired, full-bearded farmers, the men of the Bible and the rifle, imbued with the traditions of their own guerrilla warfare. These were perhaps the finest natural warriors upon earth, marksmen, hunters, accustomed to hard fare and ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... garden, beautiful to his eyes beyond all words, with broad terraces and gleaming marble steps where peacocks strutted; with at one end a fountain banked in a tangle of roses, where sprays of water fell with silvery splash and tinkle; with marble seats and statues gleaming from the cool gloom of trees. Around the garden were high walls, vine-hung, with the surrounding buildings of the villa for a broken background. An untamed profusion of green ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... famous Gobelin tapestry factories in Paris. They know nothing of the beauty of the pattern being woven. They work on the "wrong" side, the under side of the web. They miss the inspiration of seeing the rare beauty they themselves are making. All the weaver sees is the apparent tangle of many coloured threads and thread ends, while he thrusts in his needles according to the card of instructions. The more faithfully and skilfully he can follow the directions the better a piece of weaving ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... back," she said, "if I have to tie binding twine across the road to tangle up Pleurisy's long legs. He's on his way to Cowan's, I know. Ab Cowan has quinsy. Never mind, Thursa, we'll get him. I hope now that the old doctor is too full to come—oh, no I don't either, I just hope he's away and Dr. Clay will have it done ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... and saw the maid holding the door ajar and leaning against it, her pale face, framed in a tangle of soft hair, showing traces of the wearing troubles of the days ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... Ninety-Six Hours' Leave (METHUEN), and I could find it in my heart to regret it. Because, to speak frankly, the present volume will do little to add to the reputation so deservedly won by the other. It is a tangle of complications, which, since they have nothing solid to rest upon, begin by baffling, and end by boring, the reader who strives to keep pace with them. A young officer, wishful to dine at a smart hotel and having no appropriate ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various
... ford Terry heard a sharp out-cry from one of the guards, followed by the sharp crack of a rifle. Whirling, he saw the brush on his right agitated by the movements of a figure that crashed unseen through the tangle of vegetation. Two soldiers flung themselves off their ponies and leaped in pursuit, pausing fruitlessly for sight of the fleeing form and dashing on with trailed rifles. The aggressive Mercado galloped ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... one; they were just like the runs which rabbits make among gorse and heather, only on a bigger scale—bigger, even, than a fox's or badger's. By crouching and bending our backs, we could crawl through them with difficulty into the scrubby tangle. It was hard work creeping. The runs divided soon. Colebrook felt with his hands on the ground: "I can make out the spoor!" he muttered, after a minute. "He ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... compared with this. The unprecedented drama was in five acts, so fierce that Aeschylus himself would not have dared to dream of them. "The Ambush!" "The Struggle!" "The Massacre!" "The Victory!" "The Fall!" What a tangle and what an unwinding! A poet who would have predicted it would have seemed a traitor. God alone could permit ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... Way out of the tangle there seemed none. Fight Sir Amys could not, with the weight of a false oath on his soul, yet to run away were to confess all, and leave Belisante to bear her father's anger alone. Turn his thoughts which side he would, escape seemed barred, till the image ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... up the river, Mr. Eng told me; and I think we shall get out of this tangle very soon; and when we come to higher ground we will go on shore, and try our luck ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... green intertinged, The armfuls are pack'd to the sagging mow. I am there, I help, I came stretch'd atop of the load, I felt its soft jolts, one leg reclined on the other, I jump from the cross-beams and seize the clover and timothy, And roll head over heels and tangle my hair full ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... Charley was quicker. He dug his spur cruelly into his little pony's flank. With a neigh of pain the animal leaped forward. For a moment there was a tangle of striking hoofs and wriggling coils of the foiled reptile, while Charley leaning over in his saddle struck with the butt-end of his riding whip at the writhing coils. Though it seemed an eternity to the helpless watchers it was really only a few seconds ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... they proceeded Indian file over the narrow strip of sand that shelved to the sea, and then on through thicket and branches that hedged the shore in wild, luxuriant growth, until suddenly the ruins of the old lighthouse rose out of the tangle before them. The shaft that had upheld the beacon light was all gone save the iron framework, which rose bare and rusted above the little stone cabin that had sheltered the keeper of long ago, and that still stood amid crumbling stones and ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... home from a ramble over the headland, his observant eye was caught by the sight of a narrow foot-track that, crossing the main pathway of the cliff, wound steeply upward and seemingly lost itself in a tangle of gorse and bracken. Stirred by a boyish desire for exploration, he paused, turned into this obscure track, and ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... Rowlett, and he led the way to the back of the house where half-buried in the tangle that had overrun the place stood the ruins of a heavy and ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... the babies of the Mexican village, Vicente Garcia's little sister. He had found her balancing on her stomach on the bank of the ditch. Three years old, she was, and slim and straight, with enormous eyes and a great tangle of sunburned brown curls. Her dress made her quainter still, for it was low-necked and sleeveless, and came to her tiny ankles so that she looked like a child from an ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means
... the far-off rumble of independent firing he muttered to himself indications of anxiety. Strange to say, the eyes that looked out over the hollow of the gorge-like valley were blue. They were, however, hardly visible through the tangle of unkempt hair and raw wool that fell over his forehead. The high sheepskin cap was dragged forward, and the lower part of his face was almost hidden by the indiscriminate folds of hood, cloak, and scarf ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... table seemed to flicker with terror; in another an ordinary conversation was in progress, which now and then only ran over into a loud tittering, when some old lady slipped into the circle and tried her skill at a redowa, then altogether unknown to the young people. In the very midst of the tangle of dancers was to be seen the bride in a heavy silk wedding-gown. The point of her golden hood hung far down over her face. She danced continuously. She danced with every one that asked her. Had one, however, observed the actions of the young woman, they would certainly have seemed ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... she? Maybe the man was under the table in the boudoir. Maybe he warned her that, if she gave him away afterward, he'd do for her and all her belongings. That would scare Blacky blue! She worships her mother. I haven't got the tangle straightened out in my head yet. But this new idea looks good to me, so far. If Peterson's the thief—if he's pocketed the papers and the pearls—it seems to me he'll try and make a quick get-away. Let us jump on him now, ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of God Hath by other dooms its way Crossed, that none may rule alone, In one speech-outstripping groan Forth had all this passion flown, Which now murmuring hides away, Full of pain, and hoping not Ever one clear thread to unknot From the tangle of my soul, From a ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... shouted, but the sound had not ceased to echo when, out of the horrible tangle about us, rose, with a swift, sinuous motion, a monstrous anacondalike arm, flesh pink in the electric beam, but covered with spike-edged spiracles! It curled itself over the edge of the hovering air ship ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... "I've got Tangle's opinion here," answered Tom; "I won't ask you to look at it, uncle. He's dead against us. Just what you said six months back. There's no getting over that trust-deed, nor through it, nor round it, nor any way to the other side of it. I've done my d——dest, and we're not ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... in here!" said the German; and they did so, Ranjoor Singh dipping water out of a rain-pool and filling a stone trough that had once done duty as receptacle for gifts for a long- forgotten god. Then they pushed the carriage under a tangle ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... and lure him on. Presently he caught his first glimpse of the bayou and his legs shook under him; but the path wound deeper still into what appeared to be an untouched solitude, wound on between the crowding tree forms, a little back from the shore, with an intervening tangle of vines and bushes. He scanned this closely as he hurried forward, scarcely conscious that he was searching for some trampled space at the water's edge; but the verdant wall preserved its unbroken continuity, and twenty minutes later he came within sight ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... Walters, Captain Strong, Professor Hemmingwell, and Dave Barret stared unbelievingly at the tangle of wires and smashed tubes on the main ...
— Sabotage in Space • Carey Rockwell
... Nature concentrated—her wild welter of struggling and devouring forms through the geologic ages made visible and tangible in a small patch of mingled pitch and animal bones. There was nearly as much bone as pitch. The fate of the unlucky flies that alight upon tangle-foot fly-paper in our houses had been the fate of the victims that had perished here. How many wild creatures had turned appealing eyes to the great unheeding void as they felt themselves helpless and sinking in this all-engulfing pitch! In like manner how many human beings in storms and ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... the others, so that its features remained comparatively perfect, and about them hung a tangle of golden hair. Moreover, a broad battle-axe appeared resting on ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... to the wheel house and took the steam steering-gear in hand, his blue eyes sweeping over their course. The shores ahead and on either hand were low and thickly overgrown, but rose into hill-slopes behind. All was a tangle of dark green jungle, and as the brown river opened out before them, the boys saw that it was very sluggish and appeared to merge its waters with those ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... Radmore was his secret hero; and now, to-night, he asked himself painfully, why had his hero left off loving Betty? The story he had overheard this afternoon had deeply impressed him. For the first time he began to dimly apprehend the strange and piteous tangle ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... it, might prove the brilliant hero of the night's proceedings; the child, little Jenny Something, who had spent yesterday at the Carstairs house, leading strangers to think that she was somebody else; and Miss Carstairs herself, a fair flower in that moving tangle ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... herbage, tripped, went down, and was dragged a yard or two, and then, with a rush and tremendous splash, he followed the dogs' plunge off the bank into deep water, to be towed here and there by the delighted animals, which swam about, barking, drinking, and threatening to tangle their chains in a worse knot than before—to ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... unobstructed ahead, she stepped down on the accelerator and watched the needle climb up and past the legal 65-mile limit. The sound of her tires on the smooth concrete was soothing and the rush of wind outside gave the morning an illusion of coolness. She edged away from the tangle of cars that had pulled onto the freeway with her and momentarily was alone on the road, with her rear-view mirror blank, the oncoming lanes bare, and a small rise shutting ...
— The Sound of Silence • Barbara Constant
... experience I had passed through. Bolting the door securely, I threw open one of the window blinds. To my surprise the first light of dawn was visible in the sky. My room was in the rear of the house. Between me and the high wall was a dense tangle of underbrush, barely visible in the dim light. Hastily undressing, I went to bed without further delay, and was soon in deep sleep. When I awoke it was near midday. Dressing as quickly as possible, ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... light of a hand-lantern shining in my face. A small man of about thirty, with green eyes and a tangle of fair hair, ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... but if the elm tree thinks the same thing, if running water, if burning coal, if crystals, if alkalies, in their several fashions, say what I say, it must be true." Here Emerson is all but clean out of the tangle. He speaks of a "happy symbol." But inasmuch as this "happy symbol" is to express what the elm tree, the running water, and the rest, actually say in their several fashions, it is safer to drop the idea of symbolism altogether; for what they say, is not what they "stand for," ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... that I must immediately attain shelter, I clambered through one of the broken windows, and dropped to the earthen floor within. I could see nothing, not even a hand held before my eyes, yet carefully felt my way forward through a tangle of rubbish, wheels, scraps of iron, some casks, a number of plough handles, and a riffraff of stuff I could not make out. The place had evidently been used as a repair shop, but must have been closed for months, as I could feel the grit of dust everywhere, and cobwebs ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... was a flat-topped mesa eroded to fantastic mockery of some bastioned fort. In the round-topped hills behind it was Noches, fifty miles away. Beyond lay the tangle of hills, rising to the saw-toothed range now painted with orange and mauve and a hint of deepening purple. For dusk was already slipping down over ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... this? I never asked for anything! Indeed I had no time, for the messenger ran away before I had unravelled my tangle.' ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... always, to the sights and sounds of the well-loved country about her. He liked to watch the quick glancing, the clear gazing, of her eyes; everything she looked at became at once more significant to him—the tangle of tenacious roots that thrust through the greensand soil of the lane they entered, the suave, gray columns of the beeches above, the blurred mauves and russets of the woods, the swift, awkward flight of a pheasant that crossed their way with a creaking whir of wings, the amethyst ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... up Mike's small coin, which had rattled to the pavement, and vanished with them in a struggling tangle of horse cars and omnibuses before Mike finished his desperate yell ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... dam, where the pressure of the water only sufficed to drive them tighter in among the brush; and thus, little by little, a smooth bank of earth was presented to the current, backed up on the lower side by a tangle of sticks and poles. Its top was very level and straight, and along its whole length the water trickled over in a succession of tiny rills. This was important, for if all the overflow had been in one place the stream might have been so strong and rapid as to eat into the dam, ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... Tour that day at Arras! And the wire! It was strewn in every direction, with seeming aimlessness. Heavily barbed it was, and bad stuff to get caught in. One of the great reasons for the preliminary bombardment that usually precedes an attack is to cut this wire. If charging men are caught in a bad tangle of wire they can be wiped out by machine gun-fire before ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... Farrow was not finished with this gambit yet. As I drew even with her, she pried herself out of the messy tangle and came across the field in a dead run—and how that girl could run! As fast as I was going, she caught up; as fast as it all happened I had too little time to slow me down before Nurse Farrow closed the intervening distance from her wreck to my car and had hooked her arm ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... mules threw themselves into their collars—their intelligence seeming to rise at this moment to a human height. Then the great vehicle turned slowly over, and at the same moment Whittaker and the driver leapt into the tangle of heels and harness. One of the leaders swung right out in mid-air with flying legs, and mules and diligencia rolled over and over down the steep in a ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... the glove, where it had lain folded, silent, unnoticed, during all this intervening period of folly and vexation of soul. Margaret had done her duty, in time; I had only myself to blame for the tangle in which I now found myself. I was thinking of Flora, upon the deck of the steamship, when, in a moment of chagrin, she had been so near throwing herself over; wondering to what fate her passion and impetuosity would hurry her now, if she knew; cursing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... That was the hard knot in my thread. Nothing wouldn't go past that. Some, when they git things in a tangle, they just reach for the shears an' cut the thread. I wa'n't brought up that way. I was taught to leave the shears alone. So I went on stringin' one year after another. But they wouldn't join on to them that went ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... low in a dense tangle of ferns and creepers, saw a number of the younger men, headed by Horoeka, streaming down the track leading to the lake. But after a little time they returned, somewhat sobered and crestfallen, and rejoined the others, who had meanwhile ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... the distant bivouacs, made the confusion hopeless. Night was fast coming on, and in company with a Cossack, who was, like myself, seeking the headquarters of General Gourko, I made my way through the tangle of men, beasts, and wagons toward the town. It was one of those chill, wet days of winter when there is little comfort away from a blazing fire, and when good shelter for the night is an absolute necessity. The drizzle had drenched my garments, and the snow-mud had soaked my boots. Sharp gusts ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... her own clever, untiring methods of pushing him into the front ranks; Mary and Mary's little secret, so unsafe in Trudy's keeping; Beatrice, who did not know quite how many rings she possessed; the whole maddening and really uninteresting tangle—she wondered if she could force Gay to buy her a ring. Should she boldly order such-and-such a stone and pick out a setting and present him with the bill? Why she hesitated she did not know; she was like all her wilful sisters who gaze and sigh, pity themselves, and then steal away ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... confess I missed you. It's much better fun when two can see all those things that I saw—the wild roses just a tangle of slender green-mossed stems, the new grass so intensely green, with a touch of metallic iridescence; the cat's-paws chasing each other across the purple inland ponds—and that cheeky red fox that came trotting out of the briers near Wonder Head, and, when he saw me, ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... crystal; domes of deep-coloured glass and towers of jasper were as the landmarks of a city. Allen climbed the shore, walking slowly. He could see no track of sleigh or dog or any living thing. A frosted, icy tangle of branches arched the trail—a gateway of this great, crystal city of the woods. He entered, listening as he walked. Branches of hazel and dogwood were like jets of water breaking into clear, halted ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... not think so, but he was in too dispirited a mood to argue the point. It had not been good for his peace of mind to sit and watch the color come and go in Mona's cheeks, and the laughter spring unheralded into her dear, big eyes, and the light tangle itself in ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... occasional happy stroke. Both he and Dupre are primarily colorists. Dupre sees nature through a prism. Diaz's groups of dames and gallants have a jewel-like aspect; they leave the same impression as a tangle of ribbons, a bunch of exotic flowers, a heap of gems flung together with the felicity of haphazard. In general, and when they are in most completely characteristic mood, it is not the sentiment of nature that one gets from the work of either painter. It is not even their sentiment of nature—the ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... and wave and the brightness in the tops of green things, as a child counts over its toys. In the 'Song of Pleasant Things' there is no distinction between the pleasantness of sea-gulls playing, of summer and slow long days, of the heath when it is green, of a horse with a thick mane in a tangle, and of 'the word that utters the Trinity.' 'The beautiful I sang of, I will sing,' says Taliesin; and with him the seven senses become in symbol 'fire and earth, and water and air, and mist and flowers, and southerly wind.' And touches of ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... have been originally suggested by nature-myths. The all-swallowing and all-disgorging beast, wolf, or ogre, may have been derived from a view of Night as the all-swallower. But to disengage natural phenomena, mythically stated, from the human tangle of Marchen, to find natural phenomena in such a palimpsest as Perrault's courtly and artificial version of a French popular tale, is a delicate and dangerous task. In many stories a girl has three balls—one of silver, one of gold, one of diamond—which she offers, in succession, as bribes. ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... a rhetorician, but he possessed also the qualities of an acute thinker. He displayed unusual sagacity in detecting the value of different arguments in persuasion. He could arrange in proper proportion the most complex tangle of facts, so as to make one clear impression. Such power made him one of the great Victorian masters of ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... away in a maze. He had thought to straighten matters out, and he had only got them into a far worse tangle. That Miss Arminster had no conscientious scruples about adding another husband to her quota was bad enough, but that his innocent, unsuspecting father should be allowed to disgrace his cloth by solemnising such a marriage was really more than he could stand. In his ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... and, always threading their way amid a tangle of flowers, the children suddenly passed a corner and found themselves in a forest clearing, where there were a lot of pointed huts—the huts, as they knew at once, ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... unsteadily. "Don't! I know it's bad enough. Perhaps you're right—I oughtn't to have spoken to Diana, I hoped things would right themselves eventually, but you and Baroni have put another complexion upon matters. It's all an inextricable tangle, whichever way one looks at it—come good luck or bad! . . . I suppose I was wrong—I ought to have waited. But now . . . now . . . Before God, Adrienne! I ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... always loved her, even in certain evil moments of an irresistible jealousy. But she felt immensely far from Vere, distant from her as one who does not love from one who loves; yet hideously near, too, like one caught in the tangle of an enforced intimacy rooted in a past which the present denies and rejects. Directly dinner was over they parted, driven by the mutual ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... when he had met her, a chubby little scrap of only three scant summers, wandering off down the Pike, every little footfall taking her farther and farther away from the Farm, and she had raised her eyes, brimming over with tears in their wonderful tangle of black lashes, and said, with a tiny catch in her voice, "I'm losted. Tate me home, Boy!"; and he, with the superior knowledge of location which seven years gives over three, had led her safely back to Miss Eliza—ever since that long-past day, Arethusa had made up the most of Timothy's world. ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... idly surprised at the latter; he had not known that orange groves had been planted and survived in Georgia. Woolfolk gazed more attentively at the shore, and made out, in back of the luxuriant tangle, the broad white facade of a dwelling. A pair of marine glasses lay on the deck at his hand; and, adjusting them, he surveyed the face of a distinguished ruin. The windows on the stained wall were broken in—they resembled the empty eyes of ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... to have had a fine view from the pass over the trackless mountain tangle to the north, some of the peaks towering almost eighteen thousand feet into the sky, but again the clouds and mist veiled everything from sight. All the rest of the day we were making our way down ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... and disappear over the edge of the roof. One instant he was standing there, splendid, superb; the next, the corner of the parapet was empty, all that stood there was a broken, splintered post and a tangle ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... perilous hoax played upon him by the Irish servant, Daniel Hill; or whether, as he himself surmised, the crime was instigated by an unfriendly neighbour, it is impossible to say. Strange adventures of this kind, blending fact and fancy in a now inextricable tangle, are of no unfrequent occurrence in Shelley's biography. In estimating the relative proportions of the two factors in this case, it must be borne in mind, on the one hand, that no one but Shelley, who was alone ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... a pretty tangle, a job for wreckers, not boat-builders. There are two high tides every twenty-four hours, and at every high tide, night and day, for a week, there were two steam tugs pulling and hauling on the Snark. There she was, stuck, fallen between the ways and standing on her stern. Next, and while still ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... many-varied roses that claimed much of his time and care. The shadow of two great cedar trees reached protecting arms after me as I went up to the steps of the cottage hidden away in a green and purple and golden and pink tangle of bloom and sweet odors; ivy and wistaria and jasmine and honeysuckle. Beside the steps grew some of his special pet roses. Their glowing and fragrant presence sometimes afforded him a congenial topic of discourse when a guest chanced to approach ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... trackless deep, maps out and marks the dangers which lie in the routes of commerce, in order that the peaceful argosies of trade may pursue safe routes to the distant markets of the world, there to exchange the varied commodities of commerce. It penetrates the jungle and the tangle of the inter-tropical regions. It stands ready to starve to death or to die from exposure. It pushes its way into the icy fastnesses of the North or of the South, in order that it may discover new ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... regard to the end of a play arises partly because it is everywhere easier to get things into a tangle than to get them out again; partly also because at the beginning we give the author carte blanche to do as he likes, but, at the end, make certain definite demands upon him. Thus we ask for a conclusion that shall be either quite happy or else quite tragic; whereas human affairs do not ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the same size in coadunition to form this earth chain. To the student who is thoroughly grounded in the eastern physics this interweaving of the physical and metaphysical presents no difficulties; but to the western mind just beginning the study it is a tangle. ...
— Ancient and Modern Physics • Thomas E. Willson
... most noteworthy of all, Klinger and Leisewitz give us simply dynastic tragedies. In both the outlook is limited to the fortunes of a single house. In both we miss the great dramatist who looks upon life with a roving eye and intertwines his tale of private woe with the larger tangle of human destiny. ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... into the tangle of Star Point trucks, and came to a grinding halt, men piling out ready for battle. Gordon nodded. In a few minutes, Wayne's supporters would have the booth again; there'd be a delay before any organized search could ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... To the individual sovereignty of each province he held with the tenacity of a lawyer and historian. In that he found the only clue through the labyrinth which ecclesiastical and political affairs presented. So close was the tangle, so confused the medley, that without this slender guide all hope of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to his left, though as yet low down, the moon was rising, filling the woods with mystery, a radiant glow wherein objects seemed to start forth with a new significance; here the ragged hole of a tree, gnarled, misshapen; there a wide-flung branch, weirdly contorted, and there again a tangle of twigs and strange, leafy shapes that moved not. And over all was a deep and ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... a man—no wear out to her—and she's got the courage of a man. Besides which she can sling a gun like it would do your heart good to see her! Don't take nothing she does to heart. She don't mean no harm. But she sure does tangle up a gent's ideas. Here I been living with her nigh onto twenty years and I don't savvy her none yet. ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... emergency. For the elephant was gaining at every stride and must inevitably overtake the fugitive long before he could reach it, while the horses were already beginning to show signs of distress as they plunged panting through the obstructing tangle, in the midst of which they were constantly stumbling as their outflung feet encountered, and were caught in, some especially tough ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... no desecration of a hallowed spot. When the past has been dead and buried a long while ago there is no sweeter decking for its grave than a rich autumn tangle, all yellow and brown and pale and hectic red, with glossy evergreens and soft, damp moss to keep up the illusion of spring and ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... The myriad bells of Venice were borne in a floating gossamer tangle of sound across ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... you, up the attic stairs rushed a strange man, who pulled Mun Bun out of the tangle of arms and legs. And Rose thought the strange ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Uncle Fred's • Laura Lee Hope
... bush wren could have hidden its nest more completely—Bruce had been lucky in spying it out. He told White that there was but one unprotected approach—a long unused trail that led down from the cliff-top and ended in a briar tangle fifty feet above the ledge. That trail, it was evident, 'Kep' ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... battle is to know the beginning of a case. I'll almost go so far as to say that, given the real beginning, the end should be assured. You've not begun at the beginning of the Redmayne tangle, Mark. If you had, the clue to this labyrinth might be in your hands to-day. The more I hear and the more I think, the more firmly am I convinced that the truth we are out to find can only be discovered by a deal of hard digging in past times. There is a lot ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... be getting into a tangle," said Lalage, "so you'd better not go on. If you're afraid of the Archdeacon—and I suppose that is what your excuses will come to in the end—I'll do it myself. After all, you'd most likely have made a ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... grew in the tangle, In a flame red garment dressed, And many a ruby spangle Besprinkled ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... to look neater by being covered with stucco, but the chief improvement effected was the building of a large bow extending up through three storeys. This bow became covered with a tangle of creepers, and pleasantly varied the south side of the house. The drawing-room, with its verandah opening into the garden, as well as the study in which my father worked during the later years of his life, were added at ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... a little cluster of Highland cattle, vividly coloured and fleecy in the evening light, their horns branching into the sky, pushing forward their muzzles inquisitively, to know what it was all about. Their eyes glittered through their tangle of hair, their naked nostrils were full ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... knew underneath that she was playing false, accepting the passion of Jesus for her own physical satisfaction. But she was in such a daze, such a tangle. How could ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... "The Locusts," on which stood a fine old homestead that had been vacant for several years. The day after its purchase a force of carpenters and painters were set to work, and two coloured men began clearing out the tangle of bushes ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... set toward the land; she saw the wooded island with its fringe of silver birches standing like sentinels to guard the water's edge; she saw the lovely tangle of asters and golden- rod that gave it its name of Royal Island, and the strip of sand on which the waves were lapping gently; but she saw nothing of the ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... of this world into chaos are hurled, And the devil seems running the earth, When the bad folks stay and the good pass away, And greed fares better than worth, Oh, that is the hour to trust in the Power That will straighten the tangle out; For death and sorrow are little things, But ...
— Poems of Optimism • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... are dozens of others. He was impatient of the old man's rigid control. Hilton is sharp and shrewd, and he guessed things were going wrong financially. He knew that his father's methods were out of date, and believed he could straighten the tangle if the reins of power were ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... clouded her eyes; she wandered blindly on through the wood till she was conscious of sudden light and space. She had come to a clearing, where several huge beeches had been torn up by a storm some years before. Their place had been filled by a tangle of many saplings, and in their midst rose an elder-bush, already showing leaf, amid the bare winterly wood. The last western light caught the twinkling leaf buds, and made of the tree a Burning Bush, first ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... from bowing him through the tunnel, the lines in his face a tangle of emotions, the colonel was standing on the mat, in his favorite attitude—back to the fire, coat thrown open, thumbs in his armholes, his outstretched fingers beating ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Japanese-looking paper. A really old oriental paper it was, such as is not even nowadays to be procured in England, so thickly covered with tracery of leaves and flowers and birds and butterflies in a delightful tangle, that the underlying colour was more felt than seen. A short staircase of wide shallow steps ran up one side, disappearing apparently into the wall, and up this staircase, rather to Jacinth's surprise—for there were several doors in the hall leading, no doubt, to the principal ground-floor ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... tree the Hedgehog With his sleepy eyes looked at him, Shot his shining quills, like arrows, Saying with a drowsy murmur, Through the tangle of his whiskers, "Take ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... vision of a shattered black mass, a tangle of girders, wires, collapsed planes, that seemed to hang a moment in midair—of whirling bodies—of wreckage indescribable. Then the broken debris plunged with awful speed and vanished through the ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... simple—ought not to be; it is not for nothing that we are heirs to the ages. Therefore the art that utters and expresses our emotion towards modern life cannot be simple; and, moreover, it must before all things embody not only that living tangle which is felt by the Futurists as so real, but it must purge and order it, by complexities of tone and rhythm hitherto unattempted. One art, beyond all others, has blossomed into real, spontaneous, unconscious life ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... her back to a corner of the cave and her bare feet swinging out. Hurriedly he approached, intending to advise her to lie down again, to tell her that perhaps she might overtax her strength. The sun shone upon her, glinting on the little head with its tangle of bright hair and the small, oval face with its pallor, and dark-blue eyes underlined by dark-blue circles. She looked at him and he looked at her. In that exchange of glances he imagined each saw the other in some different ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... going like an airship on a high wind, when something happened to tangle its tail feathers and I can hardly write it for trembling yet. It was a simple little blue telegram, but it might have been nitro-glycerin on a tear for the way it acted. It was for me, but the ginger barber handed it to Tom and he opened it and, looking ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... my breath left me. Through the tangle of bramble stems at the mouth of the run, above naked brown shoulders there glared at me, hideously streaked with red, a face. Had my fancy lied? I stared again until my eyes were blurred, now tortured by ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... been as inseparable as their respective duties to husband and grandfather allow. And so the web of life is woven, the puzzling strands resolving themselves out of what has seemed to be a hopeless tangle into the ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... moment I was in my room, lying face down on my bed—seeing no hope on any side, and sobbing my heart out for what might have been but for the hard law of my religion and the cruel tangle of my fate. ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... The garden was her kingdom and her Paradise. It was a wide, fragrant, shaded place, full of the shrubs and flowers of former days. Huge pink and white oleanders, planted in tubs, stood on either side the walks. Thick spikes of purple lavender edged the beds; the summer-house was a tangle of honey-suckle, rosemary, and eglantine. Roses of all colors abounded. They towered high above Lota's head as she walked,—twined and clasped, shut her in with perfumed shadows, rained showers of many-colored petals on the grass. An old-fashioned ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... a dumb dislike of business. I used to moon. We were so troubled with business-troubles we had no time to live. We never really got to know each other. I used to think my mother was hard and unsympathetic because her view of life wasn't mine—as if it could be. It was a miserable tangle. There was my father, whose love for us made him leave us that horrible legacy of investments. And my mother was so busy providing for us she had no leisure to love us. And my brother and I were so different in temper and age and inclination we simply ignored each other. Love? ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... strong pull, and brought up a tangle of weeds. Again and again I cast out my line with aching arms, and drew it back empty. I looked at my uncle appealingly. "Try once more," he said; "we ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... do, and appending the Englishman's letter because it was the most mysterious document and might have had a bearing upon anything in this world or the next. An outsider would have translated all the tangle thus: "Look out! You laughed at me once, and now I am going to ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... of them was twisted in a tangle on the floor, And Iky Moss, the bettin' boss, had sprinted for ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle
... fishing boats ride together while their sails dry in the afternoon sun. Then the hamlet is very still; for the men are sleeping off the weariness of their night work, while the children play quietly among the tangle, and the women mend the nets or bait the lines for the next fishing. A lonely little spot, shut in by sea and land, and yet life is there in all its passionate variety—love and hate, jealousy and avarice, ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... tangle of pedestrians and into the entrance of a corner candy-shop. "Aw, now, what's your hurry?" he insisted, regarding ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst |
