"Tangle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which was certainly that of General Savary, had broken out suddenly through a dense tangle of brambles in front of us. The ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... over this when they turned through a gateway, imposing with its tangle of wrought iron and gilt, and at a decorously reduced speed crinkled up a wide drive to the vast pile of gray stone that housed the ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... kings, whose thoughts dwelt among the stars, who reverently searched the heavens for revelations of the divine will and wisdom, and who, by pursuing accurate observation and mathematical calculation together with the wildest dreams, made astronomy and astrology the inextricable tangle of scientific truth and fantastic speculation that we see it in the great work (in seventy tablets) prepared for the library of Sargon II. at Agade. That the ancient system of conjuring and incantations ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... 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 ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... principal point in this way of fishing is to stop the reel by using the thumb as a brake at the instant that the bait strikes the water. This prevents the reel from spinning and causing the line to overrun. Neglect of this precaution will cause a very annoying tangle that is sometimes call a "backlash" but more often characterized by much harsher names by the impatient fisherman who has ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... dey duz. But dish yere nigger w'at I'm tellin' you 'bout, he kyo'd his brer de ve'y fus pass he made at him. Hit got so dat fokes in de settlement didn't have no peace. De chilluns 'ud wake up in de mawnins wid der ha'r tangle up, en wid scratches on um like dey bin thoo a brier-patch, twel bimeby one day de nigger he 'low dat he'd set up dat night en keep one eye on his brer; en sho' nuff dat night, des ez de chickens wuz crowin' fer twelve, up jump de brer ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... not come into men's minds to ask curiously of science concerning its origin, its primary form and import, its meaning for those who projected it. It sank into their minds, to issue forth again with all the tangle about it of medieval sentiment and ideas. In the Doni Madonna in the Tribune of the Uffizii, Michelangelo actually brings the pagan religion, and with it the unveiled human form, the sleepy-looking fauns of a Dionysiac revel, into the presence of the Madonna, as simpler painters had introduced ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... tangle, blurred and distorted by incessant repetition, had come at last to seem almost a separate entity; a horror, outside his own control, that now shrank to a pin-point and now loomed gigantic, oppressive, till all true sense of proportion was lost. The silence that he could not force himself to ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... and into the Selkirks, and we have to climb right up these and down again before starting on the heights of the Rockies, which is the only range most people know by name. The peaks, which rise majestically round, are often tree-clad far up; we see huge pines, centuries old, towering out of a tangle of undergrowth that has probably never been trodden by any human foot, not even those of the Indians. There is a great deal of dead wood to be seen, and this hangs out in banners of brown among the ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... leading parts. There had been many journeyings back and forth on the part of the boys and Charlton and her uncle, Buck Rutherford. They had a way of getting off into a corner of the corral and talking low for hours at a time. And now Street had come into the tangle. Were they watching him for fear ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... with the air of a dutiful but injured man who longed to do harm in the world. By this time the ship was about to cast off, and the recruits, ranged in line along the bulwarks of the lower deck, were looking in silence towards Marseilles, which, with its tangle of tall houses, its forest of masts, its long, ugly factories and workshops, now represented to them the whole of France. The bronchial hoot of the siren rose up menacingly. Suddenly two Arabs, in dirty white burnouses and turbans bound with cords of camel's ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... returned 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 woodpecker tattoos ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... grabbed the gun off the floor and planted his back to the wall, looking around for new antagonists. But there was evidently no one left who cared to tangle with him, and the four medics strewn out on the floor didn't seem to have ...
— The Judas Valley • Gerald Vance
... Laura. No joking, now," said Coldfield, surrendering his incredulity with some hesitance. "And if the treasure involves no fighting or diplomatic tangle, count me in. Think of it, Jane," turning to his wife; "two old church-goers like you and me, a-going after a pirate's treasure! ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... would have the priest enter first. Father Thomas, with a certain apprehension of which he was ashamed, walked quickly in, and looked about him. The herbage of the garden had mostly died down in the winter, and a tangle of sodden stalks lay over the beds. A flagged path edged with box led up to the house, which seemed to stare at them out of its dark windows with a sort of steady gaze. Master Grimston fastened the door behind them, and they went all together, keeping close one ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... attention to those whose views are distorted by colour prejudice, whose object is to inflict unnecessary harm on the minds, bodies and spirits of loyal subjects of the Crown? One cannot help saying that if their career in this respect is not checked, their evil policy will land the Empire in a tangle of difficulties from which its rescue will require the highest statesmanship, much expenditure of treasure, if not also ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... rabbit, limping into cover under a tangle of gorse and blackberry bashes, that discovered to her the entrance to the series of little chambers and passages that led right through the headland to the side looking into Port Gorey. Which most satisfactory hiding-place she and Bernel turned to good account ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... of the things that happened, you would think I was a heap sight bigger liar than I am. Seein' some of them yarns in print, folks around this country would say: 'Steve Brown's corralled some tenderfoot and loaded him to the muzzle with shin tangle and ancient history!' Things that would seem amazin' to you would never ruffle the hair of the mavericks that helped ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... 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
... at the sinister name, and at the stump of wreckage which floated in the discoloured water. Something black washed to and fro beside a splintered gaff and a tangle of halliards. It was the outrageous ensign, and near it a scarlet ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... shawl-dance, it was the most exciting thing that ever was beheld; there was such a whisking, and rustling, and fanning, and getting ladies into a tangle with artificial flowers, and then disentangling them again! And as to Mr. Augustus Cooper's share in the quadrille, he got through it admirably. He was missing from his partner, now and then, certainly, and discovered ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... against their wish, the angry and astonished chamberlains let August slide out of their grasp, and he stood there in his little rough sheepskin coat and his thick, mud-covered boots, with his curling hair all in a tangle, in the midst of the most beautiful chamber he had ever dreamed of, and in the presence of a young man with a beautiful dark face, and eyes full of dreams and fire; and the ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... intense sunlight. The beds of the brooks in the valleys that cut their way through the hill-clefts were dry and dusty; and the sole shade visible lay upon the orchard floors, where the thick branches above cast blue-black shadows upon the golden tangle of grasses at their feet. A soft murmur of hidden creature-things rose like an invisible haze from earth, and nothing moved in all the horizon save the black kites high in the blue air and the white butterflies over the drowsy meadows. The poppies that flecked the yellow ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... while, however, the curtain went up once more, and the play proceeded in a tangle of "real Siberian bloodhounds," Gumption Cutes, Marks, Topsies, Little Evas, escaping slaves, slave hunters and general excitement ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... natural, I own, that one should tremble to essay These perils, dare the lures that there waylay; But from doubt's tangle you must now break free,— Be of good cheer and ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... moment. I'm not really a haberdasher. While I was in college I invented an easy-slipping tie. A friend patented it and I still draw an income from it. It's just another of the tangle of mistakes I've gotten into. As people have got the other notion, I don't care ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... and, no doubt, divined the object of his adversary,—to arrest and cripple him in this tangle-wood, where numbers did not count, and artillery could not ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... time the noble master was in worse case than the man. His fine forehead was a tangle of livid cords; his baggy jowl filled out like a balloon. In another second he had abandoned his place as our host and fled the room; and in yet another we had forgotten ours as his guests and ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... me all this came out in a haphazard tangle of unfinished sentences, interruptions, fresh starts, questions, answers, ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... their relations to it and to its transactions, thus making the situation even more acute. James Riley later had brought him the first definite ray of hope in what promised a solution of his domestic tangle; but as the burden lightened on the one hand, it seemed to bear him down with added weight on the other. Senator Hunt, urged on by Brady and other powerful interests, was working against the Consolidated Companies ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... 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 of weeds. ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... we came. "The earth," he says, And warms in his my hand amazed to lie In strange, near comfort,—blossom of first pain. Then low we dip into the clinging night That is the Lethe of God-memories; Stumble and sink in chains of time and sense Tangle in treacheries of a weed-hung globe, And tread the dun, dim verges of defeat Till spirit chafes to vision, and we learn What morning is, and where the way of love. In that gold dawn we part, knowing at last ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... world; and let all Nations meet Like Men, not monsters, when disputes arise. When crossed opinions tangle into snarls, Let Courts untie them, and not armies cut. When State discussions breed dissensions, let Union and Arbitration supersede The hell-created implements of War. Disarm the world! and bid destructive thought Slip like a serpent from the mortal mind ...
— Poems of Progress • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... into detail in my account of this experiment, for the reason that it illustrates very aptly the inextricable tangle of truth and error which most 'spirit communications' present. It typifies in little the elusive problem of spirit identification which many a veteran investigator is still at work upon, after years of study. Maxwell gives a case of long-continued unintentional and unconscious deception ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... safety; and inexorable iron crushed the tender leaves to atoms.—This morning at the end of my watch, about 4 o'clock, we came to the buoys, proving our anticipations right concerning the crossing of the cables. I went to bed for four hours, and on getting up, found a sad mess. A tangle of the six-wire cable hung to the grapnel, which had been left buoyed, and the small cable had parted and is lost for the present. Our hauling of the other day must have done ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... from the heart of his 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 ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... off and were soon lost in the tangle of scrub grass and dry gullies, their destination the Polaris and the solution to the mystery of Professor ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... poor to make ends meet. It was almost impossible to get about in the city, as the war had reduced the number of cabs and the few that did business asked such exorbitant fares that only the rich could afford to ride in them. The street car situation was in a hopeless tangle. Even before the war there were not enough accommodations for the public, but since the opening of hostilities many of the cars had broken down and there were no mechanics to repair them and no new cars to replace ...
— The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement • Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper,
... scarlet figure of little Melissa came shyly out of the dark shadows behind and drew shyly closer and closer, until she was crouched in the chimney corner with her face shaded from the fire by one hand and a tangle of yellow hair, listening and watching him with her big, solemn eyes, quite fearlessly. Already the house was full of children and dependents, but no word passed between old Joel and the old mother, for no word was necessary. Two waifs who had so suffered and who could ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... For, as a king he had sinned against his nation, as a friend he had sinned against his companion, as a captain he had sinned against his brave subordinate, as a husband he had sinned against his wife, and he had sinned against Bathsheba. And yet, with all that tangle of offences against all these people, he says, 'Against Thee, Thee only.' Yes! Because, accurately speaking, the sin had reference to God, and to God alone. And I wish for myself and for you to cultivate the habit of connecting, thus, all our actions, and especially ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... about for some time he came upon a small hut, in which lay an ugly old woman fast asleep. She had long claws instead of hands, and her hair hung down all around her in a thick black tangle. Ramchundra knew, by the whole appearance of the place, that he must have reached the Rakshas's abode of which he was in search; so, stealing softly in, he sat down and began shampooing her head. At last the Rakshas woke up. "You dear little boy," ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... But they suspected. And mere suspicion sent them upon their settees, cheering wildly. Distrust of Spinney, sullen disloyalty to the machine-created Everett, furnished a soil in which hope for another solution of the tangle ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... of the house you will find there is no path. One has to watch his step owing to the fact that there is a zigzaggy branch hidden by the tangle of weeds. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... From the tangle of daily living with its conflict of interests and its burden of practical needs, the appreciator turns to art with its power to chasten and to tranquillize. In art, he finds the revelation in fuller measure of a beauty which he has felt but vaguely. He ...
— The Enjoyment of Art • Carleton Noyes
... slopes above 5,000 feet we find Pinus montana, whose long branches form a tangle in which to catch one's Ski tips. Below 5,000 feet this pine will sometimes grow almost upright but never attains much height. Alder may also be a trap for Skis on an avalanche slope where it creeps downhill and provides a very slippery ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... days later that we disembarked, in a perfect welter of confusion. Tampa lay in the pine-covered sand-flats at the end of a one-track railroad, and everything connected with both military and railroad matters was in an almost inextricable tangle. There was no one to meet us or to tell us where we were to camp, and no one to issue us food for the first twenty-four hours; while the railroad people unloaded us wherever they pleased, or rather wherever the jam of all kinds of trains rendered it possible. ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... seemed to fall impotently on the body of the man who now grappled with him, face to face, Hector Hall throwing himself into the tangle from the rear. Mackenzie, seeing his assault shaping for a speedy end in his own defeat, now attempted to break away and seek shelter in the dark among the bushes. He wrenched free for a moment, ducked, ran, only to come down in a few yards with ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... than poetic fancies, she subsequently thought of herself as having been, during the process of making herself fine for the afternoon drive and call, like some Cape Cod young one trotting happily along with her tin pail full of blueberries, just before a big dog sprang out of the roadside tangle and jostled the pail out of her hand, so that all the ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... a beautiful open forest, intersected by frequent watercourses where the land trended gradually upward to the distant mountain-range. Sometimes they had to go out of their course in order to avoid the tangle of tropic jungle; but onward north by east they went, beneath the shade of heavy-fruited palms, their road again made difficult by the large and numerous anthills that give these northern latitudes so strange a ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... love, and such a fearful night? How the winds search through the trees and tangle thy ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... have had a fine view from the pass over the trackless mountain tangle to the north, some of the peaks towering almost eighteen thousand feet into the sky, but again the clouds and mist veiled everything from sight. All the rest of the day we were making our way down the steep east side, picking our steps laboriously along the wet rocky trail. Our path ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... had renounced her! In the hideous tangle of his error he had renounced her! For honour's sake, and her own sake, and for sake of his character as a gentleman—renounced her! Oh, there was somebody who would never have renounced her whatever ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... 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
... member was a picked and trained champion. Then there was the amazing enthusiasm, experience, and skill of Father Robert, as he called himself; who knew human nature as an anatomist knows the structure of the human body; to whom the bewildering tangle of motives, good, bad and indifferent, in the soul, was as plain as paths in a garden; who knew what human nature needed, what it could dispense with, what was its power of resistance; and who had at his disposal for the storming of the soul an armoury of weapons and ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... father, and the pride and self-withdrawal of her brother, she led a lonely life where everything around her was left to run wild. The lawn was more of a meadow than a lawn, and the park a mere pasture for cattle. The shrubbery was an impassable tangle, and the flower garden a wilderness. She could do nothing to set things right, and lived about the place like a poor relation. At school, which she left at fifteen, she had learned nothing so as to be of any vital use to her—possibly left it a little less capable than ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... Suez their conversation would have been sprightly enough, I warrant. But as here they saw around them one and another amazing triumph of industry and art, they grew earnest, spoke exaltedly of this great age, and marvelled at the tangle of chances that had thrown them here together. John called it, pensively, a most happy fortune for himself, but Barbara in reply only invited his attention to the beauty of the street vista ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... like to have your own way a good deal better than you like your mamma to have hers; if you pout and cry when you can not do as you please; if you never own that you are in the wrong, and are sorry for it; never, in short, try with all your might to be docile and gentle, then your name is Tangle Thread, and you may depend you cost your mamma many sorrowful hours and many tears. And the best thing you can do is to go away by yourself and pray to Jesus to make you see how naughty you are, and to make you humble and sorry. ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... together through the needle, care being taken not to tangle the piece of "rope" from which they have been detached. There need be no waste if this operation is carefully done, as good silk will always ...
— Handbook of Embroidery • L. Higgin
... Steynham this morning, and I shall bring you proofs, my poor child, proofs. That foreign tangle of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... He had resolved to use his life as if it were a tool in his hand to do work, and he had so used it. The habit of bigness, once caught, possesses one as quickly as the habit of drink; Johnny McLean was as unhampered by the net of smallnesses which tangle most of us as a hermit; the freedom gave him a power which was fast making ...
— The Courage of the Commonplace • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... he bowed and prepared to go out. I drew back toward the wall till the pink silk skirt began to tangle up my feet, and kept my eyes lifted to his face, which was still bathed in blushing smiles. Another step, a low curtsey, and I lifted myself up with dignity while he passed through ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... excitement, Caroline wrenched herself free from the tangle of nurses and carriages, and pushed her way through the crowd. Against the curb, puffing and grinding, stood the great red engine; on the front seat a tall policeman sat; one woman in the back leaned over another, limp against the high cushions, and fanned her with the stiff ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... down with the stream, it would be in our way— perhaps catch in some rock below, or tangle round ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... spirit left by the whalers the preceding year was exhausted, and Teneskin was issuing an inferior brand of his own brewing, concocted much in the same way as the "gun-barrel water" of the Eskimo and even more potent, if possible, than San Francisco "Tangle-foot." This is made by mixing together one part each of flour and molasses with four parts of water and then letting the mixture stand for four days in a warm atmosphere until it ferments. The distillery ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... for whose reappearance I was so earnestly waiting, step casually out on to the pavement. He attempted to cross the street and was quickly lost to sight in a tangle of vehicles. A second later I could have sworn that I saw him back again at the entrance to ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... cuts at intervals on tree-trunks, all of which "bled," giving out a milky sap; and then again the sign failed. About them were the trees in endless columns, overhead was the roof of leaves, and on the ground was a tangle of undergrowth and decaying vegetation, that gave out a moist earthy smell, which set the lungs labouring for oxygen. The boys were uncomfortable. Their skins were clammy, their eyes were heavy, and ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... crowded trees large clearings opened here and there. The sun, piercing the green carpet, then showed its structure of red, syenite granite, similar to slabs of lapis-lazuli. On some heights the sarsaparilla abounded, a plant with fleshy tubercles, which formed an inextricable tangle. The forest, with the narrow ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... the two was a child with bare, brown legs and tattered gingham dress who limped painfully along beside the man, her sunny hair in a tangle half across her pinched ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... of these. It does not make men talk and sing and tell their secrets and reveal their love and their hate, and knock their heads against the stars and tangle their feet one ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... through which the Formello flows. Precipitous cliffs rose from the bed of the river opposite to me, enriched with all the hues that volcanic rock assumes under the influences of the weather and the garniture of moss and lichen. A perfect tangle of vegetation crowned their tops and fringed their sides; the dark unchanging verdure of the evergreen oak and ivy contrasting beautifully with the tender autumn-like tints in which the varied spring foliage of the brushwood appeared. Bright flowers and gay blossoms grew in every crevice ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... The German minstrel sings of love's sweetness and pain, of summer and its delights, of winter and its woes, now of joy and happiness, again of ill-starred fortunes. And what is the burden of the exiled Hebrew's song? Mysterious allusions, hidden in a tangle of highly polished, artificial, slow-moving rhymes, glorify, not a sweet womanly presence, but a fleeting vision, a shadow, whose elusive charms infatuated the poet in his dreams. Bright, joyous, blithe, unmeasured is the one; serious, gloomy, ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... here on the chapter of the children, I must mention one little fellow, whose family belonged to Steerage No. 4 and 5, and who, wherever he went, was like a strain of music round the ship. He was an ugly, merry, unbreeched child of three, his lint- white hair in a tangle, his face smeared with suet and treacle; but he ran to and fro with so natural a step, and fell and picked himself up again with such grace and good-humour, that he might fairly be called beautiful when he was in motion. To meet ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fence grew a stubborn tangle of briers, vines, and cane. "Mind you," I began to call after the nigger-chaser, but one of my companions ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... general atmosphere of wretchedness that pervaded the house. Auguste himself was writing a symphonic poem, Icarus, dedicated to the memory of his son. Caroline was barely twenty when she was called upon to face this tangle of difficulties, but she reviewed the situation candidly. The house had served its time at the shrine of idealism; vague, distressing, unsatisfied yearnings had brought it low enough. Her mother, thirty years before, had eloped ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... bank close by, there where the marble terrace yielded to the encroaching shrubbery: a tangle of pale pink monthly roses made a bower overhead. She was just sufficiently conscious to enable him to lead her to this soft green couch. There he laid her amongst the roses, kissed the dear, tired eyes, her hands, her lips, her tiny feet, ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... question in the tangle of my other problems. 'They will think me mad,' I thought. 'And suppose I vanish now!—Amazing disappearance of a prominent politician!' That weighed with me. A thousand inconceivably petty worldlinesses weighed with me in ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... sparing words the features of the coast, but every word showed the minuteness of his observation, the clear vision of a seaman able to master quickly the aspect of a strange land and of a strange sea. He presented, with concise lucidity, the picture of the tangle of reefs and sandbanks, through which the yacht had miraculously blundered in the dark before ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... 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 ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... rewarded the ghoul in the grave was a long tangle of black hair defiled with clay: but this was such an anti-climax that it received little attention. Suddenly, with a short exclamation and a gesture of excitement, the young man unearthed a fragment ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... light which fills vapours from within and lends them their mystery. A belt of thick brushwood and low trees lay before me, clinging to the slope, and as I pushed with great difficulty and many turns to right and left through its tangle a wisp of cloud enveloped me, and from that time on I was now in, now out, of a deceptive drifting fog, in which it was most difficult to ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... stables and sleeping-rooms, halls of audience and ladies’ bowers, were strangely intermingled. Heavy weeds were growing everywhere among the open portals, and we forced our way with difficulty through a tangle of roses and jasmine to the inner court; here choice flowers once bloomed, and fountains played in marble basins, but now was presented a scene of the most melancholy desolation. As the watchfire blazed up, its gleam fell upon masses of ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... it off!" he declared resolutely. Of what avail would be going home to a wife's peevish complaints, and sit by himself to study out this tangle? As well stay here, and master it. And that palace yonder was home, and these were the comforts for which he had spent his years and his energies! This was what he had laid up. An inheritance incorruptible—why would these things come back ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... whisper, indicating a woman with a resolutely abstracted expression and constrained hands. The children were gathered finally and formed into a line which, to the drumming piano, moved and halted, divided and subdivided. Led by the instructor it was involved in an apparently issueless tangle and then straightened smoothly out. The dancing class at an end, Helena and Gregory, wedged into the seat with Lee in the car, swept into an eager chatter, a rush of questions, that he was unable to follow. ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... doubtless they had more reason to be—then he could hardly blame them for falling out. With the morning, he knew, these army-wise soldiers would go down the road until they found their outfits and there pour forth a plausible lie about becoming lost in the tangle and how they had searched all night for ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... those peculiar old places occasionally seen in France. The environs of London have a few; America none of which I know. This house, roomy, comfortable and antiquated, was surrounded with trees and a tangle of shrubbery, vines and flowers; above it all was a high stone wall, and in front a picket iron gate. It was a mosaic—a sample of the Sixteenth Century inlaid in this; solitary as the woods; quiet as a convent; sacred as a forest; a place for dreams, and reverie, and rest. At the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... from the native campong, while it was hard to believe that within touch of the mess-room there were the quarters of nearly three hundred men. But once in a while something like a whisper came from the jungle, suggesting the passing through its dense tangle of some prey-seeking, cat-like creature. But no one spoke; though, in a half-drowsy way, those seated by the window and a couple of dark figures outside in the veranda were straining their ears and trying to make out what caused the distant sounds. ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... a natural result of his belief in a tangle of polytheism as 'the original state of religion.' If so, there was not much room for the natural development of Nyankupon, in whom 'the missionaries find a parallel to the Jahveh of the Jews.'[35] On our theory Nyankupon takes his place in ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... set out to explore one of these minor streams in your canoe, you have no intention of epoch-making discoveries, or thrilling and world-famous adventures. You float placidly down the long stillwaters, and make your way patiently through the tangle of fallen trees that block the stream, and run the smaller falls, and carry your boat around the larger ones, with no loftier ambition than to reach a good camp-ground before dark and to pass the intervening hours pleasantly, "without ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... "Tangle not thy fair tresses. Soft must they lie across my cheek when thou art mine. Come," and the soldier lay hands upon her, but she shrank away and throwing herself down beside ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... as yours, if not younger. One tress of her bright amber hair is worth a whole head of your sweetheart's black tangle. Look at that!" ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... having worked well. It is a curious collection of trash that seriously impedes navigation. The grass resembles sugar-canes; this grows from twenty to thirty feet in length, and throws out roots at every joint; thus, when matted together, its roots still increase, and render the mass a complete tangle. During the wet season the rush of water tears off large rafts of this floating water-grass, which accumulate in any favourable locality. The difficulty of clearing a passage is extreme. After cutting out a large mass with swords, a rope is made fast, and the raft ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... lavish clusters of odorous yellow jasmine and many-hued morning-glory,—the latter making a pillar heavy with triumphal wreaths of every old stump along the plashy brink,—the former swinging from tree-top to tree-top to knit the whole tropic wilderness into a tangle of emerald chains, drooping lamps of golden fire, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... as is necessary to account for the actions of the characters in this or that case; when also the incidents are so accumulated, that little room is left for display of character; when the plot is so wrought up, that the motley tangle of misunderstandings and embarrassments seems every moment on the point of being loosened, and yet the knot is only drawn tighter and tighter: such a composition may well be called a Play of Intrigue. The ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... church, by the roadside, were the dwelling-houses. Some of them were a tangle of rafters mixed up with heaps of brick and miscellaneous rubbish—stoves, pots and pans, chair-legs, pictures, bedding, boxes, and all kinds of household articles. Others had been dispersed around. Others seemed to have been tipped up bodily, so that all ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... the high walls of the block of buildings loomed in silhouette; the squares of the windows were ranks of luminous blue against the dark. Dust motes danced in shafts of sunlight. Far above, the roof was dimly visible, a spidery tangle of trusswork. And below ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... was not Mars and it was not Earth. For a moment he was puzzled. The sun, when it shone, was larger and fiercer than he had ever seen it, but it shone only for an instant. Blankets of cloud and fog hid it from view. Rain fell incessantly. Lush, rank vegetation covered the ground and rose in a tangle far overhead. The Jovians emerged from the space ship, the prisoners in their midst. A huge lizard, a hundred feet long, rushed at them but a flash of the disintegrating tubes dissolved it into dancing ...
— Giants on the Earth • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... for comprehension. Nor were their lives unregulated by principles and laws; they were ruled by canons and conventions as powerful as those of Europe, as merciless as the caste code of India; their social life was rooted in a tangle of relationships and customs as intricate as any in the world. The basis of the community was the House, at the head of which was a Master or Chief, independent and autocratic within his own limited ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... Not close to, you can bet. Got no wish to tangle with spirits, not me. But I saw them. They walked in the cornfield on top of the mine hill, and they walked in the field where your plane is. They ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... inherent in forecasts of future human pressures and problems; the frequently crossed purposes of high agencies regarding environmental action; the difficulty of feeding true esthetic and recreational values into cost-benefit computations; and the paralytic tangle of motives and loyalties in regard to planning at the local level. And a great ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... half the night, but without coming any nearer to solving the problem, and at last, thoroughly tired, I went to bed. Out of the whole tangle one thing only was plain—Etienne Cordel was playing a desperate game, and no scruples would prevent him from ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... 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 ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... been thinking," he said. "You are quite right; it is an ugly tangle I have got my life into. But remember, a man does not meet every day a woman whom he can—love; and I—I have been in deep waters. ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... it was to the boy, and as he regarded the complicated web, he found himself wondering how much of all this tangle was known to the men, and whether they were always fair to their employer. He had frequently overheard conversations at his father's when they had proclaimed how easy and care-free a life the rich led, and while they had ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... means of connecting things as I find them with the life of this Brassfield. I must take with me the bridge which spans the chasm between Brassfield and Amidon—I mean our friend Clara. Without her, I shall never go back. I haven't the nerve. I should soon find myself in a tangle of mistakes from which I could never extricate myself—I've thought it all out. The Cretan Labyrinth would be like going home from ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... everywhere around him like spots of blood. To the right of the trail there seemed to be a slight mound where he could rest awhile, and yet keep his watchful survey of the horizon. But on reaching it he found that it was only a tangle of taller mesquite grass, into which he sank with his burden. Nevertheless, if useless as a point of vantage, it offered a soft couch for Susy, who seemed to have fallen quite naturally into her usual afternoon siesta, and in a measure it shielded her from ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... whose plans have gone wrong, and who are ready to fall out of the race. The blue skies and green slopes beckon to them to come out and begin again. The prairie, with its peace and silence, calls to the troubled nations of Middle Europe, whose people are caught in the cruel tangle of war. When it is all over and the smoke has cleared away, and they who are left look around at the blackened ruins and desolated farms and the shallow graves of their beloved dead, they will come ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... dining out, he muttered unsociable objections; were people coming to the house, he complained of the lack of privacy. What a whirl they lived in! So they did, but what was the remedy? Myra herself felt helpless in a tangle of engagements. They overpowered her. She could not seem to cut her way through them. Then there were rehearsals for the concert. David Cannon came to her or she went to him nearly every day. Usually Oliver was present, putting in his opinion between each song. Did David think the South Americans ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... appeared he never was going to be lucky enough to run against one. Often he fell, sometimes flat, at others upheld by the willows. What made the work so hard was the fact that he had only one arm to open a clump of close-growing stems and his feet would catch or tangle in the narrow crotches, holding him fast. He had to struggle desperately. It was as if the willows were clutching hands, his enemies, fiendishly impeding his progress. He tore his clothes on sharp branches and his flesh suffered many ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... Tee-hee!" chirruped both Chee and Chirk, so amused at the funny tangle of legs in which the Walking Stick was, that they forgot to ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks
... that I could get out of a tangle of confused details. All through another day I watched the business of battle—a strange, mysterious thing in which one fails to find any controlling brain. Regiments came out of the trenches and wandered back, caked with clay, haggard for lack ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... the sooth we know, Then bearing battle with us through the thicket shall we go, The ancient Wood-wolf's children, and the People of the Shield, And the Spear-kin and the Horse-kin, while the others keep the field About the warded wain-burg; for not many need we there Where amidst of the thickets' tangle and the woodland net they fare, And the hearts of the aliens falter and they curse the fight ne'er done, And wonder who is fighting and ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... bitter note in Allyn's voice. He was a reservist, which made it all the worse. Reservists have ten times the outside contacts we regulars do. In general when a regular and reservist tangle, the Academy men close ranks like musk-oxen and meet the challenge with an unbroken ring of horns. But somehow I ...
— A Question of Courage • Jesse Franklin Bone
... now, except in time of freshets, or during the spring and fall rains; and there was such a prodigious tangle of alder, willow, clematis and other vines that for years no one had penetrated it. From a fisherman's point of view there seemed no inducement to do so, since this secondary channel appeared to be dry for most ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... 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 and ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber |
