"Tangle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by a few evergreen shrubs and an iron railing; but it was picturesque, nevertheless, with creepers—magnolia, wisteria, and ivy—clustering on the dark red bricks. At the back there was a good garden, and in front, across the road, were green meadows with hedgerows—a tangle of holly, hawthorn, and bramble—and old trees, surviving giants of a forest long uprooted and forgotten. It was a rich and placid scene, infinitely soothing to one fresh from the turmoil of the city, and weary of the tireless motion, the ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... advantage of her condition. Without a moment's hesitation he passed his arm firmly through hers, and before she could protest she was inside the place, being led to a table, seated there with her back to the wall, with a confused tangle of words still in her throat, unuttered. Then two great tears found their way into her eyes. She said nothing because she could not. Philip was busy talking to the waiter. Soon there was a cocktail ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... When I told you that fellow was dead I was lying. I didn't intend to fool you, but I got in an awful tangle, and you had to take your chance along with the rest. When I went to the train that day and that fool didn't heave in sight I smelt a mouse. I went to the post-office and got a letter from him. It was the most wishy-washy concoction that was ever put on paper. ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... profit by his prudence and sagacity. There had been some fine old oaks on the land when he inherited it, all mercilessly stubbed-up at the beginning of his reign; there had been tall straggling hedgerows, all of a tangle with blackberry bushes, ferns, and dog-roses, hazel and sloe trees, all done away with by his order. No, he could never bring himself to sell Wyncomb. Nor was the purchase of an annuity a transaction which ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... 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
... perpetually temperate climate and even with occasional frosts. I confess that I did not believe all of his statements. I was then experienced in climbing Philippine mountains, and at five thousand feet had invariably found a hopeless tangle of the rankest tropical vegetation, with humidity so high that trees were draped with ferns, orchids, and thick moss, and dripping with moisture. However, I knew that the mere presence of pine and oak trees would mean the occurrence of special bird ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... 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. Then the old and ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... intentions, I blame you greatly. You orter have—excuse my plainness. I'm an old man who likes my minister, and don't want him to go wrong, and then I feel for her, left alone by all her folks—more's the shame to them, and more's the harm for you to tangle up her affections, as you are doing, if you are not in earnest; and I speak for her just as I should want some one to speak ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... like a sleeping eye when I got before it. It was a big, old, rambling stone house with a tangle of vines half torn away by the winds: I hammered on the door and finally an aged man-servant holding a candle high above ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... was a dreary muddle, cold, wind-swept, and filthy, with the accumulated dirt incident to the passage through of many divisions. Their train came in at seven one night, and they waited in line until one while a military tangle was straightened out somewhere ahead. Officers ran up and down ceaselessly, calling orders and making a great uproar. It turned out that the trouble was due to the colonel, who was in a righteous temper because he was a West Pointer, and the war was going to stop before he could get overseas. ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... heart-stirring trumpet-notes sounded the Last Post. With a small shudder Evelyn shrank closer to her husband, resting her head against his chair; and Desmond lay watching her in silent wonderment at the tangle of moods and graces which, for lack of a truer word, must needs be called her character. He wondered also how much might have been averted if she had come to him thus yesterday instead of to-day. Impossible to guess. He could only wrench his thoughts ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... law he's a master, and likewise a limb; His mind never once, when its purpose is fixed, errs: For cuteness there's none holds a candle to him. Let them try to deceive him, why, bless you, he's been there, And can track his way straight through a tangle of lies; And though some might grow gray at the things he has seen there, He never, no, never, gives way ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... came up to me, smiling, as I passed down the steps. I assisted his vivacious helpmeet to alight. I knew that all this tangle would presently force itself one way or the other. So I only smiled, and urged her and her husband rapidly as I might up the steps and in at the door, where I knew they would immediately be surprised and fully occupied. Then again I approached Grace ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... sentimental? No, she was not. Indeed, precisely what his little visit had done for her was to effect her release from a tangle of taut-drawn sentimentalities. She hadn't felt as free as this, as comfortable with herself, since she came home ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... looked about us. The deck was a tangle of planks on edge, of planks on end, of splinters, of ruined woodwork. The masts rose from that chaos like big trees above a matted undergrowth. The interstices of that mass of wreckage were full of something ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... Virginia came to hand, and the cause was argued the same month at Trinity term on a writ of quo warranto before Chief-Justice James Ley of the King's Bench. The legal status of the company was unfavorable, for it was in a hopeless tangle, and the death record in the colony was an appalling fact. When, therefore, the attorney-general, Coventry, attacked the company for mismanagement, even an impartial tribune might have quashed the charter. ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... for summer," he replied— "With the winter one goes south, as a matter of course, though I'm not sure that it is always advisable. I have found the Mediterranean tiresome very often." He broke off and seemed to lose himself for a moment in a tangle of vexed thought. Then he resumed quickly:— "Well, next week, then. Rothesay bay, and ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... frenzied gallop through the darkness and the storm, and when at last the sky brightened and a wet, gray light made the earth dimly visible, Mead could see beside him a close huddle of lumbering, straining backs and over it a tangle of tossing and knocking horns. The crowding, crazy herd, and he beside it, were rushing pell-mell down a long, sloping hill. With one keen, sweeping glance through the dim light and the streaming rain he saw a clump of trees, which meant ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... a few heart-beats there was only a tangle of whirling forms with the sound of fist on flesh, then the blot split up and forms plunged outward, falling heavily. Again the sailors rushed, attempting to clinch. They massed upon Dextry only to grasp empty air, for he shifted with remarkable agility, striking bitterly, as an old wolf ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... tangle of orange and lemon trees, looped with garlands of roses and flowering creepers, carpeted with a thousand fragrant, old-fashioned flowers, and arboured with grapevines, whose last year's leaves, though sparse, were still ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... got back a letter from Howarth, in which the latter said: 'Kelly did not half do his job, and all the others are kicking at me.' At any rate, Kelly did not get his one hundred and fifty dollars. Mr. Racicot then took him in hand and tried very hard to tangle him up. He commenced by trying to break down the force of the evidence of the letters, which Kelly claims Howarth has written, and which Kelly claims he had seen. Of course he had to admit that he could ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... irritated at the momentary triumph of the foes of Revelation, if such a feeling of triumph there be, and of hurrying on a forcible solution of the difficulty, which may in the event only reduce the inquiry to an inextricable tangle, he will recollect that, in the order of Providence, our seeming dangers are often our greatest gains; that in the words of the ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... exposed to their artillery fire was crowded with the white tents of a numerous army. In the hollows and on the middle slopes canvas villages gleamed like patches of snowdrops. The iron bridge across the Blue Krantz River lay in a tangle of crimson-painted wreckage across the bottom of the ravine, and the railway ran over an unpretentious but substantial wooden structure. All along the line near the station fresh sidings had been built, and many trains concerned in ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... in some mythical figure or Utopia. So to express it is simply to indulge an innocent instinct for prophecy and metaphor; but unfortunately the very innocence of fancy may engage it all the more hopelessly in a tangle of bad dreams. If we once identify our Utopia or other ideal with the real forces that surround us, or with any one of them, we have fallen into an illusion from which we shall emerge only after bitter disappointments; and even ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... was a witching tangle of shadows, and the air was drowsy with spicy, wind-blown scents, as four motor cars swept on their merry ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... 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 ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... near approach to success was made by my dear friend George William Curtis of New York, who, in admirable temper, and clear voice, unraveled the tangle, as he understood it, and seemed just about to start the convention fairly on its way, when some marplot arose to suggest that some minor point in Mr. Curtis's exposition was not correct, thus calling out a tumult of conflicting statements, the result of which was yet greater confusion, ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... low gray house standing on a grassy bank close to the road. The door was at the side, facing us, and a tangle of snowberry bushes and cinnamon roses grew to the level of the window-sills. On the doorstep stood a bent-shouldered, little old woman; there was an air of welcome and of unmistakable dignity ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... fluttered softly in a gentle breeze laden with perfumes from the garden. Near by was swinging the beaded tassel of a book-mark between the pages of a half-opened volume. He looked at the title and saw that it was Lalla Rookh. He smiled, as he glanced round the room on the flowery festoons, the graceful tangle of bright arabesques on the walls, the Dancing Girl, and the Sleeping Cupid. "All is in harmony with Canova, and Moore, and Rossini," thought he. "The Lady in Milton's Comus has been the ideal of my imagination; and now here I am so strangely ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... shimmering in the golden light, while here and there the broad-spreading, feathery sumachs made great splashes of brilliant crimson upon the yellow and gold. Down in the bottom stood the cedars and the balsams, still green. We stood some moments silently gazing into this tangle of interlacing boughs and shimmering leaves, all glowing in yellow light, then Lady Charlotte broke the silence in tones soft and reverent as if she ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... if you keep on asking questions I'll get in such a tangle that I'll never be able to find my way out," laughed her mother. "Come, we'll get ready to go crabbing this afternoon and that will keep you so busy you ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cousin Tom's • Laura Lee Hope
... itself was, on my side, fringed with bulrushes and other aquatic plants; on the opposite bank there were some large alders lifting their branches above great masses of bramble and rose-briar, all together forming as rich and beautiful a tangle as one could find even in the most luxuriant of the wild, unkept hedges round the village. The briars especially flourished wonderfully at this spot, climbing high and dropping their long, slim branches quite down to the surface of the water, and in some places forming an arch above the ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... a scientific nomenclature that the word "devolution" has to Irish ears come to mean something similar in kind to "Federal" Home Rule, but less in degree, and something different in kind from "Colonial" Home Rule, and infinitely less in degree. What a tangle of truth and fallacy from the misuse of a single word! It is associated rightly with the ill-starred Irish Council Bill of 1907, and it has been universally but wrongly used to indicate a small measure of local government in contradistinction to the Home Rule Bills of Mr. Gladstone ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... present time we had seen no signs of sea-tangle or molluscae, but during the night we beheld some molluscae for the first time, shining like stars at a great depth below the surface of ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... with thee the roaring wells Should gulf him fathom-deep in brine; And hands so often clasp'd in mine, Should toss with tangle ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... of the maid of the loch which rose before him struck him as no unpleasant one. He remembered for one thing how the sun shone through the tangle of her hair. But he had quite forgotten, on the other hand, at what part of his exegesis he had left off. It was, however, a manifest impossibility for him to slip out again. Besides, he was in mortal terror lest Mr. Welsh should ask for ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... by a span of grass rope, had been thrown overboard from the pursued vessel, in the hope that the submarine would foul her propellers in the tangle of line. Once a blade picked up that trailing rope, the latter would coil round the boss as tightly as a band ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... her position. If Mr. Hamilton married she could not remain in his house; no wife could brook such interference. She knows this, and it is her interest to prevent him from marrying. All this is clear enough; but in the case of poor Gladys?' But here again was the old tangle and perplexity. ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the names the door swung wide and the man smiled a welcome. They entered amid a rabble of sled-dogs and puppies, which rolled about the floor in a seemingly inextricable tangle, with numerous dusky youngsters of various ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... more set this tangle straight. She appeared to Leo, who was standing idly at his tent door, and told him that Roger was dying in the depths of the forest. The prince, who had grieved sorely for the loss of his friend, heard eagerly her tale, and consented gladly to ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... clouded the joy of reunion with her father; for both were adepts in the fine art of loving, the touchstone of every human relation. And in talk with him she could straighten out her tangle of impressions, her ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... a matter of minutes before we three were poking about in a tangle of wood and field, seeking to locate the spot where Kennedy's apparatus had ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... stood 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 ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... bitterly of these things as he stood leaning upon the graveyard fence. His life was a graveyard, a tangle of weeds, a plat of purposes overgrown with rank despair. He had struggled since he could remember. All his life had been one terrible struggle. And now, he knew that it was useless, he understood that the evil was hereditary, and ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... Human or Divine, To-morrow's tangle to the winds resign, And lose your fingers in the tresses of The cypress-slender ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... 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 ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... bank of a lazy eddy, birch-bark canoes were lined two and three deep. Ivory-bladed spears, bone-barbed arrows, buckskin-thonged bows, and simple basket-woven traps bespoke the fact that in the muddy current of the river the salmon-run was on. In the background, from the tangle of skin tents and drying frames, rose the voices of the fisher folk. Bucks skylarked with bucks or flirted with the maidens, while the older squaws, shut out from this by virtue of having fulfilled the end of their existence in reproduction, gossiped as they braided rope from the green roots of trailing ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... ached. Life to her seemed an inexplicable tangle, from which one fact stood out with insistent prominence. This, that although Windebank's thoughtless words about the safety of a woman with the man who truly loved her had awakened considerable apprehension in her heart, she realised how necessary it was to trust Perigal ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... In time the gray dawn came creeping in at the window, until at length the chinks between the logs in the little square-cut window and the ill-fitting door were flooded with a sea of sunlight. As this light grew stronger, Law slowly turned and looked at the face beside him. Out of the tangle of dark hair there blazed still two eyes, eyes which looked steadily up at the ceiling, refusing to turn either to the right or to the left. He calmly pulled closer to him, so that it might not stain the garments of the woman beside him, the blood-soaked shirt whose ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... east the steady sun-track Golden meshes fill Webs of fire, that lace and tangle, Never ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... 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
... toilet. It was a simple process. His ablutions were taken at irregular intervals, sometimes at long intervals, and this was not the time for them. He ran his fingers through his hair to take some of the tangle out of it, shook his great frame to force his clothes into comfortable position, tightened his loosened belt, and took off his boots. For a few moments he sat on the settle, his legs stretched out wide apart, ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... beat Chantilly. One minute before the close of the fourth chukkur the score stood at four all. Both teams were playing with desperation to avoid a decider on tired ponies, when the Wanderers' third man extricated the ball from a tangle of prancing hoofs and clattering sticks, and Alec Delgrado got away with it. He thought his pony was good for one last run at top speed, that and no more. Risking it, he sprinted across two hundred yards of green turf with the Chantilly Number One in hot chase. His opponent was a stone lighter ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... spiritualistically minded, philosophers have always aimed at cleaning up the litter with which the world apparently is filled. They have substituted economical and orderly conceptions for the first sensible tangle; and whether these were morally elevated or only intellectually neat they were at any rate always aesthetically pure and definite, and aimed at ascribing to the world something clean and intellectual in the way of inner structure. As compared ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... edge of the woods he could see the regimental colours and the bulk of his regiment re-forming; and he spurred forward to join them, skirting the edge of a tangle of infantry, dragoons, and lancers who were having a limited but bloody affair of their own in a cornfield where a flag tossed wildly—a very beautiful, square red flag, its folds emblazoned with a blue ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... a wilderness of garden, which revealed itself through an arch in an overgrown laurel hedge. She had glimpses of unkempt grass paths and unclipped topiary work which had lost its original form. Among a tangle of weeds rose the heads of clumps of daffodils, stirred by a passing wind of spring. In the park beyond ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... sun, it came cool to the lungs, cool and intensely sweet. Thousands of wild flowers perfumed it and the sun-drawn resin of a thousand firs. All the while the rushing of water accompanied the creaking of Thatcher's progress. Not far from the road, down there below in a tangle of pine branches, willows, and ferns, the frost-white stream fled toward the valley with all the seeming terror of escape. Here the team began their tugging and their panting and their long pauses ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... song with breaks in it and small chirping sounds, and when a great multitude of birds sing together the sound at a distance of fifty or sixty yards is as of a high wind among the trees, but on a nearer approach the mass of sound resolves itself into a tangle of thousands of individual sounds, resembling that of a great concourse of starlings at roosting time, but more musical in character. It is as if hundreds of fairy minstrels were all playing on stringed and wind instruments of various forms, every one intent on his own ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... could crowd out love. I knew that the time had come. I had had some trouble with Miss Wharton, the dean, and expecting to be asked to resign my position at Harlowe House. I resigned of my own accord. It was Kathleen West who straightened out that tangle for me. She sent for Miss Wilder, who happened to be coming home just at that time. My resignation wasn't accepted, and I would perhaps have gone on for another year at Overton, but—" Grace paused, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... me it comes to earning one's living in the long run," said Ann Veronica, coloring faintly. "Until a girl can go away as a son does and earn her independent income, she's still on a string. It may be a long string, long enough if you like to tangle up all sorts of people; but there it is! If the paymaster pulls, home she must go. That's what ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... voices vain and decorous and smooth, That fill the world with empty-hearted talk; The foolish voices, wandering and confused, That never clearly speak the thing they would, But ramble blindly round their true intent And tangle sense in hopeless coils of sound,— All these she heard, and with a deep mistrust Began to doubt the value of her gift. It seemed as if the world, the living world, Sincere, and vast, and real, were still concealed, And she, within the prison of her soul, Still waiting silently to hear the voice ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... which could not do any harm if they would; but the prejudices of society are so strong against them that one does not like to cultivate too much intimacy with them. So we tried to turn out of our path into a tangle of bushes; and there, instead of one, we found four snakes. We turned on the other side, and there were two more. In short, everywhere we looked, the dry leaves were rustling and coiling with them; and we were in despair. In vain we said that ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of brushwood, and the men stopped at the broken edge of a declivity which led down to a shingle bank and a foam-crested river of clear, blue-green water, strongly impregnated with sulphur from some medicinal springs above, with a steep bank of tangle on the opposite side. This beautiful stream was crossed by two round poles, a foot apart, on which I attempted to walk with the help of an Aino hand; but the poles were very unsteady, and I doubt whether any one, even with a strong head, could walk on them in boots. Then ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... 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
... Apollo's beauty?—surely eld shall spare Smooth skin, and flashing eyes, and crispy hair!— Nay, Jove himself?—the pride that holds the low Apart, despised, to mighty tales must grow!— Or Pallas?—for the world that knoweth nought, By that great wisdom to the wicket brought, Clear through the tangle evermore shall see! —O Faithful, O Beloved, turn to ME! I am the Ancient of the Days that were I am the Newborn that To-day brings here, I am the Life of all that dieth not; Through ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... the woods luxuriant in their midsummer verdure, silent except for the occasional note of a wild bird; and about us were the green fields, fresh mown of late, with thickets of grape and wild convolvulus and star-wreathed blackberry-vines making a luxuriant tangle over the fences. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... a few hundred yards to a kind of ridge, upon surmounting which I found myself upon the edge of a wildly picturesque glen, or ravine, the steep sides of which consisted of finely broken ground interspersed with outcrops of lichen—stained rock and thickly overgrown with a tangle of bushes and flowering shrubs, with here and there a few graceful saplings or a clump of noble shade trees entwined with strange-looking and beautiful orchids. The cool, refreshing, musical sound ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... monkeys long since extinct; a curved shingle beach some fifty yards across, shut in right and left by steep rocks wooded down almost to the sea, and worn into black caves and crannies, festooned with the night-blowing Cereus, which crawls about with hairy green legs, like a tangle of giant spiders. Among it, in the cracks, upright Cerei, like candelabra twenty and thirty feet high, thrust themselves aloft into the brushwood. An Aroid {103b} rides parasitic on roots and stems, sending downward long air-roots, and upward ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... the stream leaps out into the light in a fluted curve thick sown with sparkling crystals, and falls into a pool filled with brown boulders, out of which it creeps gray with foam-bells and disappears in a tangle of verdure like that ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... Arkwright, the late bridesmaid, who was having an independent chat all to herself about the many glories of the pier-end, and the sights to be seen there by visitors for a penny. And it—we are speaking of the tide—had got a delightful tangle of floating weed (Fucus Vesiculosus) and well-washed scraps of wood from long-forgotten wrecks—who knows?—and was turning it gently to and fro, and over and over, with intermittent musical caresses, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... on the log, and lowered himself until arm and shoulder were in the river. Then he sank still further until his head was under too, and the girl shivered a little. It seemed to her that it would be difficult for even a good swimmer to extricate himself from the tangle of snapped-off branches between the log and the bottom of the river. Still, the clinging foot and arm were visible above the rush of frothing water. Then more of the man came into sight again, there was a half-smothered shout, and she ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... had been talking with some one in the office about it, and had been laughingly informed that there was a method that could bring back to his memory that which he desired so ardently to recollect. "If you will tell me how to unravel this tangle that is in my brain, you will have my ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... cry of the wind then. Yet it must be. Or if not that it must be some voice of nature. But the river had no such thrill of pain, of reproach in its song. Then he thought it was some night bird, haunting the eaves of his cottage, or the tangle of wood the country people called his garden. And he put on his clothes eagerly, descended the narrow staircase, and let himself out on to the path that curved to the white gate. But, in the garden there was no ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... and crosses whole—lies exquisitely mirrored in the river below, where hollow willows, grotesquely shaped (some of them rooted on the river's banks, and some in the water itself, and all drooping their branches until their leaves have formed a tangle with the water lilies which float on the surface), seem to be gazing at the marvellous reflection at ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... line. These lines are of different lengths, so as to allow the dogs to pull to greater advantage than if all the traces were of the same length, causing the dogs to spread out like a fan. At every few miles the traces have to be unloosened and extricated from the most abominable tangle that it is possible to conceive. This comes from a habit the dogs have of constantly running under and over the other traces to avoid the whip, or in some cases merely from ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... 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 of ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a prison of loneliness and suspicion. If we worshipped life instead of metal disks, we would see that the young are not really the heirs of the old, but the old are heirs of the young. Then and there I vowed to keep myself clear of the whole wretched tangle, even if I had to carry laundry all my life, so that if any one ever tried to fetter me I could fling his words back in his face! (Uncle Richard's nerves are all on edge. A terrific storm of overbearing temper visibly gathers during this speech, and the Colonel's long habit of successful ...
— Read-Aloud Plays • Horace Holley
... particularly didn't want. Still, I could not see any means of getting the weapon into my own hands without its going off. It was impossible to "rush" him. The dozen yards which separated us was one solid tangle of scrub-bushes interwoven with brambles. It would have taken at least forty seconds to tear through them, and in that time he could most assuredly snap off all six chambers, however big a duffer he might be. This would bring up some of the country people ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... so. The train had scarcely come to a standstill, but already he had descended. Avoiding the platform, he crossed straight on to the roadway, and was lost amidst the tangle of cabs. I turned to the girl, affecting not to notice ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Mervyn's work-basket, and there, snugly coiled in the midst of wools, knitting, and fancy work, lay the white kitten fast asleep! This was not the worst, for it had evidently amused itself first by a game of play. All the skeins of wool were twisted up in a tangle, and a quantity of silk was wound tightly ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... their rustic comrades. These men spoke 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 a harder couch. They were rough in their ways ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... may well have been Lincoln's consolation in this tangle of cross-purposes. Only boldness could extricate him from the mesh of his difficulties. The mesh was destined to grow more and more of a snare; his boldness was to grow with his danger. He struck the note that was to rule his conduct thereafter, when, on the day he sent the final instructions ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... first lesson," cried Helen, jumping up, for the band had slipped from the groove, and hung in a hopeless tangle—"and I fear Miss Thusa will never be willing to give ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... battle with the look we so admire in the picture called The Soul's Awakening. He was going to glory. There are no dead. There are only memorial crosses for heroes and the Last Post. The opinions of most civilians on the War were as agreeable as stained-glass windows. The thought of a tangle of a boy's inside festooned on rusty wire would naturally have spoiled the soul's awakening and the luxury of the sigh. I heard of a civilian official, on his way to Paris after the Armistice, who was just saved by rapid explanations from the drastic ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... infallible instinct as a composer. He grows tired, exaggerates his mannerisms, gives a greater and greater share of the work to his pupils. The later Stanze are either pompous or confused, or both, until we reach the higgledy-piggledy of the "Burning of the Borgo" or that inextricable tangle, suggestive of nothing so much as of a dish of macaroni, the "Battle of Constantine," a picture painted after the master's death, but for which he probably left something in ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... aghast at the admission to speak. It was a strange tangle: Clement standing straight and still on the landing- place; Wilmet, with Theodore humming to himself, as innocent of the fray as the tadpoles that Stella was cherishing in the cupboard doorway; Alda, flushed and angry; and ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... brief for no land That tramples on its kin; My heart once bled for Poland And groaned for Russia's sin; But, if to clear the tangle WINSTON is given his head, I feel that General WRANGEL Were better downed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... known Lucette for years, even when she was a barefooted little tangle-hair, peeping at me with her great brown eyes from beneath her ragged straw hat. She wears high-heeled slippers now, and sometimes on Sundays dainty silk stockings, and her hair is braided down her back, little French Marguerite that she is, and her hat is never ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... squeak showed that the game was astir. Vix rose up and went on tiptoe into the grass—not crouching but as high as she could stand, sometimes on her hind legs so as to get a better view. The runs that the mice follow are hidden under the grass tangle, and the only way to know the whereabouts of a mouse is by seeing the slight shaking of the grass, which is the reason why mice are hunted only on ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... I think about it," he quipped, "I used to tangle almost every day in fifth grade with a kid that looked just like you. Seriously, Troy, I've got a wild idea and I want to try it out on you before I hit Jordan ...
— The Thirst Quenchers • Rick Raphael
... majesty lay, mystery, power, and all deep and significant things. In the midst of the river bed, and quite near, rose a round and squat white tower with a small cupola. Beyond it, on the little cliff, was a tangle of palms where a tiny oasis sheltered a few native huts. At an immense distance, here and there, other oases showed as dark stains show on the sea where there are hidden rocks. And still farther away, on ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... contrive it?" I asked, pausing to ease my back, and listening for a moment to the sound of hatchets on deck. (They were cutting away the tangle of the mizzen rigging.) ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... muffled reply from the corner where a struggling tangle of clothes, hands and feet proclaimed ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... close up to her and cried in great emotion: "She, she! Aye, she hath indeed cast her devil's tangle of gold about me to ensnare all that is vain and base in me; but she has no more room in my heart than those bees have. And if you—if my good angel will but be mine again I will cry 'apage'—I ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... state right here, though, that it is a mistake for a man to undertake to save the country and to have ideas on that subject when he tries to help another fellow win the heart of a girl and gets mixed up in the tangle that such interference is bound to bring on anybody who attempts it. I didn't know, and therefore I should have thrown up the job as soon as I began to get wound in it. You have heard that gentle hum of the buzz-saw? You have seen how still it runs and ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... All this is a tangle of sophisms. The assumption is, it is better to inflict a private wrong than a public one: we ought to wrong one rather than many. But even then, it is badly stated. The principle is true only where the tolerating ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... times, and I have no doubt it can easily be "explained away." In fact, the rationalistic explanation of the whole thing is patent and on the surface. There is only one little difficulty, and that, I fancy, is by no means insuperable. In any case this one knot or tangle may be put down as a queer coincidence and ...
— The Angels of Mons • Arthur Machen
... led by Colonel Jenkins, made a flank movement, and by a desperate assault, took the redoubt on the left, with six pieces of artillery. When Rhodes' North Carolina Brigade got sufficiently through the tangle and undergrowth and near the opening as to see their way clear, they raised a yell, and with a mad rush, they took the fort with a bound. They were now within the strong fortress on the left and masters of the situation. Colonel Jenkins was highly complimented by the commanding General for his skill, ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... them moving along in the tall grass near the Nzoia River. Again we swiftly circled to head them off before they could cross the river, but when we reached a point where they had last been seen they had disappeared in the dense tangle of trees and high reeds that grew at the river's edge. We thought they would cross the river, so we rushed after them. Suddenly Hassan yelled "Here they come!" and, ahead of us, came the large elephant, its head rising from above the sea of grass like the bow of a battleship ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... over to a cat's-claw bush at whose base lay a tangle of dead leaves. With a bit of stick, he scattered this litter, struck the ground several good blows and returned with a string of fat desert mice. With infinite care Cesca kindled a fire so tiny, so clear, that scarcely a wisp of smoke escaped into the ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... of the boulevard, where a gang of Finns were working, and beyond which lay the ragged, uncultivated outskirts of her father's land. Up through a tangle of nettles and yarrow she could see the zigzag path which had been the rainbow bridge of her happiness. She came to a dead stop, the back of her hand pressed against her mouth fearfully. "If I go ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... 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, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... footing that would allow him to reach the watchful invader. But between the solid wall of the dam and the bank there was a tangled framework through which the water rushed with some violence. Three times Kazan fought to work his way through that tangle, and three times his efforts ended in sudden plunges into the water. All this time Broken Tooth did not move. When at last Kazan gave up the attack the old engineer slipped over the edge of the dam and disappeared ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... those in power; they brought reciprocal accusations of lukewarm zeal; they invented the most treacherous ways of getting rid of a rival. There had been none of this internecine warfare among the Liberals; they were too far from power, too hopelessly out of favor; and Lucien, amid the inextricable tangle of ambitions, had neither the courage to draw sword and cut the knot, or the patience to unravel it. He could not be the Beaumarchais, the Aretino, the Freron of his epoch; he was not made of such stuff; he thought of nothing but his one desire, the patent of nobility; for he saw clearly that ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... you at first that that was Tangle town," his friend went on. "Don't suppose I'm saying anything against her—or against you; but she's just as much to ten other men as she is to you, and they all are old enough to carry lots ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... himself appeared, carrying Dolly and his new broom in his arms, and looking very haggard and tattered himself, his bare feet black with mud, and his bare head in a hopeless condition of confusion, and tangle. ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton
... leaves. But the rain is over now, the sky once more a pure lucid blue above me—all around me, in fact, since I am standing high on the top of the ancient stupendous earthwork, grown over with oak wood and underwood of holly and thorn and hazel with tangle of ivy and bramble and briar. It is marvellously still; no sound from the village reaches me; I only hear the faint rustle of the dead leaves as they fall, and the robin, for one spied me here and has come to keep me company. At ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... swaggered on board 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 hair, came running ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... shore stretching both ways—nothing to eat, nothing to drink, but fortunately the raft and the money had been thrown near her; none of the lashings having given way—only what is the use of a guinea amongst tangle and sea-gulls? The money she distributed amongst her pockets, and soon found strength to rise and march forward. But which was forward? and which backward? She knew by the conversation of the sailors that Paita must be in the neighborhood; ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... of the garden of the old time, out of the dimness of a forgotten past, the two took their radiant youth and the brightness of to-day. But a breeze blew across the tangle of weeds and flowers as they wandered away, and whispered a hope, perhaps a promise; for as it touched them each tall stalk nodded gayly and the box hedges rustled delicately an answering undertone. And just at the edge of the woodland, before they were out of sight, the girl turned and threw a ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... If she knew, why should she call the police in? She might have buried the ears, and no one would have been the wiser. That is what she would have done if she had wished to shield the criminal. But if she does not wish to shield him she would give his name. There is a tangle here which needs straightening out." He had been talking in a high, quick voice, staring blankly up over the garden fence, but now he sprang briskly to his feet ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... road with the shock of a railway collision; rolled over and over like dogs in a scrap, only there wasn't any growling or yelping. It was deadly quiet; not for an instant could you tell which was which, or whether the whirling, pelting tangle of arms and legs was man, beast or devil. That's why, even when I got near enough, I didn't dare plant a large, thick-soled boot in ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... train sped in one direction, and the group of women in another, no one noticed the stooped, gaunt man who dropped from the rear end of the baggage car, and, creeping down the bank of the ravine, disappeared into the green tangle ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... second day he had left Harmony, enmeshed and helpless in a tangle of language, trying to explain to the little Bulgarian the reason American women wished to vote. Byrne flung down the stairs and out into the street, ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... can doe all in all With her, that hateth thee and hates vs all, And Yorke, and impious Beauford, that false Priest, Haue all lym'd Bushes to betray thy Wings, And flye thou how thou canst, they'le tangle thee. But feare not thou, vntill thy foot be snar'd, Nor neuer seeke preuention ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... his saddle on his shoulder, on his way to place it on its accustomed peg in the lean-to adjoining the bunkhouse, passed Rope, it was by the merest accident that one of the stirrups caught the cinch buckle of Rope's saddle. Not observing the tangle, Ferguson continued on his way. He halted when he felt the stirrup strap drag, turning half around to see what was wrong. He smiled broadly ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Seven in one of his tantrums half so well as Number Five can do it. She can pick out what threads of sense may be wound off from the tangle of his ideas when they are crowded and confused, as they are apt to be at times. She can soften the occasional expression of half-concealed ridicule with which the poor old fellow's sallies are liable to be welcomed—or unwelcomed. She knows that the edge of a broken teacup may be sharper, very ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... all a horrible tangle," she said, "and what the next twenty years will bring forth who can tell? Oh! one moment, Mr. Wharton, before I forget. Are you ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... car tracks and entered a little grassy lane that skirted the stunted oaks. A few hundred feet from the street stood a cottage built of yellow "Milwaukee" brick. It was quite hidden from the street by the oak grove. The lane ended just beyond in a tangle of weeds and undergrowth. On the west side there was an open, marshy lot which separated the cottage in the trees from Stoney Island Avenue,—the artery that connects Pullman and ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... towards Rotherwood, and in spite of his loitering pace there was an intent and watchful look in his eyes; but what his purpose or design might be was best known to himself; for wonderful and devious are the ways of man, and who can fathom them? Presently a tempting tangle of honeysuckle attracted him, and he clambered up the bank in search of it. The bank was dry and slippery, and the honeysuckle was difficult to reach, but Malcolm was not to be conquered. He had just caught hold of the branch, when the far-off click of a gate attracted ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... been heard in the middle of this crowd, if the stream of gold left by the Nabob wherever he had passed, marking his royal progress, had not opened all the roads to her. She went behind the attendant in this tangle of passages, of folding-doors, of empty resounding halls, filled with a hum which circulated with the air of the building, as if the walls, themselves soaked with babble, were joining to the sound of all these voices the echoes of the past. While crossing ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... them as the darkness fell, and the solemn bulk of the girdling hills lay blacker upon the waters, and the Syrian sky was mirrored with all its stars sparkling in the still lake. All the night long cast after cast was made, and time after time the net was drawn in and nothing in it but tangle and mud. And when the first streak of the morning breaks pale over the Eastern hills they are still so absorbed in their tasks that they do not recognise the voice that hails them from the nearer shore: 'Lads, have ye any meat?' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... that no lanterns illume Stand groups of slim lilies and jonquils in bloom; On tiptoe, unseen 'mid a tangle of green, They offer the midnight ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... me," said the Wind To the ship within the dock "Or dost thou fear the shock Of the ocean-hidden rock, When tempests strike thee full and leave thee blind; And low the inky clouds, Blackly tangle in thy shrouds; And ev'ry strained cord Finds a voice and shrills a word, That word of doom so thunderously upflung From the tongue Of every forked wave, Lamenting o'er a grave Deep hidden at its base, ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... as they take their flight!" and they ring in our hearts to-day as we wander into this picturesque old way; and we love even more dearly than of yore the quiet, the grassy sides, the wild growths of roses and blackberry-bushes, the tangle of ivy and woodbine, and the lovely vistas through leafy framings of sunny hillsides and woods, of pastures dotted with grazing cattle, and of peaceful farm homes. It is a country idyll, sweet and restful! We may slacken our horses reins ...
— Annals and Reminiscences of Jamaica Plain • Harriet Manning Whitcomb |
