"Tangle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fairy-like little creature, with beautiful hazel eyes, and a wealth of brown hair on her tiny head that was a veritable crown of glory, reaching below her waist, and looking like a tangle of gold when the sun played upon it; and, somehow or other, she was the life and light of our home, always having a kind word for everybody, and ever acting as the peacemaker when any little difference ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... irritably, I looked up—and a second shower dropped fully upon my face and filled my eyes with dust. I drew back, checking an exclamation. What with the depth of the embrasure, due to the great thickness of the wall, and the leafy tangle above the window, I could see for no great distance up the face of the building; but a faint sound of rustling and stumbling which proceeded from somewhere above me proclaimed that some one, or something, was climbing either up or down the wall of ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... and covered with moss. He soon found one of the paddles, but in getting it became entangled in the long grass, until he was in great danger of drowning. By lying lengthways on the paddle, keeping his legs extended and swimming with long over-hand strokes, he got out of the tangle. He had been pretty well frightened, and swimming to the shore, climbed up on some mangrove roots. After looking for a long time, Ned made out the bow of the submerged little canoe sticking out from a bunch of moss in the eel-grass. It was about an eighth of a mile away and ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... and booth on booth, until Nick wondered where the gardens were; and such a maze of lanes, byways, courts, blind alleys, and passages that his simple country footpath head went all into a tangle, and he could scarcely have told Tottenham Court road ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... of that tangle, all of you," ordered Tom Craig, after pulling himself out of the squirming heap of boys. "It's against the rules to smother the referee to death. He has to ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock
... whose hands were still wet with the blood of murdered Christians. Could that be reconciled with what is right? A little later he saw the Kaiser once again pushing himself into Mediterranean politics, where no direct German interest lay, and endeavoring to tangle up the French developments in Northern Africa by provocative personal appearances at Morocco, and, later, by sending a gunboat to intrude upon a scene of action which had already by the Treaty of Algeciras ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... evening and Saturday afternoons, doing odd jobs in the cellar with the barrels; for your true toping spirit loves to knock the hoops and to work about the cask, and carry the jugs in answer to the cry for some more 'tangle-legs'—for thus they called the strong beer. Sometimes a labourer would toast his cheese on a fork in the flame of the candle. In the old days, before folk got so choice of food and delicate of palate, there really seemed no limit to ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... another bed, and when it had put forth its virgin buddings he transplanted the best of them, putting bell-glasses over them. He made all the cuttings in accordance with the precepts of The Good Gardener. He treated the flowers tenderly; he let the fruits grow in a tangle, and then selected one on either arm, removed the others, and, as soon as they were as large as nuts, he slipped a little board around their rind to prevent them from rotting by contact with dung. He heated them, gave them air, ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... knees. Or you might explore the tidal rocks, above all in the ebb of springs, when the very roots of the hills were for the nonce discovered; following my leader from one group to another, groping in slippery tangle for the wreck of ships, wading in pools after the abominable creatures of the sea, and ever with an eye cast backward on the march off the tide and the menaced line of your retreat. And then you might go Crusoeing, a word that covers all extempore eating in the open ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 motes of light. The Jovians made their way through the steaming jungle until a huge ...
— Giants on the Earth • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... after an hour of casting. Half the time you would not see your fish at all, but only hear the savage plunge as he swirled down with your fly. At other times, as you struck sharply at the plunge, your fly would come back to you, or tangle itself up in unseen snags; and far out, where the verge of the firelight rippled away into the darkness, you would see a sharp wave-wedge shooting away, which told you that your trout was only a musquash. Swimming quietly by, he had seen you and your fire, and slapped his tail down hard on ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... she felt then, nor, perhaps, do I quite know yet; but she caught a tangle of wild cut-leafed ivy from a tree on which I had long watched it grow, and with a spray of small green leaves she crowned herself, and so departed as she had come, singing as if she had not a care in the world, or ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... were young, the Deckers had lived in a sagging old frame house (from which the original paint had long ago peeled in great scrofulous patches) on an unimportant street in Chippewa. There was a worm-eaten, russet-apple tree in the yard, an untidy tangle of wild-cucumber vine over the front porch, and an uncut brush of sunburned grass and ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... clothes had to be hunted for or mended—far from it. But there were so many cupboards to be locked, their keys hidden in drawers, the keys of which, in their turn, went into more cupboards. When such an inextricable tangle as no burglar could tackle had been woven, Mrs. Marston always wanted something out of the first cupboard, and all had to be done over again. But at last she was achieved. Edward and Martha stood back and surveyed her with pride, ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... tell its stirring story, None can sing its deeds of glory, None can say which cause it struck for, or from what limp hand it fell; On the battle-field they found it, Where the dead lay thick around it— Friend and foe—a gory tangle—tossed and torn ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... 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
... Like a tangle of bright sunshine, Dipping a million glittering rays In a baptism divine: And a maiden, sheened in this gauze attire— Sifting a glance of her eye— Dazzled men's souls with a fierce desire To kiss and caress ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... tangle where life and death carried on a visible, unceasing struggle, he hesitated. Instinctively he shrank from losing himself ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... Africa ever were seen in southern Asia. Conditions there are different, and usually the game is widely scattered. The sambar deer and muntjac of the dense forests, the axis of the bamboo glades, the thameng deer of the Burmese jungles, the sladang, or gaur, of the awful Malay tangle, and the big cats and canines will last long and well. The ibexes, markhors, tahr and all the wild sheep eventually will be shot out by sportsmen who are "sheep crazy." The sheep and goats of Asia will disappear soon after the plains animals of Africa, because no big game that lives in the open ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... Paradise. It was a wide, fragrant, shaded place, full of the shrubs and flowers of former days. Huge pink and white oleanders, planted in tubs, stood on either side the walks. Thick spikes of purple lavender edged the beds; the summer-house was a tangle of honey-suckle, rosemary, and eglantine. Roses of all colors abounded. They towered high above Lota's head as she walked,—twined and clasped, shut her in with perfumed shadows, rained showers of many-colored petals on the grass. An old-fashioned fairy would have delighted ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... unsteadily. "Don't! I know it's bad enough. Perhaps you're right—I oughtn't to have spoken to Diana, I hoped things would right themselves eventually, but you and Baroni have put another complexion upon matters. It's all an inextricable tangle, whichever way one looks at it—come good luck or bad! . . . I suppose I was wrong—I ought to have waited. But now . . . now . . . Before God, Adrienne! I can't, give her ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... the same general direction, and preserving always the requisite level or down grade. Radway had no vantage point from which to survey the country. A city man would promptly have lost himself in the tangle; but the woodsman emerged at last on the banks of the stream, leaving behind him a meandering trail of clipped trees that wound, twisted, doubled, and turned, but kept ever to a country without steep hills. From the main road he purposed arteries to tap the ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... by his great speech, of April 5th, in the Senate, did much to clear the tangle in the minds of some faltering Union statesmen on ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... hurrah's-nest for'ard?" said Dan, pointing to a wild tangle of spare oars and dory-roding, all matted together by the ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... fire in her snow-powdered silk hood, seemed in comparison a female of another and an older race. She might well, from the look of her, have come a nearer and straighter road from the inmost heart of things, from the unpruned tangle of woods and undammed course of streams, from all primitive and untempered love and passion and religion, than this gentlewoman formed upon the models of creeds ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... sort of brown fishing bear of enormous bulk, as large as polar bears, and when the salmon are spawning in the upper waters of the coast rivers, they become so fat they can hardly move. Certainly I have never been in a country where bear signs were so plentiful. The wood was an almost impassable tangle of vines and undergrowth, and the thought of really finding a ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... flitter closer to the ground so that when a domed structure arose out of a tangle of overgrown shrubs and trees they were not more than fifty feet above it. There was no sign of life about the dwelling, if dwelling it was, and the unkempt straggle of growing things suggested that it had been left to itself through more than one season. Lablet wanted ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... full fifteen years, The war-torch has continued burning, yet No rest, no pause of conflict. Swede and German, Papist and Lutheran! neither will give way To the other; every hand's against the other. Each one is party and no one a judge. Where shall this end? Where's he that will unravel This tangle, ever tangling more and more It must be cut asunder. I feel that I am the man of destiny, And trust, with ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... inquiring where the hay, stones, or sap buckets were to-day. It was only David's repeated urging which kept him moving at all. In consequence it was dark before the boys caught sight of the "Pine Ridge" lights gleaming through the tangle of hemlock boughs that screened the drive, and saw the door of the hospitable old ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... jungle and was bordered by giant banana plants and cocoanuts. At this season all was a swamp below us, the orchard palms standing many feet deep in water and mud, but their long green fronds and the darker tangle of wild growth on the ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... the story, when the people were longing for a king, to their shores there drifted, on a day when the white birds were screaming over the sea-tangle and wreckage that a stormy sea, now sinking to rest, was sweeping up on the shore, a little boat in which, on a sheaf of ripe wheat and surrounded by priceless weapons and jewels, there lay a most beautiful babe, who smiled in his sleep. That he was ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... tangle! Who could paint all this? A bear might hug him, or a serpent hiss! For love of nature justly am I famed; But when she goes so far as this, she ought to ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... fell that night as she sat in her room by the window watching the high moon, deep crimson, rising through the mist over the far-off islands. How bitter to leave her beloved even for God, when the leaving brought woe to them! So long she had waited for the hour of freedom, and always a tangle at the supreme moment! How could she be happy and he suffering without the convent gates? This pity was to be the last temptation, her greatest trial. Its great strength did not disarm her. If twenty broke their hearts on that day, she would ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... long before you get back," said Tim Reardon. "He'll just take and tangle that line all up around the rocks and sticks at the bottom, ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... him in their own way—treading on one another's toes in their anxiety; shutting one another up; hunching their chairs together in a tangle as if their slanders were wares ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... pass into life under the scarification of a disreputable ancestor. He is drinking up their happiness, their prospects for this life, and, perhaps, for the life to come. Sometimes an appreciation of what he is doing comes upon him. His nervous system is all a tangle. From crown of head to sole of foot he is one aching, rasping, crucifying, damning torture. Where is he? In hell on ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... tangle, as Primrose Henry was to learn afterward. Philemon Henry was older than his brother James, and in trade in the city that William Penn had planned and founded in an orderly manner. And though it is the common belief that Philadelphia was born at right angles and on a level, at its early ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... places in line of battle. There was no cavalry, no artillery. It happened, however, that guns, horses, and supplies intended for Morgan at the Gap were in depot at Lexington. Then Wallace began to catch a glimpse of dawn through the dark tangle of the wilderness. Some kind of order, prompt and immediate, must be forced out of this chaos; and it came, for the master-spirit was there to arrange and compel. He mounted several hundred men, giving them rifles instead of sabres. He manned new guns, procuring harness and ammunition ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... Jeremy never spake more veraciously in Edom! The fool sighs for a fair woman,—what else should he do, being a fool? Ah, madonna, as in very remote times that notable jester, Love, popped out of Night's wind-egg, and by his sorcery fashioned from the primeval tangle the pleasant earth that sleeps about us,—even thus, may he not frame the disorder of a fool's brain into the semblance of a lover's? Believe me, the change is not so great as you might think. Yet if you will, laugh at me, madonna, for I love a woman far above me,—a woman who knows not of my love, ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... the outer gate, and, there leaping a hedge of flowering plants, I fled down the mountain through the vineyards. I went swiftly, eager to escape from Castel del Monte, but in the tangle of walls and fences it was not easy to advance. At the parting of three ways I paused, uncertain in which direction to proceed. Suddenly, without warning, a dark figure stepped from some hidden place. ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... it was easy to see she was doomed. We chopped away at the tangle of wreckage whenever we got a chance, but that wasn't often, because, in her present position, the waves raked her every second and we had to ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... the heap, without moving any of the others. You go on until you do move one of the others, and this loses you your turn. European diplomacy at any moment of any year reminds you, if you inspect it closely, of a game of jackstraws. Every sort and shape of intrigue is in the general heap and tangle, and the jealous nations sit round, each trying to lift out its own jackstraw. Luckily for us, we have not often been involved in these games of jackstraw hitherto; unluckily for us, we must be henceforth involved. If we kept out, our ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... thinking; Rita, nursing her knee, brooded under the bright tangle of her hair, linking and unlinking her fingers as she gently swayed her foot to ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... things call us, the living and the dead, And o'er the weltering tangle a glimmering ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... space of a second, Dorcas gazed at the toe of her patched working-boots. She was thinking, in a confused tangle, of Alida and Newell, and wondering if she had any clothes to wear. Then she lifted her head quickly in a resolution ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... through easily. The wallabies, seeing his shining success, followed his course, and midway managed to entangle their reins, at which Wally and Harry were wildly hauling. Confusion became disorder, and the wallabies at length reduced themselves to a tangle, out of which they had to be assisted by ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... the opposite side of the street. To find out what this tangle is, it is not necessary to jump ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... An Indian killed Pontiac between Cahokia and Prairie du Pont. When he rose from his body and saw it was not a British knife, but a red man's tomahawk, he was not a chief who would lie still and bear it in silence. Yes, I have heard that he has been seen walking through the grapevine tangle, all bleached as if the bad redness was burned out of him. But the priest will tell you better, my son. ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... place where the underbrush at the side of the path was somewhat beaten aside. I thought I could distinguish where some person or animal had gone from this place, tramping a sort of barely traceable furrow through the tangle. I followed this course: it led me back to the glade. Doubtless ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... eyes darkened, as she closed the door behind her, and stepped quickly forward to the bedside. For a moment she stood looking down at the recumbent figure; at the matted tangle of gray-streaked brown hair that straggled across a pillow which was none too clean; at the heavy-lensed, old-fashioned, steel-bowed spectacles, awry now, that were still grotesquely perched on the woman's nose; at the sallow face, ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... That fellow Nap is the principle obstacle. He stirs up hell and tommy wherever he goes, and he's never absent for long. Lucas himself admits that his brothers are a care to him. Oh, it's all an infernal tangle. I sometimes think family ties are ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... the man's shoulders. He looked up at the visitors, half in and half out of the wurley, and on his hands and knees just like an animal. His face and body were black and very dirty, and his head and chest were so thickly covered with hair that the only features which stood out from the matted tangle were a pair of very bright eyes and a flat, ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... Polly before the realisation of opulence and its anxieties and responsibilities. That only dawned upon him on the morrow—which chanced to be Sunday—as he walked with Johnson before church time about the tangle of struggling building enterprise that constituted the rising urban district of Easewood. Johnson was off duty that morning, and devoted the time very generously to the admonitory discussion ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... crab-tree, and I could have envied him as I stumbled by. It was perhaps fourscore yards through, and half-way I stopped to listen. Yes, there came to my ear the slow trot-ot-ot of hoofs on the hard road. I went on again until, through the leafless tangle, I began to get glimpses of the highway. My fate was dragging me on. In a month's time my shrivelling carcase might be swinging in chains on the top of Wes'on Bank, an ensample to evil-doers. The thought made me shiver, and ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... the dory lay alongside the cat-boat, the fisherman with a gnarled hand grasping the latter's gunwale to hold the two together. With some difficulty Kirkwood transhipped himself, landing asprawl in the cockpit, amid a tangle of cordage slippery with scales. The skipper followed, with clumsy expertness bringing the dory's painter with him and hitching it to a ring-bolt abaft the rudder-head. Then, pausing an instant to stare into the East with somber eyes, he shipped the tiller and bent to ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... 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, her fine face grew tender. "Tom came back," she continued, a faint tremor in her even ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... in his flight till he reached the thicket and saw in it his hope of securer refuge. He walked round it through the pools which the frog and turtle haunted, twice before he found this path, overhung by a tangle of grapevines. There his foot by the instinct which the foot has where the eye fails of a path, divined the scarcely trodden way, and he found himself in a central opening among the thickly growing ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... the path, however, and found himself in a desperate tangle, with the blackness of a dismal night settling down ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... certainty. Adversity follows prosperity, and my counsel is to make the best use of both,—enjoy this when it comes, and let that teach you that God's ways are inscrutable, nor can you straighten out the tangle of His providences. Evidently he intends these vicissitudes that still follow no definite rule, so that man may recognize his own ignorance and impotence. In one word, reason as you may from all ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... then again. "Haul the jib-sheet!" but no sooner was the jib hauled taut and made fast, than it broke loose and hung fluttering wildly about the stay until it gradually twisted itself up into a tangle. ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... mown down by their own cavalry. The Senior Subaltern succeeded in clearing one copse, after firing a few shots and making a bold advance, but had not sufficient men to retain it. Then, just as darkness was closing down on the hopeless tangle, a message was passed up to "close ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... that he knows in all its bitter fullness the curse of civilized fear. He is now afraid of the dark, and night in the forest is to him a thing of abysmal terror. His city house is of the spick and span order, and he evinces a great interest in burglarproof devices. His home is a tangle of electric wires, and after bed-time a guest can scarcely breathe without setting off an alarm. Also, he had invented a combination keyless door-lock that travelers may carry in their vest pockets and apply immediately and successfully under all ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... appalled by the disclosure; and she was taken unaware: nor did she dare discover the extent, the significance, of this new sophistication, nor whence it came, lest she be all at once involved in a tangle of explanation, from which there could be no sure issue. She sighed; her head drooped, until it rested on his shoulder, her wet lashes against ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... old-fashioned carriage was waiting for them; they entered it and the driver, whipped up his horses. A drive of a half mile brought them to an ideal white cottage surrounded by porches and hidden in a tangle of vines. The door was opened for them by the Rev. John Langdon in person. He seemed a preternaturally grave young man to Anna and his clerical attire was above reproach. Any misgivings one might have had regarding him on the score of his youth, were more than ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... right down to the fact of the present case and its immediate needs. Now the present case, as the doctor sees it, is just exactly such a collection of paltry individual facts as never was before,—a snarl and tangle of special conditions which it is his business to wind as much thread out of as he can. It is a good deal as when a painter goes to take the portrait of any sitter who happens to send for him. He has seen just such noses and just such eyes and just such mouths, ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... series broken at one point by six Danish tumuli that stood shoulder to shoulder along the highroad, tombs of soldiers. Beyond these tumuli habitations thickened, and the train came to a standstill in a tangle ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... to hear one or the other of these three burst into a towering rage, and order the immediate punishment of those who had offended, whereas the men extricated themselves from the tangle of half-drunken soldiers and savages as best they could, immediately resuming the apparently confidential ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... only his private part in the struggle down in the murky tangle of the scaffold base. But there was fighting up on the Platform itself. A savagely grinning Mohawk wrestled furiously with a man on one of the rocket tubes. An incendiary device in the saboteur's pocket ignited, and it flamed red-hot ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... almost bewildering in its range, diversity of aims and style of procedure. It is a chaos, with many paths leading into the maze, but as yet very few take us to a position commanding a view of the whole intricate terrain with its impenetrable tangle and pitfalls. ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... off the trail sideways, a-plungin' and a-clawin' through the brush like a wild man. By this time I was clean crazed; thought the whole country was full of bald-faces. Next thing I knows—whop, I comes up against something in a tangle of wild blackberry bushes. Then that something hits me a slap and closes in on me. Another bald-face! And then and there I knew I was gone for sure. But I made up to die game, and of all the rampin' and roarin' and rippin' and tearin' ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... him with a cynical smile, and said with mock contempt, "So you're the guy who swore you'd never tangle up with a femme! Just a month ago, too. Now look: first you get this Zara woman all het up over you, and now this one's got you all het up over ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... true especially during the war—have surrounded themselves with a tangle of red tape which has to be unwound every time an employee (or any one else) wants to get near enough to ask a question. This is absurd. Sensible men destroy elaborate plans of management and find they get ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... great deal of tripping and floundering through soft mud and mire, with slippery moss-stones sandwiched in, and dwarfed bushes which ran along the ground, and twisted themselves in an almost impassable tangle. These had a knack of catching a fellow's feet, and causing him to sprawl forward on his face and hands, whereupon his knapsack would hit him an astounding ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... strange beautiful place with a father and mother,—the latter she had not even dreamed of when she had thought a father might be found. Oh, she must be very grateful to God for sending her here where the tangle could be resolved in such an honorable manner and she must try to be worthy of all the love lavished upon her. The whole world broadened and she was part of the higher life. She was looking up to the hill tops where human endeavors must aspire ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... appear superficially to have little or nothing to do. The chief reason can perhaps be stated thus—that English politics had for more than a hundred years been getting into more and more of a hopeless tangle (a tangle which, of course, has since become even worse) and that Dickens did in some extraordinary way see what was wrong, even if he did not see what ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... her feet, the hurrying stream rested an instant, to take breath, in a deep, dusky little pool, overhung by a tangle of eglantine. ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... blue jacket, and 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 ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... ever ruffling the sails of busy ships, ships coming home with laughter, ships leaving home with sad sea-gull cries of farewell. And the shaggy tossing water shall be bounded on either bank with high granite walls, and on one bank shall be a fretted spire soaring with a jangle of bells, from amid a tangle of masts, and underneath the bells and the masts shall go streets rising up from the strand, streets full of faces, and sweet with the smell of tar and the sea. O captain! will it be morning or night when we come to my city? In ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... Archibald's title to the Douglas lands was contested by the Duke of Hamilton and the Earl of Selkirk, the former claiming as heir-male, the latter under settlements made by the Duke's father. Clever brains were set to work to solve the tangle in which the birth of the mysterious twins was involved. Emissaries were sent to France to collect evidence on one side and the other; notably Andrew Stewart, tutor to the young Duke of Hamilton, who seems to have been ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... proofs given of their frustration, than these that Henry Chester and Ned Gancy have now before their eyes. Though unacquainted with most of the above details, they see a man, all but naked, his hair in matted tangle, his skin besmeared with dirt and blubber, in everything and to all appearances as rude a savage as any Fuegian around him, who is yet the same whom they had once seen wearing the garb and having the manners of civilisation! They see a girl, too,—now woman-grown—in ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... he dashed into every covert or tangle wherein a hog might lurk, but without result; there came no rush of feet, no shaking of the brown leaves, no startled grunt. All was still, save for the quick panting ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... stopped. "Fingerless" Fraser broke through in turn, gasping as the icy water rose to his armpits. Slowly at first the sled sank, till it floated half submerged, and this spot which a moment before had seemed so safe and solid became now a churning tangle of broken fragments, men and dogs struggling in a liquid that seemed dark as syrup contrasted with the surrounding whiteness. The lead animals, under whose feet the ice was still firm, turned inquiringly, ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... harmonized perfectly with the poetic tangle of the humble exterior, the luxury and art of which was bestowed by Time, for once in a way charitable. Within, the eye first went to the roof, lined with chestnut, to which age had given the richest tints of the oldest woods of Europe. This roof was supported at equal distances by strong ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... directly from the stairway into the kitchen, or living- room, her father turned from the hopeless-seeming tangle of soiled and torn netting on the floor before him, and looked at her half wistfully from under the glazed brim of ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... was working horribly, and his eyes were dilated with excitement as he rambled on wildly, mingling up the past in one tangle of confusion as he, in brief, gave suggestions to the horrified listeners of the various scenes ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... AL. Submit to Fate without unseemly wrangle: Such complications frequently occur— Life is one closely complicated tangle: Death is the only ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... must help the major straighten out this tangle, bury the dead, defend the innocent, and punish the guilty," he said gravely. "Arm yourselves and saddle, ready to take the road to Rodeo as quickly as ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... every doom of God Hath by other dooms its way Crossed, that none may rule alone, In one speech-outstripping groan Forth had all this passion flown, Which now murmuring hides away, Full of pain, and hoping not Ever one clear thread to unknot From the tangle of my soul, From ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... traitor," replied Beecot, darkly, "and, knowing he has lost your confidence, he will certainly try and give Maud Krill possession of the money. No, I'll speak to Hurd, who is my friend and yours. He is clever and will be able to unravel this tangle." ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... chains which separated him from his destination; but he had no guide, and missed the regular pass—a fortunate thing for him, as it afterwards turned out, for he thus escaped falling into an ambush of five hundred Cherokees who were encamped along it.[62] After in vain trying to penetrate the tangle of gloomy defiles and wooded peaks, he returned to the middle towns at Canucca on September 18th. Here he met Williamson, who had just arrived, having been delayed so that he could not leave Fort Rutledge until the 13th.[63] The ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... death had clutched at him with fierce intent. He had plunged headlong over the edge of a chasm, hewn in the hillside by a subsidence of the foundations some hundreds of feet below. Six feet from the brink his great body had been caught in the arms of a bushy tangle, which bent and crushed under his great weight in a perilous, almost hopeless fashion. But he clung to the attenuated branches that supported him and waited desperately for the further plunge below, which the yielding roots ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... that kind of white men. There isn't a pint of tangle-foot in this 'ere outfit. Ef I want to murder a feller I'll take a rifle to him and do the job clean. I won't go around the bush and ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... day at Arras! And the wire! It was strewn in every direction, with seeming aimlessness. Heavily barbed it was, and bad stuff to get caught in. One of the great reasons for the preliminary bombardment that usually precedes an attack is to cut this wire. If charging men are caught in a bad tangle of wire they can be wiped out by machine gun-fire before ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... he?" she said. "It is so difficult for an American to understand these things. We are supposed to have the peerage by heart; but we haven't. It's all a mystery and a tangle to us, even the best of us. But I try not to make mistakes. And now I want you to tell me that we are friends. ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... called to the 'sulky devil' to come out. He came, and sullenly followed the two men into the manager's big sitting-room, and sat down cross-legged on the floor. The bright lamplight shone full on his nude figure and the tangle of black hair that fell about his now sun-darkened back and shoulders. And, as on that other evening long before, when he sat crouching over his fire, his eyes sought Burton's face with ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... 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 offence ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... timber. Bullets from the intercepting party whizzed around him; but he sped on unharmed, while his pursuers only stopped long enough to throw off a few rails, and then both of the guerilla squads rode straight for the woods, with the plan of keeping the fugitive between them, knowing that in its tangle he ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... written, each letter carefully drawn with a quill pen. The initials of the chapters, and the border around each page, had been painted in an ornamental design like a tangle of leaves and vines, in bright red, green, yellow, brown, black, blue. Twisted vines bore fruits, flowers, tiny animals and birds, here and there a saint, angel or cherub. The monk who was doing this ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... through the needle, care being taken not to tangle the piece of "rope" from which they have been detached. There need be no waste if this operation is carefully done, as good silk will always divide into ...
— Handbook of Embroidery • L. Higgin
... will see the white soldiers." He mounted and followed, and sitting there amid the mountain tangle he saw his dreams come true. The traders and the talking men had not lied about the numbers of their people, for his eye did not come to the rear of the procession which wound up the valley like a great snake. There were pony-soldiers, walking-soldiers, guns on wagons, herds of the white ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... that men had originally begun their homes in caves, and that they were now taking their railways and many establishments beneath the surface. Here I think a desire for intellectual completeness betrayed me. There was also a considerable tangle due to an equally unwise attempt on my part to explain about mines. Dismissing this topic at last in an incomplete state, the Grand Lunar inquired what we did with the ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... crept, The cobweb hung across in mazy tangle, And in its winding-sheet the maggot slept, At every ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... tried to tell, but we soon made a tangle of it, the only thing coherent being the fact that the fellow was a crook and had left his trunk behind. This was so heavy that Chips had failed to ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... 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 surrounding ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... fact, I found him at the bottom of a deep pit he had dug for himself; and when he first met me he was, without having the sense to realize it, just about to go smash, with not a penny for his old age. As soon as I had got this fact clear of the tangle, I showed it ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... the things that she meant to guard him against with all the strength of her zeal for his better self. When Godolphin was gone at last, she lost no time in coming back to Maxwell, where he sat with the manuscript of his play before him, apparently lost in some tangle of it. She told him abruptly that she did not understand how, if he respected himself, if he respected his own genius, he could consider such an idea as ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... arms bare to the elbow and falling away at the neck to reveal the soft, full curves where they flowed down to the swell of her bosom. She shook down her hair and gathered it loosely in a knot, leaving it as the wind and rain had tossed it into a bewildering tangle of ringlets about her face. One glance she threw at her mirror. Never had she appeared more lovely. The dead ivory of her skin, relieved by a faint flush in her cheeks, the lustrous eyes, now aglow with passion, all set in the frame of the night-black masses of ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... quarrelling at the well and the sound of blows could be heard. Calves were querulously calling for their milk, and little turkeys lost in the tangle of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... Eagle settled down—after a few minutes rapid falling—fairly in the center of the clearing. It was almost a fairylike spot. On every side it was hedged in by the densest jungle vegetation, the solid walls being broken here and there by elephant paths leading off into the green tangle. ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... and to discover what was written over the other doors of the third tower, or what lay within the towers I did not enter. So that I have had to go on ever since with the knowledge I then acquired, that whatever Reality may ultimately be, it is in the life of the affections, with all its confused tangle of loves and hates, attractions, repulsions, and, worst of all, indifferences, it is in this intricate commerce of souls that we may come nearest to apprehending what perhaps we shall never wholly apprehend, but the quest of which alone, as I believe, gives any significance to life, ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... Eden of delight to little Ambrose. His mother let him wander away in the winding paths, intersecting the close-cut yew hedges, with no fear of lurking danger, while, at the Rector's invitation, she sat with him in a bower, over which a tangle of early roses and honeysuckle hung, and filled the air with fragrance. A rosy-cheeked maiden with bare arms, in a blue kirtle scarcely reaching below the knees, which displayed a pair of sturdy legs cased in leather boots, brought a wooden trencher of bread and cheese, with a large mug ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... recognising the pair as visitors of the previous day, greeted them warmly in rather imperfect English, and bowed them into where, ranged on a long table, the whole length of the left-hand wall, stood a great quantity of mysterious-looking electrical appliances with a tangle of connecting wires, while below the tables stood a row of fully fifty large batteries, such as are used in ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... Presently, through a tangle of wild fuchsia, there was a smell of burning turf in the air and the sound of milking into a pail, and then a voice came up surprisingly ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... to do so. Do you see that silver flash through the tangle of foliage? Don't you think it comes ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... shut out above by the dew-wet foliage,—twisted vines, trees and bushes all matted together. The party traveled by means of old elephant trails, which alone made the jungle passable to man. Hour after hour they walked through the tangle of vegetation, striking into fresh paths, twisting and turning until ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... The gorges and canons of Colorado are surpassed; mountains that tower above Pike's Peak rise in steep incline from the still level of the sea; and the shores are clad in forests and undergrowth dense and impassable as the tangle of a ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... the church do we congregate from week to week; but behind it, on a sloping hillside, is the last home of us all, the old burying-ground, overrun with a briery tangle, and relieved by Nature's sweet and cunning hand from the severe decorum set ordinarily about the dead. Our very faithlessness has made it fair. There was a time when we were a little ashamed of it. We regarded it with affection, indeed, but affection of the sort accorded ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... comparatively bare and lifeless, even the Brambles and Woodbine, which straggle over the tangle of ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... I almost despaired of escaping from this tangle of spongy banks, and of hazy creeks, and reed-fringe, my horse heard the neigh of a fellow-horse, and was only too glad to answer it; upon which the other, having lost its rider, came up and pricked his ears at us, and gazed through the fog very steadfastly. Therefore I ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... dogs, he ran on for a short distance; then vaulting the rail fence he disappeared into the tangle of willows beside the stream which flowed down from ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... garrison punctilio. He was not long gone, but when he came down again to the boat his preparations for crossing took up an unconscionable time. First the boat must be baled, it seemed, and then a thole-pin was to find; when launched the craft must tangle her bow unaccountably and awkwardly in the weeds. And a curt man was Mungo, though his salute for Count Victor had lost none of its formality. He seemed to be the family's friend resenting, as far as politeness might, some inconvenience to which ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... woman, and that's no a'; he didna feenish wi' ae set an' begin wi' the next, but if he didna mix them a' thegither. Fower set o' heads a' in a tangle; noo ye hae some kin' o' idea o' what a' hed tae face." And Mrs. Macfadyen paused that I ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... fire yet," said Overland. "Our hired girl—" and he grinned through a two-weeks' tangle of red beard. "Oh, but ain't he the 'cute little workin'-man with his little ole hoss and his ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... 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 remained in full force and general use, is sufficiently proved by ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... bed, but surrounded with all the paraphernalia of war. Everywhere were swords, pistols, cuirasses, and arquebuses, and it was plain that as soon as his gout was better Monsieur de Bouillon would give a pretty tangle to the enemies of the parliament to unravel. Meanwhile, to his great regret, as he said, he was obliged to ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... bore, undertook the toil of providing food for the families of thy people. Followed the reign of winter in thy camp. Over the hair of thy men the long frost threw a veil of snowy white; the icicles hung in a tangle from their beards. So hard was the frost that the garment which the matron's persevering toil had woven had to be broken before a man might fit it to his body. Food for thy marching armies was forced from the grasp of the hostile nations around, or procured by the cunning of the hunter."[1] It ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... might open upon it. While he still looked, there fell upon his ear, from around that curve, a light footstep on the broken shells—one only, and then all was for a moment still again. Had he mistaken? No. The same soft click was repeated nearer by, a pale glimpse of robes came through the tangle, and then, plainly to view, appeared an outline—a presence—a form—a ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... seemed thus to the tall young girl who now stood upon its long gallery, her tangle of high-rolled, red-brown hair held back by the hand which half shaded her eyes as she looked out discontentedly over the familiar scene. Miss Lady—for thus she was christened by the Big House servants; and she bore well the title—frowned ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... the small panes of her large windows, she found herself overlooking part of 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 ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... beautiful, in the days when money was more plenty with the proprietor than at present; but now there were marks of neglect and decay everywhere, and in some parts of it the shrubs, and vines, and roses were mixed together in so hopeless a tangle that to separate them seemed impossible, while the yew trees, of which there were several, grew dark, and thick, and untrimmed, and cast heavy shadows upon the grass plats near them. The central part of the garden, however, showed signs of care. The broad gravel walk was clean and smooth, ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... it, might prove the brilliant hero of the night's proceedings; the child, little Jenny Something, who had spent yesterday at the Carstairs house, leading strangers to think that she was somebody else; and Miss Carstairs herself, a fair flower in that moving tangle ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... you, I do love you," she said fondly. "I believe in you, and father must too. You've got to straighten this tangle out now, for my sake as well as your own. Father ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... a tangle of climbing roses hung like a delicate pink curtain between Helmsley's eyes and the sunshine, while the busy humming of bees in and out the fragrant hearts of the flowers, made a musical monotony of soothing sound. He sat down and surveyed the simple scene with a ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... regardless of the flower seeds already hid beneath the soil. And, strange to say, they grew,—at least many of them did, choking out the poppies and marigolds and balsams which finally climbed through the three inches of ground the zealous gardener had hid them under, and formed a thick tangle of promising vines. ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... thyme. He took a sprig of woodbine that was coloured of cream and butter. The grass wetted his brown shoes and his flannel trousers. Again, a fresh breeze put the scent of the sea in his uncovered hair. The cliff was a tangle of flowers above and below, with poppies at the lip being blown out like red flame, and scabious leaning inquisitively to look down, and pink and ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... nous, Irlande, vous savez ah, oui! She thought you wanted a cheese hollandais. Your postprandial, do you know that word? Postprandial. There was a fellow I knew once in Barcelona, queer fellow, used to call it his postprandial. Well: slainte! Around the slabbed tables the tangle of wined breaths and grumbling gorges. His breath hangs over our saucestained plates, the green fairy's fang thrusting between his lips. Of Ireland, the Dalcassians, of hopes, conspiracies, of Arthur Griffith now, A E, pimander, good shepherd of men. To yoke me as his yokefellow, our crimes our ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... exhibited the same marvel; but he clinches the argument by a "notable example schawin afore our eyne. Maister Alexander Galloway Person, of Kynkell, was with us in thir Illis (the Hebridae), and be adventure liftet up ane see tangle, hyng and full of mussil schellis," one of which he opened, "bot than he was mair astonist than afore, for he saw na fische in it bot ane perfit schapin foule. This clerk, knawin us richt desirous of sic uncouth thingis, came haistely, and ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.03.23 • Various
... moment the butcher lights ten thousand candles out of my left eyebrow. In another moment, I don't know where the wall is, or where I am, or where anybody is. I hardly know which is myself and which the butcher, we are always in such a tangle and tussle, knocking about upon the trodden grass. Sometimes I see the butcher, bloody but confident; sometimes I see nothing, and sit gasping on my second's knee; sometimes I go in at the butcher madly, and cut my knuckles open against his face, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... the skipper of the Oberon could now look down the Dock Road from the corner by North Street, what he would look for first would be, not, I am sure, what compelled the electric trams, but for the entrance of the East Dock and its familiar tangle of spars. He would not find it. The old dock is there, but a lagoon asleep, and but few vessels sleeping with it. The quays are vacant, except for the discarded lumber of ships, sun-dried boats, rusted cables and anchors, and a pile of broken davits. The older dock of the West ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... if he felt the incompleteness of his performance as I did, he did not let it put an end to his endeavor. I sat there listening, and he came nearer, even to a low tree over my head; and as I had a glimpse or two of his mate in a tangle of willow and roses far out in the wet land, I concluded he was singing to her, and not to me. Now that he was so near, I heard more than I had before, certain low, sweet notes, plainly not intended for the public ear. This undertone song ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... overestimate the ultimate importance of my adventure, for Mr. Adams, our minister of the court of St. James, seems to have failed to record it, or, at least, there is no allusion to it in his biography. In the perplexing tangle of the diplomacy of the darker days of our civil war, many strange stories must have passed unrecorded, but surely none of those remembered and written were more singular than the occurrences which disturbed the quiet ...
— A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell
... lived; there was a great Bear, a little Bear, and a middle-sized Bear; and they had gone out for a walk. Goldilocks went in, and she saw"—the little girl is very still; she would not disturb that story by so much as a loud breath; but presently the comb comes to a tangle, pulls,—and the little girl begins to squirm. Instantly the voice becomes impressive, mysterious: "she went up to the table, and there were three plates of porridge. She tasted the first one"—the little girl ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... themselves. Perhaps humanity likes to be told how black it is, how far it is from the perfectness after which Nature is blundering and staggering. I know not; but it is manifest that when this grim old man, with the ivory face, the black, flashing eyes, the tangle of white hair and the tangle of beard, leans over the rostrum and calls sin 'beastly' and 'devilish' and 'nasty' the people sit as white and spellbound as the patient of ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... Mr. Bennett was much relieved by the communication. Indeed, I think he would have preferred to have some pecuniary tangle out of which to extricate his cousin. In fact, it was impossible for him to suppress a feeling of contempt, not to say disgust, at Hiram's conduct. For, worldly minded as he was, It was what he never would have been guilty of. Indeed, it so happened that Mr. Bennett had ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... owing to the height of the banks and the denseness of the undergrowth, they jumped in among the guns and caissons and floundered about until the whole battery was involved in an almost inextricable tangle, which blocked the road for more than an hour. I tried to get around the jam of mules, horses, and cannon by climbing the bank and forcing my way through the jungle; but I was so torn by thorns and pricked ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... was beating the Magister, so that the fur gown made a greyish whirl about his scarlet suit in the midst of a tangle of spun wool; spinning wheels were overset, Margot Poins crashed around upon them, wailing; the girls with their distaffs were crouching against the window-places and in corners, crying out ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... 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 didn't feel ...
— A Question of Courage • Jesse Franklin Bone
... lunch at the Corridor Restaurant Elaine had returned to Manchester Square (where she was staying with one of her numerous aunts) in a frame of mind that embraced a tangle of competing emotions. In the first place she was conscious of a dominant feeling of relief; in a moment of impetuosity, not wholly uninfluenced by pique, she had settled the problem which hours of hard thinking and serious heart-searching ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... seems inclined to do, or try to plan some method of escape in case the pilot gets in front of one of the swift-moving tugs. You have good reason to congratulate yourself on being landed at a stone-quay in a tangle of small launches, ferryboats, and cascoes. The Tondo Canal may be crossed on a covered barge, poled by an ancient boatman, who collects the fares—a copper cent of Borneo, Straits Settlements, or Hong Kong coinage—much in the same way as the pilot ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... 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 many others ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... ground not one could have told. Death was no stranger to them. For years it had lurked behind every chance shrub they passed, in the depths of every ravine, in the darkness of night, from every tangle of rank prairie grass in broad daylight. To it from long familiarity they had become callous; but death such as this, deliberate, cold-blooded, self-inflicted—it awed them while it fascinated, held them ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... good reason for not telling me!" Farland accused. "It is the truth, isn't it, that Prale does not know a single thing about it. You are afraid to tell me because I may inform him of what you say, and we may straighten out the tangle? I can see through you, sir, as easily as through ...
— The Brand of Silence - A Detective Story • Harrington Strong
... fence, between the Blake yard and that where Mr. Porter had made his garden, was low, so that the two children could look over. They saw Sammie standing near the fence, greatly frightened, and looking at a tangle of morning glory vines in which something was wiggling around and making a ...
— Daddy Takes Us to the Garden - The Daddy Series for Little Folks • Howard R. Garis |
