"Unravel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ourselves to plan the search for where the body of the king might be hidden, and that was to unravel a tangled skein indeed. All we knew was that the cart which had borne him from the end of the hidden passage had gone northward along a riverside track. Beyond that, we guessed that it might not have gone far, whether for fear of meeting ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... this moment entirely engrossed by the accounts, and his master left him and his big companion to unravel them, while he himself held speech with his guest at some distance—sending for a cup of sack, wherewith to enliven ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... beat of his retreating oars, marvelling more and more at the atrocious nature of our crime which could thus avail to intercept even his last adieus. I, for my part, never saw him again; nor, as I have reason to think, did Lord Westport. Neither did we ever unravel the mystery. ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... fact about Diana's Grove—there is, I have long understood, some strange mystery about that house. It may be of some interest, or it may be trivial, in such a tangled skein as we are trying to unravel." ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... son—also named Duncan—a cross ne'er-do-weel like himself—was natural, but how he came to have such a sweet daughter as Elspie, and such a good elder son as Fergus, are mysteries which we do not attempt to unravel or explain. Perhaps these two took after their departed mother. We know not, for we never met her. Certain it is that they did not in the least resemble their undeparted father—except in looks, for McKay senior had been a handsome man, though at the time we introduce him his good looks, ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... guise of a respectable boarding-house, No. 5 had been used as the headquarters of the gang, and the operations had been so widespread, so all-embracing in the field of crime, that after the raid many mysteries which the police had failed to unravel were credited to Randall. Many of these he could have had nothing to do with, but he had quite enough to answer for. He seems to have exercised a kind of terrorism over his subordinates, or he would surely have ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... the relationship of such races to ours must be very remote. We are concerned here with veritable races or sub-species, or at least with very constant and accentuated varieties. It is true that it is difficult to unravel the almost inextricable confusion of human races; but we may be certain that the savage races and varieties remote from ours, and even certain less-remote races such as the Mongols and Malays, are, phylogenetically speaking, infinitely ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... away colored passengers, he was not regarded with so much favor. But it was evidently me whom they looked upon as the chief culprit, alone possessing a knowledge of the history and origin of the expedition, which they were so anxious to unravel. They accordingly went to work very artfully to worm this secret out of me. I was placed in charge of one Orme, a police-officer of Georgetown, whose manner towards me was such as to inspire me with ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... To unravel the threads of the story is a task very difficult. My table is strewn with pamphlets, papers, genealogies, essays; the authors taking opposite sides as to the question, Was Jeanne d'Arc burned at Rouen on May 30, 1431? Unluckily even the most ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... much as wou'd make half a dozen modern Romances; But I was advised, by some Dramatick Friends, not to let it appear too soon. For Love, in a Farce, they said, was generally very dull, and what the English Audience always Complain'd of. But now we are come to unravel the Plot— It must be known, that Lady Lucy, Mr. Hydra, Sir Eternal, Miss Brilliant, and all the Characters, have a most Passionate Tendre for each other, and have Privately agreed that this shall be the Happy Night. And, as to a Wedding, I have taken ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin
... stub of a burdock; and that from something innate and independent of all associations of ideas;—these I had set down as irrefragable, orthodox truths, until perusing your book shook my faith.—In short, Sir, except Euclid's Elements of Geometry, which I made a shift to unravel by my father's fire-side, in the winter evening of the first season I held the plough, I never read a book which gave me such a quantum of information, and added so much to my stock of ideas, as your "Essays on the Principles of Taste." One thing, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... of resolution, and the miracle is done. Who would take me for thirty now? From this moment I abjure pessimism and cynicism in all their forms, put from my mind all considerations of the complexities of human life, unravel all by a triumphant optimism which no statistics can abash or criticism dishearten. I likewise undertake to divest myself entirely of any sense of humour that may have developed within me during the baneful experiences of the last ten years, and, in short, will consent ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... and they are all on top of him before one can say "knife"! Then one has to rush in with the whip—and everyone of the team of eleven jumps over the harness of the dog next to him, and the harnesses become a muddle that takes much patience to unravel, not to mention care lest the whole team should get away with the sledge and its load, and leave one behind.... I never did get left the whole of this depot journey, but I was often very near it, and several ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... with good intentions—came forward, who, now that the matter was in good train, advised us to put it in the hands of learned men. This brought on trouble enough; for some of those who helped me agreed to do so; and this plot of Satan was one of the most difficult of all to unravel. Our Lord was my helper throughout. Writing thus briefly, it is impossible for me to explain what took place during the two years that passed between the beginning and the completion of the monastery: the last six months and the first ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... down beforehand the precise limits of possible knowledge, the problem of physical science would be already half solved. But the question to which the scientific explorer has often to address himself is, not merely whether he is able to solve this or that problem; but whether he can so far unravel the tangled threads of the matter with which he has to deal, as to weave them into a definite problem at all ... If his eye seem dim, he must look steadfastly and with hope into the misty vision, until the very clouds wreathe themselves into definite forms. ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... would it take a man to unravel that nest, wisp by wisp, and resolve it into a loose pile of materials? Certainly not less than an entire day. Do you think that even your skilful fingers,— unassisted by needles,—could in two days, or in three, weave ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... which have reached us, the whole subject lies in confusion. It is scarcely possible to unravel the tangled mesh. Sometimes it seems to be taught that Ahriman was at first good, an angel of light who, through envy of his great compeer, sank from his primal purity, darkened into hatred, and became the rancorous enemy ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... fear for her cause. She had all her wits about her instantly; and under a pretence of repeating what she had already told the first men, she gave them such a mixture of descriptions that the negro was called up to unravel it. She made out that they were trying to reach the big river by a certain road, and marched in the night as well as in the day. She admitted that she had never been on that road but once. And when she was taken along with them a mile or two to the ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... not as simple an affair to unravel as that; for I can tell you one of the things, at least, which was apparently occupying her thoughts at the time, yet I can't quite see why or how it could have much to do with you. You remember, perhaps, that you came while we were at luncheon the day after our ride into the Valley ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... owed him nothing but a little gratitude for having delivered her from the men in black, who wished to carry her off, and that she had promised him nothing. He considered himself an outraged, betrayed, and ridiculed lover. Blood and anger mounted to his face; he was resolved to unravel the mystery. ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... had found a treasure in his new acquaintance, returned to the charge; but I was not more docile. A few days after, I was surprised by an attack of the same kind from M. de Beauvilliers. How or when he had formed an intimacy with Maisons, I have never been able to unravel; but formed it, he had; and he importuned me so much, nay exerted his authority over me, that at last I found I must give way. Not to offend M. d'Orleans by yielding to another after having refused to yield ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... allow of no description, and of such things a true Roman carnival is one. You might as well seek to analyze champagne, or expound the mystery of melody, or tell why a woman pleases you. The strange web of colour, beauty, mirth, wit, and folly, is tangled so together that common hands cannot unravel it. To paint a carnival without blotching, to touch it without destroying, is an art given unto few, I almost might say to none, save to our own wondrous word- wizard, who dreamt the "dream of Venice," and told it waking. For my ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... rough-hewn corner-stone of Time. We know Thy practised love enfolded Antony; And that around the heart of Hercules' Descendant, threading through and through, Like the red rivers of its life, in tangled mesh No circumstance could e'er unravel, thou Didst coil,—the dreamy, dazzling "Serpent of The Nile!" Thy sins stick jagged out From history's page, and bleeding tear Fair Judgment from thy merits. We perchance Do wrong thee, Isis; for that coward, History, Who binds ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... back slowly; but at length he shook himself, and stood erect at his full, immense height. He had given the wolf-pack something tricky in the way of trails to unravel, but he knew what he had taught them too well to build too much on that. And he was right, for presently, from far, far across the water, came the unutterably terrible baying clamor of the pack, moving ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... in Hodder's ears, in his very soul. How was he or any man to estimate, to unravel the justice from the injustice, to pass upon the merit of this woman's punishment? Here again, in this vitiated life, was only to be seen the remorseless working of law—cause and effect. Crooked! Had not the tree been crooked from the beginning—incapable of being straightened? She ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... old conventional designs then in use have, with very little modification, persisted up to the present day. Probably the playing cards in common use were printed by the same crude method as were the images, and unfortunately history has failed to unravel just what that method was. They may possibly have been stenciled. All we have been able to learn is that cards, images (which were in reality religious pictures), and stenciled altar cloths—the first primitive printing on cloth—all appeared ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... the road would be called hard rather than difficult work; that is difficult which involves skill, sagacity, or address, with or without a considerable expenditure of physical force; a geometrical problem may be difficult to solve, a tangled skein to unravel; a mountain difficult to ascend. Hard may be active or passive; a thing may be hard to do or hard to bear. Arduous is always active. That which is laborious or toilsome simply requires the steady application of labor or ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... eyes glittering with excitement. "That is an inspiration. I imagine that if anyone can unravel the mystery, ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... doing or dissipation.... Cruelty in the penal code and the tendency to exaggerate punishment are sure signs of a low civilization and of an imperfect educational system.... It seems to me that we can no more expect to unravel the mechanism of associative memory by histological or morphological methods than we can expect to unravel the dynamics of electrical phenomena by microscopic study of cross-sections through a telegraph ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... Ramsay [his brother the admiral] made a capital speech." On March 5, 1841, it is noted, Bishop Walker died—"a good man. His mind cast in a limited mould of strong prejudices; but a fair man, strictly honest in all his ways. He was not fitted to unravel difficulties in his episcopate, and scarcely suited to these times. He had been a furious opponent of the old evangelicals. A constant and kind friend to me. May his memory be honoured. Bishop Terrot elected bishop. I am very grateful to think that in all ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... nature-myths, symbols and parables, resulting in Chaldea in the highly artificial system which has been sketched above—(see Chapters V. and VI.)—a system singularly beautiful and deeply significant, but of which the mass of the people did not care to unravel the subtle intricacies, being quite content to accept it entire, in the most literal spirit, elementary nature-gods, astronomical abstractions, cosmogonical fables and all—questioning nothing, at peace in their mind and righteously self-conscious if they sacrificed at the various time-honored ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... none equal proofs of thoughtfulness in return, he should not more frequently have broken out into such sallies against the absent and "unreplying." For myself, I can only say that, from the moment I began to unravel his character, the most slighting and even acrimonious expressions that I could have heard he had, in a fit of spleen, uttered against me, would have no more altered my opinion of his disposition, nor disturbed ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... ruins, and to form and regulate sound opinion upon the ancient inhabitants of that quarter, and their state of arts. There can be no doubt that evidences exist in buried antiquities which will tend to connect the arts and religion, mythology and astronomy of the eastern and western hemispheres—to unravel the difficulties in the way of comparative philology, and to reconstruct and connect the links in the broken chain of ...
— Incentives to the Study of the Ancient Period of American History • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... demand. To do this with profit to himself, he must study this crop from beginning to end, he must learn the nature of the Peanut plant fully and correctly, and discovering how to increase the yield per acre to its maximum, unravel the secret of how to grow it at the least cost ...
— The Peanut Plant - Its Cultivation And Uses • B. W. Jones
... Founder said cost him enormous labour to discover and to possess. We shall gain so much and no more of the same spiritual substance as we put the same kind of energy in motion. In order that we may unravel the complexities of our day, a spirit similar to his spirit must become ours. When such a spirit ceases to exist, Christianity will become merely a [p.179] name; its power will have disappeared, and men can delude themselves into believing that they possess ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... Jenny's dream; and this trifle was her dream come true. It melted in the mouth; its flavours were those of innumerable spices. She was transported with happiness at the mere thought of such trifle. As her palate vainly tried to unravel the secrets of the dish, Keith, who was closely observant, saw that she was lost in a kind of fanatical ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... rhetoricians, painters, and musicians; but to Lacedaemon for legislators, magistrates, and generals of armies; at Athens they learned to speak well: here to do well; there to disengage themselves from a sophistical argument, and to unravel the imposture of captious syllogisms; here to evade the baits and allurements of pleasure, and with a noble courage and resolution to conquer the menaces of fortune and death; those cudgelled their brains about words, these made it their business ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... moment. It was evening. I was returning with Tom to Lizard Town from Dead Man's Rock, where we had been basking all the sunny afternoon, Tom reading, and I simply staring vacantly into the heavens and wondering when the time would come that should set me free to unravel the mystery of this ill-omened spot. Finally, after taking our fill of idleness, we bathed as the sun was setting; and I remember wondering, as I dived off the black ledge, whether beneath me there ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... every one. You have had your reward. You live happy in the esteem and love of all who know you, and I drag on the life of a miserable impostor, indebted for the marks of regard I receive to a tissue of deceit and lies, which the slightest accident may unravel. He has produced me to his friends, since the estate opened to him, as a daughter of a Scotchman of rank, banished on account of the Viscount of Dundee's wars—that is, our Fr's old friend Clavers, you know—and he says I was educated ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... perhaps may be more fitly taken in the sense in which we talk of a 'dear' bargain, meaning to imply how much it has cost us; and who shall say how many sleepless nights it has cost me to endeavor to unravel (a most appropriate verb) ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... stands on the same level with any authentic history, much less with the Bible record; inasmuch as the discovery of a single new fact may overturn the whole theory. "It furnishes us with no clew by which to unravel the unapproachable mysteries of creation. These mysteries belong to the wondrous Creator, and to him only. We attempt to theorize upon them, and to reduce them to law, and all nature rises up against us in our presumptuous rebellion. A stray ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... the liberty, confirmed the safety, and secured the heart of his charming Aurelia, now found leisure to unravel the conspiracy which had been executed against his person; and with that view commenced a lawsuit against the owner of the house where he and his mistress had been separately confined. Mr. Shackle was, notwithstanding all the submissions and atonement which he offered to make, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... tells us that these Diurnals differ from a Mercurius Aulicus (the paper of his party),—"as the Devil and his Exorcist, or as a black witch doth from a white one, whose office is to unravel her enchantments." ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... fluttering in the pure breeze, and the blue waves were dancing and sparkling in the bay, and white sails were moving rapidly about, and from the windows two beautiful islands were visible with their summer verdure, and the bewildered mother pressed her hand to her forehead, as if trying to unravel the mystery, when Mr. Bond's fat and merry face peered in at ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... whole Kwanto; confiscated manors of his enemies; recompensed meritorious deeds liberally, and granted pardons readily. In fact, he presented to public gaze precisely the figure he desired to present, the strong ruler who would unravel the perplexities of a distraught age. From all quarters the malcontent bushi ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... confounded, and rendered incapable of coming to any regular conclusion. None but a judge, a man that has from his infancy been accustomed to decide intricate cases, is equal to such a difficult task. If we even suppose the jury sufficiently enlightened to unravel those knotty points, yet there remains an insuperable objection. In State libels, their passions are frequently so much engaged, that they may be justly considered as parties concerned against ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... with its varying attraction, first on one and then on the other, complications are introduced that only the most masterly minds can follow. Introduce a dozen or a million bodies, and complications arise that only Omniscience can unravel. ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... interesting study; as a rule, people do not recognize that every place-name has a meaning or reference to some outstanding peculiarity or characteristic of the place, and that much history can be gathered from interpretation. In cycling, it is one of the many interests to unravel these derivations; merely as an instance, I may mention that in Dorset and Wilts the name of Winterbourne, with a prefix or suffix, often occurs; of course, "bourne" means a stream, but until one knows that a "winterbourne" is a stream that appears ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... Truax up on the telephone. The commission merchant had read about the express robbery, and had connected the man in the red car with it, but promised to say nothing about it until Ted had had an opportunity to unravel the mystery. ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... They showed us the process of deciphering the papyri, which is very ingenious. The manuscript (which is like a piece of charcoal) is suspended by light strings in a sort of frame; gum and goldbeater's skin are applied to it as it is unrolled, and, by extreme delicacy of touch, they contrive to unravel without destroying a great deal of it, but probably they have been discouraged by the small reward which has attended their exertions; for there are several black-looking rolls which have never yet been touched, and very few men at work. The gentlemen ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... over the back of a chair, and so often looking up to revel in the contemplation of Harry's face, that her skein was in a wild tangle, which she studiously concealed lest the sight should compel Richard to come and unravel it with those wonderful fingers ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... one main theme to make clear to his hearers and must respect the modern canons of the Story-telling Art. Among the many things therefore he could tell, an he would, he selects that only which will unravel a particular thread of fate in the tangle of endless consequences; which will render plausible the growth of passions on which, in a continuous life-drama, is based ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... singular circumstance of the morning, and demanded an explanation. Her wonder was as great as his own, however; and she remained silently gazing at the sunset, and pondering. A shake of the head betrayed her want of success in this attempt to unravel the mystery, especially the lawyer's indignation at ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... without and around, to dive into the profoundest abysses of character, trace the affections where they lie hidden like the ocean springs, wind into the most intricate involutions of the heart, patiently unravel its most delicate fibres, and in a few graceful touches place before us the distinct and visible result,—to do this demanded power of another and ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... thou grant me, O God? Lo, this is the prayer of my travail— Some well-being; and chance not very bitter thereby; Spirit uncrippled by pain; and a mind not deep to unravel Truth unseen, nor yet dark with the brand of a lie. With a veering mood to borrow Its light from every morrow, Fair friends and no deep sorrow, Well could man ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... in the case of the King of Bohemia and of the Irene Adler photograph; but when I looked back to the weird business of the Sign of Four, and the extraordinary circumstances connected with the Study in Scarlet, I felt that it would be a strange tangle indeed which he could not unravel. ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... nepardonebla. Unpleasant malplacxa. Unpolished (surface) malglata. Unpretending neafektema, simpla. Unprincipled malhonesta, senprincipa. Unproductive senfrukta. Unpublished neeldonita. Unquiet malkvieta. Unravel maltordi. Unrecognisable nerekonebla. Unremitting sencxesa. Unreserved nerezerva. Unrestrained nedetena, libera. Unroll malruli, malfaldi. Unroof maltegmenti. Unruffled trankvila, nemaltrankvila. Unruly malgxentila. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Nellie Mason was wonderfully remarkable. If it was untrue, then Mrs. Richard Stone was the most remarkable character I had ever met. I promised to call again in a day or so, and hastily withdrew to strengthen or unravel the nicely-woven fabric Mrs. Stone ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... his devices to a task in his art, a fallacy is included which is radical and mischievous beyond measure. We have, as yet, no calculus for the variable elements which enter into social problems and no analysis which can unravel their complications. The discussions always reveal the dominion of the prepossessions in the minds of the disputants which are in the mores. We know that an observer of nature always has to know his own personal equation. The mores ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... and, in spite of his illness, he hurried to town. It is impossible to describe his astonishment and distress at the sight which met his eyes. In the presence of the clerks he held anxious consultations with the detectives, who assured him that they had already taken the first steps to unravel the mystery, and that every possible effort would be made to discover the criminals. In the privacy of his own office he explained to the reporters that he had left in the bank four hundred thousand dollars in cash and bonds, every farthing of which ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... perplexed mothers, children and veterans, poured their griefs and fears, their hopes and disappointments, into the listening ear of sympathy, knowing that the clear judgment of this little woman could unravel much that seemed to be ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Broussy-le-Grand, we came upon the scene of an action in which the casualties had been exceedingly heavy. The neighborhood was absolutely deserted and as the wounded had been removed and there were no peasants about we could find no one to elucidate for us what had taken place. The action was not easy to unravel and the following conclusions were unverified by ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... inability to apprehend the meaning of the whole, or to follow the links of the connection between its several parts. I am myself as little able to understand where the difficulty lies, or to detect any lurking obscurity, as those critics found themselves to unravel my logic. Possibly I may not be an indifferent and neutral judge in such a case. I will therefore sketch a brief abstract of the little paper according to my own original design, and then leave the reader ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... great deal at the store on credit. On the other hand the men had done a considerable amount of carpenter work and hauling for the Trustees and for others. The account on the books at the Trustees' store was all in confusion, and as everybody at the store claimed to be too busy to unravel it, Spangenberg obtained permission to do it himself, and found that in addition to the bonds, (60 Pounds and 226 Pounds 13 Shillings 9 Pence,) the Moravians had taken supplies to an amount which gave them a total debt of some 500 Pounds ($2,400.00). Against this they had ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... have said, you are quite mistaken. There's a mystery somewhere. Keep his letter and show it to me. I may, perhaps, be able to unravel the tangle. I'm more than ever convinced that what I said to you last night was perfectly true. We will save him ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... on all these years in such a quiet, unnoticeable way—that Mrs. MacDougall could seem so exactly like a mother to them, and yet not be one. He was in a state of bewilderment, in which he could neither believe nor disbelieve, and so he went to sleep with a weary sigh, and left the mystery to unravel itself. ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... the first time with the thought that it is not easy to find the ideal modern life, even when one is anxious to conform to it, began tugging at all the strands of difficulty at once, not seeing them very clearly, but still with no notion but that if he set his strength to it, he could unravel them all in the half-hour's walk that lay between him and ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... expression. Belief in the divine right of his kingship gave him power over the minds of men, and he took his duties on him in this hour without weakness or failing, grasping with his human hand the obscure spiritual web of man's destiny, and with his limited intelligence trying to unravel the dark threads here and there, on which hung the healing and destruction of millions. In such moments a whole people will become united into one being, swayed by the mastery of a single mind, and await the commands of a single will. It comes, no one knows from ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... from me. Still, I hardly cried. All the way up in the train, whenever I was awake, an idea had been haunting me—a possible clue to this trickery of Lord Southminster's. Petty details cropped up and fell into their places. I began to unravel it all now. I had an inkling of a plan to set Harold ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... the union of old and new, to contemplate the Ancient of Days and all His works With feelings as fresh as if all had then sprung forth at the first creative fiat, characterises the mind that feels the riddle of the world, and may help to unravel it. To carry on the feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood, to combine the child's sense of wonder and novelty with the appearances which every day for perhaps forty years had rendered familiar—this is the character and privilege of genius. And it is the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... endeavoured to prevent my entrance. The Thikadar told me he had no authority for this, but had done it "Zubbur-dustee." They also say that the occupant of the Barahduree has just come from England. He is a being shrouded in mystery, and I shall endeavour to unravel it. My first step will be to report the occurrence to the officials at S—— when I get there. I took a swim in the Jhelum, whose course I have now followed for eighty-four crooked miles, and on whose bosom I ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... not work, will not strip to the long, patient, delving drudgery necessary to unravel, separate, analyze, weigh, measure, estimate and count, and come to like work for work's sake, and so grow to do the best and most work. They deal a few heavy blows, scatter things, pick up a ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... problems of eternal justice, the worth of upright living, and even the existence of God; for an unjust, ruthless, almighty being is no God. But by means of the theophany—which is to be understood merely as a process in his own heart, and which clearly shows him the impotence of feeble man to unravel the world-enigmas—he attains to insight; not, indeed, of a positive kind such as a knowledge of the ways of God would confer, but negative insight by means of that resignation which flows from excess of pain. It is thus ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... expulsion in 1945. Although Communist, his new government successfully steered its own path between the Warsaw Pact nations and the West for the next four and a half decades. In the early 1990s, post-TITO Yugoslavia began to unravel along ethnic lines: Slovenia, Croatia, and The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia all declared their independence in 1991; Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992. The remaining republics of Serbia and ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... with numerous other incidents, which the boys could not understand, or unravel, made such an impression on them, that they were determined to devote their energies to ferret out the inexplicable things, and the earnestness of John was a great incentive ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... some supper, too, Louisa Helen," said Everett quickly, and a smile lifted the corners of his mouth as the situation began to unravel itself to his sympathetic concern. "I guess I could take the bouquet and veil, too," he added to himself ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... offspring resembles the parents, I answer: Is not that a greater wonder still? A wonder which all the discoveries of the scalpel and the microscope have been as yet unable, and will be, I believe, to the last unable, to unravel, even to touch? A wonder which can be explained by no theories of vibratory atoms, vital forces, plastic powers of nature, or other such phrases, which are but metaphysical abstractions, having no counterpart in fact, ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... unravel the whole thing afore noon," said he, "and I'd about as lief see him this minute as I would see Lew. Let me get a better glimpse of his face. I didn't suspect him being a Huron when he jumped up just now, or I'd noticed his features. It don't look like Oonamoo, to see ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... almost too curious and fantastic for belief he loved to trace to their hidden sources. To unravel a tangle in the very soul of things—and to release a suffering human soul in the process—was with him a veritable passion. And the knots he untied were, ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... even to the naked eye through the ports of the supply-ship the enemy rockets had become visible. They were a thin skein of threads of white vapor which seemed to unravel in nothingness. The vapor curled and expanded preposterously. It could just be seen to be jetting into existence from four separate points, two a little ahead of the others. They came out from Earth at a rate which seemed remarkably deliberate ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... came. He was an inoffensive young man, and he set to work to unravel the mystery of the ha'nt with visible delight at the unusual nature of the job. Radnor received him in a spirit of almost anxious hospitality. A horse was given him to ride, guns and fishing tackle were placed at his disposal, a box of the Colonel's best cigars stood on the table of his room, and ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... exclaimed Sir Rowland, looking at Lord Strathern. "If a lady contrived this plot, I shall never unravel it; so you must ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... But me and the bicycle he cannot "size up" so readily. He never saw the like of us before, and we are beyond his Teutonic frontier-like comprehension. He gives us up; he fails to solve the puzzle; he knows not how to unravel the mystery; and, with characteristic Teutonic bluntness, he advises us to push on through fifteen miles of rocks, sand, and darkness, to Wadsworth. The prospect of worrying my way, hungry and weary, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... mistake then," said Becker; "the traces are self-evident. This is altogether a circumstance calculated to give us serious uneasiness. Nevertheless, we must view the matter calmly, and consider what steps we should take to unravel the mystery." ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... this people is just as strange as they are themselves. It is based on euphony, from which cause it is very complex, the more especially so as it requires one to be possessed of a negro's turn of mind to appreciate the system, and unravel the secret of its euphonic concord. A Kisuahili grammar, written by Dr. Krapf, will exemplify what I mean. There is one peculiarity, however, to which I would direct the attention of the reader most particularly, which is, that Wa prefixed to the essential word of a country, means men or people; ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... unpleasant thoughts, Grayson sat at his desk in the office of the ranch trying to unravel the riddle of a balance sheet which would not balance. Mixed with the blue of the smoke from his briar was the deeper azure of a spirited monologue in which Grayson ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to unravel that," chuckled the other. "Here he comes back already. His interview must have ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... blush before her own child, to weep while taking from him the right to console her, was more than she could do. No, there was nothing for her but death. To die as soon as possible, to escape shame by a complete disappearance, to unravel in this way an inextricable situation. But where to die! How? There are so many ways of departure! And she called them all up mentally while she walked. Life flowed around her, its luxury at this time of the year ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... catalogue of this interesting collection.” “Banded mail,” as it is called, has been one of the archæological difficulties “of the past and present generations, and the late Mr. Burges took great trouble in endeavouring to unravel the mystery of its construction . . . having casts made from the only four then known . . . effigies (with it) at Tewkesbury, Tollard Royal, Bedford, and Newton Solney; but . . . he had to confess, in the end, that he could make nothing satisfactory of it. Here, at Kirkstead, ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... too some fear of this quiet, soft-spoken frontiersman. All Arizona knew not only the daredevil spirit that fired his gentleness, but the competence with which he set about any task he assigned himself. She did not see how he could unravel this mystery. She had left no clues behind her, she felt sure of that, and yet was troubled lest he guessed at her secret behind that mask of innocence he wore. He did not even remotely guess it as yet, but he was far closer to the truth than he pretended. The ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... apparent that he did not live up to this profession. In the first place, the work is not scientific, facts are not "observed and noted with scrupulous care," and conclusions are drawn without warranted data to support them. On the whole then, one must say that this work fails to unravel some "knots in this tangled skein of human endeavor and error." When after a survey of the history of the Negro during the last fifty years an investigator concludes that the Negro has shown an incapacity for commerce and finance, and that he must not struggle to equip ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... wrinkle in a shoe, or the color of a ribbon! How they are worried if something gets untied, or hangs awry, or is not nicely adjusted! With a mind capable of measuring the height and depth of great subjects; able to unravel mysteries; to walk through the universe; to soar up into the infinity of God's attributes,—hovering perpetually over a new style of mantilla! I have known men, reckless as to their character, and regardless of interests ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... lies somewhere between these two extremes; the fact being that the personal and social causes of poverty act and react upon each other, changing places as cause and as effect, until they form a tangle that no hasty, impatient jerking can unravel. The charity worker and the settlement worker have need of each other: neither one can afford to ignore the experience of the other. Friendly visitors and all who are trying to improve conditions in poor homes should welcome the experience of those who are studying trade conditions and ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... in the ears and lips of the people to the words of particular ballads came long after the transcribing of the words themselves. There are other elements of perplexity and difficulty in ballad music which require an expert to unravel and explain, and which cannot be entered into here. The subject is referred to only because, in the eyes of the original composers and singers at least, to dissever the words from the tune would have seemed like parting soul from body; ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... shucks around the spindle to slip it off easy. I have seen big balls this big (2 ft. in diameter) down on the floor and mama, knitting off of it right on. When the feet wore out on socks and stockings, they would unravel them, save the good thread, and reknit the foot ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... actually took the next table, and in a few moments swords were drawn, and Le Monnier was killed. Why Canu and his nine accomplices were pardoned is one of the mysteries of the Fierte which I suppose no one will ever be able to unravel. ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... never before found a job we couldn't finish successfully," said the old detective. "But how we are to unravel the mystery of this man's death is beyond my ...
— The Bradys Beyond Their Depth - The Great Swamp Mystery • Anonymous
... this minute and clean the lamps. Your father's out pulling up the floor-boards in the barn and Mr. O'Neill's digging up the lilac bush for the third time. And that's enough. It beats me how Mr. O'Neill can go on rememberin' so much now he's got his memory started. He just seems to unravel things out of it overnight. It keeps me all worked up. I feel as if I ought to whisper when I speak and every night the minute I get to sleep I find myself diggin' in first one outlandish place and then another. And if I'm not diggin' in my ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... give back his life! Raise him up from this bed of illness, that he may unravel the web of mystery that entangles the fate ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... first place, Mrs. Capella is leaving London for the North. She must not be regarded in our operations. The woman is weighted with a secret. I am sorry for her. I prefer to allow events as supplied by others to unravel the skein. Secondly, Jiro and his wife, and all who visit them, or whom they visit, must be watched incessantly. Get all the force required for this operation in its fullest sense. You, with one trusted associate, must keep a close eye on No. 37 ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... therefore said smilingly; "let me unravel this excellent-finality song of yours; ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... troubles, was in a complacent state of mind himself. He liked life—even its very difficult complications—perhaps its complications best of all. Nature was beautiful, tender at times, but difficulties, plans, plots, schemes to unravel and make smooth—these things were what ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... he had his vanity in pronounced degree. He saw himself now, the dominant figure in this city of thirty thousand people, the man who had been selected by the chief of police as the one able to unravel the web of mystery surrounding this startling murder. The thought pleased him, and he smiled. He began to think about himself and about life as a ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... with sleep, could not unravel the memories of the night. He knew only that he had had unpleasant dreams; perhaps he had wept. The one thing he could recall was a pale face, rising from among the black veils of unconsciousness, around which all his dreams were centered. It was ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... At length, Richard having taken possession of his lodging, there was nothing to prevent our departure. He could have gone with us at that time of the year very well, but he was in the full novelty of his new position and was making most energetic attempts to unravel the mysteries of the fatal suit. Consequently we went without him, and my darling was delighted to praise ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... distinguished from a professional fisherman who fishes for fish—and you get into a rowboat that you undertake to pull yourself and that starts out by weighing half a ton and gets half a ton heavier at each stroke. You pull and pull until your spine begins to unravel at both ends, and your palms get so full of water blisters you feel as though you were carrying a bunch of hothouse grapes in each hand. And after going about nine miles you unwittingly anchor off the mouth of a popular garbage dump and everything you catch ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... correct inductive generalisation is either a law of nature, or a result from one, the problem of inductive logic is to unravel the web of nature, tracing each thread separately, with the view, 1, of ascertaining what are the several laws of nature, and, 2, of following them into their results. But it is impossible to frame a scientific method of induction, or test of inductions, ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... experiments with the Zancigs I came to the conclusion that although the alleged transmission of thought might possibly depend on a code or codes which I was unable to unravel, yet their performance was of such a nature that it was worthy of serious scientific examination. On the assumption that they possessed genuine telepathic powers it would be a pity that the opportunity of investigating their claim should be missed. I therefore set ...
— Telepathy - Genuine and Fraudulent • W. W. Baggally
... of his machine, he determined so to complicate it as that neither the President nor Congress should be able to understand it, or to control him. He succeeded in doing this, not only beyond their reach, but so that he at length could not unravel it himself. He gave to the debt, in the first instance, in funding it, the most artificial and mysterious form he could devise. He then moulded up his appropriations of a number of scraps and remnants, many of which were nothing at all, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... we cannot but feel that, in spite of the magnificent diction and poetic imagination of the one, and the homely picturesque genius of the other, the grand themes treated of are degraded if not vulgarized, without our being in any way helped to unravel their essential mysteries. In point of individual personal interest, "The Holy War" contrasts badly with "The Pilgrim's Progress." The narrative moves in a more shadowy region. We may admire the workmanship; ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... and more, the winds, the vapours, the waves. Nothing is so logical and nothing appears so absurd as the ocean. Self-dispersion is the essence of its sovereignty, and is one of the elements of its redundance. The sea is ever for and against. It knots that it may unravel itself; one of its slopes attacks, the other relieves. No apparition is so wonderful as the waves. Who can paint the alternating hollows and promontories, the valleys, the melting bosoms, the sketches? How render the thickets ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... duty. Since his struggle with Kansas Shorty he had repeatedly weighed every word this rascal had spoken and adduced from it that something most dishonorable must have been Jim's fate, and the oftener he attempted to unravel the mystery that lay concealed behind the ill-omened remarks made by this scoundrel, the more morose he became from the constant strain, for his troubled conscience caused him to feel that he was equally to be blamed for any ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... to unravel that sort of puzzle. He turned to Stormont who, as perplexed as he, had ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... Balaam is so perfectly natural, and yet of a kind so very difficult to unravel and explain, that if the story was invented by man, as poems or novels are, it must have been invented very late indeed in the history of the Jews; at a time when they had grown to be a far more civilised people, far more experienced in the cunning tricks of the human heart than they ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... Mr. Franklin! my view of the case has been proved to be all wrong, I admit—but, as things are now, my advice may be worth having for all that. I tell you plainly, we shall be wasting our time, and cudgelling our brains to no purpose, if we attempt to try back, and unravel this frightful complication from the beginning. Let us close our minds resolutely to all that happened last year at Lady Verinder's country house; and let us look to what we CAN discover in the future, instead of to what we can NOT discover in ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... he knew "all about" Coryndon; he knew at least, that the Government of India looked upon him as the best man they had to unravel the most intricate case that murder or forgery, coining or fraud of any sort, could tangle into mysterious knots. Coryndon had intuition and patience, and once he undertook a case he followed it through to the ultimate conclusion; and so it was that Coryndon ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... being, almost threatening to dispel the drowsy mist then pervading my brain. The slow thought waves gradually ceased their surging, and after a slight pause began to collect round the offending mystery, as if seeking to unravel it in a half-hearted sort of way. They gave me to understand that the "something" recurred at intervals, and even suggested that it might be a voice, though from which side of the elastic dividing line it emanated they ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... through the air, but went out like a human being. It is a plot, that is clear. They are conspiring with the Electoral Prince, and profit by the mask to obtain safe access to the castle; or it may be Nietzel, come to confess what he has done to the Prince—maybe even to bring him a remedy. I must unravel it! I am sure the illusion succeeded so well last night that the apparition will be repeated. I shall make my regulations accordingly, and if it is so, then let the White Lady beware of me, for I am a good conjurer. I shall go to the castle myself to-night, and ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... vermilion fill up the details; and on each side there is a confessional wherein all members, whether large or diminutive, whether dressed in corduroy or smoothest, blackest broad cloth, in silk or Surat cotton, must unravel the sins they have committed. This confession must be a hard sort of job, we know, for some people; but we are not going to enter upon a discussion of its merits or demerits. Only this may be said, that if there was full confession at every place of worship in Preston the parsons would never ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... vehemently agitated than before, "think you that you shall carry on with others an enterprise which I have refused?—No, by every heathen and every Christian god!—Hark ye, Christian, I will arrest you on the spot—I will, by gods and devils, and carry you to unravel your plot at Whitehall." ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... depravity of the aboriginal Australian when first seen by white men, will make it impossible hereafter for anyone whose reasoning powers exceed a native Australian's to maintain that it was the whites who corrupted these savages. It takes an exceptionally shrewd white man even to unravel the customs of voluntary or obligatory wife sharing or lending which prevail in all parts of Australia, and which must have required not only hundreds but thousands of years to assume their present extraordinarily complex aspect; customs which form part and parcel ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... to unravel the tangled skein of crime and hypocrisy among individuals can it be extended to communities and nations, as nations are only man in the aggregate, they are the aggregate of his crimes and deception and depravity, and so long ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... had she gone in the story of the world's first civilization; but she had gone further in her friendship with Michael Amory and in her knowledge of things Mohammedan. He had helped her to unravel the skein of difficulties which Egypt's three distinct and widely-different civilizations had presented to her—the period of ancient Egypt, the period which we now call Coptic or Early Christian and the period of the Arab invasion, with its importation ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... case remains yet undecided and I know not that it ever will be. There is a strange mystery surrounding the business which I am not able to unravel. The court is now in session in Boston which is expected to decide the case. In a few days we shall be able to determine what we have to expect from this case. If we lose it, your mother and I have made up our minds to sit down contented ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... An earthquake story might be as complicated as one pleased, for all the superfluous people could be killed off at the crucial moment, while legal papers and wills could disappear, so that one could not even be expected to unravel the mystery! She hovered uncertainly between three sensational titles—"A Hopeless Quest," "For Ever Hidden," "In the Twinkling of an Eye!"—and plunged boldly into the first sentence of the synopsis without having the faintest ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... herniae, which may occasionally give a good deal of trouble. Symptoms of strangulation have been well marked, yet when the sac is opened nothing is to be seen except a mass of omentum, perhaps tolerably healthy-looking. To reduce this en masse would be very unsafe; it is necessary carefully to unravel it, and disengage the knuckle of bowel which is almost certainly included in it, and which has given rise ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... open, disclosed one of her sweetish caps, side by side with a card of gingerbread. The carpet was woven of every color, in every form, but without any definite figure, and promised to be another puzzle for my curious eyes to unravel; it seemed to have been just thrown down with here and there a tack in it, only serving to make it look more awry. While amusing myself with this carpet, it recalled an incident that a roguish cousin of mine once related ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... many a double meaning. There is, in fact, no lyric song describing natural scenery that may not have beneath it some implied, often indelicate, allusion whose riddle it takes an adroit and practiced mind to unravel. ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... answered, "but I know I would cheerfully pay that sum to anyone who could unravel the mystery ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... pocket? Because,—so Mr. Grey thought,—Augustus would not trust his own father. The creditors, if they could get hold of Mountjoy when his father was dead, and when the bonds would all become payable, might possibly so unravel the facts as to make it apparent that, after all, the property was Mountjoy's. This was not Mr. Grey's idea, but was Mr. Grey's idea of the calculation which Augustus was making for his own government. According to Mr. Grey's reading of all the facts ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... new to it, and ignorant of the historical and other facts necessary to disprove the reverend author's bold assumptions. At last I burst into tears, and kneeling down, exclaimed, "O Lord, I cannot unravel this web of iniquity: enable me to cut it in twain." I was answered; for after a little more thought, a broad view of the whole scheme of man's salvation as revealed in the holy Scriptures appeared to me the best antidote for this insidious ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... thoughts had come to this stage. "The lurid tragedy of the honeymoon pair cannot compare in interest to anything connected with my sweet Ethelrida, for me, so it is your duty to put that horribly wise, cynical brain of yours to work and unravel me this mystery. Look, here is Mr. Markrute coming in—let ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... as is No. 27, The Pan-Pan Dance at the Monico, by Severini, there are some vital bits, excellent modelling, striking detail, though as a whole, it is hard to unravel; the point d'appui is missing; the interest is nowhere focussed, though the dancer woman soon catches the eye. No doubt a crowded supper room in a Continental cafe, the white napery, variegated ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... knowledge that she had voluntarily appealed to him, that she had come to him secretly with her trouble, brought strange happiness. Moreover his former acquaintance with Mrs. Dupont gave him a clue to the mystery. Yet how was he going to unravel the threads, discover the motive, find out the various conspirators? What were they really after? Money probably, but possibly revenge. What did the woman know which enabled her to wield such influence over McDonald? What was the trap they proposed springing? ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... bringing him to so desperate a state. At that time by far the most popular form of light literature was the Romances of Chivalry,—huge interminable fictions, filled with the most extravagant visions that ever visited the slumbers of a mad poet. Merely to unravel the story of one of these gigantic romances is a task which would tax the strongest brain. They dealt with the adventures of Knights-Errant, who wandered about the earth redressing grievances and succoring the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... or Bel Bree, was glad to come into this nest-warm pleasantness, when the mother must leave it for a while. It was not an irksomeness flung by, like a tangled skein, for somebody else to tug at and unravel; it was ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... this nest of boxes, Keepers of these golden legends, To the table in my cabin, Underneath the painted rafters, In this house renowned and ancient? Shall I now these boxes open, Boxes filled with wondrous stories? Shall I now the end unfasten Of this ball of ancient wisdom, These ancestral lays unravel? Let me sing an old-time legend, That shall echo forth the praises Of the beer that I have tasted, Of the sparkling beer of barley. Bring to me a foaming goblet Of the barley of my fathers, Lest my singing grow too weary, Singing from the water only. Bring me too ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... time, his essais and his omelettes. In his seclusions the Vin de Bourgogne had its allotted hour, and there were appropriate moments for the Cotes du Rhone. With him Sauterne was to Medoc what Catullus was to Homer. He would sport with a syllogism in sipping St. Peray, but unravel an argument over Clos de Vougeot, and upset a theory in a torrent of Chambertin. Well had it been if the same quick sense of propriety had attended him in the peddling propensity to which I have formerly alluded—but this was by no means the case. Indeed to say the truth, that trait of mind ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the place where he had seen the mysterious figure of the cliffs. He had thought often of her, and had so longed to return to that part of the coast that only a strict sense of duty had prevented him. Now that he was free to unravel the mystery if he could, he was as excited as a ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... hold that the dissenters are right. People with the necessary metaphysical faculty may understand and passionately enjoy their Browning, but only too many simple souls have inflicted miserable suffering on themselves by trying to unravel the meaning of verses at which ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... before he reached the valley. He could not unravel the warp and woof of his life. The gossamer threads of the webs he had begun to weave about himself so lightly in the heyday of his youth and prosperity and happiness had thickened into cables and petrified; it was impossible to break through the coil of them or find a way out of it. Roland Sefton ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... In particular, that potent instrument called the infinitesimal calculus, which Newton had invented for the investigation of nature, had become so far perfected that Laplace, when he attempted to unravel the movements of the heavenly bodies, found himself provided with a calculus far more efficient than that which had been available to Newton. The purely geometrical methods which Newton employed, though they are admirably adapted for demonstrating in a general way the ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... clayey soil of the hill on which the observatory was situated. Other defects also existed, which seemed to preclude the likelihood that the future work of the instrument would be of a high class. I had also found that very difficult mathematical investigations were urgently needed to unravel one of the greatest mysteries of astronomy, that of the moon's motion. This was a much more important work than making observations, and I wished to try my hand at it. So in the autumn I made a formal application to the Secretary of the Navy to be transferred from the observatory to the Nautical ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... noble one, and is worthily treated. * * * Mr. Motley has had the patience to unravel, with unfailing perseverance, the thousand intricate plots of the adversaries of the Prince of Orange; but the details and the literal extracts which he has derived from original documents, and transferred to his pages, give a truthful color and a picturesque effect, which ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... concise journal, narrating events as they occurred, and drawing hopes and suggestions from each of them. Eugene was full of faith. He described Prince Louis Bonaparte to his father as the predestined necessary man who alone could unravel the situation. He had believed in him prior even to his return to France, at a time when Bonapartism was treated as a ridiculous chimera. Felicite understood that her son had been a very active secret agent since 1848. Although he did not clearly explain his position in Paris, ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... outcasts; she in the heyday of youth and flowing over with wealth, I an old hag and poor as a barren rock, save for this bit of gold. The goddess is no respecter of persons. What can be the sin of this golden-haired beauty? Mine I know. I will unravel hers. Where does she go, I wonder? And with Chios? And he gave her the richest flowers. I will follow far behind. My sight is keen. I will ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... down and across lots and on the bias until the whole thing is so hopelessly mixed and tangled up that if the mystery of a woman's ways, or the fate of Charlie Ross were solved upon one of these cards all the "experts" in the world could not unravel it. A penny saved may be as good as a penny earned, and I have no objections to your saving it in a legitimate way, but when it comes to saving it at the expense of my time, patience, and eye-sight, I object most decidedly. Hereafter I will not answer postals; ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... was completed; and I looked forward to the fresh enterprise of new rivers and lower latitudes, that should unravel the ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... which has passed for true metal. But no student of Napoleon's "Correspondence," of the "Memoirs" of Marmont, and of the recitals of Augereau, Dumas, Landrieux, Verdier, Despinois and others, can hope wholly to unravel the complications arising from the almost continuous conflicts that extended over a dozen leagues of hilly country. War is not always dramatic, however much the readers of campaigns may yearn after thrilling ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... not know how to unravel the thread. How fast he talks to the Colonel Sahib!' Mahbub Ali chuckled. 'By Allah!' the keen eyes swept the veranda for an Instant—'thy lama has sent what to me looks like a note of hand. I have had some few dealings ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... him plunged in despair, or whether, indeed, his frigid indifference was not altogether assumed to serve a peculiar purpose, it was nevertheless certain that he bestowed not the slightest attention upon any of his questioners, not even upon Doe, who had previously endeavoured to unravel the riddle by seeking the assistance of Ralph Stackpole,—assistance, however, which Ralph, waxing sagacious of a sudden, professed himself wholly unable to give. This faithful fellow, indeed, professed to be just as ignorant ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... he had recovered were things that at the moment did not exercise my mind—nor have I since been at any pains to unravel the mystery of it; but there he was, and for the moment that fact was all-sufficing. What complications would come of his presence ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... might have happened under a Parliamentary government. But, then, many members of Parliament, the entire Opposition in Parliament, would have been active to unravel the matter. All the principles of finance would have been worked and propounded. The light would have come from above, not from below—it would have come from Parliament to the nation instead of from the nation to Parliament But exactly the reverse ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... and romantic, so fruitful in incident and rich in experience, that it excites curiosity and invites speculation. It is a life difficult, if not impossible, to understand. Herein lies its peculiar and engrossing fascination. It is a curious web to unravel, a riddle to solve, a problem at once stimulating and baffling. Like the history of the times, it is full of puzzling contradictions and striking contrasts. The daughter of a provincial notary, Madame Recamier was the honored associate of princes. A married woman, she was a wife ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... separated, and Adam Adams watched the young man disappear down the road, the latter feeling that he ought not to interfere with the work of the man he had engaged to unravel the mystery. In deep thought the detective went back to the neighborhood of the mansion and stationed himself where he could get a look at the ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... examination of the different branches of this labyrinth. Now my customary road was no longer practicable, and another was to be carefully explored. For this end, on my next journey to the mountain, I determined to take with me a lamp, and unravel this darksome maze: this project I resolved to execute the ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... which I have detailed to you. A person observing the occurrence of certain facts and phenomena asks, naturally enough, what process, what kind of operation known to occur in nature applied to the particular case, will unravel and explain the mystery? Hence you have the scientific hypothesis; and its value will be proportionate to the care and completeness with which its basis had been tested and verified. It is in these matters as in the commonest affairs of practical life: the guess of the fool ...
— The Method By Which The Causes Of The Present And Past Conditions Of Organic Nature Are To Be Discovered.—The Origination Of Living Beings • Thomas H. Huxley
... De Skirlaw. "I will not be the one to try to unravel it. Let us away to the king and say ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... a born detective—a regular Sherlock Holmes in real life. I have tested him several times with extraordinary results. I have given him the most difficult cases to unravel. He has found the ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... the bonnet, and was chased into the back-yard; but, as it had swallowed the ribbon without being able to swallow the bonnet, it carried that with it. The boy who specially owned the goat ran it down in a frenzy of horror and apprehension, and managed to unravel the ribbon from its throat, and get back the bonnet. Then he took the bonnet in and laid it carefully down on the table again, and decided that it would be best not to say anything about the affair. But such a thing as that could ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... Charlie. This anecdote brings before the mind very vividly the character of Sir Walter's parents. The eager curiosity of the active-minded woman, whom "the honourable Mrs. Ogilvie" had been able to keep upright in her chair for life, but not to cure of the desire to unravel the little mysteries of which she had a passing glimpse; the grave formality of the husband, fretting under his wife's personal attention to a dishonoured man, and making her pay the penalty by dashing to pieces the cup which the king's evidence had used,—again, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton |
