"Skein" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... complexity; complexness &c. adj.; complexus[obs3]; complication, implication; intricacy, intrication[obs3]; perplexity; network, labyrinth; wilderness, jungle; involution, raveling, entanglement; coil &c. (convolution) 248; sleave[obs3], tangled skein, knot, Gordian knot, wheels within wheels; kink, gnarl, knarl[obs3]; webwork[obs3]. [complexity if a task or action] difficulty &c. 704. V. complexify[obs3], complicate. Adj. gnarled, knarled[obs3]. complex, complexed; intricate, complicated, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... ran over in my mind every incident of my later visits that might tell in what regard I was held—the tones, the words, the manner, that ran from deep interest to indifference. And trying to untangle the skein, I was a good deal startled to feel a touch on my arm ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... a ready acquiescence in the desire to utilise his services. Nor was the effect of such a notable introduction lost on Mr. Winter, whose earlier knowledge of the barrister's remarkable achievements in unravelling the tangled skein of criminal investigation was now supplemented by a certain amount of awe for a man who commanded the ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... did not perceive this when she trod so far in the fatal footsteps of her ancestress, Mary Stuart. She had none of her rash violence, but not a little of her spirit of romantic intrigue, and that feminine delight of having in hand a tangled skein, of which she held securely the end of ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... and a tangled skein, full of loose, almost invisible threads. This curiously intimate, and yet impersonal conversation with one who was not only a stranger, but also a foreigner, made her realise how little we men and women really know of one ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... where to begin," said Aunt Jane, wrinkling her forehead meditatively and adjusting her needles. "Tellin' a story is somethin' like windin' off a skein o' yarn. There's jest two ends to the skein, though, and if you can git hold o' the right one it's easy work. But there's so many ways o' beginning a story, and you never know which one leads straightest to the p'int. I wonder many a time how folks ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... sea. Never would she be able to swing herself aloft to the mercy of Heaven, till she had recovered this other half, which was now held fast in the deep water. Anne Lisbeth got back to her former home, but was no longer the woman she had been: her thoughts were confused like a tangled skein; only one thread, only one thought she had disentangled, namely, that she must carry the spectre of the sea shore to the churchyard, and dig a grave for him, that thus she might win ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... darned, pillow-cases to be neatly repaired, and an apron of stout drilling to be hemmed. Anna's task was to darn stockings. She was given Melvina's thimble to use, a smooth wooden ball to slip into the stocking, and a needle and skein of cotton. ...
— A Little Maid of Old Maine • Alice Turner Curtis
... emotions: they write from the inspiration of their own hearts; they see the world in the height of their own joys and afflictions. These amiable egotists fill all nature with the voice of their own plaints, and they have ever a tangled skein of their own peculiar thoughts to unravel and to ravel again. The second order of men of genius, albeit they are not deficient in keen susceptibility or profound reflection, see the world outstretched before them, as it lies beneath the impartial light of heaven; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... embers—apparently in deep meditation, though it is to be questioned whether he thought at all. Mrs. Gordon had resumed her knitting, while Sue and Ned, after disputing some time whose turn it was to hold the yarn, were busily employed in winding a skein ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... a black sail was always carried by the ship that bore these victims to their death, he would, if he succeeded in killing the Minotaur, as he hoped to do, hoist a white one when coming home. When he reached Crete, he won the heart of Minos' daughter Ariadne, who gave him a skein of thread: by unwinding this as he went he would leave a clue behind him, by which he could find his way out of the labyrinth, after killing the monster. When this was done, by his great skill and strength, he took ship again, and Ariadne came with him; but he grew tired of her, and left ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... out on the 28th January 1547, when the tyrant breathed his last, and left his two wives and two daughters to unravel the skein which he had so persistently entangled for them. Katharine Parr took her fate immediately into her own hands, and thirty-five days after Henry's death, secretly married her former admirer, Sir Thomas, now Lord Seymour, who was described by Hayward ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... mistaking political treachery for diplomacy and impudence for intellect. As Clark cannot interview himself to the extent of half a column for the Morning Bazoo without getting his goozle entangled in the skein of his own intorted argument, so the Advertiser cannot grind out an editorial of equal length without getting hoist with its own logical sequence, split from vermiform appendix to occipitofrontalis by the recoil of its own syllogisms. The Advertiser is unreliable as Proteus; the base vulpine ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... yarn, with which kittens have been making cobwebs, has always seemed to me a much easier task than to unknot the tangled skein of confused influences, that trip up our feet at every step in life's path. Here was I, who but a month ago had a supreme contempt for guile and a lofty confidence in uprightness and downrightness, transformed into a crafty ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... is only a machine, unless it has a mind in it; and your big machine can no more create power than a little machine as small as a lady's watch. Nor does it make the least difference in respect to making power, of what materials your perpetual motion peddler makes his machine—whether of a skein of silk on a reel in a bottle, or of steel and zinc electro magnets running upon diamond points, or whether he melts up his steel, and zinc, and diamonds into red hot fire mist; it is still only a machine, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... looked, in his gloomy survey of that night, much deformed with knot and tangle, for the Spinner cared nothing at all about them. She suffered each to wind heedlessly away; she minded not that they were ugly; she spared no strand of gold or silver from her skein of human happiness to brighten the grey fabric of them. So it seemed to Will, and his temper chimed with the rough night. The wind howled and growled down the chimney, uttered many a sudden yell and ghostly moan, struck with claws invisible ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... impetuous mother, knowing a little what to expect, while to my companion he would be all original. We stood there waiting (for the Salisbury train was late), and wondering with a warm, half-fearful eagerness what sort of new thread Life was going to twine into our skein. I think our chief dread was that he might have light eyes—those yellow Chinese eyes of the common, parti-coloured spaniel. And each new minute of the train's tardiness increased our anxious compassion: His first journey; ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the case was growing deeper and deeper. The finding of the counterfeit banknotes In Barry Langmore's safe was astonishing. Where this thread of the skein would lead to he could ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... didn't notice. But your handkerchief is over by the couch and you're stepping on a skein of linen." ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... hanks, which he first washed in a solution of potash, and then with water, and after drying dipped them in the acids. The acid mixture used consisted of 3 parts by weight of sulphuric to 1 part of nitric acid, and were prepared some time before use. The cotton was dipped one skein at a time, stirred for a few minutes, pressed out, steeped, and excess of acid removed by washing with water, then with dilute potash, and finally with water. Von Lenk's process was used in England at Faversham ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... 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
... was sitting in front of her with his elbows planted on his knees and both his hands stretched forwards. Extended on these two hands of his was a skein of thread, which the elegant little woman ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... makes itself lamentably felt throughout. We are conscious, as we read, that King Edward, or Longshanks, as he is always named, is intended to impress us with his sterling English qualities. He overcomes all difficulties, and if we could only unravel his thread from the skein of characters, we should acknowledge him to be a worthy monarch, brave, loving, wise, just and firm. One or two scenes, we feel, are inserted deliberately for the sake of heightening his character, notably that in which he elects to face single-handed a man whom he supposes to be the redoubtable ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... Fanny, even when at school, had shrunk aloof. At other moments there was something so absent and distracted about her, or so fantastic and incoherent, that Vaudemont, with the man's hard, worldly eye, read in it nothing but melancholy confusion. Nevertheless, if the skein of ideas was entangled, each thread in itself was a thread ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... southern wilderness with frowning, bloodshot eyes, and once more, far to the east where the jagged cliffs of the Superstitions sweep down to the gorge of the Salagua and Hell's Hip Pocket bars the river's sweep, he saw that vague, impalpable haze—a smoke, a dust, a veil of the lightest skein, stirred idly by some wandering wind, perhaps, or marking the trail of sheep. And as he looked upon it his melancholy gaze changed to a staring, hawk-like intentness; he leaned forward in the saddle and Chapuli stepped eagerly down the slope, head up, ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... brought into worldly contact with them. I at any rate will be firm. I say to you now no more than I said, ah, so many times, when it was still possible that my words should not be vain. They were vain. But not on that account am I to be changed. I will not be wound like a skein of silk round your little finger.' That was it. Was she to give way in everything because they had been successful among them in carrying out this marriage in opposition to her judgment? Was she to assent that this man be treated as a sheep because ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... and did she not lack half a score or a dozen front teeth she might pass and make a figure among the fairest. I say nothing of her lips, for they are so thin that, were it the fashion to reel lips, one might make a skein of them; but, being of a different color from what is usual in lips, they have a marvellous appearance, for they are streaked with blue, green, and orange-tawny. Pardon me, good my lord governor, if I paint so minutely the parts of her who is about to become my daughter; for in truth I love and ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... nearly killed him. He nevertheless went on inventing, and next produced a machine for weaving flowered silks, with a contrivance for giving a dressing to the thread, so as to render that of each bobbin or skein of ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... go-by; I only know that when I finally surrendered myself to the composer he worked his will on my fancy and on my raw nerves, and I followed the poems, loathing the music all the while, with intense interest. Indeed, I couldn't let go the skein of the story for fear that I might fall off somewhere into a gloomy chasm and be devoured by chromatic wolves. I recalled one extraordinary moment at the close of the composition when a simple major chord was sounded and how to my ears it had a supernal beauty; after the perilous ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... plain Hannah unrolled one heavy skein, threaded it through their own hoop, and lowered the two ends into the garden, where John stood at attention ready to throw them over the wall. Darsie and Lavender dropped their ends straight into the street, and then chased madly downstairs to join the boys and witness the junction of ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... opinion was, that if you couldn't do nothing for him, you had better take nothing from him for doing of it; so far as he could make out, that was about what it come to. Thus, in a prolix, gently-growling, foolish way, did Plornish turn the tangled skein of his estate about and about, like a blind man who was trying to find some beginning or end to it; until they reached the prison gate. There, he left his Principal alone; to wonder, as he rode away, how many thousand Plornishes there might be within a day ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... Starling's house more frequent than ever. It was little he did to recommend himself when he was there; he generally sat watching Diana, carrying on a spasmodic and interrupted conversation with Mrs. Starling about farm affairs, and seizing the opportunity of a dropped spool or an unwound skein of yarn to draw near Diana and venture some word to her. Poor Diana felt in those days so much like a person whose earthly ties are all broken, that it did not come into her head in what a different light she stood to ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... such a sight in the world? Like a wonderful winding skein,— The way he tangles them up together And ravels them ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... top of the 'bus, I bite my pipe and look at the sky. Over my shoulder the smoke streams out And my life with it. "Conservation of energy," you say. But I burn, I tell you, I burn; And the smoke of me streams out In a vanishing skein of grey. Crash and bump ... my poor bruised body! I am a harp of twittering strings, An elegant instrument, but infinitely second-hand, And if I have not got phthisis it is only an ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... all that was, and all that might have been, Of all the sorrow that his sword had wrought, Of Death that now drew near him: of the green Vales of Larissa, where, with such a queen, With such a love as now his spear had slain, He had been happy, who must wind the skein Of grievous wars, and ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... tangled skein Fate cut her threads and formed anew The pattern of the thing she planned And red war slipped the shuttle through, Montcalm met Wolfe! The bitter strife Of flag and flag was ended here— And every man who gave his life Gave ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... right," laughed the little lady. "Come here my Gonerilla, and hold my skein for me. Signor Graziano is going to charm us with ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... chance to work here," laughed his uncle. "There is variety enough to please you, too. We have throwing mills; a place where we dye silk in the skein; a winding and weaving plant; another plant for dyeing goods in the piece; and a big printing and finishing plant. If you do not find something to suit you by the time you have worked through all these it will be your own fault. Of course women have the monopoly of certain parts of the work; but ...
— The Story of Silk • Sara Ware Bassett
... though that was a loss he was not yet ready to admit. Worst of all, she had him convinced that he was a failure, a weakling and misfit, a sort of green fool who had asked for the moon and been properly punished for his temerity. And that was a skein even fairies would find ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... with her delicate features, her wealth of raven hair, above all, with the soft, sad, dreamy eyes, that look so loving, so trustful, and so good. In such characters as theirs these things are soon accomplished. A walk or two, a waltz, a skein of silk to wind, a drive in a pony-carriage, an afternoon church, and behold them in the memorable summer-house, where he won her heart—completely and unreservedly, while flinging down his own! Then came all the sweet excitement, ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... and was admitted into a fair-sized drawing-room, whose tasteful and well-arranged furniture at once prepossessed him. An open piano, a sheet of music carelessly left on the stool, a novel lying face downwards on the table beside a skein of silk, and the distant rustle of a vanished skirt through an inner door, gave a suggestion of refined domesticity to the room that touched the fancy of the homeless and nomadic Bly. He was still enjoying, in half ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... to the letter I have just sent away. By a few minutes too late, comes what I have all day been waiting for, ... and besides (now it is just too late!) now I may have a skein of silk if I please, to make that knot with, ... for want of which, two locks meant for you, have been devoted to the infernal gods already ... fallen into a tangle and thrown into the fire ... and all the hair of my head might have followed, for I was losing my patience and temper ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... their supposed birthright of "genius," have ended where they began; flattered into the vain belief that they were men at eighteen or twenty, and finding out at fifty that they were and always had been nothing more than boys. It was but a tangled skein of life that Motley's book showed us at twenty-five, and older men might well have doubted whether it would ever be wound off in any continuous thread. To repeat his own words, he had crowded together the materials for his work, but he had no pattern, and consequently ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... thou thread, thou thimble, Thou yard, three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail, Thou flea, thou nit, thou winter-cricket, thou:— Brav'd in mine own house with a skein of thread! Away, thou rag, thou quantity, thou remnant; Or I shall so be-mete thee with thy yard, As thou shalt think on prating whilst thou liv'st." SHAK.: Taming of the Shrew, Act ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... o'clock of this cloudless October morning Colonel Montgomery Byrne, "of the old Army, sir," was reviling the fates that had set him the task of unraveling such a skein as he found at Sandy. At six he was blessing the stars that sent him. Awakened, much before his usual hour, by half-heard murmur of scurry and excitement, so quickly suppressed he believed it all a dream, he was thinking, half drowsily, ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... rebellious like herself, of the sort that goes with an ardent personality, waved and curled over her little poll, and generally ended the day in a tangle only less intricate than can be achieved by a skein of silk. Of her small oval face, people were accustomed to say it was all eyes, an unoriginal summarising, but one that forced itself inevitably upon those who met Christian's eyes, clear and shining, of the pale brown that the sun knows how to waken in a shallow pool in a hill-stream, ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... of the habit. Did a volley of oaths ever start a heavy load? Did curses ever unravel a tangled skein? Did they ever extirpate the meanness of a customer? Did they ever collect a bad debt? Did they ever cure a toothache? Did they ever stop a twinge of the gout? Did they ever save you a dollar, or put you a step forward in any great enterprise? or enable you to gain a position, ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... did foes more deadly wait Than Saladin's fierce crew. The lamp of love Was changed for one of hate, which threw Its false and fatal skein of light above. A shuddering shock, a fearful crash, ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
... as to material, so that it be of the nature of strings or threads. A lady friend once told me that, while she was working by an open window, one of these birds approached while her back was turned, and, seizing a skein of some kind of thread or yarn, made off with it to its half-finished nest. But the perverse yarn caught fast in the branches, and, in the bird's efforts to extricate it, got hopelessly tangled. She tugged away at it all day, but was finally obliged to content ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... the story bears a certain similarity to that of Mysterier, Vicioria, and Pan, being a love affair of mazy windings, a tangled skein of loves-me-loves-me-not. But it is pure comedy throughout. Rolandsen, the telegraph operator in love with Elsie Mack, is no poet; he has not even any pretensions to education or social standing. He is a cheerful, riotous "blade," who ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... did not for a moment question that he was right, nor wish to disobey; but she had become very much interested, and was a good deal annoyed at having such a sudden stop put to her pleasure. She said nothing, and went on with her work. In a little while Alice asked her to hold a skein of cotton for her while she wound it. Ellen was annoyed again at the interruption; the harp-strings were jarring yet, and gave fresh discord to every touch. She had, however, no mind to let her vexation be seen; she went immediately and held the cotton, and as ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... into a single thread, and each length of thread is a promise of warmth and protection for years to come. Then the wool-white yarn is dyed in colors symbolizing the strength of the navy, the loyalty of the army or the honor of the alma mater. Reeled into a skein, the wool is now all but ready for the fingers of the knitter; it has but to be wound in a ball. Yet here danger lurks. An inadvertent twist or a simple tangle quickly knots the thread, unless thoughtful ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... board a ship in a storm may be real confusion and riot, or it may only seem so to those not used to the sea. Often what is a hopelessly tangled mass of sails, ropes, spars and gears to the landsman, is as clear to a sailor as a skein of yarn is to an experienced knitter, who can ply her needles ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... figure and elasticity; whereas the grommets which are formed of rope are apt to relax in warm weather, and adhere to the stays, so as to prevent the sails from being readily hoisted or lowered.—Iron hanks are more generally used now that stays are made of wire.—Hank is also a skein of line or twine.—Getting into a ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... field and by one possessed of consummate military training. On the other hand, we can seldom look for any laborious work of authorship from a general in active service. Men of action exhaust their energies in doing, and are usually impatient of the slow process of unwinding the tangled skein of events which at the moment they had been compelled to cut with the sword. It is by no means every campaign which furnishes the Commentaries of its Caesar. To Sir William Napier, however, we are indebted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... English people. Freeman delved long among the chronicles of Normans and Saxons; Stubbs no less laboriously excavated the charters of the Plantagenets; Froude hewed his path through the State papers of the Tudors; while Gardiner patiently unravelled the tangled skein of Stuart misgovernment. John Richard Green, one of the youngest of the school, took a wider subject, the continuous history of the English people. He was fortunate in writing at a time when the public was prepared to find the subject interesting, but he himself ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... of the Fabian Society, deeply stirred by the tremendous social import of this movement, banded themselves together to unravel the tangled skein of women's economic subjection and to discover how its knots were tied. The first step was to get women to speak out, to analyse their own difficulties and hindrances as matters boldly to be faced. Whatever the truth may turn out to be with regard to natural and inevitable differences ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... this moment is hidden from us by a band of clouds, that stretches, right above our head, from one end of the sky to the other, like a long skein of white wool. It is alone in the blue void, and seems to make more peaceful, and even a little mysterious, the wonderful light of the fields we traverse—these fields intoxicated with life and vibrant with the music of birds; ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... himself in a veritable thicket of these delicate branches, high above his head, and so interlaced that he could make headway only by slowly and patiently disentangling them, as one would disentangle a skein of silk. It was a fantastic sort of dilemma, and not unpleasing. Except that the Father was in haste to reach his journey's end, he would have enjoyed threading his way through the golden meshes. Suddenly he heard ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... could not help noticing that London had discovered the secret which made his intellectual life a torment. The streets were more than a mere assemblage of houses, London herself was more than a tangled skein of streets, and overhead heaven was more than a meeting-place of individual stars. What was this secret that made words into a book, houses into cities, and restless and measurable stars into an unchanging ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... silk the whirling spoles reveal, If smiling Fortune turn the giddy wheel; But if sweet Love with baby-fingers twines, 130 And wets with dewy lips the lengthening lines, Skein after skein celestial tints unfold, And all the silken tissue ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... answered him, and said: 'My friend, lo, thou hast said all that a wise man might say or do, yea, and an elder than thou;—for from such a sire too thou art sprung, wherefore thou dost even speak wisely. Right easily known is that man's seed, for whom Cronion weaves the skein of luck at bridal and at birth: even as now hath he granted prosperity to Nestor for ever for all his days, that he himself should grow into a smooth old age in his halls, and his sons moreover should be wise and the best of spearsmen. But ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... of such a collection is difficult indeed, for it has drawn upon all civilizations and all literatures. But since Hammer-Purgstall and De Sacy began to unwind the skein, many additional turns have been given. The idea of the "frame" in general comes undoubtedly from India; and such stories as 'The Barber's Fifth Brother,' 'The Prince and the Afrit's Mistress,' have been "traced back to the Hitopadesa, Panchatantra, and Katha Sarit Sagara." ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... a mere truism to remark that in every political question the main controversy is complicated by a number of side issues. Thus in the tangled skein of politics in South Eastern Europe there is not merely the great struggle between the Crescent and the Cross, but there are also jealousies between Greek and Bulgarian, between Servian and Austrian, which have to be considered. So in Ireland, if we take the religious ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... principal surgeon of a well-known hospital, handed to Mr. Zancig a set of skeins of silk of different colours. These were then passed on to Madame Zancig, who was on the stage. Dr. H. pointed silently to a skein of silk of a corresponding set which he had retained, and which he took care Madame Zancig could not see. Mr. Zancig, who preserved absolute silence, and remained motionless, looked at the colour of ...
— Telepathy - Genuine and Fraudulent • W. W. Baggally
... skein o' worsted stretched out on her hands," Sanders continued, "and a young leddy was winding it. I didna see her richt, but she ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... votive temple of the Superga, which stands on a high hilltop above the city, gazing across at Monte Rosa and lifting its own fine dome against the sky with no contemptible art. But when you have seen the Superga from the quay beside the Po, a skein of a few yellow threads in August, despite its frequent habit of rising high and running wild, and said to yourself that in architecture position is half the battle, you have nothing left to visit but the Museum of pictures. The Turin Gallery, ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... doing laborious work, it was customary with The Lifter, as well as with our hero, to sit among the women and assist them in such offices as the peeling of turnips or potatoes; and holding the yarn skein whilst one of the women rolled the thread into a ball; or in scouring the knives and forks. One afternoon while all the men save The Lifter were absent, the group was seated round a small open fire. Hanging from the crane was a pot of fruit which ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... other festive season, you may have to dress a fowl or turkey for your dinner. On such occasions I would recommend the following method:—First, draw the fowl, reserving the gizzard and liver to be tucked under the wings; truss the fowl with skewers, and tie it to the end of a skein of worsted, which is to be fastened to a nail stuck in the chimney-piece, so that the fowl may dangle rather close to the fire, in order to roast it. Baste the fowl, while it is being roasted, with butter, or some kind of grease, and when nearly done, sprinkle it with a little flour and salt, ...
— A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes • Charles Elme Francatelli
... altogether, no more like the other one than a apple-pie is like a mug o' cider. An' then they both took it up, an' they swung it around between them, till it was all twisted an' knotted an' wound up, an' tangled, worse than a skein o' yarn in a nest o' kittens, an' then they ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... its pre-ordered fate—no wandering from its orbit—no variation in its seasons—and yet imagine that the Arch-ordainer will hold back the tides He has sent from their unseen source, at our miserable bidding? Shall we think that our prayers can avert a doom woven with the skein of events? To change a particle of our fate, might change the destiny of millions! Shall the link forsake the chain, and yet the chain be unbroken? Away, then, with our vague repinings, and our blind demands. All must walk onward to their goal, be he the ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... string of beads tied around its neck, and inside it was placed a switch, care being taken that a portion of it hung outside. Beside the jar was a basket containing five bundles of unthreshed rice, on which was a skein of thread supporting a new jar. All this was covered with a woman's skirt. Finally a bound pig was ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... looking slightly irritated as she wound a ball of white yarn from a skein that Docia was holding between ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... offer good chances for humor, particularly the funny story, for humor with a genuine point is not trivial. But do not spin a whole skein of humorous yarns with no more connection than the inane and threadbare "And that reminds me." An anecdote without bearing may be funny but one less funny that fits theme and occasion is far preferable. There is no way, short of sheer power of speech, that so surely leads to the heart ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... incident was so very trifling that it scarcely drew the notice of Simon, though the thought did flit across his mind that it was strange that his brother, on the eve of battle, could pause to pick up anything so utterly valueless as a slight skein of unbleached flax. It was valueless indeed, save from the associations which, in the mind of him who wore it, were entwined with every thread. That flax had been once used to tie together some flowers long since dead; the ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... combat with the sons of Roderick at Drumraitte (1237), "not to shoot but to come to a close fight." It is possible, however, that this order may have reference to the old Irish weapon, the javelin or dart. The pike, the battle-axe, the sword, and skein, or dagger, both parties had in common, though their construction was different. The favourite tactique, on both sides, seems to have been the old military expedient of outflanking an enemy, and attacking him simultaneously ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... extremely interesting. Etienne Boileau, in his book of crafts, to which I have already alluded, tells us that a member of the guild was prohibited from using gold of less value than 'eight sous (about 6s.) the skein; he was bound to use the best silk, and never to mix thread with silk, because that made the work false and bad.' The test or trial piece prescribed for a worker who was the son of a master-embroiderer was 'a ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... the curs ran into them as a falcon does into a skein of ducks. Wulf and I galloped and galloped over those accursed sand-heaps till the horses stuck fast; and when they got their wind again, we found each pair of dogs with a deer down between them—and what can man want more, ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... the rose and still the rapture Woven through the tangled skein, And the joys we still shall capture At the ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... successive changes taking place in the nucleus of an epithelium cell, preparatory to division of the cell. (From Quain's Anatomy, after Flemming.) a, resting cell, showing the nuclear network; b, first stage of division, the chromatoplasm transformed into a skein of closely contorted filaments; c to f, further stages in the growth and looping arrangement of the filaments; g, stellate phase, or aster; h, completion of the splitting of the filaments, already begun in f ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... of innumerable beams of every hue in intimate association. Every shade of red, of yellow, of blue, and of green, can be found in a sunbeam. The magician's wand, with which we strike the sunbeam and sort the tangled skein into perfect order, is the simple instrument known as the glass prism. We have represented this instrument in its simplest form in the adjoining figure (Fig. 17). It is a piece of pure and homogeneous glass in the ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... skein to unravel; but, as it happens, I really believe I can throw a little light upon the matter. You say Rona told you that somebody came into her bedroom last night, and presumably hid the pendant in her ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... whispering immensities, That rain down quietude and darkness on heart and eye. None move, none speak, none sigh But from the laurels comes a leaping voice Crying in tones that seem not man's nor boy's, But only joy's, And hard behind a loud tumultuous crying, A tangled skein of noise, And the girls see their lovers come, each vying Against the next in glad and confident poise, Or softly moving To the side of the chosen with gentle words and loving Gifts for her pleasure of sweetmeats ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... the situation between the child and his mother. He had been obliged to go into town the day after Eleanor's first unfortunate encounter with her hostess, and had hurried home in fear and trembling to try to smooth out any tangles in the skein of their relationship that might have resulted from a day in each other's vicinity. After hurrying over the house and through the grounds in search of her he finally discovered the child companionably currying a damp and afflicted Pekinese in his mother's sitting-room, and engaged ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... There was a skein of blue silk swinging over the edge of the table. Mr. Ffrench picked it up and replaced it ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram
... home of the prosperous father of Mireio. We learn of his wealth in lands, in olives, in almonds, and in bees. We watch the farm-hands coming home at evening. When the basket-makers reach the gate, they find the daughter of the house, who, having just fed her silkworms, is now twisting a skein. The man and the youth ask to sleep for the night upon a haystack, and stop in friendly talk with Mireio. The poet describes Vincen, a dark, stalwart youth of sixteen, and tells of his skill at his trade. Meste Ramoun invites them in to supper. ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... it over to the lamp, and for a while after she had taken in its easily grasped intent she went on turning its pages back and forth while she sought for an end of the tangled skein of her thoughts to hold ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... when she got me to holdin' a skein of yarn for her. As Old Hickory strolls by and sees me with my hands stuck out, I thought he was ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... and yet I have tangled among The fray'd warp and woof of this brief life of mine Other lives than my own. Could my death but untwine The vext skein... but it will not. Yes, Duke, young—so young! And I knew you not? yet I have done you a wrong Irreparable!... late, too late to repair. If I knew any means... but I know none!... I swear, If this broken fraction of time ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... white spot on the wall, she said, half in a whisper: "There our cuckoo clock used to hang, and there our father's discharge from the army. And there the hanks of yarn that mother spun used to hang—she could spin even better than Black Marianne—Black Marianne has said so herself. She always got a skein more out of a pound than anybody else, and it was always so even—not a knot in it. And do you see that ring up there on the ceiling? It was beautiful to see her twisting the threads there. If I had been old enough to know then, I ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... a white background in a good light. Select, as a test color, a skein of light green color, such as would be obtained by mixing a pure green with white. Ask the examinee to select and pick out from the heap all those skeins which appear to him to be of the same color, whether of lighter or darker shades. ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... is nothing on it,' answered she, 'but I can assure you that there is a large skein of wool, so fine that nobody can see it, which will be woven into a coat ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... plucked off the fowl with care not to break the web; free them from down, except a small quantity on the shaft of the feather. Get also a little fine wire, different sizes; a few skeins of fine floss silks, some good cotton wool or wadding, a reel of No. 4 Moravian cotton, a skein of Indian silk, some starch and gum for pastes, and a pair of small sharp scissors, a few sheets of coloured silk paper, and ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... southwards at last, crossing the road again towards her own street, it seemed to her that the day even now was beginning to cloud over. Over the roofs of Kensington a haze was beginning to make itself visible, as impalpable as a skein of smoke; yet there it was. She felt a little languid, too. Perhaps she had walked too far. She would rest a little after lunch, if dearest Maud did not mind; for dearest Maud was to lunch with her, as was usual on Sundays when ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... quantity of mucilage it contains, but it is more interesting for other properties. When cut in two, deprived of epidermis and seeds, and washed until none of the mucilage remains, there is left a fibrous skeleton, a sort of skein of interwoven nets that constitutes the so-called vegetable sponge. It serves the same purpose as a sponge and has the advantages that its fibers do not rot and that they are easily kept clean. In view of its cheapness and plentifulness in the Philippines the above advantages should ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... his binoculars obediently and scanned the west and north. His eyes traversed skein after skein of the brilliant colorful patternings, but he was unable to find a very closely netted region. He was about to announce his discovery to Caradoc when his lense focussed on another ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... way to build a fire, lighting it from the top; and it is upon a lesson of his on rural sanitation that I have based my own management of those matters in our country home. I have a pleasant memory of his holding a skein of wool for me to wind one wet afternoon, and of his telling me the while of his observations of a family of bugs. He was travelling in the East, and at some place where he stayed was much distressed by vermin. At last he discovered ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... and in fact refuse to be identified with any tribes but those of Asia Minor and the AEgean. In them we see the broken remnants of the old Minoan (Keftian) power, driven hither and thither across the seas by intestinal feuds, and "winding the skein of grievous wars till every man of them perished," as Homer says of the heroes after the siege of Troy. These were in fact the wanderings of the heroes, the period of Sturm und Drang which succeeded the great civilized ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... clue into Ambler Jevons' hands he would, I knew, quickly follow it, gathering up the threads of the tangled skein one by one, until he could openly charge her with the crime. I stood undecided how to act. Should I leave my friend to make his own investigations independently and unbiassed, or should I frankly tell him of my ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... dubersome about it. But knowin' I'd clung to Duty's apron strings I felt like leavin' the event. And when Miss Meechim come in I wuz settin' calm and serene in a big chair windin' some clouded blue and white yarn, Aronette holdin' the skein. I'd brung along a lot of woollen yarn to knit Josiah some socks on the way, to make me ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... louder as the rising tide lapped up the sands at the back of the Bar. The faint yellow-pink after-thought of sunrise and pencillings of tarnished cloud alike had vanished into the all-obtaining misty blue of the upper sky. Heading for the French coast, a skein of wild geese passed in wedge-shaped formation with honking cries and the beat of strong-winged flight. The barrow creaked again, wheeled some few yards further along ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... by Cavendish, that when Wolsey and Campeggio visited the queen by the king's order she was found at work among her women, and came forth to meet the cardinals with a skein of white thread hanging about her neck; that when Wolsey addressed her in Latin, she interrupted him, saying, "Nay, good my lord, speak to me in English, I beseech you; although I understand Latin." "Forsooth then," quoth my lord, "madam, if ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... the mantel-piece is furnished with a brass or iron arm, turning on pivots in a plate fastened to the lintel, and notched along its upper edge. From this arm, which is turned back against the lintel when not in use, the meat is hung and turned by means of a bottle-jack or a skein of worsted, knotted in three or four places, which answers the purpose equally well, and may be replaced by a new one when required, at a merely nominal cost. Meat roasted in this manner should be turned occasionally, the ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... paid no heed, and I hauled away till I felt sure that I must have at least forty or fifty yards of the line—quite as much as I wanted; and then I used the knife again, and after replacing it, wound the line into a skein from elbow to hand, ending by hanging it round my neck with the ends twisted in so that they could not ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... of disengaging the two monstrous misconceptions from the tangled skein of inherited beliefs and framing them in words, I have already repeatedly performed. Let us keep the results in mind. Here they are in their nakedness: (1) Human beings—men, women, and children—are ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... fro between the windows which looked out upon the street and the second row which gave upon the garden. His wife lay the sleeping Abel on her knee, and little Moina lay in untroubled slumber in the low chair, like a bird in its nest. Her older sister stared into the fire, a skein of silk in one hand, a needle ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... chests. However, a door at the far end of the workroom opened at that moment, and Mere-Grand, coming from the upper floor where she and Marie had their bedrooms, made her appearance. She had just absented herself to fetch a skein of wool; and she gazed fixedly at the priest, unable to understand the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... sharpened and his eyes burned as he leaned closer and closer to the older detective—"but this second case, so unlike the first in non-essentials but so exactly like it in just those points which make the mystery, has dropped a thread from its tangled skein into my hand, which may yet lead us to the heart of both. Can you guess—have you guessed—what this thread is? But how could you without the one clew I have not given you? Mr. Gryce, the tenement where this occurred is the same I visited ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... had left, we took to the caravel Nina, to which from another headland there was coming another little almadia, with a man who came to barter a skein of cotton. And some of the sailors threw themselves into the sea, because he did not wish to enter the caravel, and took him. And I, who was on the stern of the ship, and saw it all, sent for him and gave him a red cap and some little green glass ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale
... skein was too tangled for us to attempt to unravel it. They had seen vessels evidently, both sailing ships and steamers, but whether it was yesterday, or ten years back, there were no means of ascertaining; but to make certain that we were not being deceived, we instituted a strict overhaul of the ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... mighty prophet Elisha, fettered to earth by wrath and scorn till, at his own command, the music swelled, and his enfranchised spirit rose on its viewless wings to behold the veiled Future already woven from the tangled skein of the troubled Present—the thousand-fold story of music's magic and mystery, stretches back into the forgotten Past, and onward ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... bright coals as he gazed on her. He saw her clear high forehead, he heard—or thought he heard despite the jar of the street—the rustle of the muslin robe. Hermione passed, nor ever knew how, by taking this way from the house of a friend, she coloured the skein of life for three mortals—for herself, ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... distance, like mutterings and groanings arisen from the very bowels of the earth. Then there were the splash or boom of the waves, the piping of the sea-wind, the cry of curlew, or black-backed gulls, all mingled in one great and tangled skein of sound that choked the voice of the speaker, and in their aggregate, bewildered ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... failed at the Buscou, and every one came from all parts to divide their skein at the Fete ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... I thought I did about the bigness of London, I found that morning that I never had any idea of what an everlasting town it is. It is like a skein of tangled yarn—there doesn't seem to be any end to it. Going in this way from Nelson's Monument out into the country, it was amazing to see how long it took to get there. We would go out of the busy streets into a quiet rural neighborhood, or what looked like it, and the ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... we can never Straighten out life's tangled skein, Why should we, in vain endeavour, Guess and ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... were not to be answered. Had he known at the moment how deeply the two of them were to be enmeshed in the skein of Europe's destiny he would have risen and faced the anger of his host, or, risking detection, incontinently fled. But Marishka's hand clasped his ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... going to be very different from what it proved to be. Fresh from the study of the older men and also of Mr. Darwin himself, I failed to see that Mr. Darwin had "unravelled and illuminated" a tangled skein, but believed him, on the contrary, to have tangled and obscured what his predecessors had made in great part, if not wholly, plain. With the older writers, I had felt as though in the hands of men who wished to understand ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... unravel that old skein? Twist it up rather. Twist it up. Do you think I'm always so merry? Only when I meet you: ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... her Precious Toy, And I 'll rejoice to see her joy: Her bauble 's only one degree Less frail, less fugitive than we, For time, ere long, will snap the skein, And scatter all ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... how desperate was this man's determination, how tightly his lips were locked. But she had picked up another thread of this tangled skein, and that made her exult with a new hope. She went spiritedly at the cross-examination of Doctor Sherman, striving to break him down. So sharp, so rigid, so searching were her questions, that there were ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... attachment for a young stewardess, and it extended to the bridge, where Captain Boynton frequently consigned his duties to the first officer in order to devote his energies to holding Mrs. Weston's worsted. When he was not holding the skein, he was holding the ball, and during the endless process of winding and unwinding he spun his own yarns, recalling tales of wild adventure that alternately shocked and fascinated his ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... comfort, while she confessed herself. Oh! what a fool she had been. Why, pray, had she been paying all these visits to the farm, and spending all these hours in this young fellow's company? Her quick intelligence unravelled all the doubtful skein. Yearning towards her kindred?—yes, there had been something of that. Recoil from the Bannisdale ways, an angry eagerness to scout them and fly them?—yes, that there had always been in plenty. But she dived deeper into her self-disgust, and brought up the real ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... document, over and over again; and the more she read it, the more was she confused by the mixture of the first and third person; the substitution of the 'i' for the 'T. I.;' and the transition from the 'I. T.' to the 'You.' The writing looked like a skein of thread in a tangle, and the note was ingeniously folded into a perfect square, with the direction squeezed up into the right-hand corner, as if it were ashamed of itself. The back of the epistle was pleasingly ornamented with a large red wafer, which, with the addition of divers ink-stains, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... to his normal self also. He had sworn to himself that he would not tell Elizabeth he loved her, until he had succeeded in unravelling the tangled skein of the terrible ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... sensible of his own situation, I said: As you seem so well aware that you are crazy, perhaps you can inform me what caused you to become so. "Oh yes," replied he, "I can soon tell you that: first my father died, then my mother, and soon after my only sister hung herself to the limb of a tree with a skein of worsted yarn; and last, and worst of all, my wife, Dorcas Jane, drowned herself in Otter Creek." Wondering if there was any truth in this horrible story, or if it was only the creation of his own diseased mind, I said, ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... the last scene in our history, and I know not how to do it, for of all the events of the life it is to me the most dreamy and unreal. The figures of our drama flit before me like shadows. It was like a knotted skein slowly unravelling. It was as the ice becomes water, and runs silently away. It was as the gorgeous, roseate cloud lifts itself up, and then changes in color and hides beyond the horizon. It was as a carriage and ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... Tam-O'-Shanter!" exclaimed Mary jubilantly, "and a fluffy pompon on top! I can have it ready by day after to-morrow. I've been wondering what I could wear on my head. I simply can't keep a hat on when I ride fast! Here, Norman, be a dear duck of a brother and hold this skein ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... remembered an interesting 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 ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... no innocent service—confirmed yet more by references to many whose testimonials could trace, step by step, the child's record from its birth to its transfer to Jasper, and by the brief but distinct avowal, in tremulous lines, writ by Jasper himself. As a skein crossed and tangled, when the last knot is loosened, slips suddenly free, so this long bewildering mystery now became clear as a commonplace! What years of suffering Darrell might have been saved had he himself seen and examined the nurse—had his inquiry been less bounded ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... full strength, undiminished by the least exertion, and those who choose to try it will find the feat no easy one. This morning I had some good ideas respecting Woodstock which will make the story better. The devil of a difficulty is, that one puzzles the skein in order to excite curiosity, and then cannot disentangle it for the satisfaction of the prying fiend they have raised. A letter from Sir James Mackintosh of condolence, prettily expressed, and which may be sung to the old tune of "Welcome, welcome, brother ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... her mistress, and had carefully collected into one of her small white hands, those splendid threads whose naturally ardent brightness was doubled in the sunshine. When the pretty lady's-maid pulled a comb of ivory into the midst of the undulating and golden waves of that enormously magnificent skein of silk, one might have said that a thousand sparks of fire darted forth and coruscated away from it in all directions. The sunshine, too, reflected not less golden and fiery rays from numerous clusters of spiral ringlets, which, divided upon Adrienne's forehead, fell over her ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... gods constrained, controlled, Helpless to us ward, and apart— Swifter than speech my heart Had poured its presage out! Now, fretting, chafing in the dark of doubt, 'Tis hopeless to unfold Truth, from fear's tangled skein; and, yearning to proclaim Its thought, my soul is ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... knot of these difficulties save only thy Wazir Haykar; and now that none shall offer an answer save Nadan, the son of his sister, whom he hath informed with all his subtilty and his science. Therefore, do thou summon him and haply he shall unravel for thee a tangled skein so hard to untwist." Sankharib did as they advised, and when Nadan appeared in the presence said to him, "Look thou upon this writ and comprehend its contents." But when the youth read it he said to the Sovran, "O my lord the King, leave alone this folk for they point to ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... says that the world has urgent need of "girls who are mother's right hand; girls who can cuddle the little ones next best to mamma, and smooth out the tangles in the domestic skein when things get twisted; girls whom father takes comfort in for something better than beauty, and the big brothers are proud of for something that outranks the ability to dance or shine in society. Next, we want girls of sense,—girls who have a standard of their own regardless of conventionalities, ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... of the tub or vat. These sticks are best made of hickory, but ash or beech or any hard wood that can be worked smooth and which does not swell much when treated with water may be used. The usual method of working is to hang the skein on the stick, spreading it out as much as possible, then immerse the yarn in the liquor, lift it up and down two or three times to fully wet out the yarn, then turn the yarn over on the stick and repeat the dipping processes, then allow to steep in the dye-liquor. ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech
... a big lump in her throat. She had not meant to rebel openly, but she had lost her temper, and the words had flashed out. Beatrice's threat alarmed her. Through all the tangled skein of Gwen's character there ran, like a thread of pure gold, the intense passionate love for her father, and the desire to preserve his good opinion. She could not bear to see the grieved look that came into his eyes when he was forced ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... the fallen skein Of some tired spider, looped and blown, As fragile as a strand of rain, Across the air, and upward thrown By breaths of hayfields newly mown— So glimmering it is and fine, I doubt these drowsy eyes ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... sucking-pig's tail. On the ordnance map it was marked with a dark blue line, was labelled 'Benser Tief', and was given a more resolute course; bends became angles, and there were what appeared to be artificial straightnesses at certain points. One of the threads in my skein, the canal thread, tingled sympathetically, like a wire charged with current. Standing astraddle on both seats, with the map close to the lamp, I greedily followed the course of the 'tief' southward. It inclined away from the road to Esens and passed the town about ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... and worn by both men and women. The belt is made out of a hank of loose separate strands between 4 and 5 feet long, tied together with string or bark cloth at two opposite points, so as to form a belt of between 2 feet and 2 feet 6 inches in length. For better description I would liken it to a skein of wool, as it looks when held on the hands of one person for the purpose of being wound off into a ball by someone else, but which, instead of being wound off, is tied up at the two points where it passes round the hands of the holder, and is then pulled out into a straight ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... yarn, uncut skein after uncut skein of it, rose off the brocade divan, more of them piled in systematic pyramids on three chairs. She dropped at sight of it to the floor beside the couch, burying her face in its fluff, grasping it in handfuls, writhing into it. Surges of merciful sobs came sweeping through ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... big an' roun' an' bright Ez de light Whut de moon gives in de prime Harvest time. An' huh haih a woolly skein, Black an' plain. Hol's you wid a ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar |
