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More "Unravel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 that his own heroic saying is fulfilled about the reaction ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... seriously to think. How came it that the side of the book which showed my takings was so clear and easily to be understood, but the side which showed their takings wrapt in mystery and hieroglyphics such as not even the world's leading financiers and mathematicians could hope to unravel? My subaltern, being consulted, agreed with me; I would have had him carpeted by the C.O. at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... still heavy 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 ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... great cases, such as those in which a vast metropolis like New York abounds. Now he was restless and discontented; the tour seemed to him the mere reporting of speeches and obvious incidents that everybody saw; there was nothing to unravel, nothing that called for the keen edge of a ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... back his life! Raise him up from this bed of illness, that he may unravel the web of mystery that entangles the fate of my ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... 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 a joy ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... theory," says Alexander Humboldt, who, in his Examen Critique, made an exhaustive research into the Vespucci letters. Humboldt completely vindicated the character of Vespucci, leaving no shade of doubt upon his integrity, but he did not unravel the mystery. ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... all the women she met in the course of her work, there was a positive pleasure in following the exactness and inflexibility of his logic. His reasoning was orderly, neat, elastic, without loose ends or tangled skeins to unravel, and she felt again, while she listened to him, the confidence which had come to her as soon as she entered his office. He was efficiency incarnate, and from her childhood up she had respected efficiency. In an ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... any title Mr. Hastings had to seize upon the property of the Begums, except upon his hypothesis of the rebellion. He was asked if he knew any other. He answered, No. It consequently appears that Mr. Hastings, though he had before him his doctors of all laws, who could unravel for him all the enigmas of all the laws in the world, and who had himself shone upon questions of Mahometan law, in the case of the Nuddea Begum, did not dare to put this case to Sir Elijah Impey, and ask what was his opinion concerning the rights of these people. He was tender, I suppose, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... love and courage Could not give him greater knowledge. Savage mind could not unravel All the meaning of this marvel. Fear forbade him touch the arrow Lest he should destroy the green shoot; So he left the tender leaflets Reaching upward to the sunlight, Sought again the lifeless maiden For whose love his soul had ...
— The White Doe - The Fate of Virginia Dare • Sallie Southall Cotten
... such importance on hand that I must deputize Miss Howard to unravel the mystery for you," she said, as she slipped away to the upper hall where the telephone was placed, and a moment later the girls heard the bell jingle and a funny, one-sided conversation followed. "Hello, Central! 1305. ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... company at breakfast because he could not get it out of his head. He made up his mind at last to confide his vague suspicions to Mr. Donovan. This was a difficult decision to arrive at. He would have much preferred to unravel his mystery himself, to go to the Queen with evidence completely sufficient to condemn a whole band of conspirators. But he saw no chance of getting any further in his investigations. Smith's morning expedition remained obstinately unconnected with the torn ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... here a discussion as to the relations between 'justice' and 'utility' upon which Fitzjames agreed with Mill. I dissent from both, and think that Fitzjames would have been more consistent had he agreed with me. I cannot, however, here try to unravel ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... that, Hal, an thou lovest me,"' said Pleydell. 'But we must have some news from the land of Egypt, if possible. O, if I had but hold of the slightest thread of this complicated skein, you should see how I would unravel it! I would work the truth out of your Bohemian, as the French call them, better than a monitoire or a plainte de Tournelle; I know how ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... men, struggling youths and 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 in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... away on my work about the farm. And I felt relieved. But my mind and heart were full of problems. There was always Zoe! There was always Lamborn, skulking in the shadows of my speculations. How would I unravel this tangle ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... the Malay and Papuan races, and at a spot where no other writer had expected it. I was very much pleased at this determination, as it gave me a clue to one of the most difficult problems in Ethnology, and enabled me in many other places to separate the two races, and to unravel ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... various 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 made ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... Bordeaux with Monsieur the Baron's passport, and as Monsieur the Baron goes toward Geneva with my master's passport, the skein will probably be so tangled that the police, clever as their fingers are, can't easily unravel it." ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... appropriated 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; and because no right notion can be gathered ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... unravel them sacks till we've got enough to make a rope. This loft's a capital place to twist him. It's all right, sir, only help me work away, and to-night ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... Chinaman's second nature. Games of fan-tan and pie-gow are constantly in operation; and the police either tolerate or are powerless to stop them. Tong wars are of frequent occurrence, crime and its punishment being so mixed up that an outsider cannot unravel them. The San Francisco police have struggled with the question, but have finally left the Chinese to settle their own affairs after their own fashion. Opium dens flourish as a matter of course, for opium ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... delegated to them the power to transmit the same to other matter, and thus to perpetuate life. The Creator alone has the power to originate life. Man, with all his wisdom and attainments, cannot discover the secret of organization. He may become familiar with its phenomena, but he cannot unravel, further, the mystery of life. The power of organizing is possessed only by the lower class of living or organized bodies, those known as vegetable organisms or plants. A grain of wheat, a kernel of corn, a potato, when placed under favorable conditions, ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... Quantity of Love in It, as 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 ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin
... and in the hall said: "I will continue to watch you unravel the threads of this mystery, if I ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... surplus clothes with the postmaster at the general store, and repack my kit for pony travel. Then, after watching Big Pete skilfully throw the diamond hitch, we were off for the hills and our first camp. I hoped that I was on my way to find my real father and unravel the mystery that surrounded my strange babyhood. But I little guessed what adventures I was to have or the strange things I was to see before my quest ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... deterred from murder by the goddess Vesta in a dream, enjoined them for their punishment the working a web of cloth, in their chains as they were, which when they finished, they should be suffered to marry; but whatever they worked by day, Tarchetius commanded others to unravel in the night. In the meantime, the waiting-woman was delivered of two boys, whom Tarchetius gave into the hands of one Teratius, with command to destroy them; he, however, carried and laid them by the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... appearance of a series of detached episodes, but the parts have an intimate connection with the whole, which, as time wears on, will constantly emerge into plainer light. Every year brings with it the issue of documents, letters, memoirs, that help to unravel the tangled threads in which this subject has been enveloped, and which have made it less generally understood than the two other great struggles of the century, the American fight for the Union, and the unification ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... 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 happened ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... I perceive that you know better how to wield the sword than unravel intrigues," said Josephine, with a charming smile. "Well, I made use of my two lovers in order to draw their secrets from them. And secrets they had, general, for you know Botot is the most intimate and influential friend of Barras, and Madame ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... been able to unravel the mystery that seems to hang about the child, although the Bishop assured us we were quite right in consenting to assume ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... whole Nation. The more these Men began to consider, the more furiously these Plotters carry'd on their Extravagances; at last they made a General push at a thing in which they knew if the other High Men joyn'd, they must throw all into Confusion, bring a Foreign Enemy on their Backs, unravel all the Thread of the War, fight all their Victories back again, and involve the whole Nation ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... have never been so thrilled in my life," she said, after her 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 plot goes, though Godwin denied that it had any story, "The Antiquary" may be placed among the most careful. The underplot of the Glenallans, gloomy almost beyond endurance, is very ingeniously made to unravel the mystery of Lovel. The other side-narrative, that of Dousterswivel, is the weak point of the whole; but this Scott justifies by "very late instances of the force of superstitious credulity, to a much greater extent." Some occurrence of the hour may have suggested the knavish ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... than marrying a handsome millionaire, even though considerably her senior. I'm probably a conceited fool for thinking it any very great burden at all. But how, then, can I account—? Well, well, time alone can unravel this snarl. One thing is certain: she will do nothing that she does not believe right; and after what Mrs. Yocomb said I would not dare to wish ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... Greene's. Peele's lack of power to concentrate interest 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 ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... 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. ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... fellow liberated," said my cousin, "but the keys to all the outer gates and doors of the Hall have been stolen and carried away. Can you help me unravel ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... thou solv'st my doubt, That ignorance not less than knowledge charms. Yet somewhat turn thee back," I in these words Continu'd, "where thou saidst, that usury Offends celestial Goodness; and this knot Perplex'd unravel." He thus made reply: "Philosophy, to an attentive ear, Clearly points out, not in one part alone, How imitative nature takes her course From the celestial mind and from its art: And where her laws the Stagyrite unfolds, Not many leaves scann'd o'er, observing well Thou shalt discover, that your ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... nights reading the books he gave her, studying the long cruel polysyllables, and spelling slowly through the phrases that seemed to her so cramped and tangled, and which yet were a pleasure to unravel forsake of ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... satisfactory as those which the other man had given. When the two were placed face to face, Arnold du Tilh vehemently denounced the last arrival as an impostor in the pay of Peter Guerre, and expressed himself content to be hanged if he did not yet unravel the whole mystery. Nor did he confine himself to vituperation, but cross-questioned Martin as to private family circumstances, and only received hesitating and imperfect answers to his questions. The commissioners having directed Arnold to withdraw, put several questions to Martin that were ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... sharp points, and unravel the complications of things; we should attemper our brightness, and bring ourselves into agreement with the obscurity of others. How pure and still the Tao is, as if it ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... words." Some had been baptized by a woman, some by a fisherman. Painful it was to witness, or be certified of, such complications and irregularities, more so to be in any degree answerable for them, most of all to be expected to unravel and rectify them in one visit of a few hours' duration, knowing too that they must all be renewed and repeated. This is the only harbour in White Bay where there are any French, and these, it is worthy of notice, have ...
— Extracts from a Journal of a Voyage of Visitation in the "Hawk," 1859 • Edward Feild
... visibly; he could no longer preen himself. "Listen to what he says," the Frenchman exclaimed, in a very serious voice. "It is your last, last chance. If the secret is ever to be unravelled at all, by Methuselah's aid, now is, without doubt, the proper moment to unravel it." ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... order, but rather devotional and mystical. It was, I expect, mainly an aesthetic idea at present. The setting, the ceremonial, the order of the whole was prominent, with the contemplation of spiritual beauty as the central principle. The various strains which went to suggest such a scheme are easy to unravel. Hugh says frankly that marriage and domesticity always appeared to him inconceivable, but at the same time he was sociable, and had the strong creative desire to forth and express a definite conception ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... many a calcareous rock in the later secondary formations. There are strata, not a few, of the Cretaceous and Oolitic groups, that would be found—could we but trace their beginnings with a certainty and clearness equal to that with which we can unravel the story of this deposit—to be, like it, elaborations from dead matter, made through ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... have found it hard to do so, and then it would have been rather a dishonorable way in which to dispose of a rival! Ah, the evening is slow in coming. Thank God! the sun is setting, the night will soon fall; the moon will rise and I shall know my fate; the widow will tell me everything, I shall unravel all the profound mystery which is hidden from me now. Let me think over the sonnet which I have reserved for a grand effect—it is intended to describe the beauty of her eyes. Perhaps she has never heard a sonnet—possibly she will be sensible of its beauty and spirit; but no, I cannot ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... the neighbourhood, and I would unravel a few arguments with thee; a few quiddities about thy profession. I know thou art skilful at thy trade, which, though a vocation having its basis in fraud, finding countenance through the weakness and credulity ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... so soft and so violent, which breeds our sensations and precipitates our actions. We see today how the Freudian psychology, just because it is not satisfied with registering the routine of consciousness but endeavours to trace its hidden mechanism and to unravel its physical causes, is driven to use the most frankly mythological language. The physiological processes concerned, though presupposed, are not on the scale of human perception and not traceable in detail; and the moral action, though familiar in ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... as you imagine," he said. "The Secret House contains more secrets than we can at present unravel. It was built, evidently and obviously, by a man of extraordinary mechanical genius as Farrington was, and the primary object with which it was built was to enable him on some future occasion to make his escape. I am perfectly certain that any attempt to raid the house would result immediately ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... miracles, as our inquiry is a question purely philosophical (namely, whether anything can happen which contravenes or does not follow from the laws of nature), I was not under any such necessity: I therefore thought it wiser to unravel the difficulty through premises ascertained and thoroughly known by could also easily have solved the problem merely from the doctrines and fundamental principles of Scripture: in order that everyone may acknowledge this, I will briefly show ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza
... State,—as much a state as any of the great states of Europe, as Britain, as France, as Spain, and jealously ever since have we individually regarded any infringement on our integrity. That, and not the mere tangle of race that in time must unravel itself, is the question of the age. Long ago it was said that our people, holding it by transmission, never having struggled for it, would some day cease rightly to value the one chief bulwark of liberty. Nothing is more true. They of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... chillun will never go into that mill ag'in—that old Ben Butler has give 'em back their childhood an' a chance to live. It means," he said triumphantly, "that Cap'n Tom's gwinter have the chance he's been entitled to all these years—an' that means that God'll begin to unravel the tangle that man in his meanness has wound up. It means, Tabitha, that you'll not have to wuck anymo' yo'self—no mo', as long as ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... the men home with Spanish dollars in their pockets, and paid Hawkins forty thousand pounds, the worth of about two million dollars now. Then Hawkins used the information he had picked up behind the Spanish scenes to unravel the Ridolfi Plot for putting Mary on the throne in 1572, the year of St. Bartholomew. No wonder ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... high), or hitting some other note that chords, so as to produce the effect of a marvellous complication and variety, and yet with the most perfect time, and rarely with any discord. And what makes it all the harder to unravel a thread of melody out of this strange network is that, like birds, they seem not infrequently to strike sounds that cannot be precisely represented by the gamut, and abound in 'slides from one note to another, and turns and ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... 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 ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Heaven were reproduced on earth, until a web of fiction and allegory was woven, partly by art and partly by the ignorance of error, which the wit of man, with his limited means of explanation, will never unravel. Even the Hebrew Theism became involved in symbolism and image-worship, borrowed probably from an older creed and remote regions of Asia,—the worship of the Great Semitic Nature-God AL or ELS and its symbolical representations of JEHOVAH Himself were ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... intertwinings of the threads, and the manoeuvres of the needles, she is thinking of the events of byegone times, which entangled your two hearts in the network of love, whose meshes you can neither of you unravel or escape. ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... must remain in the shade, because time alone can unravel the mystery by which I am surrounded; and many important passages in my life, prudence forces me to conceal. But, my dear fellow, if my trials and sufferings will in any way reconcile you to your lot, and enable you to bear with fortitude your own, your friend will ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... she took the silver thimble which stood on the scrap of paper. On its rim she read the inscription, "H.T. from H.S." but she made no attempt to unravel the romance behind it. She merely slipped the scrawl and the thimble into the pocket of her jacket, ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... of story-writing, we continue our narrative of these mainly true incidents (for such they are,) no further. Only to say that the murderer soon departed for a new field of action—that he is still living—and that this is but one of thousands of cases of unravel'd, unpunish'd crime—left, not to the tribunals of man, but to ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... have been jerked out from under him without compunction or mercy. Eva cautioned him to be more than silent on the subject for the child's sake as well as for their own, and Anderson saw wisdom in her counselling. He even lagged in his avowed intention to unravel the mystery or die in the attempt. A sharp reminder in the shape of an item in the Banner restored his energies, and he again took up the case with a vigour that startled even himself. Anything in the shape of ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... with travail Here toils and brawls as it can, And the web of it who shall unravel Of all that peer on the plan; Would fain grow men, but they grow not, And fain be free, but they know not One name ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Pe-lung affably, "it will be your engaging task to unravel, and to this end will be your opportunity of closely watching Fuh-sang's unsuspecting movements in ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... explanation without cavil. I was glad he did. But to me the affair showed inconsistencies which I secretly felt it to be my especial duty to unravel. ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... that, subject to legal restraints. Your claim will be valid against it. You may have to play nicely over some intricate legal points. But, remember, nigger law is wonderfully elastic; it requires superhuman wisdom to unravel its social and political intricacies, and when I view it through the horoscope of an indefinite future it makes my very head ache. You may, however, let your claim revert to another, and traverse the case until ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... 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 to unravel." ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... struggled free, and shouted for help. The door fell with a crash; the soldiers poured in, and the female assassin was secured and disarmed. Eager to unravel the mystery, the police officer tore the mask from the face of the unknown, and recognized in the wild and inflamed features of the assassin of the Rue La Harpe, the Rue Richelieu, and the Boulevard des Italiens, ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... her ease. At last, just before her bed-time, when the tea was coming in, Mrs. Edmonstone engaged with that, Laura reading, Amy clearing Charles's little table, and Philip helping Mr. Edmonstone to unravel the confused accounts of the late cheating bailiff, Guy suddenly found her standing by him, perusing his face with all the power of her great blue eyes. She started as he looked up, and put her face ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... but, in a way, no more hopeless book was ever penned. The author confessed it, indeed, on his last page. "There seems to be little ground for hope that we shall be ever able to gain a perfectly true insight into the history of the epoch with which we have attempted to deal, or to unravel the meshes of so tangled a web." He felt his task, as he put it, to be not unlike that of gathering up the broken pieces of pottery from some ancient tomb, with the hope of fitting them together so as to make one large and perfect vase, but finding during the process that ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... time of Newton and the time of Laplace, mathematics had been extensively developed. 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 ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... was to cut the cable, and support one end in the water by a buoy until the rest could be unraveled. The other was to unravel ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... to us to-day how much at home the soldiers have felt in his chateau in the country; so much so, in fact, that they have already sent off to Germany all his old family portraits and the best rugs. Here is a bit of psychology for you to unravel. Why should they want his ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... a guide to the paper's enterprise we are admitted to a meeting of the Cabinet, and are assisted, at last to unravel the mystery as to which Minister it is who gives away the secrets of that assembly, for we watch him in his various disguises on his way to the dark cellar where he meets the political representative of the paper, makes his report and receives the promise ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 3, 1916 • Various
... be arranged—" The don was studying the situation and the man together. "Almost have I grasped the thread that will unravel the whole. No, no! I do not mean your going, Senor. That would but limber the tongue of scandal; and besides, I do not mean that I withdraw my friendship from you. A man must be narrow, indeed, if he cannot carry more than one friendship in ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... me he thought his men could unravel that message and that I should wait a while," panted Roy, breathless from running up the stairs. "And they did get it. It's what they call a transposition cipher. Here is what ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... be well for Christians to "test" where they cannot understand? "Ye are my friends," said the blessed Lord, "if ye do whatsoever I command you." Obedience will solve difficulties that reasoning cannot unravel. Try and see. ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... that he felt sure; but it was no part of his business to seek to unravel it. The best thing he could do, he felt, was to get up and go. He could scarcely maintain a conversation without asking or implying questions which seemed to ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... seeing it; or if Barbet had picked up any other piece of paper, it would not have come under my eye. A curious concatenation of very trivial circumstances had ended in putting into my hands a clew by which I could unravel all the mystery about my Sark patient. What was I to do with ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... that undertaking, as an architect or engineer would obtain data and apply 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 ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... pretty plan that I got into a fever of impatience. Drawing off a stocking and picking out the end of the yarn, I began to unravel the knitting for dear life, until the whole lay, a heap of thread, on the floor. I then serv'd the other in the same way: and at the end had two lines, each pretty near four hundred yards in length: which now I divided into ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... a graceful gesture of acknowledgment. He had taken but a few steps, when the thought occurred to me that he must have come from within the perplexing structure by some secret door, and that he could unravel its mystery. I was impelled to follow him, and proceeded hastily to do so, when the indelicacy of my intrusion on one evidently connected with the grief which the monument was designed to commemorate, flashed upon me, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... to unravel!" he exclaimed. "I should like to aid in it; but unless you have a clue, it is not likely that ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... the 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 ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... with pleasure that the reporters were busy with their note-books, and he knew that these editors of public utterance might be relied on to unravel a tangled metaphor before publishing a speech. He went on light-heartedly, confident that in the next day's papers his wilderness would blossom into something else, and that the hive, if it appeared at all, would be arrived at by some other ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... time, too, 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 until ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... their utterance," cried Richmond, with a somewhat jealous look at his friend, "for I have determined to know more of this mystery, and shall require the earl's assistance to unravel it. I think I remember Morgan Fenwolf, the keeper, and will send for him to the castle, and question him. But in any case, I and Surrey ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... they ought, considering the circumstances; and the small victory which his reason had thence gained over this weak imposture, remarkably increased his reliance upon his own powers. The facility with which he had been able to unravel this deception appeared to have surprised him. Truth and error were not yet so accurately distinguished from each other in his mind but that he often mistook the arguments which were in favor of the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... party assembled on this occasion was the favoured son of Esculapius, Sir W—— K——, the secret of whose elevation to the highest confidence of royalty is one of those mysteries of the age which it is in vain to attempt to unravel, and which, perhaps, cannot be known to more than two persons in existence: great and irresistible, however, must that influence be, whether moral or physical, which could obtain such dominion over the mind as to throw ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... from a friend. But it was not the moodiness of uncertainty. He knew what he was going to do. He had simply got used to Tommy being at his elbow, to chatting with him, to knowing that some one was near with whom he could try to unravel a knotty problem or hold his peace as he chose. He missed Tommy. But he knew that although they had been partners over a hard country, had bucked a hard trail like men and grown nearer to each other in the stress of it, they could not be Siamese twins. ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... in the habit of thoughtful revery, how very unsatisfactory those notions look in writing. He can't half unravel the chaotic cobwebs of his mind; as he plods along penning it, a thousand fancies flit about him too intangibly for fixed words, and his ever-teeming hot imagination cannot away with the slow process of concreted composition. For me, I must write impromptu, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the wrong person. Then I accused another character on perfectly good circumstantial evidence, and he was not the man. After that I decided to withdraw from the detective business and let Miss SILBERRAD unravel her mystery for herself. If you are of the opinion that a woman cannot keep a secret read The Mystery of Barnard Hanson and become convinced that Miss SILBERRAD at least is an exception. If I have ever read ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various
... despair on the other. Mr. Brown is bound to give his answer after raising the question so vividly. But he will not. He urges that it "presents points of tremendous difficulty," although "we shall unravel the mystery, we shall solve the problems in God's good time." Thus the solution of the problem is to be postponed until we are dead, when it will no longer interest us. However convenient this may be for the teachers of mystery, it is most unsatisfactory to rationalists. ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... in his "Manuel d'Architecture Musulmane," after attempting to unravel the influences which went to the making of the mosque of Kairouan, the walls of Marrakech, the Medersas of Fez—influences that lead him back to Chaldaean branch-huts, to the walls of Babylon and the embroideries of Coptic Egypt—somewhat despairingly sums up the result: ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... Porson said; "then it is of no use troubling you further. I have got my book back; but I confess that this affords me but small gratification in comparison to that which I should feel if I could unravel this mystery." ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... 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
... any useful purpose can be gained by discussing my brother's death," Austin interposed, turning to him. "It is a very painful subject, and does no good. The police are endeavouring to unravel the mystery—let ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... from the lessons of History is that for some reason or another the international concern, whose unlucky affairs we are now trying to unravel, has always been carried on at a loss: the point of the argument from Self-government is that the loss would have been avoided if the Irish shareholders had for a certain number of the transactions been more influentially represented ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... Lydia, meditatively. "But I think their dissimilarity owes its emphasis to some lurking likeness. Otherwise how could he have reminded me of her?" Lydia, as she spoke, sat down with a troubled expression, as if trying to unravel her thoughts. "And yet," she added, presently, "my theatrical associations are so complex that—" A long silence ensued, during which Alice, conscious of some unusual stir in her patroness, watched her furtively and ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... he sailed for Athens, and arrived at the island of Ios, now Ino, where he fell extremely ill, and died. It is said that his death arose from vexation, at not having been able to unravel an enigma proposed by some ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... determine that the myth or legend has been composed by a certain play of the imagination—as the representing the history of a people, or a tribe, under the personal adventures of an imaginary being; and then they hope to unravel this work of the fancy, and get back again the raw material of plain truth. If they are partially correct in describing this to have been one course the imagination pursued—which is all that can be admitted—still the attempt is utterly hopeless to recover, in its first shape, what has been confessedly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... there seemed to be a change of atmosphere in Miss Root's classroom. Miss Root was very nice to Blue Bonnet—even trying to unravel hard knots, and Blue Bonnet gave strict attention. She stopped Blue Bonnet one day at the ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... and to fix on the throne Arabella Stuart, a near relation of the king's by the family of Lenox, and descended equally from Henry VII. Every thing remains still mysterious in this conspiracy; and history can give us no clew to unravel it. Watson and Clarke, two Catholic priests, were accused of the plot; Lord Grey, a Puritan; Lord Cobham, a thoughtless man, of no fixed principle; and Sir Walter Raleigh, suspected to be of that philosophical sect who were then extremely rare in England, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... "Gentlemen of the jury, you must get along with this cause as well as you can; for my part, I am swamp'd." Now Reubon is exactly in the case of this judge, and I am at a loss what to advise him. You could unravel this thing in five minutes. Would to God you were here; but to ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... Loyal-Sock, and of Marine-Town in the inland State of Illinois. This last is like a "shipwreck on the coast of Bohemia." There is, too, a memorial of the Greek Revolution which tells its own story, —Scio-and-Webster! We could hardly wish the awkward partnership dissolved. But who will unravel the mysteries of New-Design and New-Faul? and can any one tell us whether the fine Norman name of Sanilac is really the euphonious substitute for Bloody-Pond? If there be in America that excellent institution, "Notes and Queries," here is matter ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... herself in horrified dismay; but then she looked at me with her eyes very blue and said "You'll see him about it, won't you? You must help unravel this tangle, Richard; and if you do I'll—I'll dance at your wedding; yours and—somebody's we ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... and abroad. He could not keep his tongue still about it. One day he was boasting to one of his neighbors, and he said, "The girl is so clever that not even the King himself could ask her a question she couldn't answer, or read her a riddle she couldn't unravel." ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... 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 ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... that he trembled at the responsibility he had undertaken; and he should, altogether despair, if he did not see before him a jury of twelve men of rare intelligence, whose acute minds would unravel all the sophistries of the prosecution, men with a sense, of honor, which would revolt at the remorseless persecution of this hunted woman by the state, men with hearts to feel for the wrongs of which she was the victim. ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... Railroads, which, for better or worse, have settled the fate of the buffalo and Indian forever. There have been wars and conflicts since with these Indians up to a recent period too numerous and complicated in their detail for me to unravel and record, but they have been the dying struggles of a singular race of brave men fighting against destiny, each less and less violent, till now the wild game is gone, the whites too numerous and powerful; so that ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... ask, What in the name of anything and everything but the "Modern School of Nature Study" do orioles know about strings fraying in the wind and the use of knots to prevent it? They have never had occasion to know; they have had no experience with strings that hang loose and unravel in the wind. They often use strings, to be sure, in building their nests, but they use them in a sort of haphazard way, weaving them awkwardly into the structure, and leaving no loose ends that would ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... mind may be expressed—the methods of distinguishing a true proposition from a false one;—the different conclusions which result from different premises;—the true consequences and opposites to any given proposition;—and, if an argument is embarrassed by ambiguities, how to unravel each of them by an accurate distinction. These particulars, I say, should be well understood by an Orator, because they are such as frequently occur: but as they are naturally rugged and unpleasing, ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... back on his pillow and seemed trying to unravel the tangled thoughts which perplexed him. Once more the dame came and brought him a cooling drink. He drank it, thanked her, and fell ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... about Margarita, so that poor little Alice had more than one bad quarter-hour, I'm afraid) and it took Roger a great deal of Bradley influence with the American consul and a lot of patient correspondence to unravel his unlucky brother-in-law. This gave Roger a good excuse for being in and near Germany; whether he would have stayed ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... they faced their darkest moment. Feeling, as they did, that they were encircled by hidden enemies, the very air they breathed became a menace. Every attempt to find the thread that might unravel the dark mystery proved futile. It was not to be wondered at that they despaired. Even the weird laughter of Eva's stricken father, echoing hollowly through the house, seemed ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... a dim hope that Mr. Corbin might in some way manage to unravel the mystery, and yet she could not see that he had anything more tangible to work upon than she ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... tangled 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
... his fellow-citizens for the honour they proposed to confer upon him, although he could not accept it. The affairs of the State, he said, were in a very confused condition, and he could not pretend to unravel them. He then took leave of the deputation, and quietly proceeded to complete his ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... And yet I believe the man was really in earnest. He was really desirous to do what was right, as far as he knew it; and all the more desirous, because he saw, in the present state of society, what was right would pay him. God shall judge him, not I. Who can unravel the confusion of mingled selfishness and devotion that exists even in his own heart, much less in that ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... certain extent, be studied apart: that (to resume our former metaphor) the regularity which exists in nature is a web composed of distinct threads, and only to be understood by tracing each of the threads separately; for which purpose it is often necessary to unravel some portion of the web, and exhibit the fibres apart. The rules of experimental inquiry are the contrivances ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... their actions, expressions, and even gestures; and again descend to the interpretation of their actions from our knowledge of their motives and inclinations. The general observations treasured up by a course of experience, give us the clue of human nature, and teach us to unravel all its intricacies. Pretexts and appearances no longer deceive us. Public declarations pass for the specious colouring of a cause. And though virtue and honour be allowed their proper weight and authority, that perfect disinterestedness, so often pretended to, is never expected ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... superimposes upon this another metaphor. He does not care to unravel it. 'Laying up in store for themselves a store,' he would have said if he had been a pedant, 'which is also a good foundation.' Now I take it that that does not mean a basis for hope, or anything of that sort, but that it conveys this thought, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 sleep, your father is, with jerks and starts and grunts ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... analyst should resort to dream analysis instead of taking the history of the case in the usual way. In all cases the patient should be permitted to tell her story in her own way. This method of procedure, with cross questioning, may and should indeed be sufficient to unravel the case for us in most cases. But if we find that we have not gained the confidence of the patient and have not that condition of being en rapport with the patient which is essential for progress and success in ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... believe him to have embarked for America. He describes him in general terms, as the most incomprehensible and formidable among men; as engaged in schemes, reasonably suspected to be, in the highest degree, criminal, but such as no human intelligence is able to unravel: that his ends are pursued by means which leave it in doubt whether he be not in league with some infernal spirit: that his crimes have hitherto been perpetrated with the aid of some unknown but desperate accomplices: that he wages a perpetual ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... conversations with the President on public affairs. The political situation was a perplexing one. The state of parties in the West seemed that of inextricable confusion, which Mr. Lincoln and his friends were anxious to unravel, if possible, before the next Presidential nomination. In Missouri the faction which had been friendly to me was also a supporter of Mr. Lincoln, while the radicals were opposed to him. In Kansas, on the ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... us," said Priscilla. "The thing is for you to keep her in play and unravel her mystery, while I slip off and put a few straight questions to Jimmy Kinsella. Be as polite as you possibly can so as to ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... 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
... captain, the old pilot, every one, gazed at her as she danced joyously about the deck, with a mingled feeling of sadness and curiosity; for our reserve while on shipboard had surrounded us with a sort of mystery which none knew how to unravel. ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... Vikings, and ran away because they were frightened at the bellowing of the cattle which Thorfin had brought with him in the ships. But what in the world could a Greek slave know of that affair? I wandered up and down among the streets trying to unravel the mystery, and the more I considered it, the more baffling it grew. One thing only seemed certain and that certainty took away my breath for the moment. If I came to full knowledge of anything at ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... further 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 of a Mohammedan ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... with what is going on in the thick of things, "thinking it out" is no easy matter. Their one frail little hold on the miracle that could make Blossom whole had snapped when the hotel mother and child went away. Where to turn next for information—what to do next—was a puzzle that would not unravel for any of them. In vain Uncle Jem wrestled with it, as he lay through long, patient hours. And ...
— Judith Lynn - A Story of the Sea • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... Chamitic race is past; you will not say the same of our Caucasian empire. To our race the present belongs,—to England, France, Germany, America,—to us. Will you see what we have done, and, perhaps, bring home, after long wanderings, a message for your country which may help to unravel the tangled ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... choke down the anger that inflames me, and hear all you have to say about your mission. I must unravel this confusion before I see my wife. Collect your senses, think well over what you say, and answer each question word ...
— Amphitryon • Moliere
... said, or I meant to say, I was troubled in it. That's all; and if you're a mite of a man you'll try and help me unravel this tangle and quit foolin'. Just step into that closet with me and maybe the tackers'll tell you themselves. I'd rather you heard ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... trail was not a good one; but the snow among the trees was far from being the hindrance it was in the open; and though their progress was slow, on the whole it was steady. Except for forced halts to unravel the harness when it caught in the bushes, they did not stop for two hours, but pressed on until they reached an open space in the woods, which they crossed in a smother of blinding snow. On the other side of this break they ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... compressed into a page or less; and contains little more than the dates of the principal events of his life, together with entries as to his work, and as to the duration of his more serious illnesses. He rarely dated his letters, so that but for the Diary it would have been all but impossible to unravel the history of his books. It has also enabled me to assign dates to many letters which would otherwise have been shorn of half ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... him with great eyes, but agreed at once, and they appointed time and place. He then bade her good night, and the moment she left him lay down on the bed to think. But he did not trouble himself yet to unravel the plot against him, or determine whether the violence he had suffered had the same origin with the poisoning. Nor was the question merely how to continue to serve his sister without danger to his life; for he had just learned ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... learn to unravel wool before the mast. I suppose your mother taught you when you were small—if you ever ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... of second sight always formed the termination of my performance. Each evening I saw unbelievers arrive with all sorts of articles to triumph over a secret which they could not unravel. Before going to see Robert-Houdin's son a council was held, in which an object that must embarrass the father was chosen. Among these were half-effaced antique medals, minerals, books printed in characters of every description (living and dead languages), coats- ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... generally, as well as among the members of the Bar, that however guilty the prisoner might be, she would not be convicted. In this belief the prosecutor did not share, but at once went to work with his accustomed energy to unravel the evidences of the great crime; and for many weeks, with an energy that never flagged, himself and his assistant, H. B. DeWolf, Esq., patiently and persistently explored the dark secrets of her life, ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... sentiments, first teach him to judge of their worth. Do you perceive folly when you mistake it for wisdom? To be wise we must discern between good and evil. How can your child know men, when he can neither judge of their judgments nor unravel their mistakes? It is a misfortune to know what they think, without knowing whether their thoughts are true or false. First teach him things as they really are, afterwards you will teach him how ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... exploration was completed, and I looked forward to the fresh enterprise of exploring new rivers and lower latitudes, that should unravel ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... there are inscriptions in Latin; designs in gold and azure and 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 ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... a word to pronounce in the plural!—I can no more get out now, than a girl's silk worm from the innermost of a nest of pill boxes, where, to ride the simile to death at once, I have warped the thread of my story so round and round me, that I can't for the life of me unravel it. Very odd all this. Since I have recovered of this fever, every thing is slack about me; I can't set up the shrouds and backstays of my mind, not to speak of bobstays, if I should die for it. The running ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... Edgar, to endeavor to unravel a mystery when a woman is at the bottom of it! Yes, Irene is at Rouen, I am convinced of that fact. Rouen is a large city, full of large houses, small houses, hotels and churches; but love is a grand inquisitor, capable of searching the city in twenty-four hours, and making the receiver ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... their own places. Would Noah, who was so much disgusted at his son Ham as to curse him, permit the children of his other sons, whom he blessed, to have any communication with his children? Bishop Cumberland, in the last century, took some pains to unravel this, and concluded that the marginal translation in our bibles is the right one—that in the text being, "Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh", &c.; that in the margin, "And he [Nimrod] went out of that land into Assyria"—for Asshur generally in scripture ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... understanding; to attempt to refer every question to abstract truth and precise definition, without allowing for the frailty of prejudice, which is the unavoidable consequence of the frailty and imperfection of reason, would be to unravel the whole web and texture of human understanding ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... a strange mystery. But I would not seek to unravel it, Angelique," remarked Amelie, "I feel there is sin in it. Do not touch it: it will only bring mischief upon ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Bohemia and the Irene Adler photograph, but when I looked back to the weird business of the "Sign of the 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 Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... significance for him. Had he been there before, in some dream or vision? He could not tell; but it was strangely familiar to him. Even so the trees had leaned together, and the clear ripples pulsed upon the bank. Something strange and beautiful had befallen him there. What was it? The mind could not unravel ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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 ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... some one in the wide world from which she has been so long excluded, takes her out of the region of shadows into that of realities". Poe's commentary is most to the point: "Why do some persons fatigue themselves in endeavours to unravel such phantasy pieces as the 'Lady of Shallot'? As well unweave the ventum textilem".—'Democratic Review', Dec., 1844, quoted by Mr. Herne Shepherd. Mr. Palgrave says (selection from the 'Lyric Poems of ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... that they faced their darkest moment. Feeling, as they did, that they were encircled by hidden enemies, the very air they breathed became a menace. Every attempt to find the thread that might unravel the dark mystery proved futile. It was not to be wondered at that they despaired. Even the weird laughter of Eva's stricken father, echoing hollowly through the house, seemed to be mocking ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... burghers who stood open-mouthed below. What could it be? In the name of all the vrows and devils in Rotterdam, what could it possibly portend? No one knew, no one could imagine; no one—not even the burgomaster Mynheer Superbus Von Underduk—had the slightest clew by which to unravel the mystery; so, as nothing more reasonable could be done, every one to a man replaced his pipe carefully in the corner of his mouth, and cocking up his right eye towards the phenomenon, puffed, paused, waddled about, and grunted significantly—then waddled back, grunted, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... playing and theatre-going rank side by side with lying, stealing and idolatry. As I sat there I tried to reconcile my opinion of these worldly pleasures with the conduct of my new friends. The tangle is too complicated to unravel at once. I could feel blushes of shame staining my cheeks as the game progressed. What would Aunt Maria say, what would daddy say, what would even tolerant Mother Bab say, if they knew I sat passively by and watched ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... take a final leave of this subject of Ireland; the only difficulty in discussing it is a want of resistance, a want of something difficult to unravel, and something dark to illumine. To agitate such a question is to beat the air with a club, and cut down gnats with a scimitar; it is a prostitution of industry, and a waste of strength. If a man say, I ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... canst, Oliver, to think, or rather to unravel my own entangled thoughts. Do not suffer me to continue in a state of delusion, if thou perceivest it to be such. Be explicit; tell me if thou dost but so much as forebode: for at moments I myself despond; though at others I am wasted to the heaven ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... of such importance on hand that I must deputize Miss Howard to unravel the mystery for you," she said, as she slipped away to the upper hall where the telephone was placed, and a moment later the girls heard the bell jingle and a funny, one-sided conversation followed. "Hello, Central! 1305. Is this 1305? Send me the ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... she returned gently. "You are the chief one. Just as soon as your thought is surely right, don't you know that your heavenly Father is going to show you how to unravel this little snarl? You remember there isn't any personality to error, whether it tries to fasten on Ada, or ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... 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 gunyahs, in hopes ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... not constitute virtuosity, nor does the ability to unravel the somewhat intricate keyboard puzzles of Bach and Brahms make in itself fine piano playing. The mind of the artist must be cultured; in fact, quite as cultured as that of the composer who conceived the music. Culture comes from the observation ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... though one may be as early as 1348; there are others of a religions nature which belong to the author's later years. The allusions in these poems are so obscure that it would in most cases be hopeless to seek to unravel the meaning had not the author left us a key in a letter to Martino da Signa, prior of the Augustinians. Many of the subjects are purely conventional, such as those of the early poems on the loves ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... expence, and to tell all he knew of his wickedness; at length, he promised to declare all he knew of Wenlock's conduct, as well in France as since their return, when he should be called upon; and, by him, Oswald was enabled to unravel the whole of his contrivances, against the honour, interest, and even life ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... appears from the chronicles the most complicated to unravel of that of any of the kingly suburbs of old Paris, though in the days of the old locomotion a townlet twenty-six kilometres from the capital was hardly to be ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... is true, but only while he has had no reason to mistrust. Let him once perceive ground for dissatisfaction or suspicion, and his eye is keen as light itself to penetrate and unravel.' ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... to add these to the instances cited by Mr. Walcott, hoping that the slightly varied form may furnish a clue by which some of your readers may be able to unravel the meaning of such allusions more satisfactorily than any ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various
... they were, with about as pretty a complication of mischief to unravel as two men could wish to have. Tom felt so foolish and nonplussed, that he felt inclined to laugh at Lee when he said, "Here we are." It so exactly expressed the state of the case; as if he had said, "All so and so has happened, and a deuce of a job it is, and here sit you and I, ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... himself body and mind to unravel the remainder of the mystery. The story repeated to him was always the same: 'She ran away with the curate.' A strangely circumstantial piece of intelligence was added to this when he had pushed his inquiries a little further. There was given him the name of a waterman at Plymouth, ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... the wind to travel, Search and course with the roving tide, All year long where his hands unravel Blossom and ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... certainly not one of his general characteristics. He was quite aware that he might put himself under the protection of the police, but this he knew would be to imperil the honor of the Mussidan family. He was sure that with time and patience he should be able to unravel the plots of the villains who were at work. But he had not time to do so by degrees. No, he must make a bold dash at once. The hideous sacrifice of which Sabine was to be the victim was being hurried on, ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... chemistry is a most interesting one, which shows that we do not stand still, and as long as arts and science are permitted to be practised by us we are not intended to stand still, but to exercise our minds to the utmost to unravel those mysteries of nature that are yet to ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... you have two valises—one will do for you and the other for me," said the Baron, putting his fore-finger on his brow in a thoughtful manner. "All, yes; besides the ties you will require a shirt-collar or two, a comb to unravel those hyacinthine locks of yours, a pair of spectacles, and a toothpick. It might be as well also to take an umbrella, in case we should be caught out in ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston
... Mercedes. It did not grow less; he had no heart to cease loving. Manlike, he was willing to face his God with the sin, but not her. He sought to change the nature of his love; perhaps, in time, succeeded. But all love has a mystic triple root; you cannot unravel the web, on earth at least. Religious, ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... coldly, and once more shook his head. "You don't know all," he said again, and kissed her reverently. "What if to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow brings no light to unravel this mystery?" ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... preachings had in reality obtained almost every where, and were now universally abolished. The ridiculous quibble was also used that, in the preachings other religious exercises were not included, whereas it was notorious that they had never been separated. It is, however, a gratuitous task, to unravel the deceptions of tyranny when it hardly deigns to disguise itself. The dissimulations which have resisted the influence of centuries are more worthy of serious investigation, and of these the epoch offers us ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... these challenges, we must never give in to the belief that America is in decline, or that our culture is doomed to unravel. The American people know better than that. We have proven the pessimists wrong before — and we will do it ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... 'dear' must be taken as conventional only, or 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 ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... claim to the name and inheritance of the dead. This matter, once touched, must be entirely laid bare: were duty out of the question, indignation alone would be sufficient to urge them, at any cost of time and vexation, to unmask one who, if not William Stanley, must be a miserable impostor—to unravel what must either prove an extraordinary combination of circumstances, or ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... width six inches longer than necessary. Then unravel the ends and tie the cords together. When the matting is taken up to be cleaned it cannot unravel and there will ...
— Fowler's Household Helps • A. L. Fowler
... trait is the notice of incessant growth. Men should be intelligent and earnest. They must also make us feel that they have a controlling happy future opening before them, whose early twilights already kindle in the passing hour. The hero is misconceived and misreported; he cannot therefore wait to unravel any man's blunders; he is again on his road, adding new powers and honors to his domain and new claims on your heart, which will bankrupt you if you have loitered about the old things and have not kept your relation ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... of those shots that turned the scale. It was unlikely he would again become entangled with a man bearing a tongue and the other things—he had given up in despair the attempt to unravel the mystery of the tongue; it completely baffled him—but it was by no means unlikely that if he spent another night in the gallery looking on the hall he might not again become a target for Lord Emsworth's irresponsible firearm. Nothing, ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... silent for awhile; then he said, "Look here, Peter. Let us cut a piece off the sail about five feet long, and say three feet wide, double it longways, and sew up the ends so as to make a bag; we can unravel some string, and make holes with our knives. Then we can sink it down two or three feet, and watch it; and when we see that some little fish have got in it, we can draw it up very gently, and, by raising it ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... on the grass, whiling away the time by alternately playing with Watch and trying to unravel the mysteries of a flower of golden-rod, until the hermit should have finished his prayers and be ready to attend to him, Piers came through the wood, evidently sent on a message, and made him understand that he was immediately wanted ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... battle-fields; dark of counsel, and terrible of execution; him to whom in after years the Empress Sophia sent word that he was more fit to spin among maids than to command armies, and he answered, that he would spin her such a thread as she could not unravel; and kept his word (as legends say) by ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... analysis instead of taking the history of the case in the usual way. In all cases the patient should be permitted to tell her story in her own way. This method of procedure, with cross questioning, may and should indeed be sufficient to unravel the case for us in most cases. But if we find that we have not gained the confidence of the patient and have not that condition of being en rapport with the patient which is essential for progress and success in the analysis, ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... nothing to do with the origin of the names by which the Zodiacal divisions are indicated, we have to seek for some other source which might have given rise to these appellations. It becomes my object to unravel a portion of the mystery connected with these Zodiacal signs, as also to disclose a portion of the sublime conception of the ancient Hindu philosophy which gave rise to them. The signs of the Zodiac have more than one meaning. From one point of view they represent the different stages ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... warp weights appear to hang from a single thread only, but this can not have been correct. The warp threads must have been bunched, because a single suspended thread with a tension weight immediately begins to unravel, and so loses the advantage of its having been spun, as any one can ascertain for oneself. As regards the same point on the Lake Dwellers looms, Cohausen was the first to surmise that the warp threads were bunched to receive the ...
— Ancient Egyptian and Greek Looms • H. Ling Roth
... a final leave of this subject of Ireland. The only difficulty in discussing it is a want of resistance—a want of something difficult to unravel and something dark to illumine. To agitate such a question is to beat the air with a club, and cut down gnats with a scimitar: it is a prostitution of industry, and a waste of strength. If a man says, 'I have a good place, and I do not choose to lose it,' this mode of arguing ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... then, to unravel them sacks till we've got enough to make a rope. This loft's a capital place to twist him. It's all right, sir, only help me work away, and to-night we'll ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... as little comprehended the cause of the Prince's fury as all the rest they had seen, were at a loss to unravel this new circumstance. The young peasant himself was still more astonished, not conceiving how he had offended the Prince. Yet recollecting himself, with a mixture of grace and humility, he disengaged himself from Manfred's grip, and then with an obeisance, which discovered more jealousy of innocence ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... colonists!' Daily have we much ado to keep ourselves, What with starving, mutiny, and Indian raids, Questions vexed that keep our minds from roving far From these palisades our toiling hands have reared, Come, Newport, we'll set our wits to work at once To unravel from this web of words the sense That our monarch would impart. Come, sit you down, Let us gaily fill our pipes with fragrant weed Such as natives grow—perchance its soothing power Anger will assuage; vexations disappear In these wreaths ...
— Pocahontas. - A Poem • Virginia Carter Castleman
... they took him away 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 ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... his brow. All the images of a future judgment which he had perhaps believed in as a boy, and blotted out from his remembrance as a man, assail his dream-bewildered brain. The sensations are far too confused for the slower march of reason to overtake and unravel them. Reason is still struggling with fancy, the spirit with the horrors of the corporeal frame. ["Life of Moor," tragedy of Krake. Act. v. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Politician of Consideration in America had expressd his high Displeasure with Mr S A for stiring up his Countrymen to attend to the Importance of our retaining a Common Right to the Newfd Ld fishery. Many wonderful Tales are & will be told, some of which a Sight of the secret Journals of Congress would unravel. I think the sooner those Journals are publishd the better. The People at large ought to know what that illustrious Body has been doing for them and the Part each Member has acted. We are now at Peace, God be thanked, with all the World—and I hope we shall never intermeddle with the Quarrels ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... assembled around you, Their kinglike leader! On your nod they wait. The single threads, which here your prosperous fortune Hath woven together in one potent web Instinct with destiny, O let them not 60 Unravel of themselves. If you permit These chiefs to separate, so unanimous Bring you them not a second time together. 'Tis the high tide that heaves the stranded ship, And every individual's spirit waxes ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... escape a settled delirium when my plots unravel, I think it is all I ought to be concerned about. What therefore I desire of thee, is, that, if two constructions may be made of my actions, thou wilt afford me the most favourable. For this, not only friendship, but my own ingenuousness, which has furnished thee ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... 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. ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... either successively or simultaneously upon the brain of man, which modify him so diversely in the different periods of his existence, are the true causes of that obscurity in morals, of that difficulty which is found, when it is desired to unravel the concealed springs of his enigmatical conduct. The heart of man is a labyrinth, only because it very rarely happens that we possess the necessary gift of judging it; from whence it will appear, that his circumstances, his indecision, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... acknowledge the superiority of his reason and logic. After long and patient meditation on the subject, we have been forced to the conclusion, that the only way to repel the argument of the sceptic, and cause the intrinsic lustre of man's free-agency to appear, is to unravel and refute ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... Let me tell you something, Brooky. The reporters and newspapers unravel more cases than ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... found myself placed; for there was so much of "empressement" towards me, in the manner of every member of the family, coupled with certain mistakes as to my habits and acquaintances, as left me perfectly unable to unravel the mystery which so evidently surrounded me. "Perhaps," thought I, "Sir Guy has written in my behalf to his lordship. Oh, he would never do any thing half so civil. Well, to be sure, I shall astonish them at head quarters; they'll not believe this. I wonder if Lady ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... at all,' said he, in bewildered perplexity. 'Was it a dream that—' and he covered his eyes with his hands, as if trying to unravel ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... 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 in a Scotch ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... 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
... business men, struggling youths and 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
... professed their inability to apprehend the meaning of the whole, or to follow the links of the connexion between its several parts. I am myself as little able to understand where the difficulty lies, or to detect any lurking obscurity, as these 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 original design, and then leave the reader to judge how far this design is kept in ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... 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
... remain in the shade, because time alone can unravel the mystery by which I am surrounded; and many important passages in my life, prudence forces me to conceal. But, my dear fellow, if my trials and sufferings will in any way reconcile you to your lot, and enable you to bear with fortitude your own, your ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... waiting respectfully. Care and hard work had already imprinted their insignia upon his fresh young face; for evidently he had not been in the Service for nothing. As a matter of fact, his greatest joy was to labour at a tangled case, and successfully to unravel it. ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... exercise of arms, and return to his proper station among the maidens of the palace, where a distaff should be again placed in the hand of the eunuch." "I will spin her such a thread as she shall not easily unravel!" is said to have been the reply which indignation and conscious virtue extorted from the hero. Instead of attending, a slave and a victim, at the gate of the Byzantine palace, he retired to Naples, from whence (if any ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... 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
... that you know better how to wield the sword than unravel intrigues," said Josephine, with a charming smile. "Well, I made use of my two lovers in order to draw their secrets from them. And secrets they had, general, for you know Botot is the most intimate and influential friend of Barras, and Madame Tallien adores Charles, the ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... 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 ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... secluded men, 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 ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... followed him, and in the hall said: "I will continue to watch you unravel the threads of this mystery, ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... Nannie, not you, to bring the child here on a visit. I know India and her religions as far as any Englishman dare say he knows anything about that unfathomable country—yes! Mam! religions—Hinduism—Brahminism—Buddhism—why, I've passed the best part of my life trying to unravel certain physical and psychical threads knotted up in India; but the years are slipping by, and time is getting shorter and shorter, and but a tithe done out of all there is to do; but thanks be, my boy has inherited my love ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... surely were. And it is from this position, as a starting point, that we must follow and unravel the whole mystery, if ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... stay; for when Polly drew up the long thread triumphantly to the end—out it flew, and away the button hopped again as if glad to be released. And then the thread kinked horribly, and got all twisted up in disagreeable little snarls that took all Polly's patience to unravel. ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... these circumstances it seems essential that the St. Petersburg Cabinet, whose desire to unravel this crisis peacefully is manifest, should immediately give their adherence to the British proposal. This proposal must be strongly supported at Berlin in order to decide [Secretary of State] Von Jagow to take real action at ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... murder. Unfortunately, when I had read a few pages more, I found that I had picked the wrong person. Then I accused another character on perfectly good circumstantial evidence, and he was not the man. After that I decided to withdraw from the detective business and let Miss SILBERRAD unravel her mystery for herself. If you are of the opinion that a woman cannot keep a secret read The Mystery of Barnard Hanson and become convinced that Miss SILBERRAD at least is an exception. If I have ever read a more perfectly sustained mystery novel I cannot recall it. There is just a chance ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various
... for him," added Mr. White; "for that man alone, so far as I can see, is he who will unravel ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... sight touched Hadden, and once or twice he was shaken by so sharp a pang of remorse at the thought of his share in this tragedy, that he cast about in his mind seeking a means to unravel the web of death which he himself had woven. But ever that evil voice was whispering at his ear. It reminded him that he, the white Inkoos, had been refused by this dusky beauty, and that if he found a way to save him, ...
— Black Heart and White Heart • H. Rider Haggard
... and Lobeck, a closer analysis; and finally, in the sudden rise of comparative philology, it chanced that philologists annexed the domain of myths. Each of these systems had its own amount of truth, but each certainly failed to unravel the whole web of tradition and ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... first volume she managed to unravel the mystery of the road. Bess and Bell, the Robinson twins, were with her, as they were again in the second volume, the story of a strange promise. This promise, odd as it was, all three girls kept, to the delight and happiness of little Wren, the crippled child. Next the girls went to Lookout ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... geniuses, Bart, will 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 ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... the measured 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
... of Brooklyn have another | |murder mystery to unravel through the | |finding early today of the body of Peter | |Barilla on Lincoln road, near Nostrand | |avenue, Flatbush. There were two bullet | |wounds in the body and four stab wounds | |in the back.—Brooklyn ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... their actions from the outside, attributing them arbitrarily to motives which are pretty sure to be the lowest possible, because it is easier to conceive a low motive than a lofty one, and to call a man a villain than to unravel patiently the tangled web of good and evil of which his thoughts are composed. He has attempted to conceive of his characters as he would if they had been his own contemporaries and equals, acting, speaking in his company; and he has therefore thought himself bound to act toward them ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... who in future attempts to unravel the mystery of these primitive sculptures must not only in gratitude but in common justice pay homage to the services of Mr John Stuart, the secretary of the Antiquaries' Society of Scotland, to whose learning and zeal he owes the collective means of examining them. It will interest many to know ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... duty? But then, if in a case of such importance God has made it thus necessary for man to act in such ignorance, people will say he may possibly have left them in something less than absolute certainty in the matter of an 'historical religion.'—Ah! it is impossible to unravel these difficulties. I only know, that, if the principle be true, then as men in general cannot form any reasonable judgment, not only on the principles of medical science, but even on the knowledge and skill of any particular professor of it, (by their ludicrous mis-estimate of which they are ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... easy to unravel, Their air's so odd, they've just returned from travel: A single hour ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... our sentiments, first teach him to judge of their worth. Do you perceive folly when you mistake it for wisdom? To be wise we must discern between good and evil. How can your child know men, when he can neither judge of their judgments nor unravel their mistakes? It is a misfortune to know what they think, without knowing whether their thoughts are true or false. First teach him things as they really are, afterwards you will teach him how they appear ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... was a merchant on my own account and could afford to go to India on a voyage of discovery—yes, as much a voyage of discovery as that of Vasco de Gama or of Drake—that I got from the Madras agent the clue which enabled me, at the cost of infinite patience and infinite labour, to unravel the mystery of my birth. There is no need to enter now upon the details of that story. I have overwhelming documentary evidence—a cloud of witnesses—to convince the most sceptical as to who and what I am. The documents are some of ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... he thought his men could unravel that message and that I should wait a while," panted Roy, breathless from running up the stairs. "And they did get it. It's what they call a transposition cipher. ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... youth who, as with toil and travel, Had grown quite weak and grey before his time; Nor any could the restless grief unravel, Which burned within him, withering up his prime, And goading him, like fiends, from land to land.—P. ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Rashi with his disciples, the Tossafists, who carry their niceties to an excess. It would be wrong to hold Rashi responsible for the abuse later made of controversy; while, on the other hand, praise is owing to him for the happy efforts he made to unravel the texts, not only for the purpose of explaining their meaning, but also to indicate possible objections and reply to them in a few words. One must marvel at the clearsighted intelligence, the sureness, the mastery with which Rashi ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... ocean paths the tangled clue He taught the nations to unravel; And mapped the track where safely through ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... exclaimed. "Mais, monsieur, we are only human! Arrested him? No, not quite. But tracked out how he did it. That is already much—to unravel Colonel Clay, gentlemen!" ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... God you would try it oftener, then," said her husband; "but I trust that during this visit of yours you will not give way to your precious temper and insult them at the outset. Don't tie a knot with your tongue that you can't unravel with your teeth. Be quiet, now; I didn't speak to raise the devil and draw on a tempest—only let us have a glass of punch, till Charley and ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... a pretty plan that I got into a fever of impatience. Drawing off a stocking and picking out the end of the yarn, I began to unravel the knitting for dear life, until the whole lay, a heap of thread, on the floor. I then serv'd the other in the same way: and at the end had two lines, each pretty near four hundred yards in length: which now I divided into eight lines of about ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... of the mind which treats its subject as a mere dead thing simply useful for demonstration. Very naturally, she attributes the same spirit of affectional intelligence to her critics as to herself; and when they unravel a few of her inconsistencies, amuse themselves with a few follies, or even venture to point out a few faults, she brands them as "hating" or "despising" woman. Point, too, is given to the charge by the fact that these affections through which she lives are from their very nature ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... not be well for Christians to "test" where they cannot understand? "Ye are my friends," said the blessed Lord, "if ye do whatsoever I command you." Obedience will solve difficulties that reasoning cannot unravel. Try and see. ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... aroused. For though Rolfe had not yet risen very high in the police force, he had many of the qualities which make the good detective—observation, sagacity, and some imagination. The extraordinary crime which he had been called upon to help unravel presented a baffling mystery which was likely to test the value of these qualities to ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... merchant a large sum of money which is his by right, as spared to him (Gorshkov) by the legal tribunal. True, the tribunal in question did not altogether believe in Gorshkov, but I do so. The matter is of a nature so complex and crooked that probably a hundred years would be insufficient to unravel it; and, though it has now to a certain extent been cleared up, the merchant still holds the key to the situation. Personally I side with Gorshkov, and am very sorry for him. Though lacking a post of any kind, he still refuses to despair, though his resources are completely ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... blind. With uneducated people a mock-proof has force which a school of philosophers dismisses with scorn. Many are the offences of the adversary under this head; but his case is made out by four fallacies chiefly, fallacies which I would rather unravel in the University than in a popular audience. The first vice is [Greek: skiamachia], with mighty effort hammering at breezes and shadows. In this way: against such as have sworn to celibacy and vowed chastity, because, while marriage is good, virginity is better (1 Cor. vii.), Scripture ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... longer day—but he has 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, ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... those memories of small but strange incidents with which I have sometimes filled this column. The thing has really some of the dark qualities of a detective-story; though I suppose that Sherlock Holmes himself could hardly unravel it now, when the scent is so old and cold and most of the ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... enmeshed her married life. But now it suddenly blazed out like a beacon illumining the dark places. Supposing it were true—supposing Max had been masquerading under another name all the time—then this suggestive little paragraph contained a clue from which she might perhaps unravel the whole hateful mystery. ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... in his walk and gazed down at the priest. "I don't know," he answered slowly. "My head is not clear enough to think it out. Mrs. Cleary might help unravel it. She saw her and will remember. Shall I sound her when I go home—not to excite her suspicions, of course, but so as to find out whether her visitor were large ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... distracted and 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 ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... condition, sat down and asked him, "Why so sad?" Thereupon the dreamer explained to him his sad and mournful fate, and why he had come there forsooth, under the impulse of a dream, he had set out thither, and was expecting God as if by a wonder, to unravel this more than Gordian knot. The mendicant answered "Good Heaven! are you so mad and foolish as to rely on a dream, which is emptier than nothing, and journey hither? I should betake myself to Dort, to dig up a treasure buried under such a tree in such a man's garden (now this garden had ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... vice-consul had been willing to listen, and patient enough to calm the boy's excitement and unravel the story, its value would have been apparent. But his skeptical manner only threw Stuart more off his balance. The vice-consul was, by temperament, a man of routine, an efficient official but lacking in imagination. Besides, it was almost ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... taken up her abode in a little shepherd hut on the slope of a little hill by a water-course, and shaded by some lime trees, in which the birds paid her homage morning and evening.... Such a place and such solitude refreshed the more than human Rosemund, and in such peace she was able to unravel her confused thoughts. ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... 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 a joy in ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... very active-minded girl. It was not her way to sit wondering and puzzling over anything she could not understand. She had a knack of setting herself to unravel problems which required explanation in the most common-sense way. After giving her uncle time to leave the house—intuition told her that he would do so—she rose and rang the bell. Then she moved to the window while she waited for ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... origin he is holy, and by descent he is sinful; because there has intervened, between his creation and his birth, that "offence of one man whereby all men were made sinners" (Rom. v. 18, 19). Though we cannot unravel the whole mystery of this subject, yet if we accept the revealed fact, and concede that God did originally make man in His own image, in righteousness and true holiness, and that man has since unmade himself, by the act of apostasy and rebellion,[1]—if we take this as ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... be studious men, or men of action, sent for a specific object, charged to unravel certain mysteries, or to support certain principles, their conversion will be undertaken ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... hero's habits and studies, which ended by 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 oppressed. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... glimpse into the future that was almost uncanny in its exactness. She had asked for a divination, and Mr. Yahi-Bahi had effected one by causing her to lay six ten-dollar pieces on the table arranged in the form of a mystic serpent. Over these he had bent and peered deeply, as if seeking to unravel their meaning, and finally he had given her the prophecy, "Many things are yet to happen ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... the 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 words ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... our feet. We try to discover how the net is made. We delude ourselves with the idea that if only we take time we shall be able to extricate ourselves; but it always means getting further entangled. It is a waste of time to study the net. Life is ever weaving for us snares too intricate for us to unravel and too strong for us to break. God alone understands how they are made and how they may be broken. He does not take us round the net or over it, but He does not leave us fast by the feet in the midst of it. He ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... discourse: The causes of the decay of eloquence are by no means difficult to be traced. They are, I believe, well known to you, Maternus, and also to Secundus, not excepting my friend Aper. It seems, however, that I am now, at your request, to unravel the business. But there is no mystery in it. We know that eloquence, with the rest of the polite arts, has lost its former lustre: and yet, it is not a dearth of men, or a decay of talents, that has produced ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... the brilliant idea of an earthquake flashed upon Dreda's mind. 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 idea ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... bit tired, isn't that so? Nay, Father, not a bit. We have come but twenty miles from the last halt, and as for the telling of my story, maybe the loose ends which I've forgotten for the moment will unravel themselves while we're talking of fish-salting—of the many extra barrels you've sent out. Now, Father, say how many? At it, Joseph, as beforetimes, rallying thy old father! Well, I've not done so badly, but a drop in the year's trading is never a pleasant thought, though it be but ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... the memory of the young generation with such associations as will prevent wrong 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 wire or by counting and locating the telephone ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... 1945. Although Communist, his new government and its successors (he died in 1980) managed to steer their 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, Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina were recognized as independent states in 1992. The remaining republics of Serbia and Montenegro declared a new "Federal Republic ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... the Eskimo of the far North. When the two years were well on and no news had been received from them, their friends began to get anxious, and of course appeal was made to the Mounted Police, who were expected to unravel all mysteries and solve all perplexing problems. And it is to their credit that they never turned a deaf ear to such appeals. It took nearly two years and a half to get the solution of the mystery. There were others in the patrol when it started, but Inspector La Nauze, ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... some vehement depth of feeling, the cause of which I could not fathom, made his grey eye glitter with pale light, and his lips contract, and his delicate cheek whiten on certain occasions. But all had been so open and above board at home, that I had no experience to help me to unravel any mysteries among those who lived under the same roof. I understood that I had made what Madame Rupprecht and her set would have called a great marriage, because I lived in chateau with many servants, bound ostensibly ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... and more prosperous years I have several times walked into Thompson Street, and from that as a starting-point tried to retrace our walk of that night, bordering along old Greenwich Village, but as well have tried to unravel the mazes of the ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... several Things to him, that might (if Love had not made him blind) have reclaimed him from the Pursuit of his Ruin. But whatever they trusted him with, she had the Art to wind herself about his Heart, and make him unravel all his Secrets; and then knew as well, by feign'd Sighs and Tears, to make him disbelieve all; so that he had no Faith but for her; and was wholly inchanted and bewitch'd by her. At last, in spite of all that would ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... length resumed, "which I have received from another quarter respecting that unfortunate youth, astonishes and perplexes me. It is inconsistent with your story, but it must be founded on some mistake, which I am, at present, unable to unravel. Welbeck, whose connection has ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... pope, to the emperor, and to other Christian lords, accusing each other of breach of faith, and treachery. The ambassador carrying the letters of the prince was the clever Mikolaj of Rzeniewa, a man of great ability who could unravel the thread which was woven by the artifice of the Knights of the Cross, convincingly demonstrating the great wrongs done to the lands of Lithuania ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... 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
... up and 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 ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... are two conditions, especially one which is peremptory: FIRST, that they should not be lies;—SECOND, that they should be of some importance, some wisdom; which with known lies is not a possible condition. To unravel cobwebs, and register laboriously and date and sort in the sorrow of your soul the oaths of crowned dicers,—what use is it to gods or men? Having well dressed and sliced your cucumber, the next clear ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... 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 ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... Alexander Humboldt, who, in his Examen Critique, made an exhaustive research into the Vespucci letters. Humboldt completely vindicated the character of Vespucci, leaving no shade of doubt upon his integrity, but he did not unravel the mystery. ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... which to dispose of a rival! Ah, the evening is slow in coming. Thank God! the sun is setting, the night will soon fall; the moon will rise and I shall know my fate; the widow will tell me everything, I shall unravel all the profound mystery which is hidden from me now. Let me think over the sonnet which I have reserved for a grand effect—it is intended to describe the beauty of her eyes. Perhaps she has never heard a sonnet—possibly she will be sensible of ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... next period of darkness, when it was fitting and right for Guineveres to seek their small meed of sustenance, to grow to frog's full estate, and to fulfil as well as might be what destiny the jungle offered. To unravel the meaning of it all is beyond even attempting. The breath of mist ever clouds the mirror, and only as regards a tiny segment of the life-history of Guinevere can I say, "There is no need ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... thinking of all the women she met in the course of her work, there was a positive pleasure in following the exactness and inflexibility of his logic. His reasoning was orderly, neat, elastic, without loose ends or tangled skeins to unravel, and she felt again, while she listened to him, the confidence which had come to her as soon as she entered his office. He was efficiency incarnate, and from her childhood up she had respected efficiency. In an hour, in less time than it had taken her to tell her story, he had lifted ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... do not convince you of my integrity, then believe the unsupported evidence of words, the tale of a woman, whose mystery, were it not for the memory of the honorable man whose name she once bore, I would publicly unravel—believe her! and leave Wallace naught of his country to remember, but that he has served it, and that ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... ever on the wing, and never rests upon the earth? Our names are not settled till our death: the ghosts of what we have done are made our haunting monitors—our scourging avengers—if ever we cease to do, or fall short of the younger past. Repose is oblivion; to pause is to unravel all the web that we have woven—until the tomb closes over us, and men, just when it is too late, strike the fair balance between ourselves and our rivals; and we are measured, not by the least, but by the greatest triumphs we have ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... University of Paris, he had been the patron there of all students of the German race. In France, nevertheless, his position as a saint was still obscure and doubtful, when Louis XI., towards the end of the fifteenth century, by some motive now difficult to unravel, but probably in order to take from his enemy, Charles the Rash, Duke of Burgundy, who was in possession of the fairest provinces of Charlemagne's empire, the exclusive privilege of so great a memory, ordained that there should be rendered to ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... and I. We have always been, and I don't want you to marry anybody—not even me." She turned to him, but she did not hear his quick, indrawing breath. "I need you too much, John. You always know the things I don't, and you unravel all the knots and straighten all the twisted strings when I get mixed up, but if we got married it wouldn't ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... gossip and insults, lamented their departure since now they would have no one to bring them fresh meat every day. It is pleasant indeed to spend your time eating and drinking, and sleeping all day long in the cool shade of the rocks, while clouds ravel and unravel their fleecy threads on the ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... place, quoth Waupee, And conceal myself awhile; This strange mystery to unravel, This new ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... Mutual Credit suit was tried before the Sixth Court. The scandal was great; but public curiosity was strangely disappointed. As in most of these financial affairs, justice, whilst exposing the most audacious frauds, was not able to unravel the ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... by religion, devastation idealized by literature, pillage justified by patriotism, fellow-destruction ennobled by self-sacrifice—these form a complex of contradictory emotions from which men are as yet unable to unravel the one essential characteristic of war; namely, the attempt to dispense justice in a trial by battle, and make it stand out in its revealed inconsistency, dissociated from its traditional concomitants of which it is neither part nor parcel. The romance of knighthood and chivalry ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... country-carrier, when he buys it for the vicar, miscalls it the urinal; yet properly enough, for it casts the water of the state ever since it staled blood. It differs from an Aulicus, as the devil and his exorcist, or as a black witch doth from a white one, whose office is to unravel her enchantments. ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... would probably unravel the mysterious origin of this beautiful face and this strange, sweet voice, whose subdued tones held an ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... contained questions in regard to parentage and the existence of deaf relatives. It is unfortunate that in these returns it is impossible to distinguish between degrees of relationship, but in such an extensive compilation it was doubtless impracticable to attempt to unravel the intricacies of consanguinity. Judging from the returns of the Census of Ireland we may assume that about half of the cases returned as "cousins" were ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner
... Cowperwood, in spite of his various 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 ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... confession of what had taken place, and had made honest restitution of the money he had taken. Under all the circumstances, therefore, I was inclined to think that Edwards and his companion had taken the gold, and that the capture of the remaining robber would unravel the ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... great eyes, but agreed at once, and they appointed time and place. He then bade her good night, and the moment she left him lay down on the bed to think. But he did not trouble himself yet to unravel the plot against him, or determine whether the violence he had suffered had the same origin with the poisoning. Nor was the question merely how to continue to serve his sister without danger to his ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... I looked down upon the great inland sea lying nestled in the very heart of Africa, and thought how vainly mankind had sought these sources throughout so many ages, and reflected that I had been the humble instrument permitted to unravel this portion of the great mystery when so many greater than I had failed, I felt too serious to vent my feelings in vain cheers for victory, and I sincerely thanked God for having guided and supported us through all dangers to the good end. I was about ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... a thumb with a bone felon. Take yore time, son. Don't go off half-cocked." The little Captain rose and put his hand on the shoulder of the boy. "I reckon things have got in a sort of kink for you. Give 'em time to unravel, Tex." ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... we have got to unravel in this tangle. First off, there's your little girl, to find if she is still alive. Second, we must locate Dave Henderson or his grave. Third, there's something due the scoundrel who is responsible for ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... urged gently. "I know what it means to you. You feel it your duty to unravel the secret of the percussion cap? You can't; no man can. No one knows the inventor more intimately than I, and even I couldn't get it from him. There are no plans for it in existence, and even if there were he would no more sell ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... me: both are 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
... else," said the excellent Mrs. Willett, with the air of one assisting to unravel ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... postponed. 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 him for ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... and place the strip on a sieve over a basin of boiling water, and cover it over. When it has absorbed the steam, and while wet, iron it with a box-iron. Then cut the strip down the centre, and unravel the wool on each side. The threads of wool all curling, resemble moss. They are held firmly by the ...
— Beeton's Book of Needlework • Isabella Beeton
... Aunt Maria's category of sins dancing, card playing and theatre-going rank side by side with lying, stealing and idolatry. As I sat there I tried to reconcile my opinion of these worldly pleasures with the conduct of my new friends. The tangle is too complicated to unravel at once. I could feel blushes of shame staining my cheeks as the game progressed. What would Aunt Maria say, what would daddy say, what would even tolerant Mother Bab say, if they knew I sat passively by and watched a game of cards? After a little while I asked Virginia whether I could write a ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... who laud its grandeur and power to charm—she gave no hint. She was still absorbing, sifting and digesting the welter of impressions. She had been overpowered, smothered by the innovation; and she now found her thoughts a tangled jumble, which she strove incessantly to unravel and classify according to their content of reality, as judged by ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... pensive for a moment, as if seeking to unravel some enigma, then she smiled and shook her head with a little fugitive shadow ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... less than a century since Liebig and Lehmann and their pupils began to unravel the mystery of food. In recent years no subject has received more assiduous attention from scientific men, and none has been made the object of more constant or more profound research than the questions of food and food supply. The feeding ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... managed to unravel the mystery of the road. Bess and Bell, the Robinson twins, were with her, as they were again in the second volume, the story of a strange promise. This promise, odd as it was, all three girls kept, to the delight and happiness of little Wren, the ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... divided counsels. Dowdeswill said: "On the repeal of the Stamp Act, all America was quiet; but in the following year you would go in pursuit of your peppercorn—you would collect from peppercorn to peppercorn—you would establish taxes as tests of obedience. Unravel the whole conduct of America; you will find out the fault is at home." Pownall, former Governor of Massachusetts and earnest advocate of American rights, said: "The dependence of the colonies is a part of the British Constitution. ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... leisure to revisit 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 boy off ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... governor. The queen was reported to have said, that "he should leave to men the exercise of arms, and return to his proper station among the women of the palace, where a distaff should be placed in the eunuch's hand." "I will spin her such a thread," Narses is said to have replied, "as she shall not unravel her life long." He forthwith invited the Lombards into Italy, an invitation which they were not both to accept. Alboin was their leader, who had married the beautiful Rosamond, daughter of the Gepid ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... was knitted loosely of some kind of mercerized cotton, and when Bobby seized the end of a broken strand the sash began to unravel with marvelous rapidity. She grinned up at the twins delightedly, and continued to pull ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison
... to have been alternately repelled by each theory and style of art, the simply natural and elaborately scientific, as it came before him; and in his impatience of each, to have been betrayed into a tissue of inconsistencies somewhat difficult to unravel. ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... very sentimental on their veiled origin, but scarcely any one takes the trouble to compare them with others elsewhere, in or out of America, which would be, however, the only means to attain the object they seem desirous of, or to unravel their historical riddle. Some writers speak of them as if they were only a few mounds and graves, scarcely worthy of notice; yet they are such mounds as are found yet in the Trojan plains, sung by Homer, dating at least three thousand years ...
— The Ancient Monuments of North and South America, 2nd ed. • C. S. Rafinesque
... science, and I ardently desired to become acquainted with it. But I was baffled in every attempt I made for this purpose. Their pronunciation was quick, and the words they uttered, not having any apparent connection with visible objects, I was unable to discover any clue by which I could unravel the mystery of their reference. By great application, however, and after having remained during the space of several revolutions of the moon in my hovel, I discovered the names that were given to some of the most familiar ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... 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" ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... often related to me, during the long winter days and evenings spent of necessity by the fire, stories drawn from his campaigns in the Netherlands and France and Scotland, speaking freely and most instructively. But he had never helped me to unravel the mystery why he, so unlike other soldiers in habits and tastes, should have chosen ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... brought her a heavier cross than marrying a handsome millionaire, even though considerably her senior. I'm probably a conceited fool for thinking it any very great burden at all. But how, then, can I account—? Well, well, time alone can unravel this snarl. One thing is certain: she will do nothing that she does not believe right; and after what Mrs. Yocomb said I would not dare to ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... from the telegraph office later in the evening, finds me endeavoring to unravel the Gordian knot of the situation through the medium of a brown-study. My geographical ruminations have already resulted in a conviction that there is no possible way to unravel it and reach India with a bicycle; my only chance of doing so is to ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... and thus to perpetuate life. The Creator alone has the power to originate life. Man, with all his wisdom and attainments, cannot discover the secret of organization. He may become familiar with its phenomena, but he cannot unravel, further, the mystery of life. The power of organizing is possessed only by the lower class of living or organized bodies, those known as vegetable organisms or plants. A grain of wheat, a kernel of corn, a potato, when placed under favorable conditions, takes the inert, lifeless ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... imperfect sight, Thou so content'st me, when thou solv'st my doubt, That ignorance not less than knowledge charms. Yet somewhat turn thee back," I in these words Continu'd, "where thou saidst, that usury Offends celestial Goodness; and this knot Perplex'd unravel." He thus made reply: "Philosophy, to an attentive ear, Clearly points out, not in one part alone, How imitative nature takes her course From the celestial mind and from its art: And where her laws the Stagyrite unfolds, Not many leaves scann'd o'er, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... him before one can say 'Knife!' Then one has to rush in with the whip—and every one 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 to follow on foot at leisure. I never did get left the whole of this depot journey, but ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... adopted by Voltaire the most probable, viz: that this unknown person was the son of the queen Anne of Austria, mother of Louis XIV. These last words helped, in a measure, to resolve the enigma which comte de la Marche had left me to unravel; and, with a view to satisfy myself more positively on the subject, I availed myself of the first time I was alone with the king, to lead the conversation to this story. At the mention of the "Iron Mask," Louis XV started. "And do you really credit such ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... am trenching upon debatable ground, and have no desire to enter an argument upon the subject. It is doubtless better to believe the tenets taught us in our childhood, than to seek at mature age to unravel a mystery which it is self-evident the Great Creator never intended that man in this state of existence should become acquainted with. However, I'll say no more on such a subject, it is quite foreign to the matter of my travels, and does not ease my fever in any ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... case the Messiah announced by the Jewish prophets was destined for the Jews, and that he ought to have been their liberator, instead of destroying their worship and their religion. If it be possible to unravel any thing in these obscure, enigmatical, and symbolical oracles of the prophets of Judea, as we find them in the Bible,—if there be any means of guessing the meaning of the obscure riddles, which have been decorated with the pompous name of prophecies, ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... 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 ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... 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
... was on the right track. He recalled that Jane Strong over the dictograph had heard old Hoff speak of something that he called the "wonder-worker." As soon as Carter returned with the other advertisements that had been appearing he felt positive that he would be able to unravel the cipher. Two words he was sure of—"passports" and "wonder-working." One footprint does not lead anywhere, but two do, and given three footprints, a pathway ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... what made the complicated riddle of the Raid. Since it has defied all the Oedipuses of the century, we will not endeavour to unravel it. Did the Reformers set all their grievances aside before the paramount question, "Under which flag, Jameson?" or did they make use of the flag argument to cover a series of vacillations which prevented ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... we have no definite ideas and no concrete imagery to guide us; and the conductor, in company with all other students of instrumental music, will find it necessary to study his score most carefully if he is to unravel the threads that are woven together in such complex fashion in orchestral music. As implied above, phrasing in instrumental ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... looking through it as through a spyglass towards my goal. I shall work after this, Miss Cunningham, as I could not work before, because I have now a fixed starting-point. It may be an intricate tangle that I shall have to unravel, it may be a ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... he trembled at the responsibility he had undertaken; and he should, altogether despair, if he did not see before him a jury of twelve men of rare intelligence, whose acute minds would unravel all the sophistries of the prosecution, men with a sense, of honor, which would revolt at the remorseless persecution of this hunted woman by the state, men with hearts to feel for the wrongs of which she was the victim. Far be it from him to cast any suspicion upon the motives of the ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... history of Aphra Behn, the first Englishwoman to earn her livelihood by authorship, is unusually interesting but very difficult to unravel and relate. In dealing with her biography writers at different periods have rushed headlong to extremes, and we now find that the pendulum has swung to its fullest stretch. On the one hand, we have prefixed to a collection of the Histories and Novels, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... cannot speak or be silent; I am full of suspicions, and therefore listen to nothing; I am in a hurry to be gone.' He wonders how this trouble is to be cured. He speaks of it as a prejudice produced from 'a gordian complication of feelings, which must take time to unravel.' And then, with a good-humored, characteristic touch, he drops the subject, saying, 'After all, I do think better of women than to suppose they care whether Mister John Keats, five feet high, ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... 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
... it," said my friend, soberly. "I am no soldier. And we never know what is best, Daisy. We must trust the Lord, my dear, to unravel these confusions." ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... of identifying the victim and running down her murderers was at once begun. The entire detective and police force of Cincinnati, Covington and Newport, was put to work to unravel the mystery, identify the remains and ...
— The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan - or: the Headless Horror. • Unknown
... Dryads, to haunt the woods again; More welcome were the presence of hungering, thirst- ing men, Whose doubts we could unravel, whose hopes we could fulfil, Our wisdom tracing backward, the river to the rill; Were such beloved forerunners one summer day restored, Then, then we might ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... summit and the plains, a distance of 60 to 70 miles, there are higher, middle, and lower ranges, so cut up by deep and winding valleys and river-courses, that no labyrinth could be found more confusing or difficult to unravel. There is nowhere any tableland, as at the Cape or in Colorado, with horizontal strata of rock cut down by water into valleys or canyons. The strata seem, on the contrary, to have been shoved up and crumpled ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... lost again. At last comes a third call in tones so imperative that it cannot be longer ignored, and we lay the book down, but open to the place where we left off, and where we hope soon to begin further to unravel the delightful mystery. Was it an effort to attend to the reading? Ah, no! it took the combined force of our will and of mother's authority to drag the attention away. This is ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... enough to wish to go out and unravel the mystery of the west now walked in chains from a Spanish ship to a Spanish prison! It was monstrous ingratitude, all declared; and they did not hesitate to show their sympathy. The story of his disgrace traveled rapidly, and everywhere it brought out the ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... apprehend the meaning of the whole, or to follow the links of the connexion between its several parts. I am myself as little able to understand where the difficulty lies, or to detect any lurking obscurity, as these 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 original design, and then leave the reader to judge how far this design is kept in ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... have two valises—one will do for you and the other for me," said the Baron, putting his fore-finger on his brow in a thoughtful manner. "All, yes; besides the ties you will require a shirt-collar or two, a comb to unravel those hyacinthine locks of yours, a pair of spectacles, and a toothpick. It might be as well also to take an umbrella, in case we should be caught out in the ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston
... want their diplomacies NOT to be swept into the ash-pit, there are two conditions, especially one which is peremptory: FIRST, that they should not be lies;—SECOND, that they should be of some importance, some wisdom; which with known lies is not a possible condition. To unravel cobwebs, and register laboriously and date and sort in the sorrow of your soul the oaths of crowned dicers,—what use is it to gods or men? Having well dressed and sliced your cucumber, the next clear human ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... great haste. Though it is Wednesday, I have been down at the House almost all day to unravel a device of Disraeli's about the manner in which the question is to be put, by which he means to catch votes; and I think after full consultation with Mahon and Wilson Patten, that this will be accomplished. The debate may close to-morrow night. I am sorry ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... to give the public his nut-cracker if I do not, before the Budget is concluded, "unravel" the paradox, which is the mathematico-geometrical nut he has given me to crack. Mr. Smith is a crack man: he will crack his own nut; he will crack my shell; in the mean time he cracks himself up. Heaven send he do not crack himself into lateral ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... filled with these 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 ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the Cross, sent ambassadors to the pope, to the emperor, and to other Christian lords, accusing each other of breach of faith, and treachery. The ambassador carrying the letters of the prince was the clever Mikolaj of Rzeniewa, a man of great ability who could unravel the thread which was woven by the artifice of the Knights of the Cross, convincingly demonstrating the great wrongs done to the lands ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... thing. I said, or I meant to say, I was troubled in it. That's all; and if you're a mite of a man you'll try and help me unravel this tangle and quit foolin'. Just step into that closet with me and maybe the tackers'll tell you themselves. I'd rather you heard ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... few there be who find it." The ways of heaven are indeed inscrutable, and it is our bounden duty to walk ever dependent on God, looking up to him with humble confidence, and hope in his goodness, and ever confess his justice; and where we "cannot unravel, there learn to trust." This wretched woman, pursuing the horrid dictates of a heart hardened and depraved, was scarcely confirmed in her recovery, when, stifling the dictates of honour, gratitude, and every natural affection, she again ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... gets to thinking and talking. Discussions lead to investigations, and investigations lead to conferences. Just lately a large conference was held in Chicago, and certain plans were formulated to attempt to unravel some of the evils that exist in marketing. So much has been said that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has begun certain investigations, and we hope that the workers will find ways to solve some of the troubles in a logical ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... reputation— That's certain, Forgetting— That he himself, in every gross Lampoon, Her leuder Secrets spread about the Town; Whilst their feign'd Niceness is but cautious Fear, Their own Intrigues should be unravel'd here. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... from the chronicles the most complicated to unravel of that of any of the kingly suburbs of old Paris, though in the days of the old locomotion a townlet twenty-six kilometres from the capital was hardly to be thought ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... history must remain in the shade, because time alone can unravel the mystery by which I am surrounded; and many important passages in my life, prudence forces me to conceal. But, my dear fellow, if my trials and sufferings will in any way reconcile you to your lot, and enable you to bear with fortitude your own, your friend will not have suffered ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... enough to expect, of course, that Duncan might nurse some slight curiosity as to his family and its welfare. This will be his third day back, and he has neither put in an appearance nor sent a word. He's busy, of course, with that tangle to unravel—but where there's a will there's usually a way. And hope dies hard. Yet day by day I find less bitterness in my heart. Those earlier hot tides of resentment have been succeeded, not by tranquillity or even indifference, but by a colder and more ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... it is naturally suggested by the flight of a bird. I have watched for hours together in early life, in my walks across the bridge from Boston to Charlestown, the motions of the sea-gulls.... Often have I attempted to unravel the mystery of their motion so as to bring the principle of it to bear upon this very subject, but I never experimented upon it. Many ingenious men, however, have experimented on air navigation, and have so far succeeded as to ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... manoeuvres, and arrangements, which we have not time here fully to unravel; but the end of all was, that in a few weeks after the Earl of Warwick's landing in France, he repaired to a castle where Margaret of Anjou and her son, the Prince of Wales, were residing, and there, in the course of a short time, he made arrangements to espouse ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... little girl inquire recently, as she fingered a scrap of pink gingham of which her mother was making "rompers" for the baby of the family, "why are the threads of this cloth pink when you unravel it one way, and white when you unravel ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... collaterally, there are inscriptions in Latin; designs in gold and azure and 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 ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... grew old, and had An ill no doctor could unravel: His torments almost drove him mad;— Some said it was a fever bad— Some swore it was the ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... of the Teutonic race settled in England, no figure appears more frequently and more mysteriously than that of Gladstone or Mista Gladstone. To unravel the true germinal conception of Gladstone, and to assign to all the later accretions of myth their provenance and epoch, are the problems attempted in this chapter. It is almost needless (when we consider the perversity ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... back to San Pasqual, and such was his perturbation that he sought to have "Doc" Taylor unravel the ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... the basis of 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
... the delight and the despair of the amateur, who finds no greater pleasure than an evening spent in endeavouring to unravel the intricacies of chamber music, nor any keener disappointment than the realisation that it is capable of ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... building, that the distracted Jew was no longer visible. It seemed plain that the person or the event he had awaited with such obvious nervousness had arrived and passed; one more of the problems, anxieties or crises that join and unravel moment by moment in the human ant-hill of London, had perhaps closed for good or ill within the past half-hour; perhaps ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... prefect, who had certified to us, the information that no such persons lived in the town, the only foreigners there being two sisters named Genrut! With this lucid clue our friends cleverly found us. Those who understand Russian script will be able to unravel the process by which we were thus disguised and lost. We had been lost before that in St. Petersburg, and we recognized the situation, with variations, at a glance. There is no such thing as a real practical directory in Russian cities. When one's passport ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... indeed, and the commotion of thy mind is terrible; this thing, however, though it have fair arguments, if any one unravel it, is not fair. But I am unadorned with phrase to speak to the multitude, but to speak to my equals and to a few, more expert: but this also has consistency in it; for those, who are of no account among the wise, are more fitted to speak before the rabble. But yet it ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... notion was, that it was an old woman; but as the oldest among us, and their fathers before them, had always heard it spoken of in exactly the same terms, they were further puzzled to account for her preternatural longevity." A well-directed course of enquiry in England, speedily enabled the Khan to unravel the mystery; and he has enlightened his countrymen with full details on the composition of the venerable Begum, with the Court of Directors, the Board of Control, &c.; but in the prosecution of these ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... make head or tail of them," I said when I had looked carefully at each, and endeavoured to unravel its secret, for obviously it must possess some secret meaning. "What do ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... Yet these I love to cherish, and sometimes still fondly clutch them, when I can escape from the throng to do so. To give way to our feelings before company, seems extravagance or affectation; and on the other hand, to have to unravel this mystery of our being at every turn, and to make others take an equal interest in it (otherwise the end is not answered) is a task to which few are competent. We must "give it an understanding, but no tongue." My old friend ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... would be unable to produce the vast quantities of foods that are now dependent upon such insect life. It is true that they take their toll of the food that they are instrumental in sometimes producing but when one attempts to unravel the mystery of balance of nature one is confronted by the big question of how far to go in the eradication of both animals and insect pests. Before man's interference the wild crops were plentiful and balances were kept ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... shouted for help. The door fell with a crash; the soldiers poured in, and the female assassin was secured and disarmed. Eager to unravel the mystery, the police officer tore the mask from the face of the unknown, and recognized in the wild and inflamed features of the assassin of the Rue La Harpe, the Rue Richelieu, and the Boulevard des Italiens, his ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... constitution for society in its internal relations (and, as the condition of that, in its external relations also), as the sole state of society in which the tendencies of human nature can be all and fully developed.' Nor is this all. We shall not only be able to unravel the intricate web of past affairs, but shall also find a clue for the guidance of future statesmen in the art of political prediction. Nay more, this clue 'will open a consolatory prospect into futurity, in which at a remote distance we ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... exposing to profane eyes. It had been the original design of the learned Dean Prideaux to write the history of the ruin of the Eastern Church. In this work it would have been necessary, not only to unravel all those controversies which the Christians made about the hypostatical union, but also to unfold all the niceties and subtle notions which each sect entertained concerning it. The pious historian was apprehensive ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... Islands, and lost colonists!' Daily have we much ado to keep ourselves, What with starving, mutiny, and Indian raids, Questions vexed that keep our minds from roving far From these palisades our toiling hands have reared, Come, Newport, we'll set our wits to work at once To unravel from this web of words the sense That our monarch would impart. Come, sit you down, Let us gaily fill our pipes with fragrant weed Such as natives grow—perchance its soothing power Anger will assuage; vexations disappear In these wreaths of smoke ...
— Pocahontas. - A Poem • Virginia Carter Castleman
... 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
... had always been 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 adoration ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... 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 a cup of strong ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... measured 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
... he not welcome change? Thinking that perhaps fruit-time is better than blossom-time, he foresaw a deeper love awaiting him, and a tenderness that he could not feel to-day might be his in years to come. Nor could habit blunt his perceptions or intimacy unravel the mystery of her sunny nature. So the bourne could never be reached; for when everything had been said, something would remain unspoken. The two rhythms out of which the music of life is made, intimacy and adventure, would meet, would merge, and become one; and ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... helping to explore—and rubbish-pits, especially in groups, lie rather outside the inhabited areas of towns. Those of London itself suggest to me that the place had not reached its full area by A.D. 100 (see above, p. 23). (b) The Newgate foundations are harder to unravel. As a rule, Roman town-gates had large super-structures and needed stronger foundations than the town-walls. At Newgate, where the superstructure must have been comparatively slender, the published plans show that under ...
— Roman Britain in 1914 • F. Haverfield
... and bewilder the intelligence of a rustic. And the other, in the midst of magnificent bombinations that amazed his friend, thought, "If I only had this man's simplicity. If on top of my ability to unravel mysteries into words I could feel these mysteries as he ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... Universal Providence, exercising an authority and a discretion over matters upon which in any progressive community the people must decide for themselves. However near to the appearances such an impression might be, nothing could be further from the facts. If I have helped the reader to unravel the tangled skein of our national life, if I have sufficiently revealed the mind of the new movement to show that there is in it 'a scheme of things entire,' it should be quite clear that the deliberate intentions both of Mr. Gerald Balfour and of those Irishmen whom he took into his confidence ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... all the harder to unravel that Anglo-Saxon too had genders, equally arbitrary, which did not agree with the French ones. It is easy to conceive that among the various compromises effected between the two idioms, from which English was finally to emerge, the principal should ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... 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 ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... to what he says," the Frenchman exclaimed, in a very serious voice. "It is your last, last chance. If the secret is ever to be unravelled at all, by Methuselah's aid, now is, without doubt, the proper moment to unravel it." ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... of the afternoon Diggory secured Mugford's copy of Poe's tales, and (sad to relate) spent a good part of that evening's preparation in trying to unravel the secret of the mysterious missive which he had found in the box-room. So intent was he on solving the problem that, instead of going down to supper with the majority of his companions, he remained seated at his desk, ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... even worked to bring it about. What his object had been Bernard could not bring to conjecture. But his instinctive, inborn hatred of all underhand dealings made him resent his brother's behaviour with all the force at his command. He was too angry to attempt to unravel the mystery, and he did not broach the subject to Tommy who evidently desired ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... yet it hangs there, this Veil, between Then and Now, between Pale and Colored and Black and White—between You and Me. Surely it is a thought-thing, tenuous, intangible; yet just as surely is it true and terrible and not in our little day may you and I lift it. We may feverishly unravel its edges and even climb slow with giant shears to where its ringed and gilded top nestles close to the throne of God. But as we work and climb we shall see through streaming eyes and hear with aching ears, lynching and murder, cheating and despising, degrading and ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... together 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 ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... to this day." His party of six white men (including Leichhardt) and two black boys, with 12 horses, 13 mules, 50 bullocks, and 270 goats, have never been heard of since they left McPherson's station on the Cogoon on 3rd April, 1848; and although there have been several attempts to unravel the mystery, there is scarcely a possibility of any discovery in regard to their ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... 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 of those same materials a nest like ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... we walked together in the glittering spring sunshine, this big silent man and I, there came upon me a swift, poignant impulse, the keener perhaps because of the loneliness of my days, to implore him to unravel all the things which lay between us. I wanted the story of that night, of my concern in it, stripped bare. Already my lips were opened, when round the corner of the rough lane by which Braster Grange was approached on this side ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that the deed was done, to preclude inconvenient revelations as to their own share in the crime. Maurice, notwithstanding these causes for perturbation, and despite his grief at his father's probable death, remained steadily by the body of the murderer. He was determined, if possible, to unravel the plot, and he waited to possess himself of all papers and other articles which might be found upon the person of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... whole soul, had done it and must therefore be to blame. Then he would read her letter over, burning every word of it upon his brain, until the piteous minor appeal would torture him once more and he would begin again to try to get hold of some thread of thought that would unravel ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... of whom wearing a white band, the distinguishing mark of the pilgrims who have visited the tomb of Iman Reza, at Meshed, informed me that the caravan came from the province of Khorassan. I waited to see it gradually unravel from the maze of the narrow streets, and, after a due allowance of wrangling and abuse between the mule and camel drivers, I saw it take up its abode in ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... 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 Heaven ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... F, or by running the free end through the last loop, as at E. To undo this shortening, it is only necessary to slip out the free end, or the bit of wood, and pull on the end, when the entire knot will quickly unravel. The "Twist," or "Double Chain," is made in a similar manner but is commenced In a different way (A, Fig. 71). It may also be made with three separate pieces of line, as shown in B, Fig. 71. Hold the double loop in the ...
— Knots, Splices and Rope Work • A. Hyatt Verrill
... collar, retied my bow, and slipped into my jacket. I was rather uncomfortably damp, and I felt a bit shaky and queer, and decided that I could do with a complete rest from the mysteries of the green ray. But the subject remained uppermost in my mind, and my tired brain still strove to unravel the tangled threads ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... it is 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
... printed as a prose soliloquy on page 97 of that exquisite and ironic volume. It will pass to the subsequent Figures of Earth and, after showing how the greater gravity of this volume is accompanied by a greater profusion of poetry per se it will unravel the scheme of Cabell's fifteen essays in what might be called contrapuntal prose. It will unscramble all the rhymes screened in Manuel's monologue beginning on page 294, quote the metrical innovations with rhymed vowels on page 60, tabulate the hexameters ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... found a difficulty in the word like, which they were unable to unravel. They could never account for its use in expressing a relation between two objectives. They forgot that to be like, one thing must be likened to another, and that it was the very meaning of this ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... of one," said Peter, "without condescending at all. As you say, we won't begin by tearing the net; we'll unravel it. What do you think would have happened to you, Mrs. Winston, before you were married, if you'd had to travel day after day in a motor car with a man ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... this," I said to myself—"it was to hear such propositions as this that I came to Sicily! That Polizzi is simply a scoundrel, and his son another; and they made a plan together to ruin me." But what was their scheme? I could not unravel it. Meanwhile, it may be imagined how discouraged and ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... without reviewing his actions and estimating the results of his work in all these directions. But the difficulty of describing and judging him goes deeper. His was a singularly complex nature, a character hard to unravel. His individuality was extremely strong; all that he said or did bore its impress. Yet it was an individuality so far from being self-consistent as sometimes to seem a bundle of opposite qualities capriciously united in a single ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... than we didst come to The 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 ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... privacy of the stoep-corner, began to be eloquent. He knew, he said, that the story he had to relate would appear almost incredible, but a soldier, a diplomat, a master of strategy, such as the personage to whom he now addressed himself, would understand—none better—how to unravel the tangled web, and follow up the clue to its ending in a den of secret, black, and midnight conspiracy. A blob of foam appeared upon his under-lip. He waved his ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... seethes, hisses, in raging rout, As when water wrestles with fire, Till to heaven the yeasty tongues they spout; And flood upon flood keeps mounting higher: It will never its endless coil unravel, As the sea with another ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... set up their rest, resolved to be The first their different quarrels to conclude: And tangled so is one with other plea, That ill Apollo's self could judge the feud. To unravel that first cause of enmity The king began — the strife which had ensued, Because of beauteous Doralice, between The king of ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... which Madeline and her efficient aides de camp could unravel the web of doubt that still clung about, and kept a prisoner, the ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... 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
... months after his return from California, the tangled web of my yarn began to unravel. Mat Bailey had reported that nothing had been heard of the highwaymen "from that day to this." But John Keeler's work had not been done in vain. O'Leary of You Bet, the Nevada City jail-bird, had been duly impressed with the handsome reward offered for the apprehension of the murderers. ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... "Manuel d'Architecture Musulmane," after attempting to unravel the influences which went to the making of the mosque of Kairouan, the walls of Marrakech, the Medersas of Fez—influences that lead him back to Chaldaean branch-huts, to the walls of Babylon and the embroideries of ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... spoons, but this would be a confession of failure on my part, and I rather dreaded Lionel Dacre's hearty laughter when I admitted that the mystery was too much for me. Besides this I was very well aware of the young man's kindly intentions towards me. He wished me to unravel the coil myself, and so I determined not to go to him except as a ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... often, there will be perplexities in our daily lives, and conflicts very hard to unravel. We shall often be brought to a point where we cannot see which way the Banner is leading us. What then? 'It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait' for the salvation and for the guidance of his God. And we shall generally find that it is when we are looking ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... since this horrible and mysterious event, which no one sought to unravel at the time it occurred. One June evening, 1771, four persons were sitting in one of the rooms of a modestly furnished, dwelling on the third floor of a house in the rue Saint-Victor. The party consisted ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... entire government 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, and applied them to different objects in reversion ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... compunction or mercy. Eva cautioned him to be more than silent on the subject for the child's sake as well as for their own, and Anderson saw wisdom in her counselling. He even lagged in his avowed intention to unravel the mystery or die in the attempt. A sharp reminder in the shape of an item in the Banner restored his energies, and he again took up the case with a vigour that startled even himself. Anything in the shape of vigour startled ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... the old man. "You're beginning to use your brain a little. You're beginning to realize the value of money—and you don't like it. Well, you can unravel your own tangle. Don't come ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... ages unfriended, With sophistry blended, Deep science in Chaos had slept; Its limits were fettered, Its voters unlettered, Its students in movements but crept. Till, despite of great foes, Great WALSH first arose, And with logical might did unravel Those mazes of knowledge, Ne'er known in a college, Though sought for with unceasing travail. With cheers we now hail him, May success never fail him, In Polar Geometrical mining; Till his foes be as tamed As his works are far-famed For ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... blessed Cross, most royal lady," said Edith —and Sir Kenneth, with feelings which it were hard to unravel, heard her prostrate herself at the Queen's feet—"for the love of our blessed Lady, and of every holy saint in the calendar, beware what you do! You know not King Richard—you have been but shortly wedded to him. Your breath might as well combat the west wind when it is wildest, as your words ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... Clay?" he exclaimed. "Mais, monsieur, we are only human! Arrested him? No, not quite. But tracked out how he did it. That is already much—to unravel Colonel Clay, gentlemen!" ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... said Lydia, meditatively. "But I think their dissimilarity owes its emphasis to some lurking likeness. Otherwise how could he have reminded me of her?" Lydia, as she spoke, sat down with a troubled expression, as if trying to unravel her thoughts. "And yet," she added, presently, "my theatrical associations are so complex that—" A long silence ensued, during which Alice, conscious of some unusual stir in her patroness, watched her furtively and wondered what would ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... closed her book. "I was quite prepared to hear it," she said; "all the unpleasant complications since your Divorce—and Heaven only knows how many of them have presented themselves—have been left for me to unravel. It so happens—though I was too modest to mention it prematurely—that I have unraveled this complication. If one only has eyes to see it, there is a way out of every difficulty that can possibly happen." She pushed the book that she had been reading across ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... nothing to prevent their living together, and Nekhludoff had not prepared himself for that. And, besides, what of her relations to Simonson? What was the meaning of her words yesterday? If she consented to a union with Simonson, would it be well? He could not unravel all these questions, and gave up thinking about it. "It will all clear itself up later on," he thought; "I must not think about it now, but convey the glad news to her as soon as possible, and set her free." He thought that the copy of the document he had received would suffice, so ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... Hastings had to seize upon the property of the Begums, except upon his hypothesis of the rebellion. He was asked if he knew any other. He answered, No. It consequently appears that Mr. Hastings, though he had before him his doctors of all laws, who could unravel for him all the enigmas of all the laws in the world, and who had himself shone upon questions of Mahometan law, in the case of the Nuddea Begum, did not dare to put this case to Sir Elijah Impey, and ask what was his opinion concerning the rights ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... 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 ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... having put off the old man and put on the new, obtain the blessed fruit of everlasting life." Again, he tells us: "Eagles often fly so high that their wings are scorched by the sun; so those who in the Holy Scriptures strive to unravel the deep and hidden secrets of the heavenly mysteries, beyond what is allowed, fall below, as if the wings of the presumptuous imaginations on which they ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
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