"Skein" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the story bears a certain similarity to that of Mysterier, Vicioria, and Pan, being a love affair of mazy windings, a tangled skein of loves-me-loves-me-not. But it is pure comedy throughout. Rolandsen, the telegraph operator in love with Elsie Mack, is no poet; he has not even any pretensions to education or social standing. He is a cheerful, ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... Dashwood and Solomon to make himself personally acquainted with that string in the tangled skein which he was determined to unravel; and now, with his mind at rest upon that subject, he was returning to settle matters with Ling Chu, that Chinese assistant of his who was now as deeply under suspicion as ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... present the Boer side of the case. It would, indeed, have been wiser on the part of Mr. Hofmeyr and other Bond leaders to have forgotten the past and given a friendly hand to the one man capable of unravelling the tangled skein of affairs. ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... thy skin as silken skein, Soft as woman's hair thy mane, Tender are thine eyes and true; All thy hoofs like ivory shine, Polished bright; O, life of mine, ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... and are dragged up against the rocks; carriage, horses, harness, all a confused heap. The Brave, and I, and the postilion, were constantly at work, in extricating the whole concern from a tangle, like a skein of thread. We broke two thick iron chains, and crushed the box of a wheel, as it was; and the carriage is now undergoing repair, under the window, on the margin of the lake: where a woman in short petticoats, a stomacher, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... this moment is hidden from us by a band of clouds, that stretches, right above our head, from one end of the sky to the other, like a long skein of white wool. It is alone in the blue void, and seems to make more peaceful, and even a little mysterious, the wonderful light of the fields we traverse—these fields intoxicated with life and vibrant with the music of birds; while, by contrast, the distant landscape, unshaded ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... finished pricking the tracing of the pattern of a cope, went to get a skein from the case of drawers, cut it, tapered off the two ends by scratching the gold which covered the silk, and he brought it to her rolled ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... secrets known as the spectroscope. The beams of white sunlight consist of innumerable beams of every hue in intimate association. Every shade of red, of yellow, of blue, and of green, can be found in a sunbeam. The magician's wand, with which we strike the sunbeam and sort the tangled skein into perfect order, is the simple instrument known as the glass prism. We have represented this instrument in its simplest form in the adjoining figure (Fig. 17). It is a piece of pure and homogeneous glass in the shape of a wedge. ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... clear high forehead, he heard—or thought he heard despite the jar of the street—the rustle of the muslin robe. Hermione passed, nor ever knew how, by taking this way from the house of a friend, she coloured the skein of life for three mortals—for ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... sick of scrolls," said the Earl testily. "What! is it some order for saying mass,—or to get some new Popish image or a skein of silk? I wear my eyes out reading such as that, and racking my brains for ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of having a strong hand if you only use it to hold a skein of silk for my mother?" cries Miss Hester; "and what is the good of being ever so strong in a drawing-room? Nobody wants you to throw anybody out of window, Harry! A strong man, indeed! I suppose there's a stronger at Bartholomew Fair. James Wolfe ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and without reward—for my sake. He, too, is a solicitor, but an honest one, as many still are, thank God; and it is a solicitor whose aid will be most useful to you in the unravelling of this tangled skein." ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... a picture on which various colours are painted is placed before the patient, as well as a skein of wool of the same shade as one of the colours in the picture, which he is ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... This is a radical perversion; all but universal in such cases. And think for an instant how different the fact is! How much does one of us foresee of his own life? Short way ahead of us it is all dim; an unwound skein of possibilities, of apprehensions, attemptabilities, vague-looming hopes. This Cromwell had not his life lying all in that fashion of Program, which he needed then, with that unfathomable cunning of his, only to enact dramatically, scene after scene! Not so. We see ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... for a walking tour in the fens, and returned enchanted. "By Ely," he said, "the line crosses a gigantic fen—Whittlesea mere in old days—and on a clear day you can see at least fifteen miles either way. As we crossed it a great skein of starlings rose out of a little holt, and streamed north; the herons or quiet cattle stood along the huge dykes. You could see the scattered figures of old labourers in the fields, and then for ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... two monstrous misconceptions from the tangled skein of inherited beliefs and framing them in words, I have already repeatedly performed. Let us keep the results in mind. Here they are in their nakedness: (1) Human beings—men, women, and children—are animals (and ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... many whose testimonials could trace, step by step, the child's record from its birth to its transfer to Jasper, and by the brief but distinct avowal, in tremulous lines, writ by Jasper himself. As a skein crossed and tangled, when the last knot is loosened, slips suddenly free, so this long bewildering mystery now became clear as a commonplace! What years of suffering Darrell might have been saved ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ingenuity which had woven this smooth and finished texture out of the ravelled skein was naturally the first impression that I felt, on handing the manuscript back to Ezra Jennings. He modestly interrupted the first few words in which my sense of surprise expressed itself, by asking me if the conclusion which he had drawn from his notes was also the conclusion ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... of Germany possesses a special talent for adding new complications to a difficult situation, so as to render it impossible of solution. He has now so completely tangled up the parliamentary skein, that in a little while it will be impossible for Parliament to govern. Can one conceive of a majority of the Chamber rallying around the Catholic centre, or the socialists, for the same reason, increasing in number ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... you something about Friar's Oak, and about the life that we led there. Now that my memory goes back to the old place it would gladly linger, for every thread which I draw from the skein of the past brings out half a dozen others that were entangled with it. I was in two minds when I began whether I had enough in me to make a book of, and now I know that I could write one about Friar's Oak alone, and the folk whom ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... they were almost as eager and excited over the last stages of the journey to the summit as though it lay before them personally, new, unknown and untried. They hardly could wait to resume their following out of the last entangled skein ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... much as I thought I did about the bigness of London, I found that morning that I never had any idea of what an everlasting town it is. It is like a skein of tangled yarn—there doesn't seem to be any end to it. Going in this way from Nelson's Monument out into the country, it was amazing to see how long it took to get there. We would go out of the busy streets into a quiet rural neighborhood, or what looked like it, and the ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... the wild strawberries shone like heaps of rubies at his feet. Wonderful birds and butterflies were darting hither and thither amongst the loveliest flowers. And on a grassy nook not far from a waterfall he perceived some white marble steps on which two little girls sat. The one was holding a great skein of wool, and the other was winding it. There was a great heap of wool of ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... sad letter were almost illegible in their faintness and irregularity; and the tangled skein of light scratches that stood proxy for a signature could never have been deciphered ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... my little Delphine. Look up and let me kiss away the tears. There! I shall find my wits and unravel this skein of your ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... silk the whirling spoles reveal, If smiling Fortune turn the giddy wheel; But if sweet Love with baby-fingers twines, 130 And wets with dewy lips the lengthening lines, Skein after skein celestial tints unfold, And all the silken tissue shines ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... as a hazel-nut, and a thick mop of fine, bright hair, rebellious like herself, of the sort that goes with an ardent personality, waved and curled over her little poll, and generally ended the day in a tangle only less intricate than can be achieved by a skein of silk. Of her small oval face, people were accustomed to say it was all eyes, an unoriginal summarising, but one that forced itself inevitably upon those who met Christian's eyes, clear and shining, of the pale brown that the sun knows how ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... now how desperate was this man's determination, how tightly his lips were locked. But she had picked up another thread of this tangled skein, and that made her exult with a new hope. She went spiritedly at the cross-examination of Doctor Sherman, striving to break him down. So sharp, so rigid, so searching were her questions, that there were murmurs in the audience against such treatment of a sincere, ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... can surpass Mr. Crawford in the construction of a complicated plot and the skilful unravelling of the tangled skein."—Chicago Record-Herald. ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... there was always the sting of that fact. Miss Granger was rarely absent for ten minutes together on these occasions; it was only some lucky chance which took her from the room to fetch some Berlin wool, or a forgotten skein of floss silk for the perennial spaniels, and afforded the brother and sister an opportunity for a few hurried words. The model villagers almost faded out of Miss Granger's mind in this agreeable society. She found herself listening to talk about things which were ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... to go back so many years and take up one thread in the skein of life, and follow that alone. I will disentangle it as rapidly as I can; but first let us have a ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... easiest thing I have been set to do,' thought the girl, who was a good spinner. But when she began she found that the skein tangled and ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... but he pushes his inquiries to ascertain whether among material substances there may not be some which resemble space. If you follow his experiments, you will soon emerge into the light of his results. A torsion-beam was suspended by a skein of cocoon silk; at one end of the beam was fixed a cross-piece 1 1/2 inch long. Tubes of exceedingly thin glass, filled with various gases, and hermetically sealed, were suspended in pairs from the two ends of the ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... assembly) kunsido. Situation situacio, sido. Situation (post) oficio. Six ses. Sixteen dek-ses. Sixty sesdek. Size grandeco. Size (of a book) formato. Size glueto. Skate gliti. Skates glitiloj. Skein fadenaro. Skeleton skeleto. Sketch skizi. Sketch skizo. Skewer trapikileto. Skid malakcelo. Skiff boateto. Skilful lerta. Skill lerteco. Skilled lerta. Skim sensxauxmigi. Skimmer sxauxmkulero. Skin ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... with stones and had nearly killed him. He nevertheless went on inventing, and next produced a machine for weaving flowered silks, with a contrivance for giving a dressing to the thread, so as to render that of each bobbin or skein ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... prayers were not to be answered. Had he known at the moment how deeply the two of them were to be enmeshed in the skein of Europe's destiny he would have risen and faced the anger of his host, or, risking detection, incontinently fled. But Marishka's hand clasped his own, and ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... might have been, Of all the sorrow that his sword had wrought, Of Death that now drew near him: of the green Vales of Larissa, where, with such a queen, With such a love as now his spear had slain, He had been happy, who must wind the skein Of grievous wars, and ne'er be ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... constrained, controlled, Helpless to us ward, and apart— Swifter than speech my heart Had poured its presage out! Now, fretting, chafing in the dark of doubt, 'Tis hopeless to unfold Truth, from fear's tangled skein; and, yearning to proclaim Its thought, my soul ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... family, who seemed suddenly to find themselves de trop, scattered away to other parts of the room. Now Miss Maria was a fast girl, and Harry knew it. She looked wicked, as if determined upon a coup d'etat; and he began to perspire all over. The skein fared badly. At this moment some slight diversion was made in his favour by a servant appearing with a message regarding somebody in the back-parlour; whereupon Mrs Blackmore went hastily down stairs; and Harry's eyes followed her wistfully: ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... that it was Weld's. He says that when he first had his head examined at Utica, he was told he was deficient in the organ of color, his eyebrow showing it. He immediately remembered that his mother often told him: 'Theodore, it is of no use to send you to match a skein of silk, for you never bring the right color.' When relating this, he observed a general titter in the room, and on inquiring the reason a candle was put near him, and, to his amazement, all agreed that the legs of his pantaloons were of different shades of ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... imagined the conclusion was going to be very different from what it proved to be. Fresh from the study of the older men and also of Mr. Darwin himself, I failed to see that Mr. Darwin had "unravelled and illuminated" a tangled skein, but believed him, on the contrary, to have tangled and obscured what his predecessors had made in great part, if not wholly, plain. With the older writers, I had felt as though in the hands of men who wished to understand themselves and to make their reader understand them with the smallest possible ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... with this possibility hanging over her, seemed to him to pass the limits of the human. He knew there were heroic women; but he had not supposed that with all their heroism they carried themselves with such sang-froid. Before replying she took time to search in her work-basket for another skein of silk. ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... I am not supposed to know that she is a visitor to Rickwell. He'll suspect our game if I chatter about her, Ware. We must be cautious. This is a difficult skein to unravel." ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... in His wooing. The web of life's daily run, with its strange mixing and blending, shadings and tints, is of His weaving. He sits at life's loom ever watching and weaving. Were He but recognized oftener and His hand allowed to guide the skein, how different the weaving! ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... labor in the pre-Kantian philosophy among these three nationalities entirely agrees with the account given of the peculiarities of their philosophical endowment. The beginning falls to the share of France; Locke receives that tangled skein, the problem of knowledge, from the hand of Descartes, and passes it on to Leibnitz; and while the Illumination in all three countries is converting the gold inherited from Locke and Leibnitz into small coin, the solution of the ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... is to copy Theseus, get dame Ariadne to give us a skein, and go into one labyrinth after another, with the certainty of getting out by winding ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... boom of the great stanchion-gun; and after that sound another sound, louder as it neared; a cry as of all the bells of Cambridge, and all the hounds of Cottesmore; and overhead rushed and whirled the skein of terrified wild-fowl, screaming, piping, clacking, croaking, filling the air with the hoarse rattle of their wings, while clear above all sounded the wild whistle of the curlew, and the trumpet note of the great ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... the rose and still the rapture Woven through the tangled skein, And the joys we still shall capture At the turning of ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... was there; he generally sat watching Diana, carrying on a spasmodic and interrupted conversation with Mrs. Starling about farm affairs, and seizing the opportunity of a dropped spool or an unwound skein of yarn to draw near Diana and venture some word to her. Poor Diana felt in those days so much like a person whose earthly ties are all broken, that it did not come into her head in what a different light she stood ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... the platter was left sticking there; whereupon the young man said, 'This is not the wife for me.'" In another house he sees a damsel who leaves not the dough which sticks to the platter; and he says, "This is the wife for me." Another young man offers to successive maidens a skein of tangled silk to wind. The first says, "I can't;" the second tries, and gives up; the third makes a quick job of it with her scissors; the fourth spends hours in patiently, untangling, and is chosen. Now, what shows the state of public sentiment is the fact that ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... of such a collection is difficult indeed, for it has drawn upon all civilizations and all literatures. But since Hammer-Purgstall and De Sacy began to unwind the skein, many additional turns have been given. The idea of the "frame" in general comes undoubtedly from India; and such stories as 'The Barber's Fifth Brother,' 'The Prince and the Afrit's Mistress,' have been "traced back to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... arisen from the very bowels of the earth. Then there were the splash or boom of the waves, the piping of the sea-wind, the cry of curlew, or black-backed gulls, all mingled in one great and tangled skein of sound that choked the voice of the speaker, and in their aggregate, bewildered him ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... new leader, whom he christened King of Clubs on the spot. Dolly made the stranger one of them at once by talking bad German, as an offset to his bad English, called him Professor in spite of all denials, and unconsciously symbolized his future bondage by giving him a tangled skein to hold for the furtherance of her ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... heather in early autumn; and whereas the northern side of Hursley gives the distinctive flora of dry chalk, here we have the growth of the black peaty bog, the great broom-rape, brown and leafless, growing on the roots of the gorse; the curious dodder spreading a tangled red skein of thread over it gemmed with little round white balls, the rare marsh cinquefoil, the brilliant yellow asphodel, the delicate, exquisite, bog pimpernel, the blue skull-cap, the two weird and curious sun-dews, and even in former times the beautiful dark blue Gentiana Pneumonanthe, as well as ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... embroiderers' guilds are also extremely interesting. Etienne Boileau, in his book of crafts, to which I have already alluded, tells us that a member of the guild was prohibited from using gold of less value than 'eight sous (about 6s.) the skein; he was bound to use the best silk, and never to mix thread with silk, because that made the work false and bad.' The test or trial piece prescribed for a worker who was the son of a master-embroiderer ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... a noble grief. The thought of the bare, uncheered, hopeless lives of the poor came to weigh on him like an obsession, and he began to turn over in his mind what he could do to unravel the knotted skein. ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... that appearance," she assented, with a smile. She kept him waiting with what would have looked like coquettish hesitation in another, while she glanced at the windows overhead, pierced by a skein of converging wires. "Suppose I go up ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... thuribles was preserved. Panelled oak screens enclose this room on both sides. Next it comes Silkstede's chapel, the central of the three easterly divisions of the transept aisles. The prior's rebus, in the form of a skein of silk, is evident among the carvings, and his Christian name Thomas may be seen on the cornice with the MA, the monogram of the Virgin, standing out distinctly. The screen in this chapel is worthy of remark, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant
... untied the thread and unfolded the paper; after all, it was nothing but a packet of worsteds! To be sure, I hadn't ordered any worsteds, but there might possibly be a note to explain; so I shook every skein carefully, and turned the covering inside out, that the document, if there should be one, might not escape my vigilance. How could my presentiments deceive me? Of course there was a note—after all, where was the harm? Captain Lovell had most politely sent me all these worsteds ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... firm. I say to you now no more than I said, ah, so many times, when it was still possible that my words should not be vain. They were vain. But not on that account am I to be changed. I will not be wound like a skein of silk round your little finger.' That was it. Was she to give way in everything because they had been successful among them in carrying out this marriage in opposition to her judgment? Was she to assent that this man be treated as a sheep because he had prevailed ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... sea-divided lands, And slowly, thread by thread, Draw forth the folded strands, Than which the trembling line, By whose frail help yon startled spider fled Down the tall spear-grass from his swinging bed, Is scarce more fine; And as the tangled skein Unravels in my hands, Betwixt me and the noonday light, A veil seems lifted, and for miles and miles The landscape broadens on my sight, As, in the little boll, there lurked a spell Like that which, in the ocean shell, With mystic ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... no siren strain To him who plows this heaven-domed main! Thy starry eyes look down all-wistful On souls that toy with a tangled skein. ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... fishing or doing laborious work, it was customary with The Lifter, as well as with our hero, to sit among the women and assist them in such offices as the peeling of turnips or potatoes; and holding the yarn skein whilst one of the women rolled the thread into a ball; or in scouring the knives and forks. One afternoon while all the men save The Lifter were absent, the group was seated round a small open fire. Hanging from the crane was a pot of fruit which ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... a mere truism to remark that in every political question the main controversy is complicated by a number of side issues. Thus in the tangled skein of politics in South Eastern Europe there is not merely the great struggle between the Crescent and the Cross, but there are also jealousies between Greek and Bulgarian, between Servian and Austrian, which have to be considered. So in Ireland, if we take the religious ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... then, some months before, that Bashley being away for a day's holiday, Antoine took his place at the scale; for it was a slack time, and few workpeople were there to be served. He believed he had given out the last skein of silk, and had weighed the last bobbin, so shutting the slide, and putting up the bar, he unlocked an inner door, and went into the house and up the stairs. Pausing on the first landing, as he frequently did, to look thoughtfully over the balustrade and down the well-staircase, ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... queen. Isabella instituted trials of needlework amongst her ladies. In the days of her disgrace and solitude, Catherine turned to her embroidery for solace and occupation. She came forth to meet the Cardinals Wolsey and Campeggio with a skein of red silk round her neck.[603] Taylor, the ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... solution of potash, and then with water, and after drying dipped them in the acids. The acid mixture used consisted of 3 parts by weight of sulphuric to 1 part of nitric acid, and were prepared some time before use. The cotton was dipped one skein at a time, stirred for a few minutes, pressed out, steeped, and excess of acid removed by washing with water, then with dilute potash, and finally with water. Von Lenk's process was used in England at Faversham (Messrs Hall's Works), but ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... ran into them as a falcon does into a skein of ducks. Wulf and I galloped and galloped over those accursed sand-heaps till the horses stuck fast; and when they got their wind again, we found each pair of dogs with a deer down between them—and what can man want more, ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... tale is twined and told. Well may Helen, as with tender Touch of rosy fingers slender She doth knit the story in Of Troy's sorrow and her sin, Feel sharp filaments of pain Reeled off with the well-spun skein, And faint blood-stains on her hands From the shifting sanguine strands. Gently, sweetly she doth sorrow: What has been must be to-morrow; Meekly to her fate she bows. Heavenly beauties still will rouse Strife and savagery in men: Shall the lucid heavens, then, Lose their ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... awoke, she related all the particulars of her ill-omened vision to her husband; and the latter, after a short pause, informed her and his friend that a terrible calamity was about to befall them. He then drew from his travelling wallet a skein of thread. This he divided into three parts, one for each, and told his companions that in case of grievous bodily injury, the bit of thread wound round the wounded part would instantly make it whole. After which he taught them the Mantra,[FN158] or mystical ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... a big lump in her throat. She had not meant to rebel openly, but she had lost her temper, and the words had flashed out. Beatrice's threat alarmed her. Through all the tangled skein of Gwen's character there ran, like a thread of pure gold, the intense passionate love for her father, and the desire to preserve his good opinion. She could not bear to see the grieved look that came into his eyes when he was forced to reprove ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... husband, and she saw that he was young and handsome, she thought, "He will love me more than old Dame Gothel does;" and she said yes, and laid her hand in his. She said, "I will willingly go away with you, but I do not know how to get down. Bring with you a skein of silk every time that you come, and I will weave a ladder with it, and when that is ready I will descend, and you will take me on your horse." They agreed that until that time he should come to her every evening, for ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... to show that the matter was beyond his comprehension, and ascended the steps of the hotel. Jennings, deep in thought, walked away, wondering how he was to disentangle the skein which Fate had placed in ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... There can, indeed, be no right conception of Washington that does not accord him a great and extraordinary genius. I will not say he could have produced a play of Shakespeare, or a poem of Milton, handled with Kant the tangled skein of metaphysics, probed the secrecies of mind and matter with Bacon, constructed a railroad or an engine like Stephenson, wooed the electric spark from heaven to earth with Franklin, or walked with Newton the pathways of the spheres. But if his genius were of a different ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... of the habit. Did a volley of oaths ever start a heavy load? Did curses ever unravel a tangled skein? Did they ever extirpate the meanness of a customer? Did they ever collect a bad debt? Did they ever cure a toothache? Did they ever stop a twinge of the gout? Did they ever save you a dollar, or put you a step forward in any great enterprise? or ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... obey weight bare their prey freight fare there weigh neigh hair where sleigh veins fair stair reign whey chair pear skein ...
— How to Teach Phonics • Lida M. Williams
... world, broken into a hundred sharp mountain ridges which seemed to cut the sky, because between the high peaks and the tangled skein of far-away villages surged foaming seas of cloud, which appeared to separate high, bright peaks from shadowed vales, by incredible distances. As far as the eye could travel with utmost straining, away to the dark, imposing background of the Djurdjura ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... and must be dismissed, and his new lawyers, a grasping, incompetent crew. For a moment, indeed, he had had a glimpse of a clear sky. A woman, who seemed to have the same kind of business faculty that many Frenchwomen possess, had laid hands on his skein of troubles, and might have unravelled them. But she had thrown him over. In a little while he would have to let Mannering—for who would buy an estate in such a pickle?—sell his collections, and go and live in a flat in West Kensington. Then he ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... flow to the man in Kansas. But the American kept thinking about it; and he wanted the Kansans to think about it, too. When he was about to meet Sir John Jellicoe he envisaged the tall column in Trafalgar Square, surmounted by the one-armed figure turned toward the wireless skein on ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... days his brain was a swarm of paradoxes, subtleties and hair-splittings, a skein of rules as complicated as the articles of the codes that involved the sense of everything, indulged in puns and ended in a most tenuous and singular celestial jurisprudence. The abstract side vanished, in its turn, and under the influence ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... arrangement for the centres of flowers, veins of leaves, and other distinguishing marks. To work the embroidery it is necessary to line the Tussore with fine unbleached muslin, and to work with Tussore silk and Japanese gold thread. The Tussore silk costs 1d. the skein, and is dyed in every shade of Oriental colouring. Three to four shades of a colour are used to work in a flower, and two shades of green for the leaves. The stitch is crewel-stitch worked very close. No shading about each leaf is necessary, but ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 353, October 2, 1886. • Various
... 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 ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... she. "Three yards more would finish, and now I shall have to go down to the village and buy a whole skein, ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... neck!' For this other half, which I hold in my hands at last, is finished off in the same way ... so I shall be able to see if it has a hiding-place too and what's inside it.... But look, my friend, isn't it cleverly made? And so simple! All you have to do is to take a skein of red cord and braid it round a wooden cup, leaving a little recess, a little empty space in the middle, very small, of course, but large enough to hold a medal of a saint ... or anything.... A precious stone, for ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... He would lie reading on the sofa while Mary wrote, and often she turned from her manuscript to find him dozing. They took a few walks together, during which he rarely spoke, but seemed glad of her silent company. Once he called with her on Mrs. Farraday, and actually held an enormous skein of wool for the old lady while she, busily winding, told them anecdotes of her son James, and of her long dead husband. He made no effort to talk, seeming content to sit receptive under the soothing flow of ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... skein," Geoffrey said, "and you must follow me carefully. First, with a piece of chalk I will draw upon the wall the pedigree of the royal line of France from Phillip downwards, and then you will see how it is that our King Edward and Phillip of Valois ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... Mary jubilantly, "and a fluffy pompon on top! I can have it ready by day after to-morrow. I've been wondering what I could wear on my head. I simply can't keep a hat on when I ride fast! Here, Norman, be a dear duck of a brother and hold this skein while I wind, ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... analyst, That canst each property detect Of mood or grain, that canst untwist Each tangled skein of intellect, And with thy scalpel eyes lay bare 40 Each mental nerve more fine than air,— O brain exact, that in thy scales Canst weigh the sun and never err, For once thy patient science fails, One problem still defies thy art;— Thou never ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... o'clock when, with her aunt, she arrived at Colonel Hetherton's and found the family assembled upon the broad piazza, the doctor dutifully holding the skein of worsted from which Miss Fanny was crocheting, and Lucy playing with a kitten, whose movements were scarcely more graceful than her own, as she sprang up and ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... arbitration is able to unravel the tangled skein of crime and hypocrisy among individuals can it be extended to communities and nations, as nations are only man in the aggregate, they are the aggregate of his crimes and deception and depravity, and so long as these constitute the basis ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... Your Honor. He has said that the British are helpless. He brought Your Honor a report from Palestine that was a skein of falsehood hung up on little pegs of truth. He told you the British are not able to defend themselves, he knowing better; for he is one of those men who say always what the hearer would like ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... bottom anywhere in this bog in which we are floundering. We know now why Stapleton looked with disfavour upon his sister's suitor—even when that suitor was so eligible a one as Sir Henry. And now I pass on to another thread which I have extricated out of the tangled skein, the mystery of the sobs in the night, of the tear-stained face of Mrs. Barrymore, of the secret journey of the butler to the western lattice window. Congratulate me, my dear Holmes, and tell me that I have not disappointed you as an agent—that you do not regret ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... the smoke rolled from her funnels in a twisted skein. What had once been ore in many a mine, and trees in many a forest, had become an individual, as what has been vegetables and fruits and the flesh of animals becomes at last a child with a soul, a name, ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... soundless black sleeping-nights that come only to the town-tired when they have first fled. She ran to the glass to know if the restoration she felt might also be seen. With unbiassed calculation the black-fringed lids drew apart and one hand pushed back of the temple, and held there, a tangled skein of hair that had thrown the dusk of a deep wood about her eyes. Then, as she looked, came the little dreaming smile that unfitted critic eyes for their office; a smile that wakened to a laugh as she looked—a little womanish chuckle of confident joy, as one alone ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... the ship that bore these victims to their death, he would, if he succeeded in killing the Minotaur, as he hoped to do, hoist a white one when coming home. When he reached Crete, he won the heart of Minos' daughter Ariadne, who gave him a skein of thread: by unwinding this as he went he would leave a clue behind him, by which he could find his way out of the labyrinth, after killing the monster. When this was done, by his great skill and strength, he took ship again, and Ariadne came with him; but he grew tired ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the islands. It is spun and sold in the skein to the Chinese and other nations, who come to get it. Cloth of different patterns is also woven from it, and the natives also trade that. Other cloths, called medrinaques, are woven ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... spare the man Dawson, then I will consent, though my heart is rent in fragments. As for you, mon ami, I fear that in her hands you were not a figure of admiration. She twisted you about her pretty fingers like a skein of wool. I do not think that you are, what you call, cut out for the ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... clue into Ambler Jevons' hands he would, I knew, quickly follow it, gathering up the threads of the tangled skein one by one, until he could openly charge her with the crime. I stood undecided how to act. Should I leave my friend to make his own investigations independently and unbiassed, or should I frankly tell him of ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... supposition—putting two and two together, don't you know, and hoping they will stick. But, in any event, we must not let any chance slip by. If he is interested, we must bring him to time. It may mean the unravelling of the whole skein, dear. Don't look so distressed. Be brave. It doesn't matter what we learn in the end, I love you just the same. ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... the tangled skein of cause and circumstance which surrounds the subject of the world-sweeping pandemic which masquerades under the misleading title of the "Spanish Influenza," the first and most important initial step must be a keen and careful ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... asked, pointing up to a network like a skein of silk twisted in a hundred zigzags across the face of the mountain from bottom to top. "Why, it's like the way up Jack's beanstalk. No sane automobile could ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... something for Colonel Ashley to discover, and with all his skill he set himself to this task. For the time being he dropped several other ends—tangled ends of the skein he hoped to unravel—and devoted his time to Grafton. And, at the end of two days the detective learned that the merchant was going to make a hurried trip to New York—a trip not directly connected with his ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... at Drumraitte (1237), "not to shoot but to come to a close fight." It is possible, however, that this order may have reference to the old Irish weapon, the javelin or dart. The pike, the battle-axe, the sword, and skein, or dagger, both parties had in common, though their construction was different. The favourite tactique, on both sides, seems to have been the old military expedient of outflanking an enemy, and attacking him simultaneously in front and rear. Thus, in the year 1225, in one of the combats of the O'Conors, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... skeins, these are hung on sticks resting on the edges of the tub or vat. These sticks are best made of hickory, but ash or beech or any hard wood that can be worked smooth and which does not swell much when treated with water may be used. The usual method of working is to hang the skein on the stick, spreading it out as much as possible, then immerse the yarn in the liquor, lift it up and down two or three times to fully wet out the yarn, then turn the yarn over on the stick and repeat the dipping processes, then allow to steep in ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech
... even recall some of the forgotten sensations of childhood, the subterranean workings of ideas excited by my visits to the churches; but I am unable to gather these threads together, and group them in a skein, I cannot understand the sudden and silent explosion of light which took place in me. When I seek to explain to myself how one evening an unbeliever, I became without knowing it, on one night a believer, I can discover ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... that, Hal, an thou lovest me," said Pleydell. "But we must have some news from the land of Egypt, if possible. Oh, 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 • Sir Walter Scott
... home, alas! did foes more deadly wait Than Saladin's fierce crew. The lamp of love Was changed for one of hate, which threw Its false and fatal skein of light above. A shuddering shock, a fearful crash, foretold ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
... the attaches said, at the Cafe Anglais, over his Marennes oysters, after the opera; "doomed to pig-iron, I'm afraid. Must do it. Can't carry on much longer. Another skein of false hair this ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... stands on a high hilltop above the city, gazing across at Monte Rosa and lifting its own fine dome against the sky with no contemptible art. But when you have seen the Superga from the quay beside the Po, a skein of a few yellow threads in August, despite its frequent habit of rising high and running wild, and said to yourself that in architecture position is half the battle, you have nothing left to visit but the Museum of pictures. The Turin ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... to trace the thread of what we at present consider abnormal, through the whole skein of a single life, hoping thereby to encourage others to do ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates |
