"Tangled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... action— the mute entreaty for a caress. But in the moment before she had caught the reflection of the two faces in the glass; her own, red-eyed, pale, with lips dyed with blackberry juice, her curls tangled, her bonnet pulled awry, her gown torn—and contrasted it with Cynthia's brightness and bloom, and the trim elegance of her dress. 'Oh! it is no wonder!' thought poor Molly, as she turned round, and put her arms round Cynthia, and laid her head ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... native here, is a species of laurel, and bears a white, scentless flower, scarcely as large as a pea. The spice of commerce is produced from the inner bark of the shrub, the branches of which are cut and peeled twice annually. The plantations resemble a thick, tangled undergrowth of wood, without any regularity, and are not cultivated after being properly started. Ceylon was at one time a great producer of coffee, and still exports the berry, but a disease which attacked the leaves of the shrub has nearly discouraged the planters. Among ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... reaction of cumulative nervous stress, anesthetizing her will, her desires, her very limbs. She was purposeless, ambitionless, except to lie and rest and seek for some resolution of peace out of the tangled web wherein her ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... heads against her breast and kissed traces of their gold hearts on her hands and bare arms, while on the other side a very riot of blush peonies crowded against her skirts. Long trails of pod-laden snap beans tangled around her feet and a couple of round young squashes rolled from their stems at the touch of her fingers. She was the very incarnation of young Plenty in the garden of the gods, and ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... of steel or iron that is already magnetized is brought near the unmagnetized needle, all the north poles of the molecules of the needle are pulled in the same direction—it is almost like combing tangled hair to stroke a needle over a magnet. Then the molecules are arranged more as shown in Figure 108. When all the molecules, each of which is a tiny magnet, pull in the same direction, they make a strong ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... tangled up in my mind," said Nellie, with an air of perplexity, "between these old people you are talking about and ourselves. Which is which? It seems odd to talk of them in the third person, and of ourselves in the first. ...
— The Old Folks' Party - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... the gypsy hat. Exquisite from head to foot, the figure had no place in the unpruned, untrained, savage, and primeval beauty of those woods. Smooth sward, with jets of water and carven nymphs embowered in clipped box or yew, should have been its setting, and not this wild and tangled growth, this license of bird and beast and growing things. And yet the incongruous riot, the contrast of profuse, untended beauty, enhanced the value of the picture, gave it piquancy ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... on Irish Poor Law Reform written within the limits assigned to me can only be constructive in the broadest sense. It is a serious and tangled problem: the existing system has developed in a haphazard fashion; there is about it hardly anything that is logical, much that is anomalous, some things that are tragic. The present conditions of the Irish Poor Law system are ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... built of turf roughly thatched with rushes and standing on the highest spot of some slightly raised ground. It was surrounded by a tangled growth of bushes and low trees, through which a narrow and winding path gave admission to the narrow space on which the hut stood. The ground sloped rapidly. Twenty yards from the house the trees ceased, and a rank ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... was mild. A fresh breeze was blowing. May clouds floated swiftly in the clear sky. I felt my blood course electrically in expectation of the wonders of New York. It was now lying before me in all its color and mystery. Boats of all kinds passed us. There was a tangled thicket of masts at the piers. I discerned gay awnings over a walk around a building near the water. Yarnell said this was Castle Garden, where many diners came for the excellence of the food and the view of the harbor. I could ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... from a deep wound on his forehead was pouring over his face, and Heideck saw that only by the greatest exertion of will could he keep himself on his legs. He wanted to reply, but the Colonel had already again hurled himself into the tangled throng of fighters, and a few seconds later fell under the butt-end blows and sabres ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... Curse of my Father!—Help! Help, whoso can, An innocent, innocent and stainless man!" Many there were that laboured then, I wot, To bear him succour, but could reach him not, Till—who knows how?—at last the tangled rein Unclasped him, and he fell, some little vein Of life still pulsing in him. All beside, The steeds, the horned Horror of the Tide, Had vanished—who knows where?—in that wild land. O King, I am a bondsman of thine hand; Yet love nor fear nor duty ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... her momentary absence, and, seizing a skein of some kind of thread or yarn, made off with it to its half-finished nest. But the perverse yarn caught fast in the branches, and, in the bird's efforts to extricate it, got hopelessly tangled. She tugged away at it all day, but was finally obliged to content herself with a few detached portions. The fluttering strings were an eye-sore to her ever after, and passing and repassing, she would give them a spiteful jerk, as much as to say, "There ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... thrown in fight, The deed in brow of Zeus to ripeness brought; For wrapt in shadowy night, Tangled, unscanned by mortal sight, Extend the pathways ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... joy. Then come not only when the springtime blows The old familiar strangeness of its breath Across the long-lain snows, And chants her resurrected songs About the tombs of death; Nor yet when summer glows In roseate throngs And works her plenitude of deeds By tangled dells and waving meads, Come here in beauty's pilgrimage: Nor when the autumn reads Illuminate her page With tints of magicry besprent Of iridescent wonderment— (As scrolls in old monastic towers, Done in an earnest far-off age). But choose to come in winter ...
— Ballads of Peace in War • Michael Earls
... through both at the sight. Wan, frail, the beautiful anguished evil face of a girl could be seen through the long tangled hair framing it. Slender to the emaciation of great suffering she knelt before the pile of plates she was counting—"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine...." The wild chilling scream froze man and woman. For at the moment in sprang another female, in whose worn emaciated face ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... gray—there was only one horse to be named so on the Range. Some of the outlaws had escaped the trap and one was riding Shiloh! Drew found the horse with the tangled rein, jerked and tore at the leather strap, and was in the saddle when a hand caught at the rein he had ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... flat-bottomed boat was drawn up. Perota Lake, on which the tiny frame cottage stood, was a shallow, reedy pond, connecting by sluggish brooks with a number of other lakes. The shore on this side of the lake was a tangled thicket; the opposite shore rose in a gentle slope to fields of sun-dried grain. The landscape was rich, peaceful, uneventful, with wide spaces of sun and cloud and large broad Wisconsin fields. The fierce west wind came ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... her for a heartsome lass. Her hair was dark, and had a tangled look, as though lately caught in brambles or still thick with burrs. Her dark eyebrows and long lashes shaded the darkest of black-brown eyes. Her mouth was alive with sensibility. Every shade of feeling could play ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... top gone, a ragged, spectral, pitiful remnant of what had been a beautiful tree. But mostly the thick stand of young poles had been laid low even as a scythe levels a field of grain. And these fallen poles lay in almost impassable confusion, twisted and tangled and in places heaped in towering masses. A barbed wire entanglement would hardly have been a worse obstacle. To penetrate the mass, even in the light of noon, would have been no easy work; but to cross the area now, with dusk fast ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... that Ruth was not clad as she had been when we had left her. She stood in scanty kirtle that came scarcely to her knees, her shoulders were bare, her curly brown hair unbound and tangled. Her face was set with wrath hardly less than that which beat from Norhala. On Ventnor's forehead was a blood red scar, a line that ran from temple to ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... commenced to pound the French defences. Never before, without doubt, had such a storm of shell been cast on any one line of trenches; and continuing, as it did, for hours, ploughing the ground over a comparatively narrow stretch, it reduced everything within that selected area to a shapeless and tangled mass of wreckage. It was to be wondered at, indeed, that anything living could survive the ordeal. French trenches, stretching across the slope behind those meshes of laced barbed wire, were blotted out—were ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... the Gudabirsi, have little power: we found them poor and proportionally importunate. The men, wild-looking as open mouths, staring eyes, and tangled hair could make them, gazed with extreme eagerness upon my scarlet blanket: for very shame they did not beg it, but the inviting texture was pulled and fingered by the greasy multitude. We closed the hut whenever a valuable was produced, but eager eyes peeped through every cranny, till ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... the foe, O king, nor we, could distinguish each other. For this reason, the kings began to fight, guided by conjecture and the names they uttered. Deprived of their cars, car-warriors, O king, encountering one another, lost all order and became a tangled mass. Their steeds killed and drivers slain, many of them, becoming inactive, preserved their lives and looked exceedingly affrighted. Slain steeds with riders deprived of lives were seen to lie on slain ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... so great that steamers are glad to get anything to carry. The Saigonites are the lowest specimens of humanity we have yet seen—miserable, sickly-looking creatures, and without the faintest regard for cleanliness. Their long, coarse black hair hangs over their shoulders in thick, tangled masses which apparently have never known a comb. Every one chews the betel-nut without intermission, young and old alike, and this so discolors the teeth and mouth as to render them extremely disgusting. We drove about the town for a few hours, but it was so hot we were compelled to return ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... afterwards the lawyers renewed their squabble over a tangled collision case, and the doctors as naturally ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... was lonely too, thought Aunt Victoria, a strange, lonely little being, neglected, ill-used, and misunderstood, and the question flashed through the old lady's mind, if she left the child, what would become of her? The tangled brown head, warm against her arm, nestled nearer, and Aunt Victoria ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... her heart was very heavy that morning. She did not blame his father for his morning nap, not a bit of it; she was only glad that the weary frame could rest a little after a night of pain. She had been up since the first grey dawn of morning, bathing his head, straightening the tangled bedclothes, walking the floor with the restless baby, in order that her husband might have quiet. Oh no; there were worse women in the world than Mrs. Lewis; but this morning her life looked very wretched to her. She thought of ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)
... the one which insisted on taking the pre-eminence in her mind. She ordered it down, with a sort of bitterness. Had her mother been alive, she would have gladly fled from this puzzle into which her life had tangled itself, and gone back to America to rest and mother-love. So she told herself, at least. But then followed the reflection that in her mother's death the refuge of love's calm and protection was gone from her forever, and that ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... Where were the sopranos and the altos? Myra Wilson and Alethea Craig and several other members of the choir were sitting down in their pews with perfectly unconscious faces. Myra was looking out of the window into the tangled sunlight and shadow of the great maples. Alethea Craig was reading ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... elemental moments is played upon by pretty complex forces. And if there was humility on that lean and rock-ribbed countenance of my soul-mate there was also antagonism, and mixed up with the antagonism was a sprinkling of startled wonder, and tangled up with the wonder was a slightly perplexed brand of contrition, and interwoven with that again was a suggestion of allegiance revived, as though he had forgotten that he possessed a wife who had a heart and mind ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... of you. He neither grants nor claims favors. He awards you your rights,—no more, no less,—and demands the same from you. Consequently there is no friction. Your friend, on the contrary, is continually getting himself tangled up with you "because he is your friend." I have heard that Shelley was never better pleased than when his associates made free with his coats, boots, and hats for their own use, and that he appropriated their ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... thing puts her out." "Won't you try her?" said Sarah, pleadingly; but they still said "No! no!" "Don't you mind the day, Dick," said Sarah, "when you pulled grandfather's new net all into the mud, and tangled his twine, and spoilt him a whole day's work?" "Yes," said Dick. "Ah, and don't you mind, too, when he went out in the boat next day, and you asked to go with him, just as if nothing had happened, and you ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... do it at Chollet, or elsewhere," they exclaimed, "and yet they beat the Blues easily. What good did discipline do to the enemy? None. Why, then, should we bother ourselves about it? When the enemy comes, we will rush upon them when they are tangled in our thickets." ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... semi-unconsciousness with the large gray earth; mist hung in the sedges, floated evanescent upon the surface of the water, within reach of his oars, floated and went out in the sunshine. But on the verge of an oak wood, amid tangled and tawny masses of fern and grass, a hound stopped and looked up. Then the huntsman appeared galloping along the upland, and turning in his saddle, he blew ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... encamped must have been at least two thousand feet above the level of the sea. The river-bed was here about a mile and a half broad and entirely covered with shingle over which the river ran in many winding channels, looking, when seen from above, like a tangled skein of ribbon, and glistening in the sun. We knew that it was liable to very sudden and heavy freshets; but even had we not known it, we could have seen it by the snags of trees, which must have been carried long distances, and by the mass of vegetable ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... which sometimes finds its counterpart in our waking life, but still the man slept, and the dead girl lay till the night turned into the morning and the earth woke up as usual. The sunbeams slid into the cave, and played indifferently upon the ashen face and tangled curls, and on the broad chest of the living man whereon they rested. An old baboon peeped round the rocky edge and manifested no surprise, only indignation, at the intrusion of humanity, dead or alive, into his dominions. ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... eyes glowed in the glare Of the moon's dying light. As a fen-fire's beam On a sluggish stream Gleams dimly, so the moon shone there; And it yellowed the strings of thy tangled hair, That shook in the wind ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... hills with golden scarf; Or when the cowled and dusky-sandaled Eve, In mourning weeds, from out the western gate, Departs with silent pace! That spirit moves In the green valley, where the silver brook, From its full laver, pours the white cascade; And, babbling low amid the tangled woods, Slips down through moss-grown stones with endless laughter. And frequent, on the everlasting hills, Its feet go forth, when it doth wrap itself In all the dark embroidery of the storm, And shouts the stern, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... goes down, and shadows rest On the gay scenes by morning blest; The gathering clouds invest the air— Yet one bright constant Star is there. Onward we press, with heavy load, O'er tangled path and rough'ning road, For still that Star shines bright before; But now it sinks, ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... is wanted for the soil, the crop should be plowed down. The trailing varieties form a tangled mass that cannot be handled by an ordinary breaking-plow, but a stalk-cutter, run in the direction the plow will follow, makes plowing possible. Pasturing with cattle and hogs sufficiently to reduce the growth so that a plow can be used ...
— Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... Fanny Meyrick? She must have come to London long since, and surely the girls were in correspondence. I was too proud. She knew of our relations: Bessie had told her. I could not bring myself to reveal to her how tangled and gloomy a mystery was between us. I could explain nothing without letting her see that she was ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... Washburn, and myself. The proprietor was the driver, and as we proceeded on the excursion, he explained everything of interest. He drove to an old orange-tree that had borne four thousand oranges that year. Near it was a tangled grove of fig-trees, the first ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... interest but his own; and Charles his son, elected Emperor as fourth of that name, and first as King of Bohemia, took into his own firm hands the tangled coils of Central European affairs, making as centre of his activities ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... from the town the carriage plunged suddenly into the soft darkness of an aspen wood, amidst the rustling of invisible leaves, the fresh moist odour of the forest, with faint patches of light from above and a mass of tangled shadows below. The moon had already risen above the horizon, broad and red like a copper shield. Emerging from the trees, the carriage came upon a small low farm house. Three illuminated windows stood out sharply on the front ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... preserving a certain continuity of outline where their bases touch the water's edge. Standing far up on the mountainside you can, from one certain spot alone, discern it two hundred feet below, and a thick mass of tangled vine and creepers stretching across its western side, through which the water flows on ...
— "Martin Of Nitendi"; and The River Of Dreams - 1901 • Louis Becke
... His share in the tangled episode on board the steamer was unfolding. I understood now why he had sprung to my rescue in the salon when I was accused. Naturally he had not wanted my traps searched, considering what ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... Chinese world as portrayed in blue or pink upon earthen table-ware of the olden time. And what a world! How artfully adapted to childish notions, how convenient for bird's-eye views, this arrangement of lofty mountain peaks, deep gorges, and rocks of fantastic forms, tangled up with examples of nature subdued by Chinese art in landscape gardening and ornate architecture. In the near distance (far and near are the same in Chinese art), we behold a slender streak of waterfall descending from mountain peaks a thousand feet or height by comparison; a broad flight ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... over head, to his proper sphere— Heels over head, and head over heels, Dizzily down the abyss he wheels— So fell Darius. Upon his crown, In the midst of the barnyard, he came down, In a wonderful whirl of tangled strings, Broken braces and broken springs, Broken tail and broken wings, Shooting-stars, and various things! Away with a bellow fled the calf, And what was that? Did the gosling laugh? 'Tis a merry roar From the old barn-door, And he hears the ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... banish his drowsiness, Jim gave himself up to wandering memories. He knew the North, where he had risked and endured much. He had seen the tangled pines snap under their load of snow and go down in rows before the Arctic gales; he had watched the ice break up and the liberated floods hurl the floes into the forest. He had crossed the barren tundra where only moss can live and the shallow bog that steams ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... fort, and for hours the men covered their faces with wet cloths to keep from suffocating. Nine times the flagstaff was struck by a shot, and at the ninth the flag fell. Lieutenant Hall dashed into the storm of balls, caught up the flag, and brought it away. The halyards were cut and tangled. The flag could not be raised, but it was nailed to the staff, and in the midst of the incessant fire, Sergeant Peter Hart fastened it up on the ramparts. The fort surrendered, but not the flag; for as Major Anderson and his men left the burning ruins, they saluted "Old Glory" with fifty ...
— The Little Book of the Flag • Eva March Tappan
... Rob, and soon he and the other boys were making their way in among the tangled thicket, sometimes in and sometimes out of the water, chopping away the branches so that the ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... the monstrous mouth into a ghastly grin. The forehead was low, and the eyebrows were shaggy, while from beneath them glared into his a great pair of glowing eyes, that flashed at times and sparkled in the starlight, which rained down on and through a bush of dark, tangled hair, a portion of which hung below the head on either side, and ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... and his followers old, Who with their own wills their own freedom wrought, And by self-slaughter their dismissal sought From this dark den of crime—this horrid lair Of men, that savager than monsters are; And scorning longer, in this tangled mesh Of ills, to wait on perishable flesh, Did with their desperate hands anticipate The too, too slow relief of lingering fate. And if religion did not stay thine hand, And God, and Plato's wise behests, withstand, I would in like case counsel thee to throw This senseless ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... however barbedwire comes, covering your frontyard and house—only it isnt barbedwire at all, but green, living grass.... Just a minute, folks, I'm having a little trouble with my microphone cable. Nothing serious, you understand—tangled a bit in the grass behind me. Those burnt stems. Stand by for ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... my own story first," she said, "and you are none of you to speak a word to interrupt me, or I won't write yours at all. Max, stop scratching on the table; Muffie, don't shuffle your feet like that, you put my vein out." The last was a slightly tangled remark picked up from Miss Kinross who had been heard to speak of various interruptions putting her brother out ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... is a story of D'Israeli's, an old one, with an episode of strange interest, or so I found it years ago,—well, you go breathlessly on with the people of it, page after page, till at last the end must come, you feel—and the tangled threads draw to one, and an out-of-door feast in the woods helps you ... that is, helps them, the people, wonderfully on,—and, lo, dinner is done, and Vivian Grey is here, and Violet Fane there,—and a detachment of the party is drafted off to go catch butterflies, and only two ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... up for about eight miles against one of three streams which unite at, and give its name to, Trinity, we turned off to the right, and got into a large dense swamp. The thicket was so tangled and impenetrable that we experienced the greatest difficulty in forcing our way through it; we were often obliged to get into the water up to our middles and shove, whilst most of the party ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... 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
... earnest protest, I took the tangled, tormented mass in hand and soon had it waving back into a fluffy knot; and just as I was drawing forth some short locks for the forehead, there came a knock and in bounced the mistress of the house, our landlady, Mme. F——, who, missing our arrival the night ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... steeds, the entire board of directors fled north and east, never pausing until they had joined Pancho Villa; and we learn from some Border gossips that all three subsequently were killed in action. But, before leaving Guaymas, they left their tangled steamship affairs in the ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... resort; Green are the walls within, green is the floor And slippery from disuse; for Christian feet Avoid it, as half-holy, half accursed. Still in its dark recess fanatic sin Abases to the ground his tangled hair, And servile scourges and reluctant groans Roll o'er the vault uninterruptedly, Till, such the natural stillness of the place The very tear upon the damps below Drops audible, and the heart's ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... lover Celia spoke about. Were ever fortunes so tangled as ours? No sooner have we got rid of one trouble than we fall into another. In vain do we hear that Leander intends to abandon his pursuit, and to give us no further trouble; that the unexpected arrival of his father has turned ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere
... said, and pointed to squared areas of pale reds and blues; "though what it is, heaven knows. And the trees!—if that's what they are." The ship went downward where an area of tropical denseness made a tangled mass of color ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... of ragged stubble, wrangled With rank weeds, and shocks of tangled Corn, with crests like rent plumes dangled Over Harvest's battle-piain; And the sudden whir and whistle Of the quail that, like a missile, Whizzes over thorn and thistle, And, a ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... was encountered on the plains of Chippewa by Scott, with his brigade, when the action became severe and general. No ambuscade or masked batteries were held in reserve—the enemy was not a moment concealed from our view—no tangled thicket or umbrageous groves gave effect or facility to our rifles: the battle was fought on a plain—where man grappled man, force was opposed to force, skill to skill, and eye to eye, in ...
— She Would Be a Soldier - The Plains of Chippewa • Mordecai Manuel Noah
... said: "O gods, how unwashed, how stern he looked—a pillar of antiquity, like one of the old bearded consuls; his dress plain plebeian purple, his hair tangled, his brow a very pledge for the Commonwealth! Such solemnity in his eye, such wrinkling of his forehead, that you would have said the State was resting on his head like the sky on Atlas. Here we thought ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... through. He found Fairy Skill standing in the midst of the workers; and when he had given her the good woman's love, she received him kindly. Then she set him to work, bidding him sort a heap of tangled threads that lay in a corner like a ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... front of Old Orchard farm. A white road bordered with golden rod and wild asters met the scraggly grass that matted and tangled itself beneath the gnarled apple trees. A grassy rutted wagon track curved itself in vistas between the trees up to the house which was set far back from the road. A man passing identified the place for ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... work that day, but stayed home, playing the part of a big, joyful, clumsy nurse, his roughened hands gentle and loving, his big rugged heart bursting with happiness. It was twilight, and the gray shadows were creeping into the bare little room, touching with feathery fingers a tangled mop of yellow curls that aureoled a pillowed head that was not now filled with thoughts of Tennyson and Emerson and frilly muslin shirtwaists. That pretty head held but two realities—Sammy, whistling robin-like as he made tea in the kitchen, and the little ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... travel through that dark, gloomy expanse. It was a floating forest. Great cypress and giant bays reared their mighty stems from the surface of black scummy water. Amongst their boughs bloomed brilliant orchids and from limb to limb stretched tangled masses of ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... had made a most tangled speech, and that there was great danger that her trembling sorrowful voice should convey to Lady Fotheringham an impression that there was something amiss; but she could only try to make the intelligence as ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... until it had formed a tangled root-fence for many yards alongshore. After which, its work being done, the mangrove proceeded to grow upward into a big and glossy-leaved shade-tree, making ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... Guile-master his toils and his tangles set, And as wide as was the water, so wide was woven the net; And as dim as the Elf's remembrance did the meshes of it show; And he had no thought of sorrow, nor spared to come and go On his errands of griping and getting till he felt himself tangled and caught: Then back to his blinded soul was his ancient wisdom brought, And he saw his fall and his ruin, as a man by the lightning's flame Sees the garth all flooded by foemen; and again he remembered his name; And e'en as a ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... to an ancient burial-mound or barrow, from which election writs were once read and the local mayor proclaimed. From this cove we can pass upward into the glorious Rocky Valley, with its broken crags, its tangled foliage and rushing stream, its old mill. It is just a little like the gorge at Lynmouth, but wilder. This is the stream forming the famous cascade known as Knighton's (or St. Nectan's) Kieve. It is ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... water far below the former watermark, bear testimony to the good days of the past and the evil days of the present. Wherever the native vegetation has been allowed to remain, as, for instance, here and there around a sacred temple or imperial burying ground, there are still huge trees and tangled jungle, fragments of the glorious ancient forests. The thick, matted forest growth formerly covered the mountains to their summits. All natural factors favored this dense forest growth, and as long as it was permitted to exist the plains at the foot of the mountains were among ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... basis. Soon you will gain the mastery of heavier implements than you begin with, and will understand how yonder slight youth has learned to handle his two heavy clubs in complex curves that seem to you inexplicable, tracing in the air a device as swift and tangled as that woven by a swarm of gossamer flies above a brook, in the sultry stillness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... impregnable. You simply spied on everybody—including the spies—and ordered summary executions often enough to show that you meant it, and kept the public ignorant: deaf-dumb-blind ignorant. The spy system was simplicity itself; you had only to let things get as tangled and confused as possible until nobody knew who was who. The executions were literally no problem, for guilt or innocence made no matter. And mind-control when there were four newspapers, six magazines ...
— The Adventurer • Cyril M. Kornbluth
... length, the dossier reached the Governor-General himself it simply flabbergasted the poor man; and even the exceptionally clever and energetic secretary to whom he deputed the making of an abstract of the same very nearly lost his reason with the strain of attempting to lay hold of the tangled end of the skein. It happened that just at that time the Prince had several other important affairs on hand, and affairs of a very unpleasant nature. That is to say, famine had made its appearance in one portion of the province, ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... permission. But a room is a different proposition. I'd rather take chances among Injuns than among white men. Why, you could throw in with a Sioux village for a year and not be robbed permanent if the chief thought you straight; but in a white man's town—hell! Now, how'd you get tangled up with this ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... and the two troopers reached the verge of the forest, they could trace for a short distance the hoof-prints of Harold's horse, and followed them eagerly among the labyrinthine paths which the fugitive had made through the tangled shrubbery and among the briery thickets. But soon the gloom of night closed in upon them in the depth of the silent wood, and they were left without a sign by which to direct the pursuit. It was near midnight when ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... fruit, the vines were festooned from bough to bough, hung with clusters of grapes, and pomegranates were ripe for the plucking. But there seems to have been an unearthliness about them, as though a deep enchantment were upon them. In the tangled undergrowth through which the bewildered sailor walked there lay great melons and pumpkins. The breeze wafted to his nostrils the smell of the incense-trees; and the scent of the flowers, after the storm, ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... their way, the forest, with leaves just opening in the warmth of spring, lay on their right hand and on their left, in a flattering semblance of tranquillity and peace. But behind woody islets, in tangled thickets and damp ravines, and in the shade and stillness of the columned woods, lurked everywhere a danger ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... is lost in a serpentine rhetoric. They hint at nights of critical terrors. During the writing of them Mallare was engaged in a desperate pursuit of himself. He was escaping. He perceived his thoughts racing from his grasp like Maenads down a tangled slope. The dread of finding himself abandoned brought his will into life. If he were to go mad he would leap upon his mania and ride it—quietly into darkness. He would be a gay rider astride his own phantoms. Rather that than let the first insane capering of his intellect ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... struggle of life, the activity and rivalry and ambition which before to-night had seemed so great to these city-bred men, here alone with Nature and Nature's God, where none other might see, assumed their true worth. The tangled web of life loosened and many foreign things caught and held therein, fell out. Man, introspecting, saw himself at his real worth, and was ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... along over a stretch of open level country. Now the ground began to slope gradually upward and soon they were climbing a very steep hill. It was hard traveling, for the hill was covered with thick, fuzzy, whitish-yellow grass which tangled itself round their feet, and gave them more than one fall. Ann and Rudolf had to stop often to pick up Peter, for he was rather fat and his legs were too short to carry him along as fast as theirs did. The False Hare hurried ahead by leaps and bounds that would soon have carried him ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... one part only of which was habitable; a turn in the road swallowed it up as though abruptly to complete the demolition time was slowly to bring about. On and on, until the way became wilder and the wood more overgrown with bushes and tangled shrubbery, when ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... the bloom Of the hidden years, as they come and pass, May leave me alone, with a wee, wee tomb Hidden away in the tangled grass. Still as on earth, so in heaven above, Near to me, dear to me, claiming my love, Safe in God's sunshine, and filling his plan, Still be ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... was taking place beneath the smooth tide? Or was it all over? Had Red Feather found a rock to which he could cling while he drowned himself with his victim? Or had their bodies been caught in the tangled branches of a submerged forest tree? It was one of the mysteries of the Ozarks never to ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... silent, for here, indeed, was he entering into an adventure which infinitely surpassed any anticipation that he could have formed. He was, besides, of a cautious nature, and was entirely disinclined to embark in any affair so obscure and tangled as that in which he now found ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... before you on the plain. With a wild cheer you dash after them in hot pursuit; no time now to think of pitfalls, banks, or ditches; your gallant steed strains his every muscle, every sense is on the alert, but you see not the bush and brake and tangled thicket that you leave behind you. Your eye is on the dusky glistening hide and the stiff erect bristles in front; the shining tusks and foam-flecked chest are your goal, and the wild excitement culminates as you feel your keen steel go straight through muscle, bone, and sinew, and you know ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... in Paris by a severe attack of the old disease, but finally reached London—whence, having completed their arrangements, they set off for Southampton, and took passage in the Trent, which was destined subsequently to play a prominent part in the tangled role of Diplomacy, and to furnish the most utterly humiliating of many chapters of the pusillanimity, sycophancy, and degradation of the ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... another watchman was left on the highest point. Down the other side and into the timber line again, directed only by a broken twig, a freshly turned bowlder, or now and then a faint suggestion of a footprint, they plunged as rapidly as they could and then through tangled brush until suddenly they came out to an old disused path. Unerringly they picked up the footprints again, and now these indicated that the quarry had felt himself secure against pursuit and made no further ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... our proceedings in the most impertinent manner. The creature was dressed in a ragged, dirty purple stuff gown, cut very low in the neck, with an old red cotton handkerchief tied over her head; her uncombed, tangled locks falling over her thin, inquisitive face, in a state of perfect nature. Her legs and feet were bare, and, in her coarse, dirty red hands, she swung to and fro an ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... dressed, when a hasty peal was heard at the bell, and no sooner was the door opened than in hurried Captain Charteris, breathless, and bearing a large plaid bundle with tangled flaxen locks drooping at one end, and at the other rigid white legs, socks ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... through the barrage, and on with a roar and a crash. My fellows—Old Nick couldn't stop 'em. On, on they went with a yell, Till they tripped on the Boches' sand-bags,—nothing much left to tell: A trench so tattered and battered that even a rat couldn't live; Some corpses tangled and mangled, wire you could pass through a sieve. The jolly old guns had bilked us, cheated us out of our show, And my fellows were simply yearning for a red mix-up with the foe. So I shouted to them to follow, and on we went roaring again, Battle-tuned and exultant, ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... descended from barbarians. The astonishment which I felt on first seeing a party of Fuegians on a wild and broken shore will never be forgotten by me, for the reflection at once rushed into my mind—such were our ancestors. These men were absolutely naked and bedaubed with paint, their long hair was tangled, their mouths frothed with excitement, and their expression was wild, startled, and distrustful. They possessed hardly any arts, and like wild animals lived on what they could catch; they had no government, and were merciless to every one not of their own small tribe. He who has seen a savage ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... messenger of God was there, Who kissed her brow and smoothed her tangled hair; And, in the tend'rest accents, told of One Who ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... shook his head to get his tangled hair out of his eyes and came in, whip swung back! Kid Wolf had no time to duck down for the gun. The heavy stock was humming through the air ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... wise man, more than two thousand years ago, when he was asked what would most tend to lessen injustice in the world, said, "If every bystander felt as indignant at a wrong as if he himself were the sufferer." Let us cherish such indignation. But the long-growing evils of a great nation are a tangled business, asking for a good deal more than indignation in order to be got rid of. Indignation is a fine war-horse, but the war-horse must be ridden by a man: it must be ridden by rationality, skill, courage, armed with the right ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... fast-approaching summer night, the Baron and Flemming walked forth along the borders of the stream. As they heard it, rushing and gushing among the stones and tangled roots, and the great wheel turning in the current, with its never-ceasing plash! plash! it brought to their minds that exquisite, simple song of Goethe, the Youth and the Mill-brook. It was for the moment a nymph, which sang to them in the ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... to make any use you can of Granger," suggested the lady. "He has done his part toward getting things tangled, and must help ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... little of, though to the dwellers in great cities they might seem strange burdens. At five o'clock the next morning Warren Freeman, the pall-bearer, went out and mowed and hacked a path through the tangled field from midway of old Pelatiah's trail down to a shortcut made by the doctor's charity boy, who was to-day a Judge. This Judge came out of the silent house, released by the waking hour, from his vigil with the dead. He watched his fellow ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... in the island of Hispaniola, or Hayti, made their living by hunting cattle and preserving the meat by the boucan process. These hunters used to form parties of five or six in number, and arming themselves with musket, bullet bag, powderhorn and knife, they took their way on foot through the tangled forests of the country. When they killed one of the wild cattle, its flesh was cut into long strips and laid upon gratings, constructed of green sticks, where it was exposed to the smoke of a wood fire, which was fed by the fat and waste parts of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... parlour-maid. Both had fainted or been stunned by the explosion on their way to help their mistress. Both lay inanimate on the library floor. The library glass door was shivered to dangerous jagged splinters, but the iron framework—"Curse it"—remained a tangled, maddening obstacle to his further progress. He could see through the splinters of thick glass something that looked like Linda, lying on her back—and—something that looked like blood. The policeman who followed him was strong and adroit. Together they detached the glass splinters ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... escape; Marshall was resolute that it should not escape, and, try as he might, the Frenchman, during that fierce two hours' wrestle, failed to shake off his tiny but dogged antagonist. The Arethusa's masts were shot away, its jib-boom hung a tangled wreck over its bows, its bulwarks were shattered, half its guns were dismounted, and nearly every third man in its crew struck down. But still it hung, with quenchless and obstinate courage, on the ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... constantly kept running back and urging her to greater speed. Once he took her by the arm and tried to draw her along. Her protests were of no avail since the beast could not know that they were protests, nor did he desist until she caught her foot in some tangled grass and fell to the ground. Then indeed was Zu-tag furious and growled hideously. His apes were waiting at the edge of the forest for him to lead them. He suddenly realized that this poor weak she could not keep up with them and that ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... returning late in the evening to my lodgings. My path lay across a wild, bleak moor, dotted with low clumps of furze, and not presenting on any side the least trace of habitation. In wading through the tangled bushes, my dog "Mouche" started a hare; and after a run "sharp, short, and decisive," killed it at the bottom of a little glen some hundred ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... manner of wrapping it up to protect it from cold had, no doubt, contributed largely to the closing of its wounds by forcibly keeping it still, though it must have added to its present sufferings. He looked for a moment on the wan, tear-stained little face, with its fringe of tangled curls peeping above the wrappings of canvas, and stooping painfully down, kissed it softly; but the kiss awakened it and it cried for its mother. He could not soothe it, nor could he try; and with a formless, wordless curse against destiny welling ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... Trained from early youth in the most tortuous paths of Italian diplomacy, he acted on the principle laid down by the Venetian Marino Sanuto, that the first duty of the really wise statesman is to persuade his enemies that he means to do one thing and then do another. But in these tangled paths he often over-reached himself, and only succeeded in inspiring all parties with distrust; and, as too often happens, this deceiver was deceived in his turn, and in the end betrayed by men in whom his whole trust had been placed. ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... explore most thoroughly. The partridge is undoubtedly acquainted with the same process of reasoning; for, like the vesper-bird, she, too, nests in open, unprotected places, avoiding all show of concealment,—coming from the tangled and almost impenetrable parts of the forest to the clean, open woods, where she can command all the approaches and fly with ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs |
