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More "Baffled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gives examples of Nasik squares constructed with primes for all orders from the 4th to the 10th, with the exception of the 3rd (which is clearly impossible) and the 9th, which, up to the time of writing, has baffled ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... answer for this," cried the baffled woman, and with that sort of weak ferocity which is so repulsive, she sat down and began ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... Henry Bradner turned on his heel and strode off, a look of baffled rage in his eyes. Instantly ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield
... the wild sierra was generally at hand, which, with its winding paths, its caves, its frowning precipices, and ragged thickets, would offer to them a secure refuge where they might laugh to scorn the rage of their baffled pursuers, and from which they might emerge either to fresh districts or to those which they had left, to repeat their ravages when ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... the diver, Wrestled all night with the North-Wind, Wrestled naked on the moorlands With the fierce Kabibonokka, Till his panting breath grew fainter, Till his frozen grasp grew feebler, Till he reeled and staggered backward, And retreated, baffled, beaten, To the kingdom of Wabasso, To the land of the White Rabbit, Hearing still the gusty laughter, Hearing Shingebis, the diver, Singing, "O Kabibonokka, You ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... goodness to take yourself out of this town before you are an hour older, else you will have to take the consequences." Having said this, he proceeded to unfasten the cord which bound the degraded and spirit-broken wretch. When this had been accomplished, the baffled stroller rose, and, with head hanging down, and without a ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... eyes his own fell baffled. He was more irritated than he cared to own. Could she not see that he was prepared for anything, that his self-control was as great as her own? She treated him like a child; those professional reserves, necessary, doubtless, in the case of ...
— In The Valley Of The Shadow • Josephine Daskam
... were little curves at the corners which hinted at amusement—grim amusement. His eyes, too, were different; the mockery had departed from them. They were steady and unwavering, as before, and though they still baffled her, she was certain that she saw a slumbering devil in them—as though he possessed some mysterious knowledge and purposed to confound Sheila and her father with it, though in his own way and to suit his convenience. Yet behind it all there lurked ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... hardly call to mind a single English play, written before the civil war, in which the character of a seducer of married women is represented in a favourable light. We remember many plays in which such persons are baffled, exposed, covered with derision, and insulted by triumphant husbands. Such is the fate of Falstaff, with all his wit and knowledge of the world. Such is the fate of Brisac in Fletcher's Elder Brother, and of Ricardo and Ubaldo in Massinger's Picture. Sometimes, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... balance than by opposing armies. Nor did Richelieu seek to maintain the peace of Europe by force alone. Never was there a more astute and profound diplomatist. His emissaries were in every court, with intrigues very hard to be baffled. He equalled Metternich or Talleyrand in his profound dissimulation, for European diplomacy has ever been based on this. While he built up absolutism in France, he did not alienate other governments; so that, like Cromwell, he made his nation respected abroad. His conquest of Roussillon prepared ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... his hair uneasily. This shallow, inconsequent creature baffled him. Her shame, her grief, her misery, were all mere straws eddying on the pool of her discomfort It was not her sin that crushed her, it was the consequence of it; hers was not a sorrow, it was a petulant unhappiness. If her lot had been prosperous outwardly, ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... "the great merchant," but before the year was ended, the sharp-seeing eyes of the Ghetto saw that Ephraim had "a lucky hand." Whatever he undertook he followed up with a calmness and tact which often baffled the restless activity of many a big dealer, with all his cuteness and trickery. Whenever Ephraim, with his pale, sad fnce, made his appearance at a farmstead, to negotiate for the purchase of wool, or some such matter, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... must be regarded as in some occult manner, which as yet has baffled detection, influencing the perfection of sporidia[P] In Rhytisma, found on the leaves of maple and willow, black pitchy spots at first appear, which contain within them a golden pulp, in which very slender corpuscles are mixed with an abundant mucilage. These corpuscles ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... discipline, its literature and art, all the teachings and self-sacrifice of its noblest teachers, have been for this. But the harmony of contrary forces, which give their rhythm to all creation, has not yet been perfected by man in his civilisation, and the Creator in him is baffled over and over again. He comes back to his work, however, and makes himself busy, building his world in the midst of desolation and ruins. His history is the history of his aspiration interrupted and renewed. And one truth of which he must be reminded, therefore, is ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... contemplate with positive pleasure the prospect of discharging the butler. That, at least, was action, something that he could do; wherever else he thought to move he found himself baffled by the blank darkness of mystery, or by his fear ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... Momentarily baffled here, the huge elephant wheeled and bore down upon the hapless priests who had now scattered, terror-stricken, in every direction. The nearest he gored and threw high among the branches of a tree. One he seized ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... gloomily. "Hark you, Caroline, she may refuse me if she pleases. But I am not a man to be baffled. Have her I will, by one means or another; revenge urges me to it almost as much as ambition. That girl's thread of life has been the dark line in my woof; she has robbed me of fortune, she now thwarts me in my career, she humbles me in my vanity. But, like a hound that has tasted ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... companionship of a man of domestic tastes, accustomed to the society of superior women. There was nothing to fall back upon, nothing to make a home, she was listless and weary whenever gaiety failed her—and he, disappointed and baffled, too unbending to draw her out, too much occupied to watch over her, yielded to her tastes, and let her pursue ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... has not had the courage to resist; the baffled foe can tell you a tale of constancy and firmness, which the bravest soldier might be ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... right and left, a good few had glazed lights above; some however must have led merely into lumber rooms or such like, because when I brought myself to try one or two I was disconcerted to find that they were locked. I stood there irresolute and uneasy like a baffled thief. The confounded basement was as still as a grave and I became aware of my heart beats. Very uncomfortable sensation. Never happened to me before or since. A bigger door to the left of me, with a large brass handle looked as if it might lead into the Shipping ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... up a hundred thousand Disputants on each Side, and convince one another by Dint of Sword. A certain Grand Monarch [5] was so sensible of his Strength in this way of Reasoning, that he writ upon his Great Guns—Ratio ultima Regum, The Logick of Kings; but, God be thanked, he is now pretty well baffled at his own Weapons. When one was to do with a Philosopher of this kind, one should remember the old Gentleman's Saying, who had been engaged in an Argument with one of the Roman Emperors. [6] Upon his Friends telling him, That he wonder'd he would give up ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... cultivation, except of asparagus (of which there are two excellent beds), having been abandoned, as the bird monopoly of peas, caused every shilling's worth that came to table to cost five, and the ingenuity of the slugs and snails having completely baffled all amateur gardening schemes of defence against their slimy invasions. [Picture: Rustic bench] Among many experiments I may mention one. Some vegetables were protected by a circumvallum of salt; but, notwithstanding, ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... battalions of the soldiers then in Ireland to reinforce the Duke of Cumberland. He discouraged jobs, kept down expenses. . . . When some savage Ascendency Protestant would come to him with tales of alarm, he usually turned the conversation into a tone of light badinage which perplexed and baffled the man. One came to seriously put his lordship on his guard by acquainting him with the fact that his own coachman was in the habit of going to mass. 'Is it possible?' cried Chesterfield: 'then I will take care the fellow shall not drive me there.' ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... baffled by this conflict between the aims of the eighteenth century and the accomplishments of the twentieth. The facts they admit. For explanation, either they may say, "It was the war," implying that with the ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... to pass her with that monosyllable, but Perrote was not to be thus baffled. She laid a ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... is trying to do work for which he is unfitted feels repressed, baffled and defeated. He may not even guess his unfitness, but he does feel its manifold effect. He lacks interest in his work and, therefore, that most vital factor in personal efficiency—incentive. He cannot throw himself into his ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... left the city of —— on a similar message. I thanked him, and we walked to the office. Before arriving there, I had merely informed him that I desired his services in the investigation of a forgery that baffled our art. He demanded all the papers. I produced the forged notes, several genuine checks and letters of Mr. Temple and Mr. Conway, and several specimens of the handwriting of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... heart to play this time. I have called it, 'The Baffled Quest of Love'. I have taken the music of the song of Alsace, 'Le Jardin d'Amour', and I have made variations on it, keeping the last verse of the song in my mind. You know the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a stupid log at the moment that she was going away? He would never be able to forgive himself for that. Was there any connection between her departure and her meeting with Alistair Ramsey? Bobby tried to concentrate his mind on the problem, but it baffled him. ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... sickness which has occurred, being almost entirely the result of accidental wounds, or the bites of musquitos and sand-flies; the latter, being irritated by rubbing, have produced, in some instances, very serious sores, which have baffled the greatest attention of our surgeons: one feature in these ulcers is, that frequent changes of applications are required, no individual remedy appearing to agree, at farthest, for more than five days; generally, but three or four; nor has any kindly disposition to heal shewn itself, until ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... to place guards in such a manner as should prevent the garrison in the castle marching out to surprise him, but his exertions were baffled by the want of judgment and incompetency of those beneath him in command. The guard was placed near the weigh-house at the foot of the Castle-rock, so that the battery of the half-moon, as it was termed, near the Castle-gate, bore upon it, and many of the guard within ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... direction. How is it possible to help seeing that the soul is not here in its proper element, in its native air? How is it possible to escape the conviction that all its unsatisfied yearnings, its baffled aims, its restless, agonizing aspirings after a something, clearly perceived to exist, but to be here unattainable—that all these things point to another life, the only true life of the soul? There is such ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... suspended their mutual love. Dumfries was four miles fully from our Torthorwald home; but the tradition is that during all these forty years my father was only thrice prevented from attending the worship of God—once by snow, so deep that he was baffled and had to return; once by ice on the road, so dangerous that he was forced to crawl back up the Roucan Brae on his hands and knees, after having descended it so far with many falls; and once by the terrible outbreak ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... bodies have banded together and travelled down to Chihuahua to make their complaints, and have always been helped out—for the time being. The efforts of the Government to enlighten the Indians by establishing schools are baffled by the difficulty in finding honest and intelligent teachers with a knowledge of ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... watchful eyes, to detect a grave, and, if successful in discovering it, would unearth the body in order to get the scalp, directions were given to prepare the grave after nightfall; and the spot selected would have baffled any one but an Indian. The grave was dug under the picket line to which the seventy or eighty horses of the troop would be tethered during the night, so that their constant tramping and pawing should completely ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... to follow their trail, for, during the night, a herd of several thousand buffaloes had crossed and recrossed it, quite trampling it out of sight. Still the sagacity of Carson triumphed, and after being baffled for a short time, he again ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... acquainted with Pee-wee Harris. These stories record the true facts concerning his size (what there is of it) and his heroism (such as it is), his voice, his clothes, his appetite, his friends, his enemies, his victims. Together with the thrilling narrative of how he foiled, baffled, circumvented and triumphed over everything and everybody (except where he failed) and how even when he failed he succeeded. The whole recorded in a series of screams and told ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Mothe, impressed in spite of himself and falling back upon the last resort of baffled argument. "It is all very plausible, but I do not ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... Baffled in his frantic contest to keep hold of that railroad—a hold that he would have turned into many millions of dollars of immediate loot by fraudulently watering the stock, and then bribing the Legislature to legalize it as Gould did—Vanderbilt ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... would keep close to his text, and yet would write like himself, very beautifully, but not with an Homeric swiftness and strength. Who is to imitate him? As to Mr. William Morris, he might be fabled to render [Greek text] "niddering wights," but beyond that, conjecture is baffled. {91} Or is this the kind ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... influence they would have on the regions beyond. He spoke also of the help which Livingstone had derived as an explorer from his influence as a missionary. The journey he had performed successfully had hitherto baffled the best-furnished travelers. In 1834, an expedition under Dr. Andrew Smith, the largest and best-appointed that ever left Cape Town, had gone as far as 23 deg. south latitude; but that proved to be the utmost distance they could reach, and they ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... far the courtesies of fiction. But for those who prefer historical fact, it may be interesting to learn the authentic details of the interment of one whose posthumous destinies seemed to share the incompleteness of his baffled life. In order to avoid the contestations arising from the transit of a corpse through a foreign state, Nignio di Zuniga (who was charged by Philip with the duty of conveying it to Spain, under sanction of a passport from Henri III.) caused it to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... straight, from where he had entered it beneath the side of the rock furthest from the unscaleable cliffs, toward the mighty barrier that had baffled him so long. ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... as she had done, and yet perforce to wait hour after hour, day after day, week after week, in the same unrelieved anxiety,—this prolonged torture is not to be told in words. She schooled herself against further outcries, but the evidence of her suffering was no less in her settled look of baffled expectancy, her fits of mute abstraction, the start of her eyes at any sound of bell or knock. She clutched back hope as it was slipping away, and would not surrender uncertainty for its less harrowing follower, ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... good number owed their lives to that mysterious Scarlet Pimpernel, that unknown Englishman who had snatched scores of victims from the clutches of Tinville the Prosecutor, and sent M. Chauvelin, baffled, back to France. ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... were white men, for the negroes thought that black baptism would not stick; but they were fortune-hunters, like the rest of the colony, mere agents of the official will, and seekers of their pleasures in the huts of the negro-quarter.[I] The curates declared that the innate stupidity of the African baffled all their efforts to instil a truth or rectify an error. The secret practice of serpent-worship was punishable, as the stolen gatherings for dancing were, because it unfitted them for the next day's toil, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... has most of grief and pain, Which is the worse to bear: The joy we crave and never have, Or the curse of the granted prayer? The baffled wish or the bitter rue— Could our hearts choose between ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... of despair or at the summit and crown of happiness. People who had been used to discover a great many of old Mr Bury's personal peculiarities in his sermons, and who, of recent days, had found many allusions which it was easy to interpret in the discourses of Mr Morgan, retired altogether baffled from the clear and succinct brevity of the Curate of St Roque's. He was that day in particular so terse as to be almost epigrammatic, not using a word more than was necessary, and displaying that power of saying a great deal more than at the first ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... toward the ships; uprais'd, the dust 175 Stood o'er them; universal was the cry, "Now clear the passages, strike down the props, Set every vessel free, launch, and away!" Heaven rang with exclamation of the host All homeward bent, and launching glad the fleet. 180 Then baffled Fate had the Achaians seen Returning premature, but Juno thus, With admonition quick to Pallas spake. Unconquer'd daughter of Jove AEgis-arm'd! Ah foul dishonor! Is it thus at last 185 That the Achaians on the ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... impregnable citadel. Loop-holes guarded every approach. The Indians could not show themselves without exposure to certain death. They were too well acquainted with the unerring aim of Boone's rifle to venture within its range. Keeping the log cabin between them and their redoubtable foe, the baffled Indians fled into ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... very likely," he said. There was no hint of elation in his voice nor any annoyance. If he felt either, why, he was on guard no less than she. Mrs. Repton was inclined to throw up her hands in despair. She was baffled and she was little likely, as she ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... small kingdom of Jinbala, I was not able to collect much information. The soil is said to be remarkably fertile, and the whole country so full of creeks and swamps, that the Moors have hitherto been baffled in every attempt to subdue it. The inhabitants are Negroes, and some of them are said to live in considerable affluence, particularly those near the capital, which is a resting-place for such merchants as transport goods from Tombuctoo ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... The ready wits which had been sharpened at so many different grindstones proved keen enough for the occasion. Valentine Hawkehurst had had little to do with genealogies or baptismal registers during his past career; but his experiences were of such a manifold nature that he was not easily to be baffled or mystified by any new experience. He showed himself almost as quick at tracing up the intricacies of a family tree as Mr. Sheldon, the ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... am baffled," he confessed. "We have three alternate possibilities here, and we dare not disregard any of them. Either this man who calls himself Altamont is truly He, or he is merely what we are asked to believe, one of a community like ours, with more of the old knowledge ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... her nephew and the Marquise with the rage of one of the Furies. She learned through Vautrot that M. de Camors had been in the chamber of Madame de Campvallon the night of the General's death. On this foundation of truth she did not fear to frame the most odious suspicions; and Vautrot, baffled like her in his vengeance and in his envy, had aided her. A few sinister rumors, escaping apparently from this source, had even crept at this ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Nicholas Udall, the first English comedy, about 1534. It contains nine male and four female characters. Ralph is a vain, thoughtless, blustering fellow, who is in pursuit of a rich widow named Custance, but he is baffled in his intention. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Hatteras was baffled. The doctor gazed and shook his head. Shandon said nothing, but an attentive observer would have noticed a ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... joy, met his only and dearly beloved sister, from whom he had so long been separated. This virtuous, amiable, but unhappy princess, had long been striving to join her wandering brothers and share their fate. Thus far she had been baffled in every endeavor, and two of them had sadly gone down into the grave, unsustained by those consolations which a sister's love and attentions might have afforded them. The princess had finally succeeded in tracing her only surviving brother from Sicily to Gibraltar, ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... to detect thy slightest movement, and ears to catch thy wariest whisper, of which thou shalt not dream. The darkness of night shall not cover thy treason—the walls of privacy shall not stifle its voice. Baffled on all sides, thy most secret counsels clear as noon-day, what canst thou now have in view? Proceed, plot, conspire, as thou wilt; there is nothing you can contrive, nothing you can propose, nothing you can attempt which I shall not know, hear, and promptly ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... putting the finishing touches to a witty drama which would settle the whole question. In this play, which, he could tell them on the best authority in the world, his own, was a work of surpassing genius, the Irish Question, which had baffled statesmen and philosophers for centuries, is settled once and for all by the wisdom and presence of mind of ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various
... frantic boy now endeavored to open the windows and spring out, but being foiled in this attempt likewise, as they were securely fastened, he threw himself upon the floor as he had been in the habit of doing when crossed, ever since his baby-hood, and screamed with all the strength of baffled rage. ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... Primrose Hill murder—a particularly exciting and underground affair. It was he who had been intimately associated with the bringing to justice of the Camden Town Gang—a group of daring and successful criminals which had baffled the London police for two years. Neale had read all about Starmidge's activities in both cases, and of the hairbreadth escape he had gone through in connection with the second. And he had formed an idea of him—which he now saw to be ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... Under these circumstances Paul made his way to Rome, and, having secured the support of the Pope, reappeared in Constantinople as the rightful bishop of the see. But the emperor, again in Syria, was not to be baffled. More angry than ever, he sent peremptory orders to Philip, the prefect of Constantinople, to expel Paul and to recognize Macedonius. By skilful arrangements Paul was quietly removed from the scene. But to install Macedonius ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... more likely to kill the lad so cunningly held in his arms. Thus it was that the captor made off with his prize, and no one was able to check him, although the hearts of the whites were burning with rage and with the desire to shoot the Apache who had baffled ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... not wanting eminent expounders of the Spiritualistic Faith who assert that this is as it should be, and that if in the attempt to apply the laws of the material world to Spiritual manifestations we are baffled, the fault lies in us, and not in the Mediums. If this be so, we must accept our fate and enlarge the adage that 'poets are born, not made,' ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... dashed at the pace of a hunter through the intricacies of the way he presently discovered that he was following nothing but the summer breeze rustling the willow leaves and wafting into his face the breath of new-cut hay, the aftermath of late July. He stopped at length and stared about him, baffled and half angry. ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... tried desperately once again to comprehend what it was in her that piqued him. And he could not. He fell back from the attempt. Was she the most wondrous? Or was she commonplace? Was she deceiving him? Or did he alone possess the true insight? ... Useless! He was baffled. Far from piercing her soul, he could scarcely even see her at all; that is, with intelligence. And it was always so when he was with her: he was in a dream, a vapour; he had no helm, his faculties were not under control. She robbed him ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... elements of caloric appear to sympathize with the prevailing state of the atmosphere, and to contribute to render that which is already too cold for comfort, even colder. So it was now; notwithstanding the preparations that had been made. Baffled twice in his expectations of procuring a blaze, Stephen stopped and took a drink of the hot coffee. As he swallowed the beverage, it struck him that it was fast losing ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... humanity, for towns and cities; and that was a big sawmill and cotton-gin town ahead of him, silhouetted along the top of a high bank. He headed straight for it, and found his boat inexplicably slowed up and rebuffed. Strangers on the river always do find themselves baffled by the big New Madrid eddy, which even power boats engage with difficulty of management. He landed at last against a floating dock, and found that it ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... the big thing all right, but that's not everything. You managed the big thing so well that the police are utterly baffled and don't know which way to look. But the stones, carissima, the sparkling stones. What ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... through lanes until he was well out of the track of returning scholars, and then fell into a moody jog. He crossed a small "branch" two or three times, because of a prevailing juvenile superstition that to cross water baffled pursuit. Half an hour later he was disappearing behind the Douglas mansion on the summit of Cardiff Hill, and the schoolhouse was hardly distinguishable away off in the valley behind him. He entered a dense wood, picked his pathless way to the centre of it, and sat down on a mossy spot under a spreading ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... says St. John Damscene, "is the will of God, by which all things are fitly and harmoniously governed,"(96) and such is its power that nothing can elude or deceive it, neither can it be hindered or baffled in any way. "For God will not except any man's person, neither will He stand in awe of any man's greatness; for He made the little and the great, and He hath equally ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... their united strength did that which had baffled the single efforts of the scholar. The package rolled to the gangway, and the German, frenzied with excitement, shouted aloud! The bark lurched, and the bale went over the side, as if the lifeless mass were suddenly possessed with the desire to perform the evolution which its inert ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... dizzy height even for a grown hunter, but the boy never looked down. He went on until he came to a place about ten feet below the nest, where there was a long, bare space on the trunk, with no limbs or knots to cling to. He was baffled then. He looked up at the nest many times, tried to find some place to catch hold of the rough bark and sought closely for some rest higher up to put his foot on. But there was none. An eagle's nest was a rare thing ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... do, Tony? Won't you marry me ever?" Alan's tone was helpless, desolate. He had run up against a power stronger than any he had ever wielded, a force which left him baffled. ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... Clara were, except for the brief and troubled intervals during which the Amidon personality had been brought uppermost, strangers,—until she could once more bring him within the magic ring of her occult power. Brought within it he must be, but how? The judge felt beaten and baffled. Yet he would try one ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... time he stood almost without movement. He was seeking, seeking in every direction. But the rosy twilight baffled him. Unaga buried her secrets deeply, and only was there the perfume in the air which she could not conceal. This was the key with which Steve meant to open the door ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... hastening from rock to rock and ridge to ridge, as intervening obstacles hid them from view, until she saw the stratagem, just referred to, practised by Keona. Then, feeling that she had no power of voice to let the pursuers know what had occurred, and seeing that they would certainly turn back on being baffled, she resolved to keep up the chase herself—trusting to accident to afford her an opportunity of rendering aid to Alice; or, rather, trusting to God to help her in her great difficulty; for the poor child had been well trained in the missionary's ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... the pastime of a half hour that we have given to the flower odors, when an ever-widening field for speculation lies before us. But imagination droops exhausted, baffled by the innumerable enchanting riddles still to solve. And this must ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... at a pleasant conceit. The wit that had baffled Father Muro was ready for Evasio Mon. A woman will take her stand before her own heart and defy the world. Juanita's eyes flashed across the man's ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... is sometimes exceedingly difficult to find the relation between structure and form in Families, and I remember a case which I had taken as a test of the accuracy of the views I entertained upon this subject, and which perplexed and baffled me for years. It was that of our fresh-water Mussels, the Family of Unios. There is a great variety of outline among them,—some being oblong and very slender, others broad with seemingly square outlines, others having a nearly triangular form, while others again are almost ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... inscribed her name and address in a heavy rustic scrawl, with pothooks and hangers tumbling over one another. When at last she made it all out, after being repeatedly baffled by the extraordinary style and spelling, she could not but smile again. It was a letter from Rosalie's aunt, introducing Zephyrin Lacour, who had fallen a victim to the conscription, "in spite of two masses having been said by his reverence." However, as Zephyrin was Rosalie's ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... you?" exclaimed the mate, waxing warmer and warmer, as he: fancied himself baffled by the other's powers of endurance. "Take that, and let us see if ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... common person they would have rapidly succeeded. But Latimer was in no haste to be a martyr; he would be martyred patiently when the time was come for martyrdom; but he felt that no one ought "to consent to die," as long as he could honestly live;[129] and he baffled the episcopal inquisitors with their own weapons. He has left a most curious account of one of his ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... sons of sires that baffled Crown'd and mitred tyranny: They defied the field and scaffold, For ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... faltered the baffled magicians, knowing their reputation gone for ever, while the Governor, addressing the people, announced that since none but God, the Great Spirit, could really make rain, any one who professed to do so henceforward would be promptly 'eaten up'—that is to say, deprived of his property by the 'father's' ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... many ways, with that brain of yours, but it was given to you for another purpose, and you'd end by leaving her. You'd come home like a sick dog to its kennel—and become a hack. Your genius would have shrivelled to the roots. If you give her up now your very unhappiness and baffled longings will make you do greater and greater things. Talent needs the pleasant pastures of content to browse on but they sicken genius. If you married her you wouldn't even have the pastures after the first dream was over and you certainly would have neither the independence of ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... twentieth of the same month. The Convention, with barbarous folly, obeyed; and the enlightened Parisians, accustomed to think with contempt on the ignorance of the Vendeans, believed that a war, which had baffled the efforts of government for so many months, was to end on a precise day—which Barrere had fixed with as much assurance as though he had only been ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... hands—all this is novel-matter of almost the first class as regards incident, with no lack of character-openings to boot. Nor could anybody want a better "curtain" than the falling back of the scorned and baffled false lover, the concert of the minstrels, and Katherine's stately stepping down the dais to complete the insult ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... examined it carefully, to find more traces of Mr Brazier having been there and stopping. So they shouted and whistled again and again, but there was no response, and trying to pick up the trail they started again—now utterly baffled and ready to return, now gathering fresh hope on suddenly coming upon a scrap of orchid or a bunch of woodland flowers, which had been carefully gathered and thrown down, apparently by some one wearied out. Then Rob uttered a cry of excitement, ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... roused her sense of humor and a laugh bubbled up instead of the tears, and Hannah, watching, cat-like, could only see eyes dancing with fun though the cheeks were charmingly red. By Hannah's expression Marcia knew she was baffled, but Marcia could not get away from the disagreeable suggestion ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... its slip, backing into the river. Ropes had been cast off, and an ever widening strip of water appeared between the vessel and the shore. It was now that the man on the dock sighted the girl. She gesticulated at him. He gesticulated at her. She appeared helpless and baffled, but he showed himself a person of resource of the stuff of which great generals are made. Foch is just like that, a bird at changing pre-conceived plans to suit the ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... a careful Master for I oblige him to clean the Tub with a Hand-brush, Ashes, or Sand every Brewing, and so that I cannot scrape any Dirt up under my Nail. However as the Cure of this Disease has baffled the Efforts of many, I have been tempted to endeavour the finding out a Remedy for the great Malignity, and shall deliver the best I ...
— The London and Country Brewer • Anonymous
... up to the old African and stood at his knee. The sorrows and perplexities of nearly a hundred years lay between them; and now, as always, the baffled eyes of age gazed into the Sphinx-like face of youth, as if by this means to unravel the mysteries of the past and solve the problems ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... him, bind him, threaten him, beat him, rack him, would he—granted he knew—reveal its whereabouts? Writ large in his face was every manner of roguery, but not one iota of cowardice. He might very well hold us baffled, hour on hour, while the papers went to Mayenne. Even should he tell, we had the business to begin again from the very beginning, with some other knave ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... re-translated from my idiom where there seemed a need for it. And I am not much afraid of being ever guessed at—except by those Oedipuses who astounded me once for a moment and were after all, I hope, baffled by the Sphinx—or ever betrayed; because besides the black Stygian oaths and indubitable honour of the editor, he has some interest, even as I have the greatest, in being silent and secret. And nothing ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... what these practicers thought of their own arts. Certainly some of them accomplished cures. Mental troubles that baffled the ordinary physician would offer the "good witch" a rare field for successful endeavor. Such would be able not only to persuade a community of their good offices, but to deceive themselves. Not all of them, however, by any means, were self-deceived. Conscious fraud played ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... in a penumbra of darkness the white comely face of a woman. She saw the beleaguered men sway back and the door close in the faces of the horde. She saw bullets go crashing into the door, heard screams of baffled fury, and presently the crash of axes into the panels of the barrier that held them back. It seemed to fade away before her gaze, and instead of it she saw a doorway ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... me, than I to him. After a silent meal, he would ride through the dark forest on a fresh mount. How and where he passed those sleepless nights, I do not know. Thus had a month slipped away; and we had done everything and accomplished nothing. Baffled, I had gone to confer with Mr. Jack MacKenzie and had, as usual, exasperated him with the reiterated conviction that Adderly and the Citadel writing paper and Louis Laplante had some connection with the malign influence that was ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... temper, and they would not notice it. The inner meaning of things concerned them very little. Their conception of cause and effect, or of the constancy of nature, was rudimentary. "Ninety-nine times out of a hundred," said an old bricklayer of the village, baffled by some error in his work—"ninety-nine times out of a hundred it'll come right same as you sets it out, but not always." Puzzles were allowed to be puzzling, and left so; or the first explanation was accepted as final. The "mistis in March" sufficiently accounted ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... vain regrets be stilled; Now rest in Him who is the complement Of whatsoe'er transcends our mortal doom, Of baffled hope and unfulfilled intent; In the clear vision and aspect of whom All longings and all hopes ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... her there, and could not have returned to Coombe Tracey until the early hours of the morning. Such an excursion could not be kept secret. The probability was, therefore, that she was telling the truth, or, at least, a part of the truth. I came away baffled and disheartened. Once again I had reached that dead wall which seemed to be built across every path by which I tried to get at the object of my mission. And yet the more I thought of the lady's face and of her manner the more I felt that something was being held back from me. Why should she turn ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... the drawn forces of Night and of Morning, Strange visions steal down to the slumbers of men, From heaven's bright stronghold once issued a warning, Which baffled all scorning, when brought to ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... the ambuscades and nocturnal sallies of his wily foe. At length, however, El Zagal, having been foiled in a well-concerted attempt to surprise the Christian quarters by night, was driven across the mountains by the marquis of Cadiz, and compelled to retreat on his capital, completely baffled in his enterprise. There the tidings of his disaster had preceded him. The fickle populace, with whom misfortune passes for misconduct, unmindful of his former successes, now hastened to transfer their allegiance to his rival, Abdallah, and closed the gates against him; and the unfortunate ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... unconsciously for what belonged to her life and growth; being taught one thing more than all, that her duty must be followed eagerly and reverently in spite of the adverse reasons which tempted and sometimes baffled her. As she grew older she was to understand more clearly that indecision is but another name for cowardice and weakness; a habit of mind that quickly increases its power of hindrance. She had the ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... unbroken even by a knowledge of a higher, a supernatural destiny that has never been given. Dante's Limbo, on the other hand, represents the souls in sadness brought about by their constant desire and hope never realizable, of seeing God. They suffer no pain of sense, but they are baffled in their endless yearning for the Beatific ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... but to accept his defeat as graciously as possible. For baffled he was, caught at every turn, and puzzled, ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... flitted through his mind at the moment. "O Kunopes!" ("thou dog-faced one!") he caught himself muttering, but negro diplomacy was too much for him, and the innocence in the face of Ananias would have baffled a man far more suspicious. Cram was a fellow who loved his battery and his profession as few men loved before. He was full of big ideas in one way and little oddities in another. Undoubted ability had been at the bottom of his selection over the head of many a senior to command one of the light ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... from the boulevards. Thursday was the only day in which there was fighting of any serious kind. There has been no resistance on the part of the real people—nothing but sympathy for the President, I believe, if you except the natural mortification and disappointment of baffled parties. To judge from our own tradespeople: 'il a bien fait! c'est le vrai neveu de son oncle!' such phrases rung on every tone ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... containing Adams & Co.'s treasure, the Tamalpais' first officer, and a crew of four men was lost on the rocks shortly after leaving the ill-fated vessel. None of the bodies were ever recovered, and the treasure itself completely baffled the search of divers and salvers. A lidless box bearing the mark of Adams & Co., of the kind in which their treasure was usually shipped, was yesterday found in the woods behind the chapel, half buried ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... shot at him a look of perplexed and baffled wonder. That brown, indomitable face, back of which was so much strength of purpose and so much keenness of apprehension, began to fill him with alarm. This man let no obstacles stop him. He would go on till he had uncovered the ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... so long as Vernon was a check on Clara; but the moment Clara, thus baffled, moved to quit the library, Dr. Middleton felt the horror of having ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... notable attributes and shocking manners—is as easily lost in Paris as anywhere; it is a city of many shadows. At the end of some weeks, during which his work had suffered from his new preoccupation, Rufin saw himself baffled. His man had vanished effectually, carrying with him to his obscurity the great picture. It was the memory of that consummate thing that held Rufin to his task of finding the author; he pictured it to himself, housed in some garret, ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... come up with them. All at once the clamour grew hideous, and I saw them. They were gathered round a tree, in a clearing just like that I had left, and were madly leaping against it, but ever falling back baffled. I looked up: in the top of the tree sat the little girl, her white face looking down upon them with a smile. All the terror had vanished from it. It was still white as the snow, but like the snow was radiating a white light through the dark foliage of the ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... Kangwe and ask Mme. Jacot, of the Mission Evangelique, if she will take me in. The air is stiff with mosquitoes, and saying a few suitable words to them, I dash under the mosquito bar and sleep, lulled by their shrill yells of baffled rage. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... even in summer measure their strength against it. But Napoleon III inspired this road, and it emerges, quickly rejuvenated, from tempest and torrent, to laugh unconquered. Of the undertakings of the Bonaparte family, only two were ever baffled by ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... imagined, the infirmities of man, and even graver evils, were permitted in order to afford amusement to superior intelligences, and make the angels laugh, few things could afford them better sport than the perplexities of this child of clay engaged in the study of himself. 'Alas,' exclaims at last the baffled spirit of this babe in intellect, as he surveys his shattered toys—his broken theories of metaphysics, 'I know that I am; but what I am—where I am—even how I act—not only what is my essence, but what even my mode of operation,—of all this I know nothing; ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... employed by the diagnostician when he is baffled in the matter of definitely locating the cause of lameness; when he has by exclusion and otherwise arrived at a decision that lameness is "high up." Shoulder lameness may be caused by any one or several of a ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... brig returned, having been baffled and beat about, and nearly lost at sea, unable to weather Tanjong Datu. The crew say she was one hour under water. She now remains here to wait the change of the monsoon, and her intriguing Pangerans return ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... the signing away of Malta at the peace of Amiens, they doubtless were not without effect, when the ambition of Buonaparte had given a full and final answer to the grand question: can we remain at peace with France? I have likewise reason to believe that Sir Alexander Ball, baffled, by exposing an insidious proposal of the French Government, during the negotiations that preceded the recommencement of the war—that the fortifications of Malta should be entirely dismantled, and the island left to its inhabitants. Without dwelling on the obvious inhumanity and flagitious ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... question of the Jews being admitted to stand for Parliament and having seats in the House, and party spirit ran extremely high upon the subject. Theodore Hook shrugged his shoulders and made a discontented grimace, as if baffled by his theme, the Jews. However, he went to the piano, threw back his head, and began strumming a galloping country-dance tune, to which he presently poured forth the most inconceivable string of witty, comical, humorous, absurd ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... some minutes without much change in the relative position of the actors. I began to hope that the bear might be baffled after all, and finding the horse too nimble for him, might desist from his attacks, particularly as the horse had already administered to him several kicks that would have discomfited any other assailant. These, however, only rendered ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... come with the otter-skins, Carry?" the elder sister said, laughing; and the younger one retired, baffled and chagrined, but none the less resolved that before Gertrude White completely gave herself up to this blind infatuation for a savage country and for one of its worthless inhabitants, she would have to run the gauntlet of many a sharp word of ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... January was dark and foggy, and the blockading fleet was nowhere to be seen. Then, if ever, was the time for escape; and the Yankee tars weighed anchor and started out through the Narrows. In the impenetrable darkness of the night, baffled by head-winds and perplexing currents, the pilots lost their reckoning, and the orders to the man at the wheel were quick and nervous, until an ominous grating of the ship's keel, followed by the loss of headway, told that the frigate was aground. For a time the ship lay ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... had not forgotten to take her jewels with her, and the old judge made a great fuss, and appealed to the colonel, who requested him to inspect the regiment as it left the town. But the sooty visage and uniform jacket baffled his penetration, and at the first halt, the drummer and the lady were made one flesh. Thorp, the lucky bridegroom, was a fine dashing fellow, bent upon distinguishing himself. He was often wounded, but never missed an engagement, even when his hurts were unhealed. He fell gloriously ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... of every nationality and creed, labored strenuously in making preparations to feed the hungry, clothe the shivering, and care for the sick. When the morning dawned fair and balmy beyond all precedent for this season of the year, the scene in the vast amphitheatre baffled description, over which the heavenly host rejoiced as never before. The united bands of the city discoursed sweet music from the balcony, from steaming cauldrons the multitudes were fed to repletion with nourishing delicious food; the sick, the weak, the women and children were ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... Dick and the deputies were able, with great difficulty, to follow the tracks of the outlaw and his prisoner toward the south for a full mile. But at this point, an expanse of outcropping rock baffled them completely. Search as they would, there was no least sign of footsteps anywhere. After an hour of futile questing, they gave up in despair, and hurried to the rendezvous ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... mechanically sacrifices everything to his dominant task. External circumstances might, as so often happens, have checked the cause of my life and prevented me from following my natural bent, but my utter incapability of succeeding in anything else would have been the protest of baffled duty, and Predestination would in one way have been triumphant by proving the subject of the experiment to be powerless outside the kind of labour for which she had selected him. I should have succeeded in any variety of intellectual application; I should have failed miserably in ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... a rock, and, catching hold of the lower branches of a large tree, drew himself up among the dense foliage, just as the yelling savages rushed with wild tumult to the water's edge. Here they paused, as if baffled. They spoke in rapid, vehement tones for a few seconds, and then one party hastened down the banks of the stream towards the fall, while another band ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... of April, 1547, the cry of fire alarmed the inhabitants, and soon the flames were spreading with fury which baffled all human power. The store-houses of commerce, the magazines of the crown, the convent of Epiphany and a large number of dwellings, extending from the gate of Illinsky, to the Kremlin and the Moskwa, were consumed. The river alone arrested the destruction. ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... that had defeated Napoleon stopped, baffled, before a breast-work defended by raw militiamen; when, finding that the heads of their columns melted away like wax in fire as they approached the blaze of those hunters' rifles, they finally recoiled, terribly defeated,—saved from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... on the beach and seemed to try to embrace the earth, possess it. But it fell away baffled. Over its subsiding pother sprang a new wave with the same bosomful of desire and the same frantic clutching here and there—the same rebuff, the same destruction under the surge of the next and the next. The descending ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... discipline, the state of the hulks, agricultural distress, commerce and manufactures, the bullion question, the Catholic Question, the Bourbons or the Inquisition, 'domestic treason, foreign levy,' nothing can come amiss to him—he is at home in the crooked mazes of rotten boroughs, is not baffled by Scotch law, and can follow the meaning of one of Mr. Canning's speeches. With so many resources, with such variety and solidity of information, Mr. Brougham is rather a powerful and alarming, than an effectual debater. In so many details (which he himself goes through with unwearied ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 496 - Vol. 17, No. 496, June 27, 1831 • Various
... colour but is imitated by some shell. Purple and red and white, and green and yellow, pied and striped and clouded, the living shells wear in every combination the livery of the dead reef—if the reef be dead—so that the eye is continually baffled and the collector continually deceived. I have taken shells for stones and stones for shells, the one as often as the other. A prevailing character of the coral is to be dotted with small spots of red, and it is wonderful how ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... unstinted boons that she showered on Napoleon by land, Fortune rudely baffled him at sea. When he was hurrying from Ulm towards the River Inn, to carry the war into Austria, he heard that the French navy had been shattered. Trafalgar was fought the day after Mack's army filed out of Ulm. The greatest sea-fight ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... even very young children may easily be forced into sensual channels. A little girl, twelve years old, was one day brought to the psychopathic clinic connected with the Chicago juvenile court. She had been detained under police surveillance for more than a week, while baffled detectives had in vain tried to verify the statements she had made to her Sunday-school teacher in great detail of certain horrible experiences which had befallen her. For at least a week no one concerned had the remotest idea that the child was fabricating. ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... and reassert the old ways. But somehow the ancient sorcery of his masterful brother was too strong upon him; and at times he gazed upon him with a sense almost of awe, groping to fathom the alchemy of charm, baffled by the strange lights and fires in his brother's eyes, and by the wisdom of far places and of wild nights and days written in his face. What was it? What lordly vision had the other glimpsed?—he, the irresponsible and careless one? Frederick remembered a line of an old ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... that I had clearly not fought out the economic aspect of the question. I said that was how my hair was blanched, with trying to fight it out, but that, somehow, it always baffled me. I added remarks about squaring the circle, but they said it was a good deal easier to square Mr. GLADSTONE. The friends of Total Prohibition of Vaccination and of Beer were waiting, also a deputation, who wanted subscriptions for a SHELLEY Memorial, Russian ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 30, 1892 • Various
... and baffled, Dr. Howe rose. He leaned heavily forward on the table, his open palm resting on the volume of sermons, which Alfaretta had lifted from the floor, and he looked steadily at John. "Then, sir," he said slowly, ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... me so much that I did my best to enter into conversation with him, only to be baffled by the jerky embarrassment with which he met all advances, and when we got out at Esher, curiosity led me to ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... an imperfect formation where having bad materials to work on the Creator could only palliate the evil effects of his combinations but I saw a wanton malignity in many parts & particularly in the mind of man that baffled me a delight in mischief a love of evil for evils sake—a siding of the multitude—a dastardly applause which in their hearts the crowd gave to triumphant wick[ed]ness over lowly virtue that filled me with painful sensations. Meditation, painful & continual ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... surprised at the strength and steadiness of her voice. Fortified by its sound she went on, her eyes on Miss Mellins's baffled countenance: "Mr. Ramy has gone west on a trip—a trip connected with his business; and Evelina is going to stay with me till he ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... how far she of the sunny paths could penetrate an unlighted country. He looked at her—peered at her, fairly—trying to decide. But he could not decide. Katie baffled ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... telescope constructed by himself, was enabled to solve the enigma which for so many years baffled the efforts of the ablest astronomers. He announced his discovery in the form of a Latin cryptograph which, when ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... fit into the picture, and your mysterious visit there made me anxious to interview the man. He had left no address however, just faded out of sight suddenly, which increased suspicion. Then, when we were completely baffled, Sexton learned about your conversation ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... the sons of sires that baffled Crowned and mitered tyranny: They defied the field and scaffold ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... than he had yet made to her. In the morning he had given her the outer history of his life, during the year of her absence. But this was the inner history of a man's weakness and failure—of his quarrels and hatreds, his baffled ambitions and ideals. She put it together as best she could from his hurried, excited talk—from stories half told, fierce charges against 'charlatans' and 'intriguers,' mingled with half-serious, half-comic returns upon himself, attacks ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that of the other. The tribunes cried out to their faces in the forum, "That the Volscian war was all a concerted farce: that the Hernicians were instructed to act their parts; that the liberty of the Roman people was now no longer crushed by manly efforts, but that it was baffled by cunning; because all probability was now gone that the Volscians, who were almost exterminated, and the AEquans, would of themselves commence hostilities, new enemies were sought for: that a loyal colony, and one in their ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... repressed the pretensions of Zebek-Dorchi, who, on his part, so deeply resented this discountenance to his ambitious projects that, in conjunction with other chiefs, he had the presumption 5 even to weave nets of treason against the Emperor himself. Plots were laid, were detected, were baffled; counter-plots were constructed upon the same basis, and with the benefit of the opportunities thus offered. Finally, Zebek-Dorchi was invited to the imperial lodge, 10 together with all his accomplices; and, under the skilful management of the Chinese nobles in the Emperor's ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... become inevitable, when Lewis XVI. ascended the throne, that the success and also the failure of the movement came from causes that were at work before. The desire for political freedom was sincere but adulterated. It was crossed and baffled by other aims. The secondary and subordinate liberties embarrassed the approach to the supreme goal of self-government. For Tocqueville was a Liberal of the purest breed—a Liberal and nothing else, deeply suspicious of democracy and its kindred, equality, ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... feel Monk's inclinations in this matter of the abjuration oath, and also to watch his attitude to the deputations and their requests, that they had despatched their two commissioners, Scott and Robinson, to be in attendance on him. He had baffled them by his matchless taciturnity. Very probaby, his intention, when he first projected his march to London, had been to restore the Rump and to insist at the same time on the re-admission of the secluded members; ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... but through all, from birth to death, from the cradle to the grave, I had felt myself doomed. All efforts I had previously made to secure my freedom had not only failed, but had seemed only to rivet my fetters the more firmly, and to render my escape more difficult. Baffled, entangled, and discouraged, I had at times asked myself the question, May not my condition after all be God's work, and ordered for a wise purpose, and if so, Is not submission my duty? A contest had in fact ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... ourselves to account for our actions, reason compels us to fix this aim higher and higher, till we come at last to the highest end of our existence: and here that longing for the infinite which is inherent in our being, is baffled by the limits of our finite existence. All that we do, all that we effect, is vain and perishable; death stands everywhere in the back ground, and to it every well or ill- spent moment brings us nearer and closer; and even when a man has been so singularly fortunate ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... supernatural power. If, in the face of these facts, it be pretended that these miracles are attested, we shall be compelled, at least, to agree that, according to the Bible account, they have been entirely useless, that the Deity has been constantly baffled in all his projects, and that he could never make of the Hebrews a people submissive to ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... They were not the men to fear a pair of gaping jaws, armed with a deadly array of tusks; but half a dozen lances were hurled at him, some entering his mouth from a distance of five or six paces. At the same time several men threw handfuls of sand into his enormous eyes. This baffled him more than the lances; he crunched the shafts between his powerful jaws like straws, but he was beaten by the sand, and, shaking his huge head, he retreated to the river. During his sally upon the shore ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... masonry—crenellated on top, and loopholed on the sides—which had been built as a place of defence and refuge during the Indian wars of the preceding century. Often had the prowling bands of Iroquois turned away baffled and dismayed at the sight of the little fortalice surmounted by a culverin or two, which used to give the alarm of invasion to the colonists on the slopes of Bourg Royal, and to the dwellers along the wild banks of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Ambitiously sententious—But I wonder Old Syphax comes not; his Numidian genius Is well disposed to mischief, were he prompt And eager on it; but he must be spurr'd, And every moment quicken'd to the course. Cato has used me ill; he has refused His daughter Marcia to my ardent vows. Besides, his baffled arms, and ruin'd cause, Are bars to my ambition. Caesar's favour, That show'rs down greatness on his friends, will raise me To Rome's first honours. If I give up Cato, I claim, in my reward, his ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison
... The locked door baffled him. It was of such solid construction, and its lock was so well made, that it resisted all his efforts to force it. The windows were provided with heavy wooden shutters that were fastened on the inside. For an hour Winn busied ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... the Loire, elsewhere deep and navigable as far as Roanne.[584] If the drought which had so reduced the stream as to render the passage practicable was justly regarded as a providential interposition of Heaven in their behalf, the sudden rise of the river immediately afterward, which baffled their pursuers, was not less signal a blessing.[585] Other dangers still confronted them, but their prudence and expedition enabled them to escape them, and on the eighteenth of September[586] the weary travellers, ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... marched, in the direction indicated, to the end of the street; but, finding that five ways branched off therefrom, she returned baffled to her brother's house, and ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... come to those critics who, intellectually baffled by the problem in Mrs Warren's Profession, have made a virtue of running away from it. I will illustrate their method by quotation from Dickens, taken from the fifth ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... F The king, baffled, now offers to pardon and reward the thief if he will discover himself. The thief gives himself up, and is married to ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... Vrow Katerina were divided between the two larger vessels; the others, being smaller, were easier worked with fewer hands. Every arrangement having been made, the boats were hoisted up, and the ships made sail. For ten days they were baffled by light winds, and the victims to the scurvy increased considerably on board of Philip's vessel. Many died and were thrown overboard, and others were carried down to ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... and in a minute the place was a shambles. Before Maxim and Lee-Metford were too hot to touch, before the baffled foe fell back, those who surged in through the gate climbed, not over a wall of dead, but up on to a platform of dead, a plateau through which ran a valley literally blasted ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... hovering hand, 10 Some chaste and angel friend to virgin fame, With whisper'd spell had burst the starting band, It left unblest her loathed dishonour'd side; Happier, hopeless Fair, if never Her baffled hand, with vain endeavour, 15 Had touch'd that fatal zone to her denied! Young Fancy thus, to me divinest name, To whom, prepared and bathed in heaven, The cest of amplest power is given: To few the godlike gift assigns, 20 To gird their blest prophetic loins, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... her to the house. He was not baffled. He knew that the struggle was yet to come; that, when she was alone, her faith in the far-off Christ would falter; that she would grasp at this work, to fill her empty hands and starved heart, if for no other reason,—to stifle by a sense ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... moment he would be discovered cheating, he would be scorched with our hatred and contempt. He must leave our pure society on the instant—not of course that he was any worse than the rest of us, but only that he was unfortunate in being discovered. That night Gourlay and I were demons. We had baffled each other, and drank till our brains seethed, though our countenances and speech betrayed nothing but the extreme of coolness. He had won a thousand of me, and hounded me from post to pillar, offering to be cleared ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... oval hoop peculiar to Spain, was in full blow; and the robes of a dowager might have curtained the tun of Heidelberg, and the powers of Velasquez were baffled by the perverse fancy of "Fribble, the woman's tailor." The gentle and majestic hound, stretching himself and winking drowsily, is admirably painted, and seems a descendant of the royal breed immortalized by Titian in portraits of the ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... doubt that his handsome roguery had caught the woman's fancy. She was at the dangerous age, when even the most ferro-concrete-natured of women are apt to run riot. She was comprehensible, and pardonable. But the man baffled me. He was obviously marrying her for her money; but how in the name of Diogenes and all the cynics could he manage to look ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... people heard Him gladly; and many, even of the priests and rulers, believed on Him. But the chief of the priesthood and the leading men of the nation were determined to condemn and repudiate His teachings. Though they were baffled in all their efforts to find accusations against Him, though they could not but feel the influence of the divine power and wisdom attending His words, yet they encased themselves in prejudice; they rejected the clearest evidence of His ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... into the clouds at last. It is when a pedigree approaches extinction that the occasion opens for the genealogist to exercise his subtlety and skill, and his exertions become all the more zealous and exciting that he knows he must be baffled somewhere. The pursuit is described as possessing something like the same absorbing influence which is exercised over certain minds by the higher mathematics. The devotees get to think that all human knowledge centres in their peculiar science and the cognate mysteries and ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... by the saucy creature. But she will not explain herself. 'Suppose this pretty business ends in murder! she says. I may rue my opposition as long as I live, for aught she knows. Parents will not be baffled out of their children by imprudent gentlemen; nor is it fit they should. It may come home to me when I ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... search of employment. Through the treachery of a friend, Ida's fortune was lost, and the ill-fated couple found themselves reduced to the most painful exigencies. Vienna, Lemberg, Vienna again, Switzerland, everywhere Dr. Pfeiffer sought work, and everywhere found himself baffled by some malignant influence. "Heaven only knows," says Madame Pfeiffer in her autobiography, "what I suffered during eighteen years of my married life; not, indeed, from any ill-treatment on my husband's part, but from poverty and want. I came of a wealthy family, and had been accustomed ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... distinguished himself. He, and he alone, passed the ordeal, munching those dreadful mouthfuls without so much as a change of expression on his countenance, while the facial contortions the rest of us went through baffled description. In every subsequent trial it was the same. Peter never made a face, and no one else could help making them. It sent him up fifty per ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the questions as to clarify and illuminate them. There is little difficulty in accounting for the lucidity, simplicity, flexibility, and compass of Mr. Lincoln's style; it is not until we turn to its temperamental and spiritual qualities, to the soul of it, that we find ourselves perplexed and baffled. ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... peace was brief. It was hardly a week before Keene's old moods returned, darker and stranger than ever. The girl's unconcealable bewilderment, her sense of wounded loyalty and baffled anxiety, her still look of hurt and wondering tenderness, increased from day to day. John Graham's temper seemed to change, suddenly and completely. From the best-humoured and most careless fellow in the world, he became silent, thoughtful, irritable toward everyone except Dorothy. With Keene he ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... should as a Church humble ourselves before God, and that without delay. He waits to be gracious. We must not lose heart. Let the thousands of faithful workers among us remember that when the disciples were baffled, Jesus was in the company of Moses and Elijah; but He dismissed them that He might come to the help of His people. Whatever he may be doing, we can catch His ear, and bring Him to the rescue. He needs only that we should ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... ground, in order to get rid of his burden, but for this escapade I was quite unprepared. I had no difficulty, however, in keeping on his back, having been accustomed from my childhood to ride without a saddle. To stop him, however, baffled all my endeavours, and I almost began to pay credit to the words of the Gypsy, who had said that he would run on until he reached the sea. I had, however, a strong arm, and I tugged at the halter until I compelled him to turn slightly his ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... sought for information how to bring in a bill, they learnt simply that bills were not brought in. They asked for the speaker, and were privileged to hear much ripe wisdom from the ex-king Egbert, who was now consciously among the seniors of the gathering. Thereafter they were baffled men.... ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... swimming slowly, it appeared to be one of the swiftest of fishes: for at each instant as the albacores changed their position from one side of the raft to the other, the long-snouted creature was seen to shoot to the same side with a velocity that almost baffled the sight to ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... mode of approach also, and was relieved, because he saw that Mr. Belcher was baffled. His instincts were quick, and they told him that he was the victor. In the meantime Mr. Belcher was getting hot. He had closed the door of his room, while a huge coal fire was burning in the grate. He rose and opened the ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... at Dick for several seconds without making any remark. They were sitting on their ponies, completely baffled by the manner in which the trail of the rustlers had suddenly "petered out." And they had been about to turn and go back to camp when Dick made his ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... heavy burthen borne by Amvarisha and Mandhatri, Yayati and Nahusha and Bharata and Dilip and Sivi the son of Usinara and other royal sages of old, he that is endued with an excellent character and disposition, he that is conversant with virtue, and whose prowess is incapable of being baffled, he that is fit to become the monarch of the three worlds in consequence of his possession of every accomplishment, he that is the foremost of all the Kurus lawfully and in respect of learning and disposition, who is handsome and mighty-armed and hath no enemy,—Oh, how is that Yudhishthira ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... defending the harbor front. At the further end of this unique approach he placed a large gun; and so destructive was the bombardment thus opened that fire-ships were sent against the bridge and battery. But the Genoese of Galata betrayed the scheme, and it was baffled. The prisoners captured were hanged in view of the Greeks, and in retaliation Constantine exposed the heads of a hundred and sixty Turks ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... human characters on one side the mysterious events on the other, and would prefer the more single- eyed treatment of the short tale. Wonder, too, is a very tender and short-lived emotion, and sometimes perishes after a few pages. Curiosity is tougher; but that too may be baffled too long, and end by tiring of the pursuit while it is yet in its early stages. Many excellent plots, admirable from the constructive point of view, have been wasted by stringing them out too far; the reader recognizes their merit, but ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... not have braved any danger to explore the depths of this hiding-place? But we could not do it. Try as we might, the hidden path leading up, or down, baffled us. ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... beyond the sepulchral line of mortality he shall know no more of his friends, may find, as helps to a willing acquiescence in what is fated, either one of two possible contemplations.8 He may sadly lay upon his heart the stifling solace, There will be no baffled wants nor unhappiness, but all will be over when hic jacet is sculptured on the headstone of my grave. Or, with measureless rebound of faith, he may crowd the capacity of his soul with the mysterious presentiment, In the unchangeable fulness ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... unworthy ruse, she was induced to repair to the palace, it was found impossible to make her an inmate of it in defiance of the Empress' jealousy. She had to be housed elsewhere, and still the Imperial lover was baffled, for he dared not brave the elder sister's resentment by visiting the younger. Finally he took advantage of the Empress' confinement to pay the long-deferred visit, but, on learning of the event, the outraged wife set fire to the parturition house and attempted to commit ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... regret at our failure to get right across; so I said to myself, "I never can face that; I must try again," and try again we did, and you know the result. (Cheers.) I candidly tell you that the thought struck me that if we were baffled in our efforts to penetrate through, it might be all the better for this colony, inasmuch as there would be a saving of expense thereby, although the credit due to me would be considerably diminished. But I did not care so much for that. ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... family of Ponziano had enjoyed since Lorenzo's marriage was interrupted by the sudden and dangerous illness of his wife, which baffled all medical skill, and soon brought her to the verge of the grave. The affliction of her husband and of his whole family was extreme. Their pearl of great price seemed about to be taken from them. No remedies afforded the slightest ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... times, as if it were in some way at fault, then dropped down to try for her nest again. Only vacant air there! She hovers and hovers, her blue wings flickering in the checkered light; surely that precious hole MUST be there; but no, again she is baffled, and again she returns to her perch, and mauls the poor beetle till it must be reduced to a pulp. Then she makes a third attempt, then a fourth, and a fifth, and a sixth, till she becomes very much excited. "What could have happened? Am I dreaming? ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... the attack of redemptive energy in the sphere of personal life. It comes to a man shamed by the sense of guilt and baffled by moral failure, and rouses him to a consciousness of his high worth and eternal destiny. It transmits the faith of the Christian Church in a loving and gracious God who is willing to forgive and powerful ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... a snarl of baffled chagrin, was his only answer. But a moment later the door to his booth swung open, and he ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... mutandis, to be followed by the other greater colonies. Elgin's solution of the question of responsible government was so natural and easy that the reader of his despatches forgets how completely his task had baffled all his predecessors, and that several generations of colonial secretaries had refused to admit what in his hands seemed a self-evident truth. At the outset Elgin's own mind had not been free from serious doubt. He had come to Canada with a traditional suspicion of the French Canadians and ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... been equal to the effect of that dramatic entry and sudden revelation. "As for Montjoie, all was up with him, but the Contessa knew what she was about. She was not going to throw away her effects," they said. "There could be no doubt for whose benefit it all was." The Contessa graciously baffled with her charming smile all the questions that were poured upon her. She received the compliments addressed to her with gracious bows, but she gave no reply to any one. As she swept out of the room after dinner she tapped Montjoie lightly on the arm ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... when I came I put into execution such rules as I have been trained to follow. That made changes in our staff and a few dismissals. Such action is sure to stir up the wrath of someone, but even with that as a basis, and with all the detective skill I have been able to operate, I must confess I am baffled. This very minute our janitor would be found in his quarters over the stables, for I have phoned him there. And for the past week I have gone over the ground with him personally, he and his wife when they lock up. She is one of the day workers ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... something of her old dramatic fervor in voice and gesture; Mr. Fletcher saw it, and, while he never had admired her so much, could not resist avenging himself for the words that angered him, the more deeply for their truth. Wounded vanity and baffled will can make an ungenerous man as spiteful as a woman; and Mr. Fletcher proved it then, for he saw where Christie's pride was sorest, and touched the wound with the ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... with the fixed determination to make the most of her time, prepared to listen to the master's instructions with all due attention; but Winnie's incessant fidgeting and yawning baffled every attempt, and the ludicrous answers, given with tantalizing readiness, almost upset her gravity, ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... crawled to a very noisy pond without showing himself, and nearer and yet nearer until he was within three feet of a loud peeper in the floating grass. He located the spot within a few inches and yet could see nothing. He was utterly baffled, and lay there puzzling over it, when suddenly all the near Peepers stopped, and Yan was startled by a footfall; and looking around, he saw a man within ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Finding all his efforts baffled by the Major's indifference, the mysterious passenger seized his telescope, drew it out to its fullest extent, about four feet, and began gazing at the horizon, standing motionless with his legs wide apart. ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... the simplest and most exact departments of science which does not speedily lead us to a transcendental problem that we can neither solve nor elude. A broad common-sense argument has often to be called in, where keen-edged metaphysical analysis has confessed itself baffled. ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... stubble. Heaven saw need to chastise me in love—I was stript of all I clung to on earth—my worldly honour was torn from me—I went forth an exile from the home of my fathers, a deprived and desolate man—a baffled, and beaten, and dishonoured man. But who shall find out the ways of Providence? Such were the means by which I was chosen forth as a champion for the truth—holding my life as nothing, if thereby that may be advanced. But this was not ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... who loved truth better than fortune dropped baffled; for he could not afford to surrender the favor of the Senate which promised him means to achieve in his own special field; and he groaned in spirit while the wide halls of the Frari, with their treasure of ancient MSS. rose before his mental vision as the most tempting spot on earth, with his own ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... to let my canary fly about the room, and Peter chased him. The canary flew to an old helmet on a shelf, and thus baffled Peter. The canary seemed to know this, for when Peter was in the room he always flew to the helmet and sang in peace. If he perched elsewhere there was a chase. The linnet's cage I placed on the window-sill in sunny weather, and Peter took ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... rid of him? Then, though she might feel humiliated at the baseness of such enjoyment, she clung to it from habit or from corruption, and each day she hungered after them the more, exhausting all felicity in wishing for too much of it. She accused Leon of her baffled hopes, as if he had betrayed her; and she even longed for some catastrophe that would bring about their separation, since she had not the courage to make up her mind to ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... treetops now and then reaches the ear; in a tent the faint noises of the night outside are borne on the wind, and at times the silhouette of a passing animal moves slowly across the heavy cloth; but in a hamaca one is not thus set apart to be baffled by hidden mysteries—one is given the very point of view of the creatures who live and die in ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... words of Indra, Karna was filled with delight and seeing that his purpose was about to be accomplished he approached Vasava, and intent upon obtaining a dart incapable of being baffled, he addressed Indra, saying, 'Do thou, O Vasava, in exchange for my coat of mail and ear-rings, give me a dart incapable of being baffled, and competent to destroy hosts of enemies when arrayed in order of battle!' Thereupon, O ruler of earth, fixing his mind for a moment on the dart (for bringing ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... she said that she lied, though thrice she has striven to murder her, I have no time to tell you how, but was always baffled by those who watched. Yet she might have succeeded at last, so, although Heliodore fought against it, it was best that she should go. Those who are parted may meet again; but how can we meet one who is dead until ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... who is served with white meat, to that of one who is content with a leg and one of those obscure and bony sections which, after much turning with a bewildered and investigating knife and fork, leave one baffled and unsatisfied. ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... handselling the nuptial sheets, when a man perceives himself full of agitation and trembling, and to await another opportunity at more private and more composed leisure, than to make himself perpetually miserable, for having misbehaved himself and been baffled at the first assault. Till possession be taken, a man that knows himself subject to this infirmity, should leisurely and by degrees make several little trials and light offers, without obstinately attempting at once, to Force an absolute conquest over ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... that; but he did not quite do it. He certainly spoke to his daughter about her, lover, and he satisfied himself that there was yet nothing explicit between them. But she was so much less frank and open with him than she had always been before that he was wounded as well as baffled by her reserve. He could not get her to own that she really cared for the fellow; but man as he was, and old man as he was, he could not help perceiving that she lived in a fond ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... panted, dragging me into a great, bare chamber and bolting the door, then leaned breathless against the wall to listen as the chase galloped up, clamoring, kicking and beating on panel and wall, baffled. ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... Wrestled all night with the North-Wind, Wrestled naked on the moorlands With the fierce Kabibonokka, Till his panting breath grew fainter, Till his frozen grasp grew feebler, Till he reeled and staggered backward, And retreated, baffled, beaten, To the kingdom of Wabasso, To the land of the White Rabbit, Hearing still the gusty laughter, Hearing Shingebis, the diver, Singing, "O Kabibonokka, You are but ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... at the old woman's effrontery, he wanted to crush her with angry eloquence; but her stolidity baffled him, and he went up to his room without a word. When he was alone, his anger soon cooled; but he found himself repeating those cruel words, and as he said them over, he began to fear that Florou was ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... been much abridged here, for they needed a volume to convey their mellifluous abundance and the graces which accompanied them. The retrospective perspicacity of this man, so natural, so profound, was baffled by the candor of that tale and its poignancy, and by ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... exhibited the simplicity of character so remarkable in the domestic species; but that where they had been often fired at they were exceedingly wild, alarmed their companions on the approach of danger by a hissing noise, and scaled the rocks with a speed and agility that baffled pursuit." The mountain men of early days tell precisely the same thing of the sheep. Fifty or sixty years ago they were regarded as the gentlest and most unsuspicious animal of all the prairie, ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... suggest it? On the contrary, everything looks in an opposite direction. How is it possible to help seeing that the soul is not here in its proper element, in its native air? How is it possible to escape the conviction that all its unsatisfied yearnings, its baffled aims, its restless, agonizing aspirings after a something, clearly perceived to exist, but to be here unattainable—that all these things point to another life, the only true life of the soul? There is such a manifest disproportion between all objects of earthly attainment ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... can not get into his presence," replied Otanes. "There are guards stationed at every gate and door, who will not allow us to pass. If we attempt to kill them, a tumult will be immediately raised, and the alarm given, and all our designs will thus be baffled." ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... It descends to the very roots of life. It springs from the original reservoirs of life. It has depths which no mental logic can sound; and it has horizons in the presence of which the mind stops baffled. When we use the term "the beautiful" to indicate the nature of what it reveals, we are easily misled; because in current superficial speech—and unless the word is used by a great artist—the term "beautiful" ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... heavenward, young Delaware all of a sudden found the keys dumb beneath his helpless fingers: the bellows was empty, the singing thing dead. He called aloud, and his voice echoed through the empty chapel, but no living response came back. Tom Fool had grown weary and forsaken him. Disappointed and baffled, he rose and left the chapel, not immediately from the organ loft, by a door and a few upward steps through the wall to the minstrels' gallery, as he had entered, but by the south door into the court, his readiest way to reach ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... Cervantes determined to play turncoat; indeed, mentally, he had already changed sides. Did not the sufferings of the underdogs, of the disinherited masses, move him to the core? Henceforth he espoused the cause of Demos, of the subjugated, the beaten and baffled, who implore justice, and justice alone. He became intimate with the humblest private. More, even, he shed tears of compassion over a dead mule which fell, load and all, after ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... around the pitfall. Again and again she tried to involve him, but ever with the same result. He was abashed, ready to answer—and always elusive. At the end she had gained nothing from him, and for a minute stood looking silently at him in baffled exasperation. ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... from Mr. Ford," retorted Paul again, and enjoyed the baffled expression on Mr. Pash's wrinkled face. "By the way, sir, why did you not tell Hurd that Tray ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... shall immediately see, by sex,—from certain characters not blending together,—and, perhaps, occasionally from the effects of a previous fertilisation on the mother. It is therefore not surprising that every one hitherto has been baffled in drawing up general rules ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... in the bitter wind a while longer, and then slowly, very slowly, made our way home. We wished to pass as much time as possible, in order to give probability to the deceit we intended to practise, for we could not bear to own ourselves baffled in our boasted wisdom of taking the train at Porter's Station, and had agreed to say that we had been to Concord and got back. Even after coming home to my house, we felt that our statement would be wanting in verisimilitude without ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... not unfrequently contain secret rooms and underground passages, which were often used as places of refuge in troublous times. Those held by recusants usually had two or three hiding-places ingeniously contrived, which must have baffled all pursuers, and were needed for the concealment of the Roman Catholic priest, in the days when his services were proscribed. There are two cleverly designed hiding-places at Ufton Court, Berkshire, which was held by the Roman Catholic family of Perkins. In a subterranean ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... have the goodness to take yourself out of this town before you are an hour older, else you will have to take the consequences." Having said this, he proceeded to unfasten the cord which bound the degraded and spirit-broken wretch. When this had been accomplished, the baffled stroller rose, and, with head hanging down, and without a word ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... If baffled in one road, he usually found out another. He therefore wrote a brief note to the Minister, stating that he might require his assistance at a later hour of the evening, and at a time not usually official. This done, he despatched another note ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... in scores of places by the sharp teeth of the rats, and even their clothing as high up as their shoulders showed ragged tears. A dozen or more rats hung to the boys' boots until the top was reached, then they dropped back screaming with baffled rage. ...
— Boy Scouts in the Coal Caverns • Major Archibald Lee Fletcher
... a challenging glance at Austin, but not a muscle of his grey face responded. Her natural expectations were baffled. There was no start of amazement, no fierce movement of anger, no indignant look of reproach. She was thrown back ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... a good picture; he can track a fugitive by delicate traces which the white man's eye cannot discern, and by methods which the finest white intelligence cannot master; he makes a missile which science itself cannot duplicate without the model—if with it; a missile whose secret baffled and defeated the searchings and theorizings of the white mathematicians for seventy years; and by an art all his own he performs miracles with it which the white man cannot approach untaught, nor parallel ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... what they said. It was insupportable, Willis! Characters that make trouble, Willis, do it to feel important. And we'd left them without a thing to tell us that was important enough to mention—unless they told us about the Cerberus. We had 'em baffled. They needed to say something, and that was the ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... expected to do otherwise,' said Eustace; 'and truly the design is so arbitrary and unjust that, Cavalier as I am, I cannot but rejoice that it should be baffled.' ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this moment of triumph. I laughed although there was no one to enjoy my laughter. And I watched her. She was still talking, deep, meaningless words. For it was her habit to talk in the gypsy language when moved. Often this fact baffled me. But I perceive now that my thought was a seed containing my omniscience in microcosm. God does not invent languages but He understands them since it is unnecessary for Him to know, in His indifference, what they are saying. And the language my phantom spoke, although foreign ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... sickly, but it had the great power of reticence; the calm with which she faced the closest gaze was natural to her,—no mask. When she left her room and went down, the same unaltered quiet that had baffled Knowles steadied her ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... in the seventeenth century there was no other way to maintain this balance than by opposing armies. Nor did Richelieu seek to maintain the peace of Europe by force alone. Never was there a more astute and profound diplomatist. His emissaries were in every court, with intrigues very hard to be baffled. He equalled Metternich or Talleyrand in his profound dissimulation, for European diplomacy has ever been based on this. While he built up absolutism in France, he did not alienate other governments; so that, like Cromwell, he made his nation respected ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... more the French gave way. Napoleon himself, lost in the tumult, was borne backwards, forced over the dyke, and had nearly been smothered in the morass, while some of the advancing Austrians were already between him and his baffled column. His imminent danger was observed: the soldiers caught the alarm, and rushing forwards, with the cry, "Save the general," overthrew the Germans with irresistible violence, plucked Napoleon from the bog, and carried the bridge. This was ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... conversation difficult and friendship impossible. Claude was full of bonhomie, good-nature generally, and sociability; but Cazeneau was more than he could endure; so that, after a few attempts, he retired, baffled, vexed at what he considered the other's aristocratic pride. What was more noticed by him now, was the fact that Pere Michel had grown more reserved with him; not that there was any visible change in the good priest's friendly manner, but he seemed pro-occupied ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... made no difference at any time. He cared for neither praise nor blame. In his actions a materialist, in his mind he was a watcher of life, a baffled inquirer whose refuge was irony, and whose singular habits had in five years become a personal insult to the standards polite society and Puritan morality had set up. Perhaps the insult had been intended, for irregularities were committed with an insolent disdain for appearances. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... all, but The Mercies of God. Many other matters come up incidentally in this delightful book, but the whole drift and the real burden of the book is its author's life of prayer. Her attainments and her experiences in prayer so baffled and so put out all her confessors that, at their wits' end, they enjoined her to draw out in writing a complete account of a secret life, the occasional and partial discovery of which so amazed, and perplexed, and condemned them. And thus it is that we come to ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... always been in the habit of playing with the rest of the girls, so thinking that Ling Kuan was like the others, he felt impelled to draw near her and to entreat her, with a forced smile, to get up and sing part of the "Niao Ch'ing Ssu." But his hopes were baffled; for as soon as Ling Kuan perceived him sit down, she impetuously raised herself and withdrew from his side. "I'm hoarse," she rejoined with a stern expression on her face. "The Empress the other day called us into the palace; but I couldn't ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... him to pack the books and clothes for the readings first, dressed, and pocketed my jewels and papers, while Dolby stuffed himself out with money. Meanwhile the police and firemen were in the house, endeavouring to find where the fire was. For some time it baffled their endeavours, but at last, bursting out through some stairs, they cut the stairs away, and traced it to its source in a certain fire-grate. By this time the hose was laid all through the house from a great tank on ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... city of visions and love! O hideous half-brute city of hate! O wholly human and baffled and passionate town! The throes of thy burgeoning, stress of thy fight, Thy bitter, blind struggle to gain for thy body a soul, I have known, I have felt, and been shaken thereby! Wakened and shaken and broken, For I hear in thy thunders terrific that throb through ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... chase, the stranger stopped and stood looking at Bowers in baffled fury. Then he turned sharply on his heel, caught his horse and swung into the saddle. He hesitated for the part of a second before spurring his horse ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... now follow our factory workman back to the city, for the purpose of noting the effect of this monopolized transportation, on city rents. Baffled in his desire to live in the country, he seeks to make the best of a bad situation. As a consequence, he is obliged to pay to the owner of some tenement house, a rental of fifteen dollars per month for three small rooms; poorly ventilated, ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... as gladiators; or, if they had the opportunity to kill those to whom they attributed their former distresses. They cared not to follow their leader to the northward, and thus his wiser plans were baffled; but, in spite of all obstacles, he laid the country waste from the foot of the Alps to the most southern extremity of the toe of the Italian boot. For two years he was able to keep up his war against the Roman people, but at last he was driven to the remotest limits of Bruttium, ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... Mrs. Miller was, perforce, obliged to let the matter rest. She went her way angry and vexed beyond measure, and somewhat baffled too. How is a mother to deal with a daughter who is so determined and so defiant as was Beatrice Miller? There is no known method in civilized life of reducing a young lady of twenty to submission in matters of the heart. She could not whip her, or put her on bread and water, nor could she shut her ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... General to the effect that all efforts to trace the missing packet had failed. A friend of Mr. Cromering's suggested that he should invoke the aid of the famous detective Colwyn, who had a name for solving mysteries which baffled the police. Mr. Cromering took the advice and wrote to Colwyn, offering to mention his name in a preface to The Jurassic Deposits if he succeeded in recovering the missing manuscript. Colwyn, by dint of bringing to bear a little more intelligence and energy than the postal officials had displayed, ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... performances, not knowing what would become of me after the remaining one hundred and seventy-five dollars was spent. It was several weeks before the performances, and Wagner had given strict orders that no one, without exception, should be admitted to the rehearsals. But I was not to be so easily baffled, and one afternoon I sneaked into the lobby and succeeded in catching some wonderful orchestral strains by applying my ear to a keyhole. But my pleasure was short-lived. An attendant espied me and summarily ordered me off the premises, ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... rail from Breslau to Oppeln and found himself alone with a lady in a second-class compartment. He vainly endeavoured to enter into conversation with the other occupant of the carriage; her answers were invariably curt and snappish. Baffled in his attempts, he proceeded to light a cigar to while away the time. Then the lady said to him: "I suppose you have never travelled second-class before, else you would know better manners." Her travelling companion quietly rejoined: "It is true, I have hitherto only ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... were, a growing company of ships, each with her burden of grain, of timber, of wool, of hides, and even of oranges, for we had one or two belated fruit schooners in company. There we were, in that memorable spring of a certain year in the late seventies, dodging to and fro, baffled on every tack, and with our stores running down to sweepings of bread-lockers and scrapings of sugar-casks. It was just like the East Wind's nature to inflict starvation upon the bodies of unoffending sailors, while he corrupted their simple souls by an exasperation leading to outbursts of profanity ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... out along Deephole Branch—and he has no telephone," growled the Titan. Suddenly through the baffled perplexity of his eyes broke the light of dawning idea, and he spoke with a ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... long ago been safely lodged in Newgate. They did not know that as soon as the convict was given in charge of the tipstaff of the court he was led away by Inspector Denning, along a carefully planned and circuitous route that entirely baffled the curiosity of the waiting crowd. Through the Court of Exchequer the prisoner and his guards went, by the members' private staircase, across the lobby, along the corridor, through the smoking-room into the Commons Courtyard, where a plain police omnibus was in waiting with an escort ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... Monthly, said: "Singer was a poor, baffled adventurer. He had been an actor and a manager of a theatre, and had tried his hand at various enterprises, none of which had been successful." The proprietor of the shop, who had some sewing-machines there on exhibition, speaking of them, said: "These machines are an excellent ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... of him: "His manner was at once the most majestic, the proudest, the most sustained, and at the same time the least embarrassing." That he was still eccentric may be judged from his call upon Mme. de Maintenon. She was ill in bed, and could not receive him; but he was not to be baffled. He drew aside the bed-curtains and stared at her fixedly, while she in speechless indignation glared at him. So, without one word, these two historic persons met—and parted! He probably felt curious to see what sort of a woman had enthralled and controlled the policy of Louis XIV. ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... turned his back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... place. Brother Dreamgood told the wonderful story of angels and holy manifestations and heavenly illuminations constantly occurring on that sacred spot till I forgot all about asking where the Lord would have me be, and forthwith started for Moriah. But I was baffled at every turn. Especially was I chagrined to find there was no place for me on Moriah at that time. Brother Dreamgood had a dreadful battle with the giants before he won a home for himself, and I am not certain that I could have fought ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry
... everlasting arms,"—that was the repeated burden of the great men of Israel. They lived in the midst of national calamities and distresses. They were defeated, puzzled, baffled. The way looked dark. Then they fall back on the one great re-establishing thought: after all, it is God's world. It is not going to ruin. Changes which seemed tremendous are not fatal or final. Israel dwells in safety, for God ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... admitted her husband's embraces but for the sake of posterity. If her hopes were baffled, in the ensuing month ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... of beasts grew ever denser as fresh parties came down and joined it. It was opposite the rocks on which they sat that the singing men collected, roaring their long verses and clattering on the buckets, doubtless not without some intention to jeer at and flout the baffled baboons, who watched them in such a silence. It was drooping now to the pit of night, and things were barely seen as shapes, when from higher up the line, where the guardians of the crops were sparser, there came a discord ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... enraged, baffled, helpless Captain Jack could hear the two dogs moving about ere they settled down on the ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies • Victor G. Durham
... banks of the Seine, gazing in wonder on that event taking place under the lee of Berry Head, her thoughts flashing back, perchance, to the days when William of Orange brought his fleet to shore at that same spot and baffled the designs of the other great ruler of France. The glory of that land is now once more to be shrouded in gloom. For a time, like an uneasy ghost, Clio will hover above the scenes of Napoleon's exploits and will find little to record but promises broken ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... pretending to be in search of the Maryland gentlemen belonging to the party. But nobody had seen the parties described, and, after a futile ride on the Fredericksburg road, they turned shortly to the east, and kept up their baffled inquiries all the way to Port Conway, ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... eye caught the expression of baffled reaching-forth, of uncertain striving after sympathetic understanding. "You darling lady!" she cried, clasping her hands to keep her arms from flying about the other's neck, "don't you be troubled about ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... survey their surroundings. The shed was an old one, yet strongly built. There were no windows, no other door save that at which the three middies now stood baffled. ...
— Dave Darrin's Second Year at Annapolis - Or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters" • H. Irving Hancock
... the erring thought Not into evil wrought: Lord, for the wicked will Betrayed and baffled still: For the heart from itself kept, ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... "Thus baffled, the burghers of the little city found their proud position quite untenable. They accordingly, on the 1st of December, despatched the burgomaster and a senator to Amersfoort, to make terms, if possible, ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... Though baffled by the "levelling principles" of the colonial assemblies, the governors did not give up the case as hopeless. Instead they evolved a system of policy and action which they thought could bring the obstinate provincials to terms. That system, traceable in their letters to the government in ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... difficulty might be obviated or overcome, and while my constant researches helped, I still found much difficulty in arriving at accurate conclusions before attempting an operation. I found nothing that satisfied me. I was also greatly bothered and baffled by the large number of cases which the surgeon encounters, controlled or dependent upon nervous conditions and the futility of ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... away—clutching out again, and still again, so fiercely, that drops of blood fell after them into the dark current beneath. Still the white face struggled upward through masses of wet hair, and the baffled hands groped about fiercer, but more aimlessly, till both were forced away beneath the ice, sending back a shriek so sharp and terrible that it might have aroused the dead!—no, not the dead, for up in that stately mansion, frowning among the snows a little way off, a human ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... infirmities of man, and even graver evils, were permitted in order to afford amusement to superior intelligences, and make the angels laugh, few things could afford them better sport than the perplexities of this child of clay engaged in the study of himself. 'Alas,' exclaims at last the baffled spirit of this babe in intellect, as he surveys his shattered toys—his broken theories of metaphysics, 'I know that I am; but what I am—where I am—even how I act—not only what is my essence, but ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... are weak, and not permitted to perform public worship to God. When our first mother, who was not attended with those weaknesses, either sinful or natural, as our women now are, stept out of her place but to speak a good word for worship, you see how she was baffled, and befooled therein; she utterly failed in the performance, though she briskly attempted the thing. Yea she so failed thereabout, that at one clap she overthrew, not only, as to that, the reputation of women for ever, but her soul, her husband, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the forest, making a circle first to one side and then to the other. As they advanced they stirred up several birds and also two squirrels but did not fire at them. Thus an hour passed, and at last they came back to the spring utterly baffled. ...
— Young Hunters of the Lake • Ralph Bonehill
... Spartans led to fight, And made them conquer in the muse's right; So would our poet lead you on this day, Showing your tortured fathers in his play. To one well born the affront is worse, and more, When he's abused and baffled by a boor: With an ill grace the Dutch their mischiefs do, They've both ill nature and ill manners too. Well may they boast themselves an ancient nation, For they were bred ere manners were in fashion, And their new commonwealth has set them free, Only from ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... resounding plunge the elephantine quarry struck the water and was gone. The tiger cat, forced to relinquish its hold or drown, swam hurriedly back to the bank below the encampment, where it roared and spat and squalled in a blood-chilling paroxysm of baffled fury. And though every man was awakened, not one left the flimsy shelter of his net. Nor did anyone so much as speak until Tim, wearying of the noise, announced his intention to "go bust that critter in the nose and give him somethin' ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... his last position on the heights near Saratoga; and hemmed in by the enemy, who refused any encounter, and baffled in all his attempts at finding a path of escape, he there lingered until famine compelled him to capitulate. The fortitude of the British army during this melancholy period has been justly eulogised by many native historians, but I prefer quoting the testimony of a foreign writer, as free from all ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... unceremoniously took a seat at the same table. This was just the opportunity which the piqued nobleman had desired. Maurice returned his salutation politely, but with an occupied air which seemed to forbid conversation. But Lord Linden was not to be baffled. He opened a periodical, and, after listlessly turning the leaves, closed it, and, leaning over the table in the direction of Maurice, said, with ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... And turned him from the opposing rock; Then, dashing down a darksome glen, Soon lost to hound and Hunter's ken, In the deep Trossachs' wildest nook 145 His solitary refuge took. There, while close couched, the thicket shed Cold dews and wild-flowers on his head, He heard the baffled dogs in vain Rave through the hollow pass amain, 150 Chiding the ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... September, 1733, as the books in Doctors' Commons show, letters of administration on his goods and chattels were granted to Mary Brooks, widow, a creditrix, after summoning in official form the next of kin to appear. Now, if Defoe had been driven from his home by imaginary fears, and had baffled with the cunning of insane suspicion the efforts of his family to bring him back, there is no apparent reason why they should not have claimed his effects after his death. He could not have died ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... is disconcerting. The actual refuses to make terms with the ideal. It is a vast storehouse of historical material, but the imagination is baffled in the attempt to ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... He had baffled with his bemuddled brain, to recall the conversation he had held with his wife since his return home to marry her, and every innocent word she had uttered in jest had seemed guilty and foul. "You've been nothing but a fool, Davy," he told himself. ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... witnesses before the committee of that year; nor are the proceedings of those of 1838, 1840, and 1844, less interesting. In the third of the four Gibbon Wakefield, under examination, tells the story of the New Zealand Association. In 1839 it became the New Zealand Land Company. Baffled in Parliament, as already described, the colonizers changed their ground, decided to propitiate the powers, and become a joint-stock company. Having done so, and subscribed a capital of L100,000, they tried to enlist the ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... "Baffled!" he exclaimed, with a slight vexed laugh, as the boat vanished from his sight. "By a woman, too! Who would have ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... communicate with me. In the first place, she must inform one of her attendants that she has been robbed. He must communicate the news to the functionary in charge of her residence, who will communicate with the Home Secretary, and from him will issue the orders to the police, who, baffled at every step, will finally address themselves to me. 'I'll give that side two weeks,' I said. On the other hand, the robber: will he allow himself to be lulled into a false sense of security by counting on this ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... it had made no difference at any time. He cared for neither praise nor blame. In his actions a materialist, in his mind he was a watcher of life, a baffled inquirer whose refuge was irony, and whose singular habits had in five years become a personal insult to the standards polite society and Puritan morality had set up. Perhaps the insult had been intended, for irregularities were ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... at him a look of perplexed and baffled wonder. That brown, indomitable face, back of which was so much strength of purpose and so much keenness of apprehension, began to fill him with alarm. This man let no obstacles stop him. He would ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... was the voice of revenge speaking loudly in his soul. That man, his instrument, now his master, Paul Lowther, must be brought down, and his time-serving sponsor with him. But how? There was but one way—by denouncing himself. Yes, that was the sole outlet for his outraged and baffled spirit. He must go to the proper quarter and say, "I have perjured myself, and sworn away my brother's liberty. The man who was condemned as Paul Drayton is Paul ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... non-committal eyes his own fell baffled. He was more irritated than he cared to own. Could she not see that he was prepared for anything, that his self-control was as great as her own? She treated him like a child; those professional reserves, necessary, doubtless, in the case of Peter ...
— In The Valley Of The Shadow • Josephine Daskam
... the dust, the Company and their fellow-sufferers, Jefferson Worth's cool, even tones and unruffled spirit helped them to a needed self-control and gave them a new and stronger grip on things. And many a baffled, discouraged and well-nigh beaten settler, ready to give up, found in the man whose gray, mask-like face seemed so incapable of expression, fresh inspiration and new courage; while the store continued its policy of helping the worthy, hard-pressed ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... perforce, obliged to let the matter rest. She went her way angry and vexed beyond measure, and somewhat baffled too. How is a mother to deal with a daughter who is so determined and so defiant as was Beatrice Miller? There is no known method in civilized life of reducing a young lady of twenty to submission in matters of the heart. She could not whip ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... about boils. I merely mentioned that Job had them. Yes, I agree with you, Aunt Dahlia, that things are not looking too oojah-cum-spiff at the moment, but be of good cheer. A Wooster is seldom baffled for more than ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... at his side. The two men's glances countered, held each other, one calm, dignified, unafraid; the other, murderous, searching, baffled. Presently, McTurpin turned and strode away. Windham looked after the departing gambler. "'Fraid I've spoiled his morning," he remarked ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... putrefactive stages which were to follow in the victory and decline of Puritanism. Old forms of belief and worship still lingered, all the more touching to Fancy, perhaps, that they were homeless and attainted; the light of sceptic day was baffled by depths of forest where superstitious shapes still cowered, creatures of immemorial wonder, the raw material of Imagination. The invention of printing, without yet vulgarizing letters, had made the thought and history of the entire past ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... safety. Two or three times Brun was on the point of being caught, but each time the dragoon or Swiss who had got up to him fell, struck by Francezet's unerring bullet. The chase lasted four hours, during which time five officers, thirty dragoons, and fifty Swiss were baffled by two men, one of whom Francezet was almost a boy, being only twenty years old! Then the two Camisards, having exhausted their ammunition, gave each other the name of a village as a rendezvous, and each taking a different direction, bounded away with the lightness of a stag. Francezet ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the utmost enjoyment from the report. He liked the substance of it, and above all, he was tickled by the bitter tone of frustration which characterized it. Oakes was baffled, and his knowledge of Oakes told him that the sensation of being baffled was gall and wormwood to that high-spirited young man. Whatever might be the result of this investigation, it would teach him the virtue ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... to follow the more regular procedure, but he "got the better of them" and refused.... Of course not long ago a governor might, in extreme cases.... But how could this be an extreme case? That's what baffled me. ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... in a terrific confusion, as baffled by certain inconsistencies displayed by her own nature as overwhelmed by her disgraceful predicament. For she was certainly sincere in her craving to be as debonairly "athletic" as Tess; yet, during that ghastly moment when ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... a sudden gust. The nor'wester came howling over the dark tree-tops, fell upon the clearing about the little wooden buildings—house, stable, barn—in' squalls and-wicked whirlwinds that sought to lift the roof and smote the walls like a battering-ram, before sweeping onward to the forest in a baffled fury. The house trembled from base to chimneytop, and swayed on its foundation in such a fashion that the inmates, feeling the onslaught, hearing the roar and shriek of the foe, were almost as sensible of the terrors of the ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... and the defense of it were equally fierce, bloody, and desperate. Again and again the buccaneers assaulted, and again and again they were beaten back. So the morning came, and it seemed as though the pirates had been baffled this time. But just at this juncture the thatch of palm leaves on the roofs of some of the buildings inside the fortifications took fire, a conflagration followed, which caused the explosion of one of the magazines, ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... world of knowledge to which the men of his own generation were blind, and which they could not, even with his help, imagine a possible one, had now won the first step in that long and toilsome ascent to success in life, in which for fourteen years he had been baffled. He had made himself, for good and for evil, a servant of the Government of James I. He was prepared to discharge with zeal and care all his duties. He was prepared to perform all the services which that Government might claim from its ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... politicians, when they come to work for supplying the place of what they have destroyed. To make everything the reverse of what they have seen, is quite as easy as to destroy. No difficulties occur in what has never been tried. Criticism is almost baffled in discovering the defects of what has not existed; and eager enthusiasm and cheating hope have all the wide field of imagination, in which they may expatiate with little ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... all, from birth to death, from the cradle to the grave, I had felt myself doomed. All efforts I had previously made to secure my freedom had not only failed, but had seemed only to rivet my fetters the more firmly, and to render my escape more difficult. Baffled, entangled, and discouraged, I had at times asked myself the question, May not my condition after all be God's work, and ordered for a wise purpose, and if so, Is not submission my duty? A contest had in fact been going on in my mind for ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... bowled headlong into the visitor, in his effort to overtake the horseman, but found himself baffled and took out his wrath in foul vituperation that presently drove the stranger from ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... crashing ring at the doorbell that acted like an electric shock on the group. Karl and Olga came to their senses, dazed, trembling, thankful. Millar stepped down from the chair, baffled, and turned his ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... because she was not led away? His disposition was to praise her for a choice so wise, and to think that she had done very right in accepting Lord Tristram of Blent. Aye, Lord Tristram of Blent! Precisely! Deep despair settled on Mr Neeld's baffled mind. ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... let go the line. The officer, unwilling to be carried off to New Jersey, where he was threatened with imprisonment in the penitentiary for interfering with the steamer, would at once jump ashore, or beg to be landed. This was kept up for two months, but the captain successfully baffled his enemies during the whole of that period. The opponents of Mr. Gibbons offered a larger and better boat than the one he commanded if he would enter their service, but he firmly declined all their offers, avowing his determination to remain ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... care, And deep-toned warning both our hearts have heard, Even as the old-time low-bell held each bird Suddenly trembling, nestling pair by pair Dark in the covert, till a blinding glare Of torchlight and a clamorous shouted word Dazed their bright eyes, and terrified wings upwhirred To baffled blundering in the ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... law. A certain course would be mapped, certain plans formed, a certain objective determined, and before the course could be finished, the plans executed, or the objective point attained the perverse, inexplicable movement of the ice baffled their determination and set at naught ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... elements of which the planets and satellites of our system are composed, we, however, find ourselves baffled, for the simple reason that these bodies emit no real light of their own. The light which reaches us from them, being merely reflected sunlight, gives only the ordinary solar spectrum when examined with the spectroscope. But in certain cases we find that ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... rice, and melon seeds. To supplement all this, Fong Wu recounted the news: the arrival of a consul in San Francisco, the raid on a slave—or gambling-den, the progress of a tong war under the very noses of the baffled police, and the growth of Coast feeling against the continued, quiet immigration of Chinese. But of the social or political affairs of the Flowery Kingdom—of his own land beyond the sea—Fong ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... and Lynch, crumpling the unheeded money in his hand, stepped aside with an expression of baffled fury and watched him stride along the side of the house ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... enfilading fire. Huntington changed front with his own battery and repelled the assault. The 110th Pennsylvania regiment, of Whipple's division, arrived in time to strengthen the cavalry support, and many of the Eleventh Corps men fell into line also. The last charge of the enemy was baffled by the opportune arrival of Birney's and ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... is not worth enduring"? And yet, does it also come to pass as certainly that these valiant, unselfish, loving ones will struggle, fight, climb, wade, creep on, on while the breath of life remains in them, and never surrender? It seemed as if Sister Benigna had arrived at a place where her baffled spirit stood still and felt its helplessness. Could she do nothing for Elise, the dear child for whose happiness she would cheerfully give her life, and not think ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... upon Mr. Pett. For the thousandth time he felt himself baffled by this calm, goggle-eyed boy who treated him ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... and exhausted, she knew that she was unwinding the puzzle. Often as its intricacies baffled her, she kept her head, rectifying each mistake and pressing on, till the wider curve told her that she was very near the entrance. She came upon it finally quite suddenly, and found herself, to her astonishment, close to the ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... Present at a Hanging A Cold Greeting A Wireless Message An Arrest Soldier-Folk A Man with Two Lives Three and One are One A Baffled Ambuscade Two Military Executions Some Haunted Houses The Isle of Pines A Fruitless Assignment A Vine on a House At Old Man Eckert's The Spook House The Other Lodgers The Thing at Nolan The Difficulty of Crossing a Field An Unfinished Race Charles ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... "Yes," said I, "they're baffled, they've given it up, they're on their way home. We will climb back to our roost again, and let ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... never spoken like that to her before, or used that tone of voice. His methods had been more fierce than tender. She glanced up swiftly at his face, but it baffled her. There was no love in his eyes or even desire, nothing but an unusual gentleness. "Perhaps you would prefer the diamonds and the pearls," he went on, pointing disdainfully at ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... impetuosity, as if he meant to bear me down by the sheer weight and rapidity of his strokes. His favorite attack was a cut aimed at my head. Six several times he repeated this manoeuvre, and six times I stopped the stroke with the usual guard. Baffled and furious, he tried it again, but—probably because of failing strength—less swiftly and adroitly. My opportunity had come. Quick as thought I ran under his guard, and, thrusting his right arm aside with my left hand, passed ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... been in the habit of playing with the rest of the girls, so thinking that Ling Kuan was like the others, he felt impelled to draw near her and to entreat her, with a forced smile, to get up and sing part of the "Niao Ch'ing Ssu." But his hopes were baffled; for as soon as Ling Kuan perceived him sit down, she impetuously raised herself and withdrew from his side. "I'm hoarse," she rejoined with a stern expression on her face. "The Empress the other day called us into the palace; but I couldn't sing ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... to have been at the head of a powerful faction, rose in rebellion at some place not named in the narrative, but in the rear of the army. The rapidity with which Ahmosis repulsed the Nubians, and turned upon his new enemy, completely baffled the latter's plans, and he and his followers were cut to pieces, but the danger had for the moment been serious.* It was, if not the last expedition undertaken in this reign, at least the last commanded by the Pharaoh in person. By his activity and courage Ahmosis had well earned the right to pass ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... had come with the otter-skins, Carry?" the elder sister said, laughing; and the younger one retired, baffled and chagrined, but none the less resolved that before Gertrude White completely gave herself up to this blind infatuation for a savage country and for one of its worthless inhabitants, she would have to run the gauntlet of many a sharp ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... down stairs feeling angry and baffled. All that she had done to retain her ascendency over Uncle Oliver had failed, and Mrs. Forbush and Philip seemed to have superseded herself and Alonzo in his regard. She conferred with Mr. Pitkin on his return from the store, ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... date-palms. One of our most inveterate relic-hunters had his hammer with him, and tried to break a fragment off the upright Needle and could not do it; he tried the prostrate one and failed; he borrowed a heavy sledge hammer from a mason and tried again. He tried Pompey's Pillar, and this baffled him. Scattered all about the mighty monolith were sphinxes of noble countenance, carved out of Egyptian granite as hard as blue steel, and whose shapely features the wear of five thousand years had failed to mark or mar. The relic-hunter ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... friends were seeking a building in Belfast where the baffled Minister could hold his meeting on the 8th of February, and in the course of the search the director of the Belfast Opera-house was offered a knighthood as well as a large sum of money for the use of his theatre,[20] a fact that possibly explains the statement made by ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... flowers have baffled me, and I have caused several friends much useless labour; though, Heaven knows, I have thrown away time enough on ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... commission for himself —before giving up his capture, O'Conor imprisoned the Earl in the keep of Castle-Ishin, but the White Knight, the Knight of Glynn, Fitzmaurice of Kerry, and Pierce Lacy, levying rapidly 2,000 men, speedily delivered him from confinement, while his baffled betrayer, crest-fallen and dishonoured, was compelled to quit the Province. The year following he was attacked while marching through Galway, and remorselessly put to death by Theobald Burke, usually called Theobald ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... word the baffled man turned away. But the look of savage hatred that gleamed in his fierce eyes told Challoner that he had made a dangerous enemy. And only a few days passed before he heard from the natives that Larmer said he would have his revenge—and ...
— The Brothers-In-Law: A Tale Of The Equatorial Islands; and The Brass Gun Of The Buccaneers - 1901 • Louis Becke
... letter which Swinnerton Loughburne received over the signature of Doctor Randall Byrne. It was such a strange letter that between paragraphs Swinnerton Loughburne paced up and down his Gramercy Park studio and stared, baffled, at the ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... understood. Hitherto she had been unable to answer him, even by a word, yet she believed that she was destined to become better acquainted, if only to show him that his power, of which the Burgravine had spoken, was baffled when directed against the heart of a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to re-establish the colony at Port Royal belongs to the history of Acadia rather than to the story of Champlain. But remembering the spirit in which he and De Monts strove, one feels glad that Lescarbot spoke his mind regarding the opponents who baffled their ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... and depressing feeling at my heart. The wreck of fortune, the thwarting of ambition, the failure in enterprise, great though they be, are endurable evils. The never-dying hope that youth is blessed with will find its resting-place still within the breast, and the baffled and beaten will struggle on unconquered; but for the death of friends, for the loss of those in whom our dearest affections were centred, there is no solace,—the terrible "never" of the grave knows no remorse, and even memory, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the power of his supporters, that he was permitted to depart from Oxf. and retire to Lutterworth, where, worn out by his labours and anxieties, he d. of a paralytic seizure on the last day of 1384. His enemies, baffled in their designs against him while living, consoled themselves by disinterring his bones in 1428 and throwing them into the river Swift, of which Thomas Fuller (q.v.) has said, "Thus this brook has conveyed his ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... light, welcome to him on his way in the distance, was likely to betray him when near; and he not unfrequently reckoned a wild night of wind and rain as a blessing, since it helped to conceal his coming, and proved to his mistress that he was ready to brave all for her sake. Of rivals met and baffled; of half-willing and half-unconsenting maidens, persuaded and won; of the light-hearted and the careless becoming affectionate and tender; and the coy, the proud, and the satiric being gained by "persuasive ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... marble columns, the very ruins, some insist, of the synagogue which the good centurion built for the city he loved. Here, then, may have been the home of our Lord during those earliest days of his public ministry, the happiest days of his earthly life, before baffled hate had begun to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... if I owed you some sort of apology; and yet, when I come to frame it, I find myself baffled. Of course I'm leaving for home as soon as possible—probably to-morrow. Of course if I had known the truth I should have left long ago, and that letter would never have had any occasion for being written. I'm assuming, Covington, that you will believe that without any question. You ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... society could not quite be baffled so: mornings brought carriage after carriage, and evenings a run upon the door. Mr. Falkirk had little peace of his life, unless it were a reposeful thing for him to sit by and ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... done, and yet perforce to wait hour after hour, day after day, week after week, in the same unrelieved anxiety,—this prolonged torture is not to be told in words. She schooled herself against further outcries, but the evidence of her suffering was no less in her settled look of baffled expectancy, her fits of mute abstraction, the start of her eyes at any sound of bell or knock. She clutched back hope as it was slipping away, and would not surrender uncertainty for its less harrowing follower, despair. She had resumed, as the probability of immediate news ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... prodigious constructive faculty, wielded with the strength of a huge Samson-like artificer in the material of mind, and welding together the substances it might not be able to fuse, puzzled all opponents who understood it not, and baffled the efforts of all who understood it well. He rarely took a position on any political question, which did not draw down upon him a whole battalion of adversaries, with ingenious array of argument and infinite noise of declamation; but after the smoke and dust and clamor ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... his face was deathly white, and his eyes had the look of a baffled demon. But he was not destined to have the satisfaction of even seeing Mona, for he reached the pier just in season to see the noble steamer sailing with stately bearing slowly out into the harbor, and he knew that the fair ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... sigh almost buried the last word. Go when she would, she must leave Constantine behind, leave him without an expectation of beholding him more—without a hope of penetrating the thick cloud which involved him, and with which he had ever baffled any attempt she had heard to discover his birth or misfortunes. She wept over this refinement on delicacy, and "loved him dearer ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... pigs as the women of Spain, and our aristocratic damsels who affect, to imitate them, are of poodles. She is never without one, which she nurses with great care. She is now in great tribulation, having lost her last by a croup, which baffled the skill of the most eminent physicians. And so deep was her sympathy for it, that she had it buried in a corner of the garden, with a rose-bush planted to its memory." This so excited the swine driver's pity, that ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... one extreme to the other. Crazed, tumultuous in his fury, and at first like a baffled tiger, he moderated his voice and manner until his companions wondered ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... made the African coast, the wind continued contrary, and they were baffled for many days; at last they espied a brig under the land, about sixteen miles off; her rig and appearance made Captain Wilson suspect that she was a privateer of some description or another, but it was calm, and they could not approach her. Nevertheless, Captain Wilson thought ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... joined them together. Could I but penetrate the mystery which lies at the heart of this fragile flower, I should possess the secret of the universe; I should understand the ancient miracle which has baffled wisdom from the beginning and will not discover itself to the ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... Even more absorbing, and in her eyes, more urgently necessary, was the task of dissecting and appraising the characters of the two young men who were favouring her with their attentions. And herein lay cause for much thinking and some perturbation. Youghal, for example, might have baffled a more experienced observer of human nature. Elaine was too clever to confound his dandyism with foppishness or self- advertisement. He admired his own toilet effect in a mirror from a genuine sense of pleasure in a thing good to look upon, just as he would feel a sensuous ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... more. Baffled and sick at heart, I left her, wondering if some happy inspiration would come before it was too late, and help ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... toward him, her head pillowed on her hand, and regarded him intently, a smile playing about the corners of her mouth. Again he searched for the truth in her eyes, and again he was baffled. ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... Let the trampled despot's fate Forewarn the rash, misguided band To sue for mercy, ere too late, Nor scatter ruin o'er the land. The baffled traitor, doomed to bear A people's hate, his colleagues' scorn, Defeated by his own despair, Will curse the hour ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... supremacy of the sea; and I hope the time is coming—I believe the hour is hastening—when we shall find that law and justice will guide the councils and will direct the policy of the Christian nations of the world. Nature will not be baffled because we are jealous of the United States—the decrees of Providence will not be overthrown by aught ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... herdsman with the staff in one hand and the book in the other. In the constituent Assembly of France was found a peasant whose sagacity was as distinguished as his integrity, whose blunt honesty over-awed and baffled the refinements of hypocritical patriots. The people of Paris followed him with acclamations, and the name of Pere Gerard will long be mentioned with admiration and ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... The baffled searchers had just reached the conclusion that he must have leaped from the train in spite of its speed and of Conductor Tobin's watchfulness, when Rod, who from his position in the doorway could look over the heads of the crowd surrounding the car ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... aided him to lose those pursuing vultures. The last of them fell off, baffled,—or afraid to go deeper into France. Now he emerged again into the clear air and the starlight. The land beneath him was a scudding blur, with a dark-green mass in its center, the ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... made before the attainders. The result was that a certain number of Irish estates were added to the possessions of a certain number of English families. But Munster was not planted. Burghley's policy, and Walsingham's resolution, and Ralegh's daring inventiveness were alike baffled by the conditions of a problem harder than the peopling of America or the conquest of India. Munster could not be made English. After all its desolation, it reverted in the main ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... which I have described, and in a fever besides. The favourable crisis must have occurred just about the time that I performed the magic touch; it certainly was a curious coincidence, yet I was not weak enough, even though a child, to suppose that I had baffled the evil chance by ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... that he felt I had supplied the clue which had baffled him, and asked me if I did not discover a chaos of a different sort in English life and literature since the armistice. I agreed that I did discover such a chaos, but that it seemed to me a chaos which was an end ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... first stroke of character to arrive without notice—having utterly baffled Peter at the Junction—and to be in complete possession of the manse on the return of Carmichael and his aunt from ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... had the courage to resist; the baffled foe can tell you a tale of constancy and firmness, which the bravest soldier might ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... lightning accompanied the darkness, and this time heavy rain. Baffled by the darkness, the multitude ran hither and thither, aimlessly, wildly, in search of their homes. Presently the vivid lightning flashes gave them fitful direction, and gradually ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... confronts us everywhere in nature, so we confess ourselves baffled when we attempt to explain the most wonderful of all the attributes of bird courtship—song. Birds have notes to call to one another, to warn of danger, to express anger and fear; but the highest development of their vocal efforts ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... the rebuke she would not trust herself to utter, by stripping the glove from the hand he had touched and dropping it disdainfully as if unworthy of its place. Gilbert had not looked for such an answer, and while it baffled him it excited his man's spirit to rebel against her silent denial. With a bitter laugh he snatched up ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... were arrested and put to death. The researches of Comte Daru have brought to light some hitherto unknown contemporary documents; but even the inexhaustible diligence of that most laborious, accurate, and valuable writer has been baffled in the hope of obtaining certainty as its reward; and he has been compelled to content himself with the addition of one hypothesis more to those already proposed in explanation of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 559, July 28, 1832 • Various
... the French that their adversaries were not to be despised. But Joinville and Baldwin of Rheims rendered their comrades good service. Hastily closing their ranks, they contrived not only to stay the rush, but to present so impenetrable a front, that the Saracens retired baffled to prepare for a ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... some persons grows out of benevolence disappointed, so there are certain natures—and Kenelm Chillingly's was perhaps one of them—in which indifferentism grows out of earnestness baffled. ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the old woman's effrontery, he wanted to crush her with angry eloquence; but her stolidity baffled him, and he went up to his room without a word. When he was alone, his anger soon cooled; but he found himself repeating those cruel words, and as he said them over, he began to fear that Florou was not so ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... a light has been found which can penetrate, so as to make a photographic record, through everything from a purse or a pocket to the walls of a room or a house, is news which cannot fail to startle everybody. That the eye of the physician or surgeon, long baffled by the skin, and vainly seeking to penetrate the unfortunate darkness of the human body, is now to be supplemented by a camera, making all the parts of the human body as visible, in a way, as the exterior, appears certainly to be a greater ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... thou leave the world, with powers Fresh, undiverted to the world without, Firm to their mark, not spent on other things; Free from the sick fatigue, the languid doubt, Which much to have tried, in much been baffled, brings. ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... characters. They have known joys and sorrows, failures and successes. They have hoped and feared. All that Beethoven poured into this music from his experience of poverty, of conflict with physical weakness and the cruel limitations of Fate, of baffled desire, of loneliness, of strong resolution, of immortal courage and faith, these players in their measure and ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... were equal to the emergency. When the commissioners came to decide on the relative merits of Springfield and another site a few miles away, they led them through brake, through brier, by mud knee-deep and by water-courses so exasperating that the wearied and baffled officials declared they would seek no further, and Springfield became the county-seat for all time; and greater destinies were in store for it through means not wholly dissimilar. Nature had made it merely a pleasant hunting-ground; the craft and the industry of its first ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... broad-shouldered man, a giant of a fellow. He knew all the trappers on this part of the coast, and where their trapping grounds lay. One of his neighbors, whom he spoke of as "Si," trapped in the neighborhood where the baffled men now found themselves. ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... Kennedy appeared, but they had made their getaway. Baffled, he turned and retraced his steps to ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... sat down on the stairs, and drew the fair little head to his shoulder. In a minute he knew it all,—the sudden fear that had assailed her, the creeping flight across the ward, and the baffled attempt at hiding. As he listened, his eyes grew grave and tender, for in the broken little confession he comprehended the child's unspoken abhorrence of the life she had left behind when she had come to the ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... child-bearing might be regarded by an ignorant and forsaken girl. Her position as the reputable and capable mother of a family being unassailable, no one could consider that kindness to the girl implied any countenancing of her offence. Anne, puzzled and baffled by the things which she had seen, felt herself in a larger sphere which could consider the fact of birth as a small matter for everyday occurrence and preparation, happen however ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... grasping the details of an antagonist's position she combined all the other qualities of an astute politician; thus, upon the desired consummation of her plots she brought to bear a sagacity, finesse, and energy that baffled all her adversaries. With her, politics became a passion and a necessity; even while in exile, her zeal was unflagging and she intrigued over all Europe. Scorning peril as well as all petty restraints, and characterized ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... incidents were not viewed too seriously by people of fashion—here the captain would delicately take a pinch, and offer his snuff-box (with the Cranstoun arms: gules, three cranes argent) to the baffled attorney. ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... feel like a blind man groping in a strange place, or worse, like a bull in a china-shop. He was prepared enough to find differences in the American and English points of view. But this thing that baffled him did not seem to have to do with that; it was something deeper, something very definite, he was sure—and yet, what was it? The worst of it was that he had a curious feeling as if they were all—that is, Lady Sherwood and ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... he said; "this is good news indeed! We have been baffled for years, stopped by this hiding-place which no one knew of. Then, when I have taken the schooner I'll land you with a party, and you shall show ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... mysterious Sphinx—which has baffled all inquisitive inquirers for centuries without number, stands in the sand only a. short distance from Cheops. Imagine, if you can, with what feelings one gazes upon it. It is as old as the Pyramids, perhaps older, and there it still looks out upon the green and fertile ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... mass (heralded over the desolate moor at uncertain times by uncanny bell-ringing), which the reprobate priest (who has been shot at the altar-steps before he could accomplish the Sacrifice of Reconciliation[452]) endeavours after his death to complete, being always baffled before the consecrating moment. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Jimmie's. They were in velveteen hunting costumes; we in the smartest of evening dress. Jimmie had given his fancy free rein in ordering the dinner, but, to his amazement and indignation, the little game being played by the rest of us so surprised and baffled our guests that Jimmie's delicacies were removed with course after course untasted. The officers searched the brilliant room with their eyes, hoping for a quiet nook, or balcony. There was none, and their disguise effectually prevented them from suggesting ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... America would disclose new sources of trade, promote many useful discoveries, and open a more direct communication with China and the English settlements in the East Indies, than that by the Cape of Good Hope or the Straits of Magellan. * This enterprising and intrepid traveller was twice baffled in individual efforts to accomplish this great journey. In 1774, he was joined in the scheme by Richard Whitworth, a member of Parliament, and a man of wealth. Their enterprise was projected on a broad and bold plan. ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... its foundations. She glanced in every direction, and then hurling the hateful green-and-white livery into the stage, she gathered up all traces of the shameful fray, and sweeping them into her gingham apron ran into the house in a storm of tears and baffled rage. ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... from the crowd into the shelter of the Piccadilly Tube. They had been walking the streets for an hour, and as much of their lives as they were able to tell one another had been told. Now they were both baffled and tired out. Of what had really happened to them they could say nothing, and their memories, disinterred in a kind of desperate haste ("Do you remember that row with Dickson about my hair, Robert?") had crumbled, after a moment's ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... was no other way to maintain this balance than by opposing armies. Nor did Richelieu seek to maintain the peace of Europe by force alone. Never was there a more astute and profound diplomatist. His emissaries were in every court, with intrigues very hard to be baffled. He equalled Metternich or Talleyrand in his profound dissimulation, for European diplomacy has ever been based on this. While he built up absolutism in France, he did not alienate other governments; so that, like Cromwell, he made his nation respected abroad. His conquest of Roussillon prepared ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... there was fighting of any serious kind. There has been no resistance on the part of the real people—nothing but sympathy for the President, I believe, if you except the natural mortification and disappointment of baffled parties. To judge from our own tradespeople: 'il a bien fait! c'est le vrai neveu de son oncle!' such phrases rung on every tone expressed the ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... she was staring at her reflection in the mirror, while he was waiting below on the pavement for her to come to the window, and as he walked away, she began to talk to the angry, baffled girl she saw ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... often called a pessimist, for his "heavy sadness of disillusion"; but he is never bitter. Finding the universe incomprehensible, he stands baffled and passive, with a tender sympathy, almost an envy, for those who still have faith. He is above all interesting as a sane and characteristic product of the latest social conditions. His is the tolerant, somewhat negative point of view of the man ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... train for Chicago; but not before Podmore had third-degreed him into abject fear. No, Clayton had had no hand in it; that was certain, and with that once established, the identity of the arch-thief remained a mystery which baffled investigation—especially when the situation called for ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... wobble him—at that precise moment his conscience flares into function, and so finishes his business. First he sees difficulty, then he sees the danger, then he sees wrong. The result is that he slinks off in trepidation, and another vampire is baffled of her prey. ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... disorder, the four Lhari clustering together in a furious babble, then hastily leaving the room. Bart stood waiting, feeling empty and cold. Vorongil's stare baffled ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... been particularly easy for either of us," returned Hawtrey, with grimness. "Anyway, it seems that I'm only distressing you." There was a baffled, puzzled look in his face. "Naturally, this is so unexpected that I don't know what to say. I'll come back when I feel I've grasped ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... partakes a little of the nature of battering, and danger may be apprehended when next they meet. It is difficult to give any account of this remarkable correspondence; it is too far away from us, and perhaps not yet far enough, in point of time and manner; the imagination is baffled by these stilted literary utterances, warming, in bravura passages, into downright truculent nonsense. Clarinda has one famous sentence in which she bids Sylvander connect the thought of his mistress with the changing phases of the year; it ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... distinguished by the general with marks of particular regard, and became the admiration of all his comrades. Under the banners of this adventurous warrior did Tigranes toil with various fortunes during the space of many years; sometimes victorious in the fight, sometimes baffled; at one time crowned with conquest and glory, at another beset with dangers, covered with wounds, and hunted like a wild beast through rocks and forests; yet still the native courage of his temper sustained ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... its source. Philosophy was but another name for uncertainty; and after the mind had successively deified Nature and its own conceptions, without any practical result but toilsome occupation; when the reality it sought, without or within, seemed ever to elude its grasp, the intellect, baffled in its higher flights, sought advantage and repose in aiming at truth of a lower but more ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... lost neither yet," replied Wyvil, who had completely recovered his spirits, and joined in the general merriment occasioned by the foregoing occurrence. "I have been baffled, not defeated. What say you to an exchange of mistresses? I am so diverted with your adventure, that I am half inclined to give you the grocer's daughter for Disbrowe's wife. She is a superb creature—languid as a Circassian, ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... to effect a lodgement and maintain themselves for some years at the mouth of the Loire. Together they started upon an extensive campaign, the objective point of which was again Paris. But the powerful fortifications baffled the Norsemen, who possessed no machinery of destruction fit to cope with such defences. The siege had therefore to be abandoned. Dijon and Chartres also made a successful resistance. But a long chain of smaller cities surrendered, and the country was ravaged far and wide. The peasants took to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... she might feel humiliated at the baseness of such enjoyment, she clung to it from habit or from corruption, and each day she hungered after them the more, exhausting all felicity in wishing for too much of it. She accused Leon of her baffled hopes, as if he had betrayed her; and she even longed for some catastrophe that would bring about their separation, since she had not the courage to make up her mind to ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... replied, baffled and hopeless, "I've nothing more to say, except that, generally speaking, the man who ought to be avoided is just the sort of person that my own refractory nature clings to with the fellow-feeling which makes us wondrous ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... Stephen (Vol. ii., p. 407.) asks for information respecting the "Gospel Oak Tree at Kentish Town." Permit me to connect with it another Query relative to the foundation of the old St. Pancras Church, as the period of its erection has hitherto baffled research. From the subjoined extracts, it appears to be of considerable antiquity. The first extract is from a MS. volume which I purchased at the sale of the library of the Rev. ...
— Notes and Queries, 1850.12.21 - A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, - Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. • Various
... solitude growing louder each night, poverty growing louder, obstinacy growing louder, Mrs. Brigg growing louder. What an orchestra! Cuckoo had not seen Julian once. She had seen the doctor, to be told of his baffled efforts, of Julian's escape from all his friends, of Valentine's declaration of the stone going down in the sea, of utter deadlock, utter stagnation. For the doctor treated Cuckoo frankly as a brave woman, not deceitfully as a timid child ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... of food and water; the body would have crumbled. To have planned this for months, and then to be balked by something as visible yet as elusive as quicksilver! Born in the same mudhole, and still Boris Karlov the avenger could not understand Stefani Gregor the fiddler. Perhaps what baffled him was that so valiant a spirit should be housed in so weak a body. It was natural that he, Boris, with the body of a Carpathian bear, should have a soul to match. But that Stefani, with his paper body, should mock him! The ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... three P.M. the Confederates massed troops in two columns, one on each side the road, flanked by a line some eight hundred yards long, in the woods. An impetuous charge was made to within twenty yards of the abattis, but it was baffled ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... stared at him in baffled, unhappy silence, and in the pause, the door quickly and silently opened and Christine herself entered. She looked calm, almost Olympian, as she laid her hand on ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... the road, invisible because of the trees. Again and again his mind reviewed the strange events of the evening, unable to arrive at any definite conclusion. The harder he sought to delve into the mystery, the more obscure it became. The young woman herself thoroughly baffled him. If this was merely a test, it was certainly a most unusual one, and he hoped he had met the requirements to her entire satisfaction. He already frankly acknowledged to himself, at least, that she ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... But, on the other hand, as the gauger's object was to take them, if possible, by surprise, it frequently happened that his appearance was as unexpected as it was unwelcome. It was then that the prompt ingenuity of the people was fully seen, felt, and understood by the baffled exciseman, who too often had just grounds for bitterly cursing their talent ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... and over the child's face there came a puzzled expression, as if she were trying to recall something which baffled all her efforts. But she did not forget the name, and that evening Mrs. Crawford heard her singing ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... a sigh of relief, he continued: "I pursued my way home like a drunken man. Every attempt to approach the Queen or her attendants was baffled, but I learned from Charmian's clever Nubian that Cleopatra had been permitted, in Caesar's name, to choose the palace she desired to occupy, and had ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
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