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More "Clew" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the house was quite unaltered, and I knew every leaf in the garden. The flush in the sky had turned to gold and the air throbbed with light as I hid my portmanteau under the rosebush by the gate and stole up to the study-door. I would not give so palpable a clew to my identity as that: I wished to appear like one who had dropped in for a moment to ask the hour or the loan of a late journal. I rapped at the shutters that enclosed the outer door, and waited in a tremor of expectation: there was no response. Again I rapped, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... will speak to the hearts of thousands of women all through the country, and particularly to the women "out West," as they have already to my own. This problem has been revolved in my mind again and again, but no clew has appeared by which to solve it; and I have laid it down hopelessly, feeling that there is no alternative but to submit and carry the burden as long as strength endures, and seeing no outlook for the future but in a brief period of old age, when ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... pitiable: D'Harmental unquestionably had there, ready to his hand, all the means necessary to the happy completion of his plot, but he had, in killing the captain, broken with his own hand the thread which should have served him as a clew to them, and, the center link broken, the whole chain had ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... ahoy!'' was sounded down the fore scuttle and the after hatchway, and, hurrying upon deck, we found a large black cloud rolling on toward us from the southwest, and darkening the whole heavens. "Here comes Cape Horn!'' said the chief mate; and we had hardly time to haul down and clew up before it was upon us. In a few minutes a heavier sea was raised than I had ever seen, and as it was directly ahead, the little brig, which was no better than a bathing-machine, plunged into it, and all the forward part of her was under water; the sea pouring in through ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... functions of a professor may appear obscure and exaggerated to one who has not studied at a German university. But it gives the clew to the entire German system of university education, and accounts in great part for the high standard of scholarship. Only in part, for the innate proneness of the German mind to research must be credited with some share in the result. It is safe to say ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... your clew," said Stella, turning to Ted. "The fellow who posted this notice was disguised in a wolfskin so that he could sneak up to the house unnoticed by the Chinaman, or, if seen, he would make a ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... refused to follow her. She jerked at it in vain. She dared not let her clew break, because if she should lose the lover supposed to be holding its other end, she would die unmarried. "Let me see you! let me see you!" she cried, eagerly, and a figure drew near her in the darkness. An arm covered with ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Chic-a-dee-dee! I think old Caesar must have heard In northern Gaul my dauntless bird, And, echoed in some frosty wold, Borrowed thy battle-numbers bold. And I will write our annals new, And thank thee for a better clew, I, who dreamed not when I came here To find the antidote of fear, Now hear thee say in Roman key, Paean! Veni, ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... simply presenting the God of the Bible! I can never thank you enough, Miss Marsden, for your strong good sense that has dissipated my fog-bank of words. I think I see the way into light. You have placed a clew in my hands which I trust will lead, not only me, but others into peace. I fear I did present to you a calm, unimpassioned, inflexible Being this morning,—a God of purposes and decrees and remorseless will; and I have felt before that this was ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... try the directory first go-off. If I didn't find him there I'd write to some of his folks, if I knew any of 'em, and get a clew. If I didn't succeed then I'd try the police. ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... as he and Lennox gripped each other's hands hard and in silence, a soft, rustling movement was heard. For the men were springing to their feet and arranging their pouches and belts, before giving their rifles a thorough rub to get rid of the clinging clew. ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... glasses. All Nihilists wear glasses when traveling. And then I had a good clew. A minute before the departure from Paris I had a friend go into the corridor of the sleeping-car, a reporter who would do anything I said without even wanting to know why. I said, 'You call out suddenly and very loud, "Hello, here is Rouletabille."' So he called, 'Hello, here is ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... no clew to the source of this great and sudden change of climate. Various suggestions have been made—among others, that formerly the inclination of the earth's axis was greater, or that a submersion of the ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... questioning glance. It was almost as if she were asking "Have we known each other before?" Irene could not help looking at her, and ransacking the side cupboards of her memory to try to light upon some forgotten clew as to why the face should ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... made for the grand fleet to anchor, All in the Downs that night for to meet; So cast off your shank-painter, let go your cat's-topper, Hawl up your clew-garnets, let fly tack ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... explanation which a friend was pouring into his ear. Standing at the moment with my knee on Madame de Bruhl's stool, and remembering very well the meeting on the stairs, I conceived in a flash that the man was jealous; but whether he had yet heard my name, or had any clew to link me with the person who had rescued Mademoiselle de la Vire from his clutches, I could not tell. Nevertheless his presence led my thoughts into a new channel. The determination to punish him began to take form in my mind, and very quickly I regained my composure. Still I was for ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... making sail with all possible speed, got clear away. Meantime a shot had brought the Norfolk to on the Falmouth's starboard bow, where she was immediately boarded. On her decks an ominous state of things prevailed. Her crew would not assist to clew up the sails, the anchor had been seized to the chain-plates and could not be let go, and when the gang from the Falmouth attempted to cut the buoy ropes with which it was secured, the "crew attacked them with hatchets and treenails, made sail and obliged them to quit the ship." ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... spectroscopic character, and so forth—or given a knowledge of the molecular constitution, together with the general physical and chemical properties of compounds—in other words, given such knowledge of the element or compound as may be learned in a laboratory—does such knowledge afford us any clew whereby to predicate the probable action of the element or of the compound respectively on the living body? The researches of Blake, Rabuteau, Richet, Bouchardat, Fraser, and Crum-Brown were discussed, the results of their observations ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... each other with the sly curiosity of a police officer on the lookout for a clew, when they are quite convinced of the newness of each other's gloves, of each other's waistcoat and of the taste with which their cravats are tied; when they are pretty certain that neither of them is down in the world, they link arms and if they start from the Theater des Varietes, they have ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... the matter. Parker had disappeared; he had gone to New York and there drawn heavily on his father. The journey which Colonel Hitchcock had made with his daughter had been largely for the purpose of finding Parker, and had failed. The boy was ashamed to come back. Now there was a clew, but it seemed unwise for the father to follow it ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... amazement. That she was free temporarily at least, could not be gainsaid. Her captors had not seen fit to bind her and she now stood absolutely untouched by anyone. The shooting, the fighting, had confused her. She had only seen Marteau as an accomplice and friend of her assailants, she had no clew to his apparent change of heart. She did not know whether she had merely exchanged masters or what had happened. Smiling ironically at her bewilderment, which he somehow resented in his heart, ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... stranger's grave had to be provided. In the meantime the friends and relatives of the missing girl had been making every effort to locate her, no idea having occurred to them that she was going South. A loving brother finally got hold of a clew, which he followed up so successfully that he at last solved the mystery. He arrived in New Orleans on November 1st, and when taken out to the grave that had been provided for the stranger who had died just ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... D——, at Vienna once, did me an evil turn, which I told him, quite good-humoredly, that I should remember. So, as I knew he would feel some curiosity in regard to the identity of the person who had outwitted him, I thought it a pity not to give him a clew. He is well acquainted with my MS., and I just copied into the middle of the blank ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... farm-house that no one had seen a man with a boy in his arms or walking by him pass that way, he proceeded down a long and not much frequented grassy lane at a jog-trot, but with small expectation of finding any clew that might guide him to the discovery of the lost child. He had ridden on thus about half a mile, when he paused at a place where another grassy lane crossed at right angles the one down which he ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... rolling-pin, rundle. cone, conoid[obs3]; pear shape, egg shape, bell shape. sphere, globe, ball, boulder, bowlder[obs3]; spheroid, ellipsoid; oblong spheroid; oblate spheroid, prolate spheroid; drop, spherule, globule, vesicle, bulb, bullet, pellet, pelote[obs3], clew, pill, marble, pea, knob, pommel, horn; knot (convolution) 248. curved surface, hypersphere; hyperdimensional surface. V. render spherical &c.adj.; form into a sphere, sphere, roll into a ball; give rotundity &c. n.; round. Adj. rotund; round &c. (circular) 247; cylindric, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... proved to be a total failure. It was best, we thought, not to mince matters with her; and we stated minutely how time after time the anchorage of the schooner had been precisely located, and then in a little while had been unlocated again. She saw, as we did, that as a clew Old Jacob was not much of a success, and also that he was about the only thing in the least like a clew that we possessed. Realizing this latter fact, and knowing that his great age made his death probable at any moment, Susan ...
— Our Pirate Hoard - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... been found in a tomb, with their six faces marked with words instead of pips. He showed that these words were identical with the first six digits in the Altaic branch of the Turanian family of speech. Guided by this clew, it was easy to prove that the grammar and vocabulary of the 3000 Etruscan inscriptions were also Altaic. The words denoting kindred, the pronouns, the conjugations, and the declensions, corresponded closely to those ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... smitten down with cruel falsehood, and even her father is convinced of her guilt, he is the first to suspect that "the practice of it lies in John the bastard." With his just faith in the honour of the Prince and of Claudio, his quick judgment and native sagacity forthwith hit upon the right clew to the mystery. Much the same, all through, is to be said of Beatrice; who approves herself a thoroughly brave and generous character. The swiftness and brilliancy of wit upon which she so much prides herself are at once forgotten in resentment and vindication of her injured kinswoman. ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... optimistic. Day by day crept by without a clew to the missing girl being discovered; without development of any sort. The Inspector informed Mr. Merrick that "it began to ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... ancient prophets also, his heart was ever burdened by the waywardness of the people whom he exhorted and warned. In young Waldo appeared a joyousness which nothing could quench. From the moment she obtained a clew to his unexpected behavior, everything in his manner accorded with the surgeon's explanation. In his boyish face and expression there was not a trace of the fanatical or abnormal. He seemed to think of Heaven as he did of his own home, and the thought of going to the one ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... dog," Leigh said, filling an impressive pause with the first chance comment that came to him. Afterward he wondered at the obstinate torpidity of his mind, for not even the reference to her deliberate look and fine eyes gave him the clew. All this talk of early hardship and of street-cars had put the narrator for the time on another level from that he now occupied in the world, and made his past seem his present. The very confession, and the manner of it, belittled the confessor, and ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... the violence of the attack and to the particular form of disease with which the animal is affected. In the superficial, or cutaneous, form the presence of a swollen tongue, throat, and dewlap, or even of the lower portion of the legs, gives us a clew to the trouble. An entire loss of appetite occurs, and in milk cows there is a diminution of the milk secretion. The temperature may be only slightly elevated, but it is usually very high. Salivation is set up by the inflammation of the ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... stone, while they crowded for a closer peep at the mysterious dancers in a hand-organ. From that day to this the whereabouts of the dollships has remained a solemn secret from the knowledge of all but the Midgetts. And it was to them Bunch had gone for a clew ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... locality of that little domicile where his plainly clad mate is evidently sitting, it is all we will ask of him. But this he seems in no wise disposed to do. Here and there, and up and down; we follow him, often losing him, and as often refinding him by his song; but the clew to his nest, how shall we get it? Does he never go home to see how things are getting on, or to see if his presence is not needed, or to take madam a morsel of food? No doubt he keeps within earshot, ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... owe you for anything, Mr. Webb?" she suddenly asked, groping for some clew to this ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... well our position just now, I think I can steer to it. Then, as to working the vessel, it is true I cannot hoist the sails single-handed, but luckily we have enough of sail set already; and if it should come on to blow a squall, I could at least drop the peaks of the main and fore sails, and clew them up partially without help, and throw her head close into the wind, so as to keep her all shaking till the violence of the squall is past. And if we have continued light breezes, I'll rig up a complication of blocks and fix them to the top-sail halyards, so that I shall be able to hoist the sails ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... been insane for a number of years. He was in an asylum over at Dayton, Ohio. There you see I have let it slip out! All of this took place in Ohio, right here in Ohio. There is a clew if you ever get the notion of looking ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... though wrought of the intertwining strands of each. Again she saw the dark face in the gateway. It was a mere picture in a frame, set for an artist's joy. Then it seemed a summons, calling her to unfamiliar paths,—a prophecy, a clew. Again she heard his voice,—an echo made of all these things, and more. She tried to force herself to think of him merely as an artist would think; how the lines of the shoulders and the throat flowed upward, like dark ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... inquest. Soon after the inspector came from Banff. And the next morning a skillful detective arrived from London. And the investigation commenced in earnest. Many witnesses were examined; extensive searches were made, and all measures taken to find out some clew to the murderer, but in vain. The police held possession of the premises for nearly a week, and the coroner's jury sat day after day; but all to no purpose, as far as the discovery of the perpetrator of the crime was concerned. This seemed one of the obstinate murders that, in spite ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... had been revealed to Peter, and he now thought he had the clew to the charm. The good dwarf, Glassmanikin, only helped people who were ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... time there came on a squall with rain, which almost blinded us; the sail was taken in very neatly, the clew-lines, chock-a-block, bunt-lines and leech-lines well up, reef-tackles overhauled, rolling-tackles taut, and all as it should be. The men lied out on the yard, the squall wore worse and worse, but they were handing ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... fished, played upon the beach, or explored the neighborhood. When it rained, which was seldom, they cleaned up the house, read books and old letters, ransacking trunks and drawers trying to discover the secret of the departed owner. But in vain. The departed owner had been careful to leave no clew to his identity or of his reason for abiding there. They did find, however, between the leaves of a book, a little chart of the point done by his own hand apparently, and ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... closeted with Mr. Damsel all day, but so shrewdly and cunningly had the express robber covered his tracks, that nothing but the bare description of the man could be used as a clew. ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... that boiling, seething world of Rome, now more than ever disturbed by the inroads of strangers eagerly looking forward to the excitements of the amphitheatre, it would be in vain to make even deliberate and careful search for a lost slave, unless some clew should be left behind. Yes, she must surely have that clew; and doubtless she purposed to use it as soon as daylight came. Let her go now, therefore. It were idle to call her back only for new flight ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the express purpose of preventing anything of the kind did not improve matters. He hated to put the news on the wire—to admit to headquarters that the ranchers apparently had caught him napping. But, having dispatched his telegram, he set his energies to finding some clew to the perpetrators of ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... six men on horseback bearing up full in his teeth, upon which he threw his sails aback, and prepared for action; that he hailed them at a considerable distance, and bade them bring to; when they came alongside, notwithstanding his hail, he ordered them to clew up their courses, and furl their topsails, otherwise he would be foul of their quarters; that, hearing this salute, they luffed all at once, till their cloth shook in the wind; then he hallooed in a loud voice, that his sweetheart, Besselia Mizzen, were the broad pendant ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... he had a clew to her interest, and followed it deftly. In a few minutes he had come about into her seat. He talked of sales of clothing, his travels, Chicago, and ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... understood what had taken place. That which he supposed to be the head of an Indian was some object presented by the crouching warrior with the purpose of drawing his fire, and it succeeded in doing so. The flash of the negro's rifle revealed where he stood, and the Shawanoe, who was watching for that clew, lost no time in firing, missing by a hair's-breadth a fatal result. Thus it came about that not the least execution was done on ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... also had the honor locally to represent. Years before, Smith had once visited Schuyler, and at that time had met the small, grizzled individual who now stood before him. He had not, however, the slightest idea of the identity of his visitor, and waited a brief moment for a clew to ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... to bed, after hanging the garment before the bedroom fire, will see the apparition of his or her object of affection turn the sleeve to dry the other side. To find the name of one's future spouse, one has nothing more to do than to go on Hallow-e'en to a barn or kiln, throw into it a clew of blue thread, which the person begins to wind up into another clew, having of course kept hold of one end of the thread. Before the winding operation is completed, some one will take hold of the thread, and on the question being asked, "Who holds?" an answer will be returned, in which ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... the earnest contents, convinced me that I now held the clew of that mystery which had baffled me so long, and that the missing letter said to have been lost at Le Noir's Landing was at last in my possession. It needed not this additional proof of treachery to convince me that my suspicions had been correct, and that, next to ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... except in the discharge of his professional duties. Various and conflicting opinions were expressed as to whither he had gone, in testing which I had visited no less than twenty cities, making careful inquiries, especially among medical men. Occasionally I struck what seemed to be a promising clew, which only increased my confusion and left me more hopelessly in the dark. I had reported my movements to Mr. Earl as often as once a week and I received letters from him frequently, encouraging me to continue the search and enclosing money with which to do so. But although ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... onely in a wearye body, to conteine a minde distraught through troublesome thoughts, breathing out hollow and deepe sighes, desiring helpe of the pittifull Cretensian Ariadne, who for the destroying of hir monstrous brother the Mynotaur[A] gaue vnto the deceitfull Theseus a clew of thred, to conduct him foorth of the intricate laborinth, that I also by some such meanes might be deliuered ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... the long sticks out of her, and the sails were gaping open and splitting in every direction. The mizzen-topsail, which was a comparatively new sail and close reefed, split from head to foot in the bunt; the foretopsail went in one rent from clew to caring, and was blowing to tatters; one of the chain bobstays parted; the spritsailyard sprung in the slings, the martingale had slued away off to leeward; and owing to the long dry weather the lee rigging ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... found her eyes searching the shape beside her for a clew to the answer of this lamentable mystery. In her covert scrutiny there was no morbid desire to spy upon another's hidden miseries—our Miss Smith was too well-bred for that—only was there a sudden quickened pity and with that pity a yearning to offer, if opportunity served, any small ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... officers who should be fully responsible for their actions. Indeed, it ought to be simpler to detect and punish offenders than in the case of mere individuals unincorporated, for the very fact that a corporation keeps books and acts under an elaborate set of by-laws and regulations gives a clew to its proceedings, and indicates a source of information as to all its acts. One clerk may therefore reveal, and properly reveal, books and letters which shall incriminate "those above"; one employee may show ten thousand ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... consecrated crew Some more seraphic shade Lend me a favourable clew, Now mists my eyes invade. Why, having filled the world with fame, Left you so little of ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... effort to learn who the mysterious interloper was, but he wholly failed to obtain any clew to his identity. He had jumped to the conclusion that Dorothy's mysterious lover was a man of low degree. He had taken for granted that he was an adventurer whose station and person precluded him from openly wooing his daughter. He did not know that the heir to Rutland ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... with an interest inspired by all I had been hearing of the poor priest, and turned over the little volumes of his humble library to trace, if I might, some clew to his habits in his readings. They were all, however, of one cast and character—religious tracts and offices, covered with annotations and remarks, and showing, by many signs the most careful and frequent perusal. It was easy to see that ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... our sailing-master. "Clew up the topsails! Let the flying jib run down! Back the jib over to windward and run down the foresail!" And so was our schooner Sophie Sutherland hove to off the Japan coast, near Cape ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... a Godward development. St. John, the disciple of love, teaches very plainly that he who says he loves God must prove it by also loving man. If the whole of our training here is to be in loving and in living out our love, we certainly have the clew to the heavenly life. We shall continue in the doing of the things we have here learned to do. Life in glory will be earth's Christian life intensified and perfected. Heaven will not be a place of idle repose. Inaction can never ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... she sought a clew to the mystery and found none. What had come to Timar? His countenance betrayed something like happiness; what was he concealing under his care for Timea? In company he was bright and cheerful, unconstrained and ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... moment in California, the former home of Virgie, and could perhaps ascertain what mystery overshadowed her former life that had made it necessary to conceal her true name. This would perhaps give a clew how to proceed further, and, as we know, her letter was written at once, and brought an immediate reply. Further correspondence elicited information which only tended to strengthen Lady Linton in her evil designs, and Mrs. Farnum was advised to proceed directly to New ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... [p 22] For the more I consider, the more I'm perplex'd: However, thus much I will venture to tell; A female alone could have written so well." Sir Argus believ'd the Dame might have guess'd right; Yet, entre-nous, thought her not very polite: But that was a trifle; he now had a clew To assist his research; and more satisfied grew: Since the OWL'S well-known wisdom, and vast penetration, From time ...
— The Peacock and Parrot, on their Tour to Discover the Author of "The Peacock At Home" • Unknown
... few of our cavalry wore, when on Indian campaign, the forage-cap with its crossed sabres and distinguishing letters. Nothing in the dress or accoutrements of the two men thus advancing to meet the Indian emissaries would give to the latter any clew as to the troop or regiment to which they belonged. Could they see the horses, however, the matter would be settled at once. The U. S. brand, with that of the number of the regiment and letter of the troop showed on every ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... minor (op. 31, No. 2) meant, he received for an answer only the enigmatical remark: 'Read Shakespeare's "Tempest."' Many a student and commentator has since read the 'Tempest' in the hope of finding a clew to the emotional contents which Beethoven believed to be in the two works, so singularly associated, only to find himself baffled. It is a fancy, which rests, perhaps, too much on outward things, but still one full of suggestion, that had Beethoven said: 'Hear my C minor symphony,' he would ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... care?" thinking I now had the clew to Ned's savage manner for the week past. "When did ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... America are still an unsolved riddle. Those of Babylon have been slowly pieced together like a puzzle, a puzzle to which the learned world has given its most able thought. Yet they are not fully understood. In Egypt we have had the luck to stumble on a clew, the Rosetta Stone, which makes ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... archway in the Strand. Such a man, under such misfortunes, may have a house, but he is never in his house; and has an address where letters may be left; but only simpletons go with the hopes of seeing him. Only a few of the faithful know where he is to be found, and have the clew to his hiding-place. So, after the disputes with his wife, and the misfortunes consequent thereon, to find Sir Francis Clavering at home was impossible. "Ever since I hast him for my book, which is fourteen pound, he don't come home till three o'clock, and purtends ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... language, an expression of thought as well as a condition of thought. Imagine a being free of a three-dimensional world trying to converse with a being still limited to a two-dimensional world, and we have a clew to what I think may have happened after the crucifixion of Jesus. The three-dimensional body would behave in a manner altogether unaccountable to the two-dimensional watcher. The latter, knowing only length and breadth, and nothing of up or down, would see his three-dimensional ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... when they again met, Byrne could give him no definite information; he did not even tell him that he thought he had a slight clew which he ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... sought the ground giving up the problem. Others continued to gaze at him either with wonder, or hopeful of extracting from his face some clew to his involved and incomprehensible moral attitude. They suddenly felt as if he had confessed himself of an alien species, a creature as remote from them and their ideals as a ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... step-mother might not behave well to them, and perhaps would do them some mischief, he took them to a lonely castle standing in the middle of a wood. There they remained hidden, for the road to it was so hard to find that the king himself could not have found it, had it not been for a clew of yarn, possessing wonderful properties, that a wise woman had given him; when he threw it down before him, it unrolled itself and showed him the way. And the king went so often to see his dear children, that the queen was displeased at his absence; and she became curious ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... surprised. She had had an idea that Mildred was not answerable for that postscript, but Mildred herself had no clew to the mystery, never having been told of Milly's written communication of a year ago. She sickened at the possibility that in some moment of aberration she might have written words meant for another on the ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... her face on her palms and considered the matter. Even with her habit of dealing with facts rather than fancies, she still found life a most perplexing and complex affair. The only help she gained toward understanding it was that clew taught her by her mother of matching the days and the events as one matches a fascinating puzzle. Out of this thought she spoke at last, though quite to the bewilderment of ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... the necessary clew to the castaway's identity in this preliminary search, she went on resolutely, dragging the two suit-cases over to the lighted corner and unlocking them with the keys taken from ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... while he might fear for his friend some chance repute of insanity, he had greater terrors than that. As to their nature I had no clew; nor was it my affair to be guessing; but whatever they were, the days of security at Les Trois Pigeons had somewhat eased Professor Keredec's mind in regard to them. At least, his anxiety was sufficiently assuaged to risk dining ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... sparkled merrily through the stringent air; the small, round moon shone like silver; little breaths of dreaming wind wandered across the pointed fir-tops, as the pilgrims toiled bravely onward, following their clew of light through ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... chemical combination because we have no experience upon which to found it. It is so fundamentally unlike a mechanical mixture that even our imagination can give us no clew to it. It is thinkable that the particles of two or more substances however fine, mechanically mixed, could be seen and recognized if sufficiently magnified; but in a chemical combination, say like ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... of her fair hair suggested weariness—sleep, perhaps. But as the young man hesitated on the threshold the sound of a muffled sob escaped the quiet figure. He turned noiselessly and went away, sorry and ashamed, because unwittingly he had stumbled upon the clew ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... one was in sight except his schoolmates returning from Lincoln Hall. To these he reported his loss, and a dozen of the Ridgleyites made a hurried search of the campus; they investigated all the shaded corners and unlighted doorways but found nothing that in any way offered a clew to the identity of ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... not found—a big slouch hat being the only tangible clew unearthed to a real personality. And this Walter dug out of a hole near a rear ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... "Dutchy" Mack and the "Black Diamond," and then he read carefully how "Abe" Hubbard, alias "Jimmie the Gent," a burglar, had broken jail in New Jersey, and had been traced to New York. There was a description of the man, and Van Bibber breathed quickly as he read it. "The detectives have a clew of his whereabouts," the account said; "if he is still in the city they are confident of recapturing him. But they fear that the same friends who helped him to break jail will probably assist him from the country or to get ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... of this. He had not told any one that he intended to retire to the circus cars earlier than usual. The chances were that he would not be missed till the circus company had reached the next town on their route, ten miles away. Then there would be no clew to his whereabouts, and even if there were he might be killed before any help could come to him. So far as he had been able to observe, the miners were—a portion of them, at least—a lawless set of men, who were not likely ...
— The Young Acrobat of the Great North American Circus • Horatio Alger Jr.
... overwhelmed a very worthy but very impetuous nobleman, Baron Jasto Dangloss, chief of police in Edelweiss. He could only sputter his excuses and withdraw, swearing to catch the arch-conspirator or to die in the attempt. Not a soul in the castle, not a being in all Graustark could offer the faintest clew to the identity of the man or explain his motive. No one knew a Michael, who might have been inadvertently addressed as "your" possible "Highness." The greatest wonder reigned; vexation, uneasiness and ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... the helm!" cried Morgan the instant the boat was alongside. "Swing the mainyard and get the canvas off her. Aloft, topmen, settle away the halliards! Clew ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... It is a great source of strength to know our weakness, to make ourselves, if not the masters, the pilots of the soul of the race to which we are bound, which bears us like a vessel upon its waters,—to make fate our instrument, to use it as a sail which we furl or clew up according to the wind. When Grazia closed her eyes, she could hear within herself more than one disturbing voice, of a tone familiar to her. But in her healthy soul even the dissonances were blended to form a profound, soft ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... just see what we can learn. The doctor's sure to hold an audience with Appleby and Sam in the big front office, and he always has a window open, for Merry is a fresh air fiend, you know. Some of the talk will leak out and it may give us a clew." ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... whole college of swaddling teachers knocked into smidhereens. John Tuam, your sowl, has tuck his pasthoral staff in his hand and heathen them out o' Connaught as fast as ever Pathric druve the sarpints into Clew Bay. ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... wrote George E. Ellis in the "Memorial History of Boston,"[2] "who attempts to trace the springs, the occasions, and the directing forces of the revolt ... cannot find his clew a year short of the date when the former self-governed Colony of Massachusetts Bay became a Royal Province." He is right in pointing out that in 1692 the struggle took open form. Yet even then the controversy ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... found that had long been sought for by a thousand restless yearnings and vague desires, less of the heart than mind; not as when youth discovers the one to be beloved, but rather as when the student, long wandering after the clew to some truth in science, sees it glimmer dimly before him, to beckon, to recede, to allure, and to wane again. She fell at last into unquiet slumber, vexed by deformed, fleeting, shapeless phantoms; and, waking, as the sun, through a veil of hazy cloud, glinted with a ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... geologist."[365] In fact, no truly scientific geologist pretends that it stands on the same level with any authentic history, much less with the Bible record; inasmuch as the discovery of a single new fact may overturn the whole theory. "It furnishes us with no clew by which to unravel the unapproachable mysteries of creation. These mysteries belong to the wondrous Creator, and to him only. We attempt to theorize upon them, and to reduce them to law, and all nature rises ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... to Miss Price, who murmured something about Julian's being so badly ventilated, but gave him no clew as to her particular branch of the profession. Miss Snell, however, supplied all details. It seemed Miss Price was sharing Miss Snell's studio, having been sent over by the Lynxville, Massachusetts, Sumner Prize Fund, for which she had successfully competed, ...
— Different Girls • Various
... she was drowned," said the Chevalier gravely. "Someone must have been about, to save her. Do not be discouraged, Mademoiselle, if our search for Louise takes several days. We are without a clew—groping, like her, in the dark. But we shall find ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... clew to the character of a nation is gained by a study of the nature of the gods it worships, no less valuable an insight is gained by a study of its heroes. Such a study confirms the impression that the emotional life is fundamental in the Japanese temperament. ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... itself directly in front of them, and close to the briars. It was of a round shape, and looked like a large clew of hair or wool of a greyish colour, half-buried in the ground. Whether it had been there before, neither Basil, nor Lucien, nor Francois, could tell. It might have been without their noticing it, as their attention was so occupied with the hares and the lynx. Francois said he had noticed it ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... as they might lead. He set off at a round pace, stopping now and then to assure himself, and presently stood perplexed near the Spouting Cave, for there they ceased. As he was looking about for some clew that might set him right once more, a faint movement behind him caused him to turn, and he saw a figure slinking along from rock to rock, bending low, as if seeking to be concealed: Oponui! Why should he be alone? Why should he hide like that? Why was he trying to escape? The truth flashed upon ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... the citizens, too, gave no clew to the country to which the place belonged; there were as many Egyptians among them as Greeks, Syrians, and negroes. Asiatics appeared in the majority only in the market place, where the dealers were just leaving their stands to secure their ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Compton or not. Yet why should he? The old man would become excited, and feel all sorts of wild hopes about discovering his wife and son. Could it be possible that the Italian after so many years could now afford any clew whatever? Certainly it was not ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... permission to attempt the capture of the escaped prisoner, Bute; but the murderer had disappeared, leaving no clew. Brandt learned that the slums of large cities and several mining camps had been searched in vain, also that the trains running east had been carefully watched. We need not try to follow his processes of thought, nor seek to learn how he soon came to the ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... by a boom. The operation of balancing the mizen is performed by lowering the yard or gaff a little, then rolling up a small portion of the sail at the peak or upper corner, and lashing it about one-fifth down towards the mast. A boom main-sail is balanced by rolling up a portion of the clew, or lower aftermost corner, and fastening it strongly to the boom.—N.B. It is requisite in both cases to wrap a piece of old canvas round the sail, under the lashing, to prevent its ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... whole shore of the lake was twinkling with lights borne high in the hands of men who were searching. Two boats were rowing back and forth on the lake, with bright lights at stern and prow; and loud shouts filled the air. No answer; no clew: at last, from the island, came a pistol shot,—the signal agreed on. Every man stood still and listened. Slowly the boats came back to shore, drawing behind them Hetty's boat; bringing one of the oars, and also Hetty's ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... to ascertain by careful looking how the planks had come to give way under the hoofs of his steed. But there was no clew that he could discover. The bridge was not a carefully made one, and it would have been an easy matter for any one to so loosen a couple of the planks that the least motion would send ...
— Jack of the Pony Express • Frank V. Webster
... been heard from, and search as he would, Richard could find no trace of her whatever. She had effectually covered her tracks, so that not even a clew to her whereabouts was found. No one had seen her, or any person like her, and the suspense and anxiety of those three—Richard, Aunt Barbara, and Andy—who loved her so well, was getting to be terrible, when there came to Andy a letter—a letter in the dear, familiar ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... dinner I took a chopper, and, going on to the forecastle, lay out upon the bowsprit, and after beating the spritsail-yard block clear of the ice, cut away the gaskets that confined the sail to the yard, heartily beating the canvas, that was like iron, till a clew of it fell. I then came in and braced the yard square, and the wind, presently catching the exposed part of the sail, blew more of it out, and yet more, until there was a good surface showing; then to a sudden hard blast of wind the whole sail flew open with a mighty ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... supplying reasons for her departure—and the very first held him spellbound. Was it another move in her perpetual game? Was she on the track of someone's secret? Was her scheming mind now following some new clew that must lead to the discovery of a hidden or forgotten crime—the burial place of some well entombed family ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... tell us a' he could hae tell'd us, if he had liked, about the application for pardon, neighbours,' said Saddletree; 'there is aye a wimple in a lawyer's clew; but it's a wee bit o' a secret.'"—Heart ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... luck," he muttered in reply, but the girl could see that he trembled slightly with nervousness. Neither realized at the time the fatal folly of the act, for they were unaware that the Germans were seeking just such a clew to direct them ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... man unfolded to our view The world's beliefs of Death and Heaven and Hell— This man whose own convictions none could tell, Nor if his maze of reason had a clew. Dogmas he wrote for daily bread, but knew The fair philosophies of doubt so well That while we listened to his words there fell Some that were strangely comforting, though true. Marking how wise we grew ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... reach the place where Mary was stalled by the accident to her machine. Soon he was hovering over a level field, one of several that lined the country highways in that section. A small crowd on the turnpike gathered about an evidently disabled automobile gave Tom the clew he needed, and presently he made a landing. Instantly the throng of country people who had gathered to look at the automobile crash deserted that for a view of something more ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... in regard to our self-development and our families, so they have been in regard to limited circles of friends. If the fulfilment of these claims were all that a righteous life required, the hunger and thirst would be stilled for many good men and women, and the clew of right living would lie easily in ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... go off?"—and cheer after cheer went up as the battery passed through. Vain efforts were made to check this vociferous clamor, which was plainly audible to the enemy, less than 1500 yards away. The bullets of the enemy began to drop lower. The cheering had furnished them the clew they needed. They had located our position, and the 71st atoned for this thoughtlessness by the loss of nearly eighty men, as it lay cowering in the ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... sail billowed out, full of wind, pulling hard at the clew-line, which was made fast to the gunwhale beside Hrolfur. The fore-sail resembled a beautifully curved sheet of steel, stiff and unyielding. Both sails were snow-white, semi-transparent and supple in movement, like the ivory sails on the model ships ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... it, but how could I? All I know is that he was a delicately brought up young Englishman, and the only clew I have is a watch with a London maker's name on it and a girl's photograph. I've a very curious notion that I shall ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... connection with my son-in-law's extravagant expenditure—whether the clew to the mystery might not haply be the forging of bank-notes on the other side of the baize door. My mind was prepared for anything by this time. We descended again into the dining-room. Felicia saw how ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... exclaimed the general, triumphant in his clew. "No, he didn't tell. He never will tell now. I have learned from a picket boat that was captured last night by our patrols, that nothing was seen of the ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... to meet you," he said. "I am on my way to C—— in search of my mother. I want to see the person who sold her last, and, if possible, get some clew to the direction in which ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... pleasures form'd in playful groupes invite, No dulcet sounds the ravish'd ear delight; 50 No tender cares:—- But in their place appear, Sullen Complaint, and cloy'd Disgust, and Fear; There, fever'd Jealousy with livid hue, And falt'ring steps unwinds Suspicion's clew; Arm'd with the blood-stain'd instruments of death, There, Rage and Hatred spread their poison'd breath; 55 While Malice, brooding over secret guile, Repays their labour with a treach'rous smile; Remorse, that never sleeps, brings up the rear, Hates his own deed, and ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... love, and rejoiced to see him growing before the Lord. How long she did this, we are not told. We have searched in vain for a word or hint that she lived to see the excellence and greatness of the son whom she "asked of God." The only clew which we can find is, that Samuel's house was in Ramah, the house of his parents; and we wish to think he lived there to be with them; and we hope his mother's eyes looked on the altar which he built there unto the Lord, and that her heart was gladdened by witnessing the proofs ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... in a measure from the astonishment produced by this discovery I inquired whether other shamans had such books. "Yes," said Swimmer, "we all have them." Here then was a clew to follow up. A bargain was made by which he was to have another blank book into which to copy the formulas, after which the original was bought. It is now deposited in the library of the Bureau of Ethnology. The remainder of the time until the return ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... have had diligent search made for you. All the houses of bad repute have been examined and their inhabitants questioned. But there are so many camp-followers and other rabble at present in the town that a hundred men might disappear without our being able to obtain a clew. I doubted not indeed that your body had been thrown in the river, and that we should never hear more of you. I am right glad that you have been restored; not indeed from any fear of the threats of the king your master, but because, from what the Earl of Evesham ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... no measure of the time, no clew to the old dates, nothing whatever, beyond such considerations as I have stated, to warrant even a vague hypothesis. It can be seen clearly that the beginning of this old civilization was much older than the earliest great cities, and, also, that ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... the clothing there was nothing by which the woman could be identified, excepting the dealers' names in the shoe, and the murder or murderers had left no other clew behind by which they could be identified. Without the head, the mystery seemed unsolvable, and every effort was made to find it in ...
— The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan - or: the Headless Horror. • Unknown
... moment, Mr. Griffith," cried the pilot aloud; "clew up and furl everything but your three topsails, and let them be double-reefed. Now is the time to ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... anticipate a thief, John Mullins whispers, "Take my handkerchief." "Thank you," cries Pat; "but one won't make a line." "Take mine," cries Wilson; and cries Stokes, "Take mine." A motley cable soon Pat Jennings ties, Where Spitalfields with real India vies. Like Iris' bow, down darts the painted clew, Starred, striped, and spotted, yellow, red, and blue, Old calico, torn silk, and muslin new. George Green below, with palpitating hand Loops the last 'kerchief to the beaver's band— Up soars the prize! The youth, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... foolish across the register and do the wonderin' act all day, though. Besides, I wanted to follow a clew. It ain't a very likely one, but it's better'n nothing. So I slides out and boards a Columbus Avenue surface car, and inside of twenty minutes I'm at Auntie's apartments, interviewin' Helma, her ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... we were small boys in Virginia. This is the only thing by which I could identify my brother William." Nothing more was said upon the matter, and it dropped out of my mind. I did not realize how important were the words of this man. It never occurred to me that he held the clew that might bring ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... particularly bowlder (boulder), clew (clue) and vail (veil), have been retained. Also, the Table of Contents was missing so ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Donald were busily engaged in examining old family ambrotypes, papers, and various articles that, carefully hidden in the uncle's secretary, had been saved all these years in the hope that they might furnish a clew to Dorry's parentage, or perhaps prove that she was, as Mr. Reed trusted, the daughter of his brother Wolcott. To Donald each article was full of interest and hopeful possibilities; but his uncle looked ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... named Peter Colburn, and his wife; and they, together with a traveller, who had obtained lodging there for the night, were all burned with the house. The stranger's horse and saddle were found in the barn, some little distance from the house, but there was no clew to his identity. There were only a few people then who had settled in this bleak region, and there was no funeral other than the assembling of a half dozen together, who dug a grave within fifty ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... as the man. It is all things to all men; it lends itself to a multitude of interpretations. Every earnest reader of it will find some clew or suggestion by the aid of which he fancies he can unlock the whole book, but in the end he will be pretty sure to discover that one key is not enough. To one critic, his book is the "hoarse song of a man," its manly and masculine element ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... belonged to a man whose own hired advocate could only vindicate his client's heart at the expense of his head. Pope tells us, that to form a just estimate of any one's character, we must study his ruling passion; and by adopting this rule, we shall soon obtain a satisfactory clew both to the exquisite count's penchant for the prize-ring, and his aversion to the hells. Some persons exhibit an inexplicable union of avarice and extravagance, of parsimony and prodigality—something of this kind is observable ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... its inspiration from the very skies? Where, we repeat, are these bioplasts now? They are all quietly and industriously at work as before. The occupant of the song-mansion is gone, but not one of these bioplasts has dropped a clew, thrown down a shuttle, abandoned a loom, or fled in dismay to the core of its cell. They still pulsate, throb, throw off tissue. No chemical change has yet intervened to break down their cell-walls, ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... addition to all his other eccentricities, "Old Man Wheeler" had the habit of disappearing from his home at intervals, leaving no clew behind him. He had attacks of a morbid unwillingness to see a human face: during tkese attacks, he would hide himself, sometimes in one place, sometimes in another. He had old warehouses, old deserted mills and factories, and uninhabited ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... not destroy these children of his. No doubt they've all been rejected; but he couldn't throw them overboard. I suspect he has a bit of vanity. I'll tell you what. I'll leave these out, and to-morrow you can read them through. Somewhere you may stumble upon a clew to his identity. To-morrow I'll wire Cook's and the American Express in Hong-Kong to see if there is any mail. Taber is the name. ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... he tried to deny his identity, but the Americans had been furnished with his photograph, and a wart on his forehead proved a clew that was conclusive. At once his effects were searched, and under his pillow was found a leather bag containing fifty thousand dollars in gold and ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... experiment was not a success. They slept with all the doors and windows open, an' one night a skunk came in an' got under the bed. Mrs. Bill discovered that they had company, an' Bill got up an' lit the lantern, an' followed the clew to its source. He threatened an' argued an' appealed to the skunk's better nature with a doughnut, but the little beast sat unmoved in his corner. The place seemed to ...
— Keeping up with Lizzie • Irving Bacheller
... looked at each other and shook their heads. She might have to wait longer than for the morning paper to have news of Mary Rose. They felt so helpless. They had followed every clew, they had the assistance of the entire police force, but they had discovered nothing. They knew no more about Mary Rose than they knew when they had first discovered that she ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... of Percy's father," said the Colonel, "the poor woman would give me no clew to him,—but he may be living,—he may some time trace and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... of the week, however, there was no news of Anna. She had not returned to the mill. Rudolph's friend on the detective force had found no clew, and old Herman had advanced from brooding by the fire to long and furious wanderings about the ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... up flew the sail with a thundering flap, loud as the report of a cannon—shot, through which, however, I could distinctly hear a heavy smash, as the large and ponderous blocks at the clew of the sail struck the doomed sailor under the ear, and whirled him off the booms over the fore—yard—arm into the sea, where he perished, as heaving—to was impossible, and useless if practicable, as his head must ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... is thoroughly characteristic of the servile class; they conscientiously conceal everything from the master till he finds a clew; after which they tell ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... executed on his people, if they were not pardoned. And in the declaration, whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book, he discovers an intimation, that that offending people should die short of the promised land! A discovery without a clew. This sin of Israel was pardoned. Sentence of death in the wilderness was occasioned by a subsequent act of rebellion, as will be shewn ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... attractive, well-cut features had fulfilled the promise of youth. But for six wretched months, after that bitter night when Diane fled from him, he had suffered acutely. In vain his friends, none of whom could give him any clew to his betrayer, sought to comfort him; in vain he searched for trace of tidings of his wife, for her faithlessness had not utterly crushed his love, and the recollections of the first months of his marriage were very sweet to him. The chains with which the dancer of the Folies Bergere bound him ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... I offered, a proper person was immediately set to work to open the drawers. The search was continued for four hours without success. Every private drawer was rummaged, every paper opened, and many a curious glance was cast at the contents of the latter, in order to get some clew to the probable amount of the assets of the deceased. Consternation and uneasiness very evidently increased among most of the spectators as the fruitless examination proceeded; and when the notary ended, declaring that no will was to be found, nor ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... had any hands aboard, you'd think they'd have sense enough to clew up her courses," ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... As the homeward-bound crew was the same as the outward-bound, and Mr. Dodge had come abroad quite as green as he was now going home ripe, this traveller of six months' finish did not escape diver commentaries that literally cut him up "from clew to ear-ring," and which flew about in the rigging much as active birds flutter from branch to branch in a tree. The subject of all this wit, however, remained profoundly, not to say happily, ignorant of the sensation he had produced, being occupied in disposing of the ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... sowing, to rise again in the spring; thus does a faithful heart pine during absence till it is reunited to the beloved one; thus do we mourn our dead till our soul is assured of their resurrection: and this belief is the end and clew to the mystery. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... said Captain Bird, "and you, Captain Burress, clew him up for'ard. You can stay in the bow, Captain Sanderson, and take the ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... packet inclosed, D'Avencourt continued—"The accompanying letters were found in Ferrari's breast-pocket, and on opening the first one, in the expectation of finding some clew as to his last wishes, we came to the conclusion that you, as the future husband of the lady whose signature and handwriting you will here recognize, should be made aware of the contents, not only for your own ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... Werper sought for the party that had accompanied him from the camp to the barrier cliffs; but not until late in the afternoon of the second day did he find clew to its whereabouts, and then in such gruesome form that he was totally unnerved ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... in the dark as to what the title of that book was, and, although we ransacked the British Museum and even appealed to the learned Frognall Dibdin, we could not get a clew to the identity of the volume. To be wholly frank with you, I will say that both the Judge and I had wearied of the occupation; moreover, it involved great expense, since we were content with nothing but India proofs (those before ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... no further clew to guide his search. It was destined that the last he was to know of her should be that she was thrown on the tender mercies of the world—her last friend gone, her last penny expended. She was buried out of his sight, not in the peaceful grave, with ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... awkward. Neither hair, dress, nor conversation affords the slightest clew, and you are left to guess. By some mysterious law of nature you invariably guess wrong, and are thereupon regarded by all the relatives and friends as a mixture of fool and knave, the enormity of alluding to a male babe as "she" being only equaled by the atrocity of referring to a female ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... read my grandfather, following the paragraph with his forefinger; "'escaped from the bridewell, leaving no clew to their identity, except the letter H, cut on one of the benches.' 'Five dollars reward offered for the apprehension of the perpetrators.' Sho! I ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Langton, after a short private conversation, had summoned the landlord, in the hope of obtaining some clew to the development of the mystery. But no young lady, nor any stranger answering to the description the doctor had received from Hugh Crombie (which was indeed a false one), had been seen to pass through the village since daybreak. Here, therefore, the friends were entirely at a loss ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the merry-hearted kanaka crew ranged the cable, and others ran aloft to clew-up the sails, Packenham steered the brig between a narrow reef-bound passage till she brought up abreast a sweeping curve of sandy beach, shining white under the wooded spurs of a mountain peak two thousand feet above. Back from the beach and showing golden-brown ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... can't git no clew to him. He cleared about two months ago, and they hain't seen hide nor hair on him sence. ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... and dat pile up de water so de tide rise six or eight inches higher," continued Quimp, picking up the clew given him. "High tide in one hour from now, and de Reindeer was gwine out den for shore. Dat's de whole story, massa, and not ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... that character which the story of her sin and suffering had made him in his immaturity, misinterpret and despise! He did not comprehend that tragic story when she told it; it was impossible that he should, for he had no knowledge or experience adequate to furnish him the clew. Nothing is more inconceivable and impossible to a child than the possibility of his parents dying or doing wrong. When he awakens to consciousness he finds around him eternal things,—rocks, hills, rivers, stars, parents! They all seem to belong to the same order of indestructible existence, ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... mentioned the fact that the majority of men felt it necessary to talk down to women, instead of sharing with them their best thoughts and most vital interests, Flora looked reflective, as if in that direction might lie the clew to the insufferable stupidity which she often found in the young ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... however, I shall not commence, till I have again seen some of old Louis's old-fashioned Galanteries at Versailles. Rosamond's bower, you, and I, and Tom Hearne know, was a labyrinth: but as my territory will admit of a very short clew, I lay aside all thoughts of a mazy habitation: though a bower is very different from an arbour, and must have more chambers than one. In short, I both know, and don't know what it should be. I am almost afraid I must go and read Spenser, and wade through ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... insufficient where the specific properties and heterogeneous nature of matter come into play; it is to be feared that, by persisting in the pursuit of laws, we may find our course suddenly arrested by an impassible chasm. The principle of unity is lost sight of, and the guiding clew is rent asunder whenever any specific and peculiar kind of action manifests itself amid the active forces of nature. The law of equivalents and the numerical proportions of composition, so happily recognized by modern chemists, and proclaimed under the ancient form of atomic symbols, still ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... heel, he left the apartment. By some means he obtained a clew to the retreat of Louise. Mounting his horse, accompanied by a single page, he galloped to the convent of Chaillot. As there had been no warning of his approach, the grating still remained closed. He arrived just after the poor girl ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... at all introspective she might have found a clew as to her feeling for Hugh in the unusual care with which she arranged her hair, and her decision at the last moment to discard the pale-green gown lying in state on the bed for a white satin one embroidered at long ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... moment,—it blew rather too fresh for the mizen,—and then their bosoms were distended, and their bow-lines hauled. How the fore and main-tacks got aboard I could not tell, though it was done while my eyes were on the upper sails. I caught a glimpse of the fore-sheet, however, as the clew was first flapping violently, and then was brought under the restraint of its own proper, powerful purchase. The spanker had been hauled out previously, to help the ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... was a clean job. They had got away with the plates. We didn't have a clew. We thought, naturally, that they'd make for Mexico or some South American country to start their printing press. And we had the ports and border netted up. Nothing could have gone out across the border or, through any port. All the customs officers ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... brush. It soon brightened sufficiently to reveal the unmistakable gleam of gold, and was a foreign coin of some sort, possibly of Austrian coinage; but the letters which it had borne, and the figures, had been worn much away; and one side was worn quite smooth, so as to give no clew to what had been ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... and we never got a clew. It couldn't have been burglars, for the safe had been opened by the combination in the proper way. People must have begun to talk, for one afternoon in comes Alice—that's my wife—and the boy and girl, and Alice stamps her foot, and her eyes flash, and she cries out, 'The lying wretches—Tom, ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... wealthy Burlington real estate broker, had mysteriously disappeared some months before, and it was supposed that he had met with foul play. Despite the efforts of Dyke Darrel and other detectives, no clew had yet been found of the missing man. The detective had met Sibyl at her father's house, and had regarded her as one both beautiful and accomplished. To meet her as now was ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... plunged into the next sea. And, strangely enough, within the hour they fell in with and passed a small gun-boat, undoubtedly British. She was rigged as a barquentine. Her three topmasts were housed, and she was hove-to under the lee clew of her close-reefed topsail and a small storm-trysail. She was being flung about in a manner that was absolutely appalling to look at, at one moment standing almost upright, and anon thrown down on her beam-ends at such an extreme angle that, to the onlookers, her decks seemed ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... that Barras himself did not believe in his death, and gave to Josephine all her energy and presence of mind. She busied herself in endeavoring to find a clew to this horrible rumor; and she found that Bonaparte's enemies had spread it, and that only those to whom his death would be welcome, and his return be objectionable, had circulated ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... ... passing sad," murmured Master Skyffington, shaking his head, "but methinks I recollect ... hem ... some six years ago ... a quest which led to a clew ... er ... that is ... two ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... and, in an incredibly short time, the whole shore of the lake was twinkling with lights borne high in the hands of men who were searching. Two boats were rowing back and forth on the lake, with bright lights at stern and prow; and loud shouts filled the air. No answer; no clew: at last, from the island, came a pistol shot,—the signal agreed on. Every man stood still and listened. Slowly the boats came back to shore, drawing behind them Hetty's boat; bringing one of the oars, and also Hetty's shawl, which ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... crude theological idea of my own, instead of simply presenting the God of the Bible! I can never thank you enough, Miss Marsden, for your strong good sense that has dissipated my fog-bank of words. I think I see the way into light. You have placed a clew in my hands which I trust will lead, not only me, but others into peace. I fear I did present to you a calm, unimpassioned, inflexible Being this morning,—a God of purposes and decrees and remorseless will; and I have felt before that this was the God of theology and religious philosophy, ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... simpler to detect and punish offenders than in the case of mere individuals unincorporated, for the very fact that a corporation keeps books and acts under an elaborate set of by-laws and regulations gives a clew to its proceedings, and indicates a source of information as to all its acts. One clerk may therefore reveal, and properly reveal, books and letters which shall incriminate "those above"; one employee may show ten thousand persons ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... sight of the other ships of the squadron, which had hitherto kept us company, notwithstanding the violence of the preceding storms. Neither was this our sole misfortune, for next morning, while endeavouring to hand the top-sails, the clew-lines and bunt-lines broke, and the sheets being half flown, every seam in the top-sails was soon split from top to bottom. The main top-sail shook so violently in the wind, that it carried away the top lanthorn, and even endangered ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... if you had a clew," said Martinus. He was as white as death, though naturally rubicund, and without another word he walked on. Robert looked after him and saw the square shoulders drooping a little. He had not the slightest doubt of the man's guilt, ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... from the British army. He was arrested on his return, and compelled to serve out the remainder of his term of service. The death of an uncle in India recruited his finances, and he returned to New York. It afterwards appeared that he had some clew to Peter Belgrave's missing million, and he was therefore anxious to recover the possession of the wife who ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... escort to the next encampments. They had set out southwest to the Mascoutins, Mandans, and perhaps, also, the Omahas. They were now circling back northeastward toward the Sault between Lake Michigan and Lake Superior. How far westward had they gone? Only two facts gave any clew. Radisson reports that mountains lay far inland; and the Jesuits record that the explorers were among tribes that used coal. This must have been a country far west of the Mandans and Mascoutins and within sight of at least the Bad Lands, or that stretch of ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... usual necessitous state. Balboa then consented to their extending their incursions to more distant lands, as they had already wasted and ruined the immediate environs of Antigua, and he sent Valdivia to Spain to apprise the admiral of the clew he had gained to the South Sea, and the reported wealth of those regions. Valdivia took with him fifteen thousand pieces of gold, which belonged to the King as his fifth, and a charge to petition for the thousand ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... of the skipper were obeyed. The Languedocian made a third sailor. All bore a hand. Not satisfied with brailing up, they furled the sails, lashed the earrings, secured the clew-lines, bunt-lines, and leech-lines, and clapped preventer-shrouds on the block straps, which thus might serve as back-stays. They fished the mast. They battened down the ports and bulls'-eyes, which is a method of walling up a ship. These evolutions, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... declared Viola firmly. "And while I feel, as you do, about Jean, still it is a clew that must not be ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... of her jewelry, except what she was wearing, had been stolen. As no arrest had yet been made the references to the affair were naturally guarded. The paragraph even concluded without the usual formula as to the police having a clew. On the whole, I put the paper down with a slight feeling of relief. I felt that it might have ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Sir Bromley followed the clew thus given him, and behind the wall, in a secret chamber, came upon Garnet and his companion, Oldcorne, who, since the coming of the authorities, had been fed through the reed with broths and ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... sea-weed, whirl'd in dazzling rings; Subtle and variable as flickering flames, Sight could not trace their evanescent changes, Nor comprehend their motions, till minute And curious observation caught the clew To this live labyrinth,—where every one, By instinct taught, perform'd its little task; —To build its dwelling and its sepulchre, From its own essence exquisitely modell'd; There breed, and die, and leave a progeny, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various
... Though of like colour, there was no bird of such form as that. There was neither beast nor fish belonging to the sea that could show such a shape above its surface. That sable globe, rounded like a sea-hedgehog, or a Turk's-head clew, and black as a tarred tackle-block, could be nothing else than the woolly pate of Snowball, ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... want it to be done, don't you? Well, it depends only on you. There must be some one among you who knows something about this matter. Let him come forward and tell us what he has seen or heard. Remember that the smallest trifle may be a clew to the crime. You would be as bad as the incendiary himself, if you concealed him. Just think it ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... Geoffrey Annersley, but no address. The baggage train had been destroyed by fire at the time of the accident, so there were no trunks to give evidence. The small traveling bag she had carried with her bore neither initial nor geographical designation, and contained nothing which gave any clew as to its owner's identity save that she was presumably a person of wealth, for her possessions were exquisite and obviously costly. A small jewel box contained various valuable rings, one or two pendants and a ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... on trial has remained unknown. Any one who has engaged in the fascinating pursuit of elusive historical truth will understand, therefore, my warm delight, and my warm gratitude to Mr. Marsden, when this clew to hitherto unpublished facts concerning Hudson was ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier
... not lime-juicers beating their way aft with a belaying pin. They could sail a ship with two-thirds the crew of a Britisher with her clumsy yellow hemp sails and belly you could lose a dinghy in. Mind, I don't say the English aren't handy in a ship and that they wouldn't clew up a topsail clean at the edge of hell. What we are on the seas came over from them. But we bettered it, William, and they knew it; and, naturally enough, laid out to sail around us. I don't blame England, but ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the influence of the relative scarcity or plenty of the various groups or agents of production, as unqualified as that just made must be incorrect. It gives no clew to the importance of interacting factors. Here, as elsewhere in economics, many separate causes meet to produce a result. The disentanglement of their effects is frequently so difficult as to make more ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... brave boys, comes the best of the fun, It's hands about ship and reef topsails in one; So it's lay aloft, topman, as the hellum goes down, And clew down your topsails as the mainyard goes round. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... clue. Probably the rascals took to their heels during the hours of darkness, making for some small railroad station. Now, I propose to go straightway, mount my horse, and scour the country in search of information. If I find a clew I shall follow it up; and so, if you don't see me by to-morrow morning, Constance, you may know that I ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... awaiting her moment of entrance, her ear caught the dialogue going on upon the stage between two of the gypsies, "conveying the impression that Meg was no longer to be feared or respected—that she was no longer in her right mind." This furnished her with a clew to the character, and led her to present it upon the stage as the weird and startling figure which afterward became so famous. Of course, the first performance was but a sketch of her later portrayals of Meg Merrilies, yet she made a profound impression. "I had not thought that I had done anything ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... reinstating these same heirs in their rights, I've regained my lost money, and received a handsome reward in addition; but in this case all is darkness; there isn't a single gleam of light—not the slightest clew. If I could only find them! But how can I search for people whose names I don't even know—for people who have escaped all the inquiries of the police? And where shall I look for them—in Europe, in America? It would be sheer madness! To whom, ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... sleep. He kept assuring himself there was nothing to fear, yet he did fear. Dark possibilities rose on his imagination—in his excitement at finding the treasure he might have left something, some betraying mark or object. Was there any way in which the bandits could have obtained a clew to his identity; could they have guessed, or discovered by some underground channel of espionage, that he was the man who had robbed them? Over and over he told himself it was impossible, but he could not lift from his spirit a dread that made him toss in restless torment. ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... from the astonishment produced by this discovery I inquired whether other shamans had such books. "Yes," said Swimmer, "we all have them." Here then was a clew to follow up. A bargain was made by which he was to have another blank book into which to copy the formulas, after which the original was bought. It is now deposited in the library of the Bureau of Ethnology. The remainder of the time until the return was occupied in getting an understanding ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... household have failed to find him. Our messengers have been sent in every direction without discovering the slightest clew to ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... threshold; picking his way daintily over heaps of litter on the floor. Yes, the room was full of the scent. But, whence the scent emanated, Lad could not, for the life of him, tell. The room gave him no clew. And, after a few minutes of futile ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... opposite the canoe, peered a swarthy, sinister countenance and I recognized the features of Cuthbert Mackenzie. I took aim at him, but before I could fire he was gone. My brain seemed in a whirl. I had found the clew—the fiendish clew—to the attack that threatened to cost us our lives. Bent on revenge, Mackenzie had traveled up country to intercept us on the way to the fort—to kill me, and to capture Flora. He had bribed the savages to help him, and he and his ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... young officer was about to retrace his way, when an exclamation from Heiss recalled him. The backwoodsman had found a clew to the labyrinth. An opening led into the thicket. This had been concealed by a perfect curtain of closely woven vines, covered with thick foliage and flowers. It appeared at first to be a natural door to the avenue which led from this spot, but a slight ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... may train his eye, and be able to observe things that otherwise would pass unnoticed. In this way he may be able to save animals from pain, as a horse from an ill-fitting harness. He may also be able to see little things which may give him the clew to great things and so be able ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... how in ancient days three warriors came from Green Ierne, to dwell in the wild glens of Cowal and Lochow,—how one of them, the swart Breachdan, all for the love of blue-eyed Eila, swam the Gulf, once with a clew of thread, then with a hempen rope, last with an iron chain, but this time, alas! the returning tide sucks down the over-tasked hero into its swirling vortex,—how Diarmid O' Duin, i.e. son of "the Brown," slew with his own hand the mighty boar, whose head still scowls over the escutcheon of the ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... often wondered how his neighbours could be so fond of it; but a humble sort of acquiescence in what was held to be good, had become a strong habit of that new self which had been developed in him since he had found Eppie on his hearth: it had been the only clew his bewildered mind could hold by in cherishing this young life that had been sent to him out of the darkness into which his gold had departed. By seeking what was needful for Eppie, by sharing the effect that everything produced on her, he had himself come to appropriate the forms ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... Then following the clew that, in the hands of the Abbe Faria, had been so skilfully used to guide him through the Daedalian labyrinth of probabilities, he thought that the Cardinal Spada, anxious not to be watched, had entered the creek, concealed his little barque, followed the line marked by the notches in the rock, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... unoccupied, and who had doubtless made their escape as soon as the affray was over; but the examination of their effects, which will be made by the police in the morning, will doubtless furnish a clew by which they will be ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... misgivings and fears in which Ferris had lived was suddenly without a clew; he could not look upon the pallid visage of the priest lest he should now at last find there that subtle expression of deceit; the whirl of his thoughts kept him silent; Don Ippolito ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... physiology. He turned his attention to the newly-discovered power by which he tested the activity of organic substances; and it is plain, from his manner of treating the subject, that he leaned to the idea that the chemical process going on in the living body of animals furnished a clew to the phenomena of life, if it was not life itself. This may be inferred from the title of the book published in 1797—"Ueber die gereizte Muskel und Nervenfaser, mit Vermuthungen ueber den chemischen Process des Lebens, in Thieren ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... She had caught the contagion of his enthusiasm, though she had no clew as to how this great time-saving ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... resurrection until the age of Shakspeare. So that, notwithstanding a gulf of nineteen centuries and upwards separates Shakspeare from Euripides, the last of the surviving Greek tragedians, the one is still the nearest successor of the other, just as Connaught and the islands in Clew Bay are next neighbors to America, although three thousand watery columns, each of a cubic mile in dimensions, ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... Clem. For she had quite set her heart on the romance that had commenced in dots and dashes culminating in orange blossoms—a Wired Love. But now, to her vexation, she saw her anticipations liable to be set at naught, and herself unable to obtain even a clew to the trouble. Like the "line man," who goes up and down to find why the wires will not work, she could not find the "break" anywhere, and decided that romances, whether "wired" or taken in the ordinary way, were certainly very unwieldy ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... and the king are named together. When Babylon became supreme it was usual to swear by Marduk and the local gods as well. The significance of these oaths for historical purposes is great, both as indicating political relationships, and as often affording by the name of the king the only clew to the date of the document. Mr. King, in his edition of the Chronicle,(141) and Dr. Lindl,(142) have made skilful use of these oaths in ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... came to me and entreated me to leave the city the next morning. She said her house was watched, and it was possible that some clew to me might be obtained. I refused to take her advice. She pleaded with an earnest tenderness, that ought to have moved me; but I was in a bitter, disheartened mood. I was weary of flying from pillar to post. I had been chased ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... got a clew. When Davies was here, he said he'd like to go fishing and some of the boys ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... the three banking houses at which his money was deposited. The check for seven thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine pounds fourteen shillings was drawn upon the London and Western Counties Bank, and that would have afforded the manager some clew even if he had not been well ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... order was given, it was the duty of the cook to execute it; and, ordinarily, this is about the only seaman's duty which the "doctor" is called upon to perform. Harvey promptly cast off the sheet, and the hands at the clew-garnets hauled up the foresail. The flying-gib and top-gallant sails had already been furled, and the canvas on the brig was soon reduced to the fore-topsail, fore-topmast staysail, and spanker; and these sails hung like wet rags, the vessel drifting with ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... said Piero haughtily. "But the times are perilous; and later, if thou would'st seek me, thou hast the clew. But of the mission, to which I am sworn in secrecy, let it not be known that I have so much as named it—it would argue ill for me and thee. And the clew is for thy using only. Meanwhile, forget that I have spoken. The Ave Maria ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... with an ingenuity and boldness which left no doubt that it had been effected by clever and practiced hands. The detective officers first employed having failed to discover the offenders, the threads of the imperfect and broken clew were placed in my hands, to see if my somewhat renowned dexterity, or luck, as many of my brother officers preferred calling it, would enable me to piece them out to a satisfactory conclusion. By the description obtained of a man who had been seen ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... Perhaps the two obviously corrupt words in italics may contain a clew to the right reading, ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... then?" exclaimed the general, triumphant in his clew. "No, he didn't tell. He never will tell now. I have learned from a picket boat that was captured last night by our patrols, that nothing was seen of the ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... exclamation of assurance that he was awake to the suppositious landlord who had called, for the sense of some sound but stilled on the second of his waking was strong within him. He fastened upon the vague starlit space of the little window to give him a clew to his situation. Then he remembered Doom, and, with the window for his key, built up the puzzle of his room, wondering at ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... when May with heavy clouds and slant rains was making the city as miserable as possible, Ethel had a caller. His card bore a name quite unknown, and his appearance gave no clew to ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... this fellow—he's a spy. Apparently, he won't have anything incriminating about him. My impression is that he's in the army and hopes to get himself captured by his friends. Yet he may desert and take a chance of getting into Germany through Holland. About the only clew there is, is the intimation that he's related to the prisoner. He may look like him. We've been trying to get in communication with Dieppe, where this transport is expected to dock to-morrow, but the wires seem to be shot ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... There's your clew," said Stella, turning to Ted. "The fellow who posted this notice was disguised in a wolfskin so that he could sneak up to the house unnoticed by the Chinaman, or, if seen, he would make ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... notice that Bertram was looking at her in all astonishment, and in vain seeking a clew to her conduct. "This is too much!" cried she, half soliloquizing. "Love cannot stand this! Love! away with the word—I would despise myself if I could find a spark of this love in my heart!" She pressed her hands to her breast, as if she wished thereby to extinguish the flames ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... himself, resigned the work he valued, put the seas between himself and Deena, only to be baffled at every turn. For two months he had used his utmost acumen in prosecuting the search without even finding a clew, and when finally he made his great discovery, it was by yielding to the impulse of the moment rather than ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... the men of the detail—every one of them as anxious as myself—on a long and fruitless search beside the river, without coming upon a clew. Returning to Mr. Gray's, and dismissing the men, I sat upon the veranda alone, sadly reflecting upon the absence of my young ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... her elbows on her knees, and her chin on her hands. She wished she had not seen Rawson-Clew that day; she wished she was not here, she wished there was no such thing as a blue daffodil; she was vaguely angry and dissatisfied, but not willing to face things. It was unlikely that the man ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... Note: Variant spellings, particularly bowlder (boulder), clew (clue) and vail (veil), have been retained. Also, the Table of Contents was missing ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... child had a soothing effect upon Mr. Linwood, and he now recovered rapidly from the sad and almost hopeless condition in which she had found him. When able to converse, without danger of a relapse, he told Clotelle of his fruitless efforts to obtain a clew to her whereabouts after old Mrs. Miller had sold her to the slave-trader. In answer to his daughter's inquiries about his family affairs up to the time that he ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... outward-bound, and Mr. Dodge had come abroad quite as green as he was now going home ripe, this traveller of six months' finish did not escape diver commentaries that literally cut him up "from clew to ear-ring," and which flew about in the rigging much as active birds flutter from branch to branch in a tree. The subject of all this wit, however, remained profoundly, not to say happily, ignorant of the sensation he had produced, being ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... troubled Dave in those days was the question of his identity, and when one of his school rivals spoke of him as a "poor-house nobody" it disturbed him greatly. Receiving something of a clew, he went on a long voyage, as related in "Dave Porter in the South Seas," and located his uncle, Dunston Porter, and learned for the first time that his father, David Breslow Porter, was also living, ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer
... cottage several times. High words had generally attended his visits. I had once asked my uncle who he was, and the fact that an answer was refused, was enough to assure me that a better knowledge of him would assist me in finding a clew to my own history. ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... as I knew it, in my vague exploration of that scene of beauty, of those scarcely stirring, stilly burning trees, of that shimmering-fronded fern, of that misty splendour, I was hunting for the soul of it all, for the informing spirit of it all. Harkness's erotics gave ardour to my search, but no clew. I lost him, left him behind, and never found him again. He fell into the Garden of Priapus, I doubt. As for me, I believed that I was now looking upon a Dryad. I was looking certainly at a spirit informed. A being, irradiate and quivering with life and ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... already gathered round his name during his lifetime. He has been so written about, so talked about, so riddled with praise or blame, that, to those who have never seen him in the flesh, he has become almost a tradition, a myth—and one runs the risk of losing all clew to ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... remained clear and distinct. And the question that it had brought to me, the chain of thoughts that had linked themselves to it, lingered through the morning, and made me feel sure that there was an untold secret in Falconer's life and that the clew to it must be sought in the history of ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... said Holmes. "As to the letters," he continued, glancing over them, "they are very commonplace. Absolutely no clew in them to Mr. Angel, save that he quotes Balzac once. There is one remarkable point, however, which will no doubt ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... through me, that left me numbed and helpless. For an instant, I stumbled on, half-dazed; then, gradually, my self-control came back, and with it a certain fierce joy, a hot exultation. Here, at last, was something definite, tangible, a clew ready to my hand, if only I were clever enough to follow it up; a ray of light in the darkness! I could feel my cheeks burning, and my heart leaping at ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... whom slavery had scattered. Like the ancient prophets also, his heart was ever burdened by the waywardness of the people whom he exhorted and warned. In young Waldo appeared a joyousness which nothing could quench. From the moment she obtained a clew to his unexpected behavior, everything in his manner accorded with the surgeon's explanation. In his boyish face and expression there was not a trace of the fanatical or abnormal. He seemed to think of Heaven as he did of his own home, and the thought of going to the one inspired much ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... was of the greatest assistance to me during that most anxious day. But we found no clew, nor discovered any reason for the Vicomte's disappearance. I went back in the evening to the Hotel Clericy, and there found Madame de Clericy and Lucille awaiting me, with that calmness which is admirable when there is nothing else ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... before, when he had engaged the taxicab and had started in pursuit of the limousine Kate Gilbert had entered. Prale wondered what Farland had been doing, whether he had discovered anything concerning Kate Gilbert, whether he had found a clew that would lead to an unraveling of ...
— The Brand of Silence - A Detective Story • Harrington Strong
... manufacture of this garniture the spangles are strung on a thread which, if once broken, allows them to drop away one by one, till you can almost follow a woman so arrayed by the sequins that fall from her. Perhaps it was the delicate nature of the clew thus offered that pleased him, perhaps it was a recognition of the irony of fate in thus making a trap for unwary mortals out of their vanities. Whatever it was, the smile with which he turned his eye upon the table toward which he had thus been led was very eloquent. But ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... a deity named Pasht, who sits in the hall, very big, very grave, carved of black stone, and very ludicrous, wearing a dog's head. I will just mention the Rosetta Stone, with a Greek inscription, and another in Egyptian characters which gave the clew to a whole field of history; and shall pretermit all further handling ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... there ain't nothin' new—no clew—nothin' you can work on?" The speaker felt assured there was not, but it might be an encouragement to suggest ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the subject, the earnest contents, convinced me that I now held the clew of that mystery which had baffled me so long, and that the missing letter said to have been lost at Le Noir's Landing was at last in my possession. It needed not this additional proof of treachery to convince me that my suspicions had been correct, and that, next to the arch-fiend Bainrothe, ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... having done so once, the mistake might have occurred again. Taking out his partner's bunch of keys, he soon found one that fitted and opened the drawers. He had half completed his task, without finding any clew to the missing securities, when he was interrupted by the sound of the opening of the front door, and had but time to slam the drawers shut and pocket the keys when the night clerk of the hotel stepped inside the apartment and, closely followed by a sandy-haired man, walked ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... now found what appeared to her a clew to his whole plan. He was, or pretended to be, her guardian; he had been appointed, or pretended to have been appointed, by her father. It might have been so. Edith could well imagine how in previous years he had made this false friend his executor and the guardian of his child; ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... that as he was the first discoverer of those Indies, so he was really of all the mainland; and to him the credit is due. For it was he that put the thread into the hands of the rest by which they found the clew to more distant parts. It was not necessary for this that he should personally visit every part, any more than it is necessary to do so in taking possession of an estate; as the jurists hold." This generous protest by Las Casas should receive the assent of all geographers. ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... his son to sea,—he suddenly experienced religion. "I got it in New Orleans in '59," said Mr. Thompson, with the general suggestion of referring to an epidemic. "Enter ye the narrer gate. Parse me the beans." Perhaps this practical quality upheld him in his apparently hopeless search. He had no clew to the whereabouts of his runaway son; indeed, scarcely a proof of his present existence. From his indifferent recollection of the boy of twelve, he now expected to identify ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Thaddeus in the "noble pastime of snooping," as he called it. The house was searched by him in a casual sort of way from top to bottom for a clew to the mystery, but without avail. Several times he went below to the cellar, ostensibly to inspect his coal supply, really to observe the demeanor of Margaret, the cook. Barring an unusual pallor upon her cheek, she appeared to be as she always had been; but with the waitress it was different. ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... the mother's answers. She had been out at work all day; when she returned, Jenny was gone. Some one had seen her going up the road to the Munroes' that morning about ten o'clock. That was her only clew. ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... action. She had already so conquered herself as to be able to leave her own quiet room, and descend to that of her parents. There she would sit calmly for hours, listening attentively to the conversation, hoping to catch some word that might give her a clew. ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... the hearts of thousands of women all through the country, and particularly to the women "out West," as they have already to my own. This problem has been revolved in my mind again and again, but no clew has appeared by which to solve it; and I have laid it down hopelessly, feeling that there is no alternative but to submit and carry the burden as long as strength endures, and seeing no outlook for the future but in a brief period of ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... upon me," said Lawrence Croft to himself, "for when I wish to discover that, I shall simply ask her. What I wish now to know is whether, or not, she considers me at all as a lover. There surely must be something I can say which will give me a clew." "The Virginians, as a rule," he replied, "are certainly a very well-grown and ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... visualize a chemical combination because we have no experience upon which to found it. It is so fundamentally unlike a mechanical mixture that even our imagination can give us no clew to it. It is thinkable that the particles of two or more substances however fine, mechanically mixed, could be seen and recognized if sufficiently magnified; but in a chemical combination, say like iron sulphide, no amount of magnification could reveal the two elements of iron ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... who shall lift that wand of magic power, And the lost clew regain? The unfinished window in Aladdin's ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... traveling two or three hours, and still Mercer and Anina gave us no clew to what we were about to see. It began to snow. Huge, soft flakes soon lay thick on ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... misunderstood. We know of countless criminal cases which we face powerless because we do indeed know the criminal but are unable to explain the causal connection between him and the crime, or because, again, we do not know the criminal, and judge from the facts that we might have gotten a clew if we had understood the psychological development of the crime. If we seek for "grounds,'' we may possibly think of so many of them as never to approach the right one; if we seek motives, we may be far misled because ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... with delight. And he himself harnessed the ancient horse to the creaking carriage. In the meantime Porthos was curious to behold. He imagined he had discovered a clew to the secret, and he felt pleased, because a visit to Athos, in the first place, promised him much satisfaction, and, in the next, gave him the hope of finding at the same time a good bed and good supper. The master, having got the carriage ready, ordered ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... sooner had this inner self refused to accept Mrs. Marteen's story than his mind began supplying reasons for her departure—and the very first held him spellbound. Was it another move in her perpetual game? Was she on the track of someone's secret? Was her scheming mind now following some new clew that must lead to the discovery of a hidden or forgotten crime—the burial place of some well entombed family ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... arrested. In another paper Kirk found something that relieved his mind a bit: evidently Williams had not died prior to the time of going to press, although he was reported in a critical condition. Kirk was interested to read that the police had a clew to the identity of the criminals and were confident of soon rounding them up. What mystified him most was the lack of detail. Evidently much had been printed previously, but he had no means of ascertaining what ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... of a professor may appear obscure and exaggerated to one who has not studied at a German university. But it gives the clew to the entire German system of university education, and accounts in great part for the high standard of scholarship. Only in part, for the innate proneness of the German mind to research must be credited with some share in the result. It is safe to say that Germany, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... and, hurrying upon deck, we found a large black cloud rolling on toward us from the southwest, and darkening the whole heavens. "Here comes Cape Horn!'' said the chief mate; and we had hardly time to haul down and clew up before it was upon us. In a few minutes a heavier sea was raised than I had ever seen, and as it was directly ahead, the little brig, which was no better than a bathing-machine, plunged into it, and all ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... development. St. John, the disciple of love, teaches very plainly that he who says he loves God must prove it by also loving man. If the whole of our training here is to be in loving and in living out our love, we certainly have the clew to the heavenly life. We shall continue in the doing of the things we have here learned to do. Life in glory will be earth's Christian life intensified and perfected. Heaven will not be a place of idle repose. Inaction can never be a condition ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... vouchsafed one clew. Her last victim, Jack Coughran, having fruitlessly laid at her feet both his heart and a five- hundred-foot creek claim on Bonanza, celebrated the misfortune by walking all of a night with the gods. In the midwatch of this night ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... just before she got aboard the ship that Rachel sent me a letter containing another to you, to be sent when all was right—I've carried it ever since—somehow or other I was afraid it would drop a clew to send it at first, and after it got a year old, I didn't ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... night, Smoke continued to win. His method of play varied. Expert after expert, in the jam about the table, scribbled down his bets and numbers in vain attempts to work out his system. They complained of their inability to get a clew to start with, and swore that it was pure luck, though the most colossal streak of it they had ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... higher order holds the thread which guides it surely through life's labyrinths; but all the more on this account its attention is called to the erratic movement of other travellers around it. The genius who has the clew begins, therefore, to study these errors and to describe them for our behoof. It is a great mistake to suppose that the abnormal or preposterous phases which he describes are the fruit of self-study,—personal ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... next morning at daybreak. It was a little cloudy. The three days had been unusually fine. Savignon had been tracing this and that clew, and presently came upon a piece of wampum, with a curious Huron design at one end. And a little further on he found a trail where things had been roughly dragged. But he came ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... borrowed name and in the romance of early youth you knew and loved Alice (though in innocence and honour)? Your tender age, the difference of rank, forbade your union. Her father, discovering your clandestine correspondence, suddenly removed her from the country, and destroyed all clew for your inquiries. You lost sight of each other,—each was taught to believe the other dead. Alice was compelled by her father to marry Mr. Cameron; and after his death, her poverty and her love for her only child induced her to accept ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book IX • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... with the hours, And the moon has divers phases; And shall the mind Be racked to find A clew to Fortune's mazes? ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... are also met with in the manic-depressive group proper. So often a stupor begins with the same indefinite kind of upset as does another psychosis that the development may furnish no clew. Any condition where there is inactivity, scanty verbal productivity and poor intellectual performance resembles stupor. This triad of symptoms occurs in retarded depressions, in absorbed manic states and in perplexities. Negativism and catalepsy are never well developed ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... but passes along, to all appearance, much like other men. Insane, in the popular acceptation, he certainly is not; but it is equally certain that his mind is not in a healthy condition. Lord Byron was one of this class, and the fact gives us a clew to the anomalies of his character. His mother was subject to violent outbreaks of passion, not unlike those often witnessed in the insane. On the paternal side his case was scarcely better. The loose principles, the wild and reckless conduct of his father procured for him ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... foretopsail was next sheeted home and hoisted, and the head yards braced forward to help her round more quickly. In the meantime the anchor was catted and fished ready for sea, and as the wind came abaft the beam, the head yards were squared, and the fore-clew-garnets being let run, the ponderous folds of the foresail were allowed to fall towards the deck, just as the wind was brought right aft. Both sheets were then hauled aft, and the increasing breeze no longer finding escape beneath it, blew it out in a graceful swell which made it appear ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... Philadelphia friend, saying that he was seen on Friday last at the house of Mrs. K, a well-known Union lady in Hagerstown. Now this could not be true, for he did not leave Keedysville until Saturday; but the name of the lady furnished a clew by which we could probably track him. A telegram was at once sent to Mrs. K, asking information. It was transmitted immediately, but when the answer would be received was uncertain, as the Government almost ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... why the youth of Grande Anse should be any finer than the youth of other places; and it seemed to me that the baker's own statement of his never having been there might possibly furnish a clew.... Out of the thirty-five thousand inhabitants of St. Pierre and its suburbs, there are at least twenty thousand who never have been there, and most probably never will be. Few dwellers of the west coast visit the east coast: in fact, except among ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... fainting-fit Judith had watched him with tender anxiety, and it seemed to her that there was something strange in his manner that morning. She did not know what it was, but had she held any clew to his thoughts she would have perceived that Bertie was astonished and bewildered. He looked as if a dream had suddenly become a reality, as if a jest had turned into marvellous earnest. He smoked ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... reveal the secret of the affair. Mr. Critchet may live, and be able to give us a clew to his assailants; and until he recovers or dies, I think that I shall be justified in committing your ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... groans of those who fell a sacrifice to your accursed ambition? But, if the laboring earth does not expand her jaws; if the air you breathe is not commissioned to be the minister of death; yet hear it, and tremble! the eye of Heaven penetrates the darkest chambers of the soul; traces the leading clew through all the labyrinths which your industrious folly has devised; and you, however you may have screened yourselves from human eyes, must be arraigned, must lift your hands, red with the blood of those whose deaths you have procured, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... have been in regard to limited circles of friends. If the fulfilment of these claims were all that a righteous life required, the hunger and thirst would be stilled for many good men and women, and the clew of right living would lie ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... parted from him; noted down Carefully my address, and gave me his. Then to my lodgings driving with me back, He left me with a Benedicite! He's rich: has he been sending money, then? What means it all? Conjecture finds no clew. ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... him a blow from which he began to fear he would never recover. He was too morbid to be just to any one, even himself, and he felt that she had deserted and turned against him also, forgetting that he had given her no clew to his present place of abode, and had sent a message indicating that he would regard any effort to discover him as officious and intrusive. He quite honestly believed that by this time she had come to share in the ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... by and we never got a clew. It couldn't have been burglars, for the safe had been opened by the combination in the proper way. People must have begun to talk, for one afternoon in comes Alice—that's my wife—and the boy and girl, and Alice stamps her foot, and her ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... and entreated me to leave the city the next morning. She said her house was watched, and it was possible that some clew to me might be obtained. I refused to take her advice. She pleaded with an earnest tenderness, that ought to have moved me; but I was in a bitter, disheartened mood. I was weary of flying from pillar to post. I had been chased during half my ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... Precisely the clew that he needed the sculptor had not given, but he was endeavoring to overcome his repugnance to disclosing his most secret feelings. Every word cost him an effort, but he went on with a savage sense of doing penance ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... Heavens, the girl had not been mistaken. Through a rift in the foliage, nearly opposite the canoe, peered a swarthy, sinister countenance and I recognized the features of Cuthbert Mackenzie. I took aim at him, but before I could fire he was gone. My brain seemed in a whirl. I had found the clew—the fiendish clew—to the attack that threatened to cost us our lives. Bent on revenge, Mackenzie had traveled up country to intercept us on the way to the fort—to kill me, and to capture Flora. He had bribed the savages to help him, and he and his ruthless ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... of sorts 'em out, beforehand. 'Taint the worst ones that are willing to come, or to send, for that. You always have to work in at an edge, in anything, and make your way as you go along. It'll regulate. I'm living there right amongst 'em; I've got a clew, and a hold; I can follow things up; I shall have a 'circle;' there's circles everywhere. And in all the wheels there's a moving spirit; you ain't got to depend just on yourself. Things work; the Lord sees to it; it's His business as ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... ascertain by careful looking how the planks had come to give way under the hoofs of his steed. But there was no clew that he could discover. The bridge was not a carefully made one, and it would have been an easy matter for any one to so loosen a couple of the planks that the least motion would send ...
— Jack of the Pony Express • Frank V. Webster
... quality sought was beef. Being embryo sailors we had to have nautical terms for our signals, and they made our opponents sit up and take notice. When I played halfback I remember my signals were my order relating to the foremast. For instance, 'Fore-top-gallant clew lines and hands-by-the-halyards' meant that I was the victim. On the conclusion of the order, if the captain could not launch a play made at once, he had to lengthen his signal, and sometimes there would be a string of jargon, intelligible only to a sailor, which would take the light yard ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... can't he?" That's what they all do; and HE'S got to, too. Huck, you don't ever seem to want to do anything that's regular; you want to be starting something fresh all the time. S'pose he DON'T do nothing with it? ain't it there in his bed, for a clew, after he's gone? and don't you reckon they'll want clews? Of course they will. And you wouldn't leave them any? That would be a PRETTY howdy-do, WOULDN'T it! I never heard of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... empiric politicians use deceit, Hide what they give, and cure but by a cheat; You boldly show that skill which they pretend, And work by means as noble as your end: 70 Which should you veil, we might unwind the clew, As men do nature, till we came to you. And as the Indies were not found, before Those rich perfumes, which, from the happy shore, The winds upon their balmy wings convey'd, Whose guilty sweetness first their world betray'd; So ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... while ether, benzene and acetone cannot be used to extract the B vitamine from its source, benzene, (and to a slight extent acetone) will dissolve the vitamine if it is first deposited from an alcohol extract on dextrin. These observations have not yielded any further clew to the ...
— The Vitamine Manual • Walter H. Eddy
... after a short private conversation, had summoned the landlord, in the hope of obtaining some clew to the development of the mystery. But no young lady, nor any stranger answering to the description the doctor had received from Hugh Crombie (which was indeed a false one), had been seen to pass ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... deny his identity, but the Americans had been furnished with his photograph, and a wart on his forehead proved a clew that was conclusive. At once his effects were searched, and under his pillow was found a leather bag containing fifty thousand dollars in gold and in ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... drawing-room, less cheerful than our smaller assembly-room by half, and therefore less often used (there, you have our whole first-floor arrangement now, my reader, I believe, and I must begin over again, to catch the clew of my long sentence). We were sitting, then, around the cheerful fire in the parlor in question, when Morton, my father's "own man," announced "Mr. Bainrothe and son," and a moment afterward the two gentlemen so heralded entered the room together. With one you are already somewhat familiar, reader ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... procureur-general in the good work she wished to do, and persuade him to write to the prefecture of police in Paris to recover traces of the girl. The circumstance of Catherine's having sent money to Farrabesche at the galleys ought to be clew enough to furnish information. Veronique was determined to know why it was that the young woman had not returned to her child and to Farrabesche, now that he was free. She also told her old friend of her discovery ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... or when they resisted for two hundred years those Normans who had conquered the Anglo-Saxons in a decade. This very quality, in old Welsh literature, is more than once given as a characteristic of extreme age; "I am old, bent double; I am fickly rash." says Llywarch Hen. I think that gives the clew to the whole position. The race was at the end of its manvantaric period; the Race Soul had lost control of the forces that bound its organism together; centrifugalism had taken the place of the centripetal impulse that marks the cycles of youth and growth. It had eaten into individual character; ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... innocent prattle. Allen could not know what was coming next, and so was powerless to head off conversation upon subjects into which he knew he had no right to enter, for Patricia possessed the faculty of keeping herself well informed as to family matters. It was through this that he secured the first clew upon which to start a real investigation, so he considered the information Heaven-sent, and blessed the ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... on her palms and considered the matter. Even with her habit of dealing with facts rather than fancies, she still found life a most perplexing and complex affair. The only help she gained toward understanding it was that clew taught her by her mother of matching the days and the events as one matches a fascinating puzzle. Out of this thought she spoke at last, though quite to the bewilderment ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... Redfield Lyttoun. He had been devoted for a long time to my wretched wife. Their flight was so secret and so skillfully managed that I could gain no clew whatever to it—and, indeed, it was better so—perhaps—yes—better so." Lord Chetwynde drew a long breath. "Yes, better so," he continued—"for if I had been able to track the scoundrel and take his life, ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... boatswain, "but he couldn't leave the wheel, for 'twas pipin' up a freshish breeze on our port quarter, and we was doin' about seven, or seven and a half knots, with topmast and lower stunsails set to port, and of course we had to take 'em in, clew up the royal and to'ga'ntsail, and haul down the gaff- tops'l before we could round to; and that took us so long that at last, when we'd brought the hooker to the wind, hove her to, and had got the jolly-boat over the side, we knowed that it'd be no earthly use to look for either of 'em. ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... sure indication of extraordinary preoccupation; and the concierge, on taking up the provisions, had found the poor mother half mad, running from one room to another, looking for a note from the child, for any clew, however unimportant, that would enable her at ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... engagement with Ward & Barlas to furnish a history of John Adams's Administration, and that 1250 copies were printed, but suppressed at the desire of some person. Mr. Duane then animadverts with harshness, and expresses a wish to get a clew to the names of the person or persons who ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... given, it was the duty of the cook to execute it; and, ordinarily, this is about the only seaman's duty which the "doctor" is called upon to perform. Harvey promptly cast off the sheet, and the hands at the clew-garnets hauled up the foresail. The flying-gib and top-gallant sails had already been furled, and the canvas on the brig was soon reduced to the fore-topsail, fore-topmast staysail, and spanker; and these sails hung ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... those who have sailed in the West India passages, where the sudden shocks of the short-chopping sea acts with a tremendous strain upon the hull of a heavy-laden vessel. The captain ran to the windward gangway, hurrying his men in the discharge of their duty, and giving another order to clew up the coursers and foretop-sail. Just as the men had executed the first, and were about to pull on the clew-lines of the latter, a sudden gust took effect upon the bag of the sail and carried it clean from the bolt-ropes. The halyards were lowered and the yards properly ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... in the least; certainly not in little Sammy Worrell. The person I had reference to chances to be a young woman, having dark eyes, and a wealth of auburn hair. We met quite by accident, and the sole clew I now possess to her identity is a claim she advanced ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... was at that time very hard at work, and, as she had several clews of thread by her, she took up one, and, presenting it to Prince Ahmed, said: "First take this clew of thread. I'll tell you presently the use of it. In the second place, you must have two horses; one you must ride yourself, and the other you must lead, which must be loaded with a sheep cut into four quarters, that must be killed to-day. In the third place, you must be provided ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... warrant now," remarked Colonel Whimpers, as soon as the tale was finished, "that you two boys get the first clew to where the robbers are hiding. Didn't you beat the wonderful Chief out before, and doesn't history have a habit of repeating itself? Oh; if only I was ten years younger, how I'd love to be along, when all these glorious ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... very evening of her arrival her husband, after meeting her with reproaches, had fled from the house, leaving no clew to his destination, and giving no reason ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... and hoisted, and the head yards braced forward to help her round more quickly. In the meantime the anchor was catted and fished ready for sea, and as the wind came abaft the beam, the head yards were squared, and the fore-clew-garnets being let run, the ponderous folds of the foresail were allowed to fall towards the deck, just as the wind was brought right aft. Both sheets were then hauled aft, and the increasing breeze no longer finding escape beneath it, blew it out in ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... her steadily. This woman held a clew to the mystery. She glanced at him uncertainly but she had recovered her self-possession, and her replies to his questions, if anything, were more ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... Roland. He had heard it before. It had a happy memory, an air of prosperity about it. Lanhearne! It was a Cornish name! That circumstance gave him the clew. When he was a boy at Eton, he remembered a Mr. Lanhearne who stayed with his father. "By Jove!" he cried, starting to his feet, "he was an American. What a piece of luck it would be if it should be the same man!" He fixed the address in his mind ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... you the answer. I'm just slippin' you the proposition, with the side remark that now and then, when the jumble seems worse than ever, you can get a glimpse of what might be a clew, or might not. ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... would be closed with scorn in the face of Frederick Coventry, the miserable traitor, who had broken his solemn pledge, and betrayed his benefactor to those who had all but assassinated him. Little would be sure to suspect him, and the prisoner, when he came to be examined, would furnish some clew. ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... the signal it was made for the grand fleet to anchor, All in the Downs that night for to meet; Then stand by your stoppers, See clear your shank painters, Haul all your clew garnets, stick ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... "you have a letter, and did not tell me before? Perhaps it contains the clew to the mystery. Give ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... wondered why the youth of Grande Anse should be any finer than the youth of other places; and it seemed to me that the baker's own statement of his never having been there might possibly furnish a clew.... Out of the thirty-five thousand inhabitants of St. Pierre and its suburbs, there are at least twenty thousand who never have been there, and most probably never will be. Few dwellers of the west coast visit ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... myself for differing with you—and yet I do differ. Magdalen is very strange, very unaccountable, to those who don't know her intimately. I can understand that she has innocently misled you; and that she has presented herself, perhaps, under her least favorable aspect. But that the clew to her language and her conduct on Wednesday last is to be found in such a feeling toward the man who has ruined us, as the feeling at which you hinted, is what I can not and will not believe of my sister. If you knew, ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... harsh and strange; she had no clew to their meaning. She could not have imagined Dora jealous of her. She made some laughing reply, and passed on. Dora was not lonely now, the care of the little ones occupying her whole time; but, far from their binding Ronald to his home, ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... distended, and their bow-lines hauled. How the fore and main-tacks got aboard I could not tell, though it was done while my eyes were on the upper sails. I caught a glimpse of the fore-sheet, however, as the clew was first flapping violently, and then was brought under the restraint of its own proper, powerful purchase. The spanker had been hauled out previously, to ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... me to see the six brave men again?" she asked, smiling, but really she was prying at his mind to get a clew of the ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... this man unfolded to our view The world's beliefs of Death and Heaven and Hell— This man whose own convictions none could tell, Nor if his maze of reason had a clew. Dogmas he wrote for daily bread, but knew The fair philosophies of doubt so well That while we listened to his words there fell Some that were strangely comforting, though true. Marking how wise we grew upon his doubt, We said: "If so, by ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... journey, he descried five or six men on horseback bearing up full in his teeth, upon which he threw his sails aback, and prepared for action; that he hailed them at a considerable distance, and bade them bring to; when they came alongside, notwithstanding his hail, he ordered them to clew up their courses, and furl their topsails, otherwise he would be foul of their quarters; that, hearing this salute, they luffed all at once, till their cloth shook in the wind; then he hallooed ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... Vienna once, did me an evil turn, which I told him, quite good-humoredly, that I should remember. So, as I knew he would feel some curiosity in regard to the identity of the person who had outwitted him, I thought it a pity not to give him a clew. He is well acquainted with my MS., and I just copied into the middle of ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... was made for the grand fleet to anchor, All in the Downs that night for to meet; So cast off your shank-painter, let go your cat's-topper, Hawl up your clew-garnets, ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... gentle gale at west by south, and clear weather, the wind at once flattened to a calm, the sky became suddenly obscured by dark dense clouds, and seemed to forebode much wind. This occasioned as to clew up all our sails, and presently after six water-spouts were seen. Four rose and spent themselves between us and the land; that is, to the south-west of us, the fifth was without us, the sixth first appeared in the south-west, at the distance of two or ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... the booby. Though of like colour, there was no bird of such form as that. There was neither beast nor fish belonging to the sea that could show such a shape above its surface. That sable globe, rounded like a sea-hedgehog, or a Turk's-head clew, and black as a tarred tackle-block, could be nothing else than the woolly pate of ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... inclosed, D'Avencourt continued—"The accompanying letters were found in Ferrari's breast-pocket, and on opening the first one, in the expectation of finding some clew as to his last wishes, we came to the conclusion that you, as the future husband of the lady whose signature and handwriting you will here recognize, should be made aware of the contents, not only for your own sake, but in justice to the deceased. If all the letters are of the same tone as the ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... of Salvation. The Codpiece of the Law. The Slipshoe of the Decretals. The Pomegranate of Vice. The Clew-bottom of Theology. The Duster or Foxtail-flap of Preachers, composed by Turlupin. The Churning Ballock of the Valiant. The Henbane of the Bishops. Marmotretus de baboonis et apis, cum Commento Dorbellis. Decretum Universitatis Parisiensis super gorgiasitate ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... Various and conflicting opinions were expressed as to whither he had gone, in testing which I had visited no less than twenty cities, making careful inquiries, especially among medical men. Occasionally I struck what seemed to be a promising clew, which only increased my confusion and left me more hopelessly in the dark. I had reported my movements to Mr. Earl as often as once a week and I received letters from him frequently, encouraging ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... vain. But this is the unvarnished record of an odious hour, and it passed without further aggravation from without; only, as I drove to Sloane Street, the news was on all the posters, and on one I read of "a clew" which spelt for me a doom I was grimly resolved ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... said nothing: she sought a clew to the mystery and found none. What had come to Timar? His countenance betrayed something like happiness; what was he concealing under his care for Timea? In company he was bright and cheerful, unconstrained ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... boiling, seething world of Rome, now more than ever disturbed by the inroads of strangers eagerly looking forward to the excitements of the amphitheatre, it would be in vain to make even deliberate and careful search for a lost slave, unless some clew should be left behind. Yes, she must surely have that clew; and doubtless she purposed to use it as soon as daylight came. Let her go now, therefore. It were idle to call her back only for new flight in a ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... making a thorough search yesterday, found a key on her bunch that fitted this lock. She opened the drawer, drew out the bottom book of a pile (so that its mutilation would more likely escape discovery), saw that it might contain a clew, and tore out a handful of the leaves. She had barely replaced the book, locked the drawer, and made her escape when her husband appeared. He hardly ever allows her to be out of his sight when she is in ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... to the furniture of his room seemed to indicate that they contained the latter. To this request Mrs. Pedagog had gladly acceded, because she had a notion that therein at some time or another would be found a clew to the new boarder's past history—or possibly some evidence of such duplicity as the good lady suspected he might be guilty of. She had read that Byron was profligate, and that Poe was addicted to drink, and she was impressed with the idea ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... pre-eminently endowed. That she loved Graydon Muir was a truth for life. If he could learn to love her from what she had sought to be, from what she simply was, he should have the chance. Her own deep experience had taught her much and given her the clew to many things. She had studied life, not only in books, but in its actual manifestations. Mrs. Wayland was a social mine in herself, and could recall from the past, volumes of dispassionate gossip, free from malice. In two years Madge had learned ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... It was safe to assume that this was one of the things the professional "strong-arm man" would not do. But it was also evident that he must speedily lose his identity if he hoped to escape; and the lost identity must leave no clew to itself. ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... was light, rolling and pitching as though she would shake the long sticks out of her, and the sails were gaping open and splitting in every direction. The mizzen-topsail, which was a comparatively new sail and close reefed, split from head to foot in the bunt; the foretopsail went in one rent from clew to caring, and was blowing to tatters; one of the chain bobstays parted; the spritsailyard sprung in the slings, the martingale had slued away off to leeward; and owing to the long dry weather the lee rigging hung in large bights at every lurch. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... have been drawn from the first, and there spent eight years, founding many churches and monasteries. There also he ascended Croagh Patrick, the tall sugar-loaf mountain which stands over the waters of Clew Bay, and up to the summit of which hundreds of pilgrims still annually climb ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... came from our Philadelphia friend, saying that he was seen on Friday last at the house of Mrs. K, a well-known Union lady in Hagerstown. Now this could not be true, for he did not leave Keedysville until Saturday; but the name of the lady furnished a clew by which we could probably track him. A telegram was at once sent to Mrs. K, asking information. It was transmitted immediately, but when the answer would be received was uncertain, as the Government almost monopolized the line. I was, on the whole, so well satisfied ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... down with a whack at each measure. In my hands was the mission album, a motley collection of faces, as devoid of Nature or any clew to the real characteristics of the owners as the average photograph usually is, but here and there one with a suggestion of interest and, in this special case, of beauty—a delicate, pensive face, with a mass of floating hair, deep, dark eyes, and exquisite ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... be well to reiterate the fact that the predominant use of each room in a house gives the clew to the best rules of treatment in decoration and furniture. For instance, the hall, being an intermediate space between in and out of doors, should be coloured and furnished in direct reference to this, ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... each other and shook their heads. She might have to wait longer than for the morning paper to have news of Mary Rose. They felt so helpless. They had followed every clew, they had the assistance of the entire police force, but they had discovered nothing. They knew no more about Mary Rose than they knew when they had first discovered that she ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... dimensions; Compress'd like wedges, radiated like stars, Branching like sea-weed, whirl'd in dazzling rings; Subtle and variable as flickering flames, Sight could not trace their evanescent changes, Nor comprehend their motions, till minute And curious observation caught the clew To this live labyrinth,—where every one, By instinct taught, perform'd its little task; —To build its dwelling and its sepulchre, From its own essence exquisitely modell'd; There breed, and die, and leave a progeny, Still multiplied beyond the reach of numbers. To frame new cells and tombs; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various
... the rattle of blocks and the tramp of the crew, Hisses the rain of the rushing squall; The sails are aback from clew to clew, And now is the moment for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... some mischief, he took them to a lonely castle standing in the middle of a wood. There they remained hidden, for the road to it was so hard to find that the king himself could not have found it, had it not been for a clew of yarn, possessing wonderful properties, that a wise woman had given him; when he threw it down before him, it unrolled itself and showed him the way. And the king went so often to see his dear children, that the queen was displeased at his absence; and she became curious and wanted to know ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... have no clew whatever. Our men have been keeping the sharpest watch over the fellows suspected of having a hand in such matters, but they all seem keeping pretty quiet at present, and none of them seem to be particularly flush with money. It is the same ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... be guided by the report of the detectives, or to proceed to Europe and search for her himself, Lee did not know. He finally determined that to seek for her with no clew to her whereabouts would be but a waste of precious moments, while, if in their search the agents were successful, he would be able to go directly to her. Meanwhile, by cable, he asked for protracted leave of absence and, while waiting for his answer, returned ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... answer. He penetrated the underbrush, noting where the broken branches had been bent upright after the forced entrance of the car, the better to hide it. The young inventor was, seeking some clew to discover the owner of the machine. To this end he climbed up in the tonneau and was looking about when some one burst in through the screen of bushes and a voice cried: "Here, you get out ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton
... He would have preferred a devoted belief that but for him Hicks must have perished. Besides, what she said still gave no clew to her feeling in regard to himself. He was obliged to go on, but he went on as indifferently as he could. "However, it was hardly a question for me at the time whether he could have been got out without my help. If I had thought about it at all—which I didn't—I suppose I should ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... life was devoted to the dissemination of this new philosophy of human nature (new, at any rate, in the precise details which Gall, Spurzheim, and he elaborated from it), which, Combe believed, if once generally accepted, would prove the clew to every difficulty, and the panacea for every evil existing in modern civilization. Political and social, religious and civil, mental and moral government, according to him, hinged upon the study and knowledge of the different organs of the human brain, and he labored incessantly ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... assuring himself there was nothing to fear, yet he did fear. Dark possibilities rose on his imagination—in his excitement at finding the treasure he might have left something, some betraying mark or object. Was there any way in which the bandits could have obtained a clew to his identity; could they have guessed, or discovered by some underground channel of espionage, that he was the man who had robbed them? Over and over he told himself it was impossible, but he could not lift from his ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... I took to be presumption was a vital clew to the nature of Ernest Everhard. He was simple, direct, afraid of nothing, and he refused to waste time on conventional mannerisms. "You pleased me," he explained long afterward; "and why should I not fill my eyes with that which pleases me?" I have said that he was afraid of ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... carry a vast load of scientific facts. Hence the many eminent observers who have been the most illogical of reasoners. What a contrast between Hugh Miller and his friend Francia; the mind of the latter, as Miller describes it, 'a labyrinth without a clew, in whose recesses was a vast amount of book-knowledge that never could be used, and was of no use to himself or any one else;' the former wielding all his stores as he swung his sledge. What is wanted is the comprehensive hand, and not ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... they could walk; rowed and sailed boats before they could guide a plow; could give the location of every bank, the sort of fish that frequented it, and the season for taking them. They could name every rope and clew, every brace and stay on a pink or Chebacco boat before they reached words of two syllables in Webster's blue-backed spelling-book; the mysteries of trawls and handlines, of baits and hooks were unraveled to them while ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... there drawn heavily on his father. The journey which Colonel Hitchcock had made with his daughter had been largely for the purpose of finding Parker, and had failed. The boy was ashamed to come back. Now there was a clew, but it seemed unwise for the father ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... fancy occurred to Mr. Roscorla at this moment, and he smiled: "I think I have got a clew to Mr. Barnes's disinterested anxiety about my affairs. The widower would like to protect the solitary and unfriended widow, but the young man is in the way. The young man would be very much in the way if he married Wenna Rosewarne; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... intention of going to Father Salvierderra. Temecula seemed the only place, now, to look for them; and yet from Temecula Felipe had heard, only a few days before leaving home, that there was not an Indian left in the valley. But he could at least learn there where the Indians had gone. Poor as the clew seemed, it was all he had. Cruelly Felipe urged his horse on his return journey. He grudged an hour's rest to himself or to the beast; and before he reached the head of the Temecula canon the creature was near spent. At the steepest part he ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... his touch, when he called his lyrics and romances dramatic. He became consciously sensitive later to slight variations effected by his manipulation in shape and shade which it yet takes a little thought to discern, even after his own redivision of his work has given the clew to his self-judgments. ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... idiot that I was in developing a crude theological idea of my own, instead of simply presenting the God of the Bible! I can never thank you enough, Miss Marsden, for your strong good sense that has dissipated my fog-bank of words. I think I see the way into light. You have placed a clew in my hands which I trust will lead, not only me, but others into peace. I fear I did present to you a calm, unimpassioned, inflexible Being this morning,—a God of purposes and decrees and remorseless will; and I have felt before that this was the God of ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... police in Edelweiss. He could only sputter his excuses and withdraw, swearing to catch the arch-conspirator or to die in the attempt. Not a soul in the castle, not a being in all Graustark could offer the faintest clew to the identity of the man or explain his motive. No one knew a Michael, who might have been inadvertently addressed as "your" possible "Highness." The greatest wonder reigned; vexation, uneasiness and perplexity ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... express purpose of preventing anything of the kind did not improve matters. He hated to put the news on the wire—to admit to headquarters that the ranchers apparently had caught him napping. But, having dispatched his telegram, he set his energies to finding some clew to the perpetrators ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... Stevenson and his work a fair subject for study. It is not impossible that a man who met certain needs of the times so fully, and whom large classes of people sprang forward to welcome, may in some particulars give a clew ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... will be his clew: he couldn't miss her," said Varney. "Let me go on, while I have time. Miss Carstairs, it is not fair to either of us to let matters stay like this. In the cottage last night, you forced me to let you ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the unpainted oblong box would furnish a clew to the man's real personality, Cleggett, assisted by Lady Agatha and Dr. Farnsworth, opened ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... man, if his revenge is wanting for yourself. The police have not hunted him out: how can you? Accident has made me acquainted with one of his haunts. Give me a single promise, and I will put you at least upon that clew,—weak, perhaps, but as yet the sole one to be followed. Promise me that, only in defence of your own life, not for mere jealousy, you will avail yourself of the knowledge, and you shall ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a poor clew at the best. But I put a good face on it, and promised her I would find him if he could be found. And I spared no pains. I wrote to the postmaster at Tuckahoe, and to a minister I heard of there. I inquired of the Swedish consuls in New York and Philadelphia. Indeed, in the end, I went ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... for it, in a character so dignified as Arthur's, in some worthy cause, some emotional failure, some moral wound. I believe the following to be the clew; I can not develop it without treading ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... certain that while he might fear for his friend some chance repute of insanity, he had greater terrors than that. As to their nature I had no clew; nor was it my affair to be guessing; but whatever they were, the days of security at Les Trois Pigeons had somewhat eased Professor Keredec's mind in regard to them. At least, his anxiety was sufficiently assuaged to risk dining out of doors with ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... But he did some thinking. Experience had sharpened his wits, and by this time he knew a clew when he met it. A while later, when Bates had gone and his brother had come in with Alice, he got Oliver off in a corner and demanded, "How much are you to get out of ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... very unsatisfactory, for she had not gained the slightest clew by which to prove herself to be the child of Mona Forester, ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Crane, "they are probably not far off. Let us print handbills, offering a reward for their clew, and luring the old man himself by an assurance that the inquiry is made in order that he may learn of ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... pile up de water so de tide rise six or eight inches higher," continued Quimp, picking up the clew given him. "High tide in one hour from now, and de Reindeer was gwine out den for shore. Dat's de whole story, massa, and not ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... Master Quinton Edge's particular retreat. And yet it would have marked the subtlety of the man to have set his secret here, where it would have been at once so easily seen and overlooked. Every labyrinth has its clew, but the fugitive walks safely ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... how the sail billowed out, full of wind, pulling hard at the clew-line, which was made fast to the gunwhale beside Hrolfur. The fore-sail resembled a beautifully curved sheet of steel, stiff and unyielding. Both sails were snow-white, semi-transparent and supple in movement, ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... attains a height of from 50 to 100 feet clear of the branches; moreover, it yields a gum resin like copal, which exudes from the trunk, and which is sometimes found below ground in the vicinity of the trees, thus giving the clew to the real nature of amber ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... discovered Christian Science in 1866. She studied the Scriptures and the sciences, she declares, in a search for the great curative Principle. She investigated allopathy, homoeopathy, and electricity, without finding a clew; and modern philosophy gave her no distinct statement of the Science of Mind-healing. After careful study she became convinced that the ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... to walk then, any more than now, else I would have ranged London all round, day and night, for my darling. As it was, a kind city missionary made inquiries at all the police-offices, and everywhere else he could think of, but no clew could be gained as to what had become of her. At last he got wearied out and gave it up. No wonder; he had never seen Edie, and could not love her as I did. Once he thought he had discovered her. The body ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... indeed! But supposing it true, how could we be expected to believe it like them that saw him with their own eyes? I couldn't be required to believe just as if I could have no doubt about it. It wouldn't be fair. Only—perhaps we haven't got the clew ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... yards to be sure of the mother-bird, charging my friend not to stir from his tracks. When I returned, he had moved two paces, he said (he had really moved four), and we spent a half hour stooping over the daisies and the buttercups, looking for the lost clew. We grew desperate, and fairly felt the ground all over with our hands, but without avail. I marked the spot with a bush, and came the next day, and with the bush as a centre, moved about it in slowly increasing ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... my head, and raising it above the hammock I caught sight of numberless dark creatures with huge wings which kept sweeping round and round here and there through the verandah. Presently one of them pitched on the clew of my hammock. There was sufficient light from the bright stars to see its shape, and I beheld a creature with large ears standing out from the sides and top of its head, a spear-shaped appendage on the tip ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... he affords scarcely a clew to his localities; of the man, as he worked and ate and drank and lodged, of his neighbors and contemporaries, of all he saw and heard of the world about him, we have only an occasional glimpse, here and there, in his narrative. It is the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... for their trouble. Silence fell on the house and Migwan returned to the mastering of the sum of the angles. Geometry was the bane of her existence and she was only cheered into digging away at it by the thought of the money lying in her name in the bank, which she had received for giving the clew leading to little Raymond Bartlett's discovery the summer before, and which would pay her way to college for one ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... incapable of their solution. Then will be felt, in all its aggravation, the pernicious consequence of destroying all docility in the minds of those who are not formed for finding their own way in the labyrinths of political theory, and are made to reject the clew and to disdain the guide. Then will be felt, and too late will be acknowledged, the ruin which follows the disjoining of religion from the state, the separation of morality from policy, and the giving conscience ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... vain. No clew to the purloined securities could be obtained,—the copies of the "Sunday Visitor," which had been substituted for them, affording not the least; for that valuable little paper was found in almost ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... of the fast upon the mountain. It was on the height ever since called Cruachan Patrick, which looks to the north upon Clew Bay, and to the west on the waters of the Atlantic. It was Shrove Saturday, a year and a little more from the apostle's first landing in Ireland. Already he had carried the gospel from the eastern to the western sea. But his spirit longed for ...
— Saint Patrick - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... and heterogeneous nature of matter come into play; it is to be feared that, by persisting in the pursuit of laws, we may find our course suddenly arrested by an impassible chasm. The principle of unity is lost sight of, and the guiding clew is rent asunder whenever any specific and peculiar kind of action manifests itself amid the active forces of nature. The law of equivalents and the numerical proportions of composition, so happily recognized ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... man had discovered the great secrets they were delving after; and soul-sick people trying this new, and perhaps dangerous medicine, when others failed to cure. Many earnest, thoughtful men and women were there, some on the anxious seat, and some already at peace, having found the clew that leads safely through the labyrinth of life. Here and there a white head, a placid old face, or one of those fine countenances that tell, unconsciously, the beautiful story of ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... Cumberland—conjectured to be his sister; and only, Alick never ceased in his attempts to discover where his lost queen was hidden, though these attempts had hitherto been hopelessly baffled, partly because he had not an inch of foothold whence to make his first spring, nor the thinnest clew to tell him ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... key before used evidently opened all the locks in the basement of this tower; and so it proved, as one after the other the dungeons or cellars were tried with the same unsatisfactory results, for none of the eight afforded the slightest trace of the clew they sought. ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... as the outward-bound, and Mr. Dodge had come abroad quite as green as he was now going home ripe, this traveller of six months' finish did not escape diver commentaries that literally cut him up "from clew to ear-ring," and which flew about in the rigging much as active birds flutter from branch to branch in a tree. The subject of all this wit, however, remained profoundly, not to say happily, ignorant of the sensation he had produced, being occupied in disposing of the Dresden pipe, the Venetian ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... you in office? That laugh of an office! Who? Why, Courtrey—th' biggest thief, th' coldest murderer in th' country! He put you there! An' what are you good for? My daddy was shot—in th' back—an' did you make one inquiry into the murder? Come out to Last's, even to find a clew? Not you! There's only one sheriff in this Valley—one bit o' law that will avenge his death—an' that's me! Now, you two fine gentlemen—I'm goin'. There's my hand! I throw th' cards on th' table! Shoot me in the back if you've got th' nerve. Come out in th' open an' fight! ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... for three years when, without any warning, Irene left me. I came home one night from a dinner at the English Embassy, and found her gone. There was no message, not a single line of adieu, not a ghost of a clew by which I could trace her. It was a shock to me; but when the first wrench was over, I knew that it was something of a relief. In my heart I was tired of the irregular life we had been leading, and longing to return to England and my old ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... attempt the capture of the escaped prisoner, Bute; but the murderer had disappeared, leaving no clew. Brandt learned that the slums of large cities and several mining camps had been searched in vain, also that the trains running east had been carefully watched. We need not try to follow his processes of thought, nor seek to learn how ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... they got into and out of is no part of my story; but one day something happened—things do happen as far back in lives as that—which gave Luclarion her clew ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... been sought for by a thousand restless yearnings and vague desires, less of the heart than mind; not as when youth discovers the one to be beloved, but rather as when the student, long wandering after the clew to some truth in science, sees it glimmer dimly before him, to beckon, to recede, to allure, and to wane again. She fell at last into unquiet slumber, vexed by deformed, fleeting, shapeless phantoms; and, waking, as the sun, through a veil of hazy cloud, glinted ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the tyrant regretfully, "for if we only knew that, we should have a clew that might lead to our discovering the truth about this most suspicious affair. It is only too evident that some one is trying to put you out of the way, quibuscumque viis, as the pedant would say. Although we unfortunately have no proof of it, I am very ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... The only clew left by the assassin was the "dog." At the inquest, the policeman on the beat swore that when he passed the house on his rounds at half-past four A.M., he tried both front doors, and that they were fastened, and that when he passed again a little before six o'clock, he noticed that the ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... Corpre, reigning in the land of Clew,[FN44] Dwelt in Coolny's[FN45] fort; and fostered sons of princes not a few: Forty kine who grazed his pastures gave him milk to rear his wards; Royal blood his charges boasted, sprung from Munster's noblest lords. Maev and Ailill sought to meet him: heralds ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... into many of the cases of complaint made in this general way, and have felt mortified that our soldiers should do acts which are nothing more or less than stealing, but I was powerless without some clew whereby to reach the rightful party. I know that the great mass of our soldiers would scorn to steal or commit crime, and I will not therefore entertain vague and general complaints, but stand, prepared always to follow up any reasonable ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... told him of the evil deeds of the suitors, and besought him to give him every possible clew to his father's whereabouts. Menelaos was indignant over the young ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... only a short time had elapsed after his return to America when he disappeared suddenly and mysteriously, and in spite of long-continued and strenuous efforts to obtain some light on the subject, no clew or trace of him was ever found. He was a favorite among the Edison "oldtimers," and his memory is still cherished, for when some of the "boys" happen to get together, as they occasionally do, some one is almost sure to "wonder what became of poor 'Mac.'" He was last ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... been carrying her mainsail, when, the squall striking her, she was taken aback, and before the clew-garnets could be manned and the sail clewed up, the mainmast went overboard, carrying with it in its fall the mizen-mast, the fore-topmast and foreyard; the tiller broke off at the head, and then in an instant the noble ship lay a helpless wreck on the tossing ocean. The carpenter ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... made him in his immaturity, misinterpret and despise! He did not comprehend that tragic story when she told it; it was impossible that he should, for he had no knowledge or experience adequate to furnish him the clew. Nothing is more inconceivable and impossible to a child than the possibility of his parents dying or doing wrong. When he awakens to consciousness he finds around him eternal things,—rocks, hills, rivers, stars, ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... 22] For the more I consider, the more I'm perplex'd: However, thus much I will venture to tell; A female alone could have written so well." Sir Argus believ'd the Dame might have guess'd right; Yet, entre-nous, thought her not very polite: But that was a trifle; he now had a clew To assist his research; and more satisfied grew: Since the OWL'S well-known wisdom, and vast penetration, From time ...
— The Peacock and Parrot, on their Tour to Discover the Author of "The Peacock At Home" • Unknown
... rundle. cone, conoid[obs3]; pear shape, egg shape, bell shape. sphere, globe, ball, boulder, bowlder[obs3]; spheroid, ellipsoid; oblong spheroid; oblate spheroid, prolate spheroid; drop, spherule, globule, vesicle, bulb, bullet, pellet, pelote[obs3], clew, pill, marble, pea, knob, pommel, horn; knot (convolution) 248. curved surface, hypersphere; hyperdimensional surface. V. render spherical &c.adj.; form into a sphere, sphere, roll into a ball; give rotundity &c. n.; round. Adj. rotund; round &c. (circular) 247; cylindric, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... aged twenty-two.' There could be no mistake, and with a tear to the memory of the dead whom I had loved and injured, I burned the paper, feeling that now there was no clew to the secret I was as anxious to preserve ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... fully equal in power to any Canto in Dante's "Inferno," is the story of "Ethan Brandt," or "The Unpardonable Sin." We have a clew to its origin in the statement that it was part of an unfinished romance; presumably commenced at Concord, but afterward discarded, owing to the author's dissatisfaction with his work—an illustration of Hawthorne's severe ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... not likely she was drowned," said the Chevalier gravely. "Someone must have been about, to save her. Do not be discouraged, Mademoiselle, if our search for Louise takes several days. We are without a clew—groping, like her, in the dark. But we shall find ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... see, sir, it's this way," he continued. "We sailormen are the masters of the sittyation, as the sayin' is. Wilde and his lot can't do nothin' without our help; they can't navigate the ship, and they can't handle her; there ain't one of 'em knows enough to be able so much as clew up a r'yal, or take in the flyin' jib; so if they wants to carry out their plan, they'll have to agree to the same as what we does, d'ye see? And we're willin' to agree to anything reasonable as you may ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... have decided that the outside shall be of treillage, which, however, I shall not commence, till I have again seen some of old Louis's old-fashioned Galanteries at Versailles. Rosamond's bower, you, and I, and Tom Hearne know, was a labyrinth: but as my territory will admit of a very short clew, I lay aside all thoughts of a mazy habitation: though a bower is very different from an arbour, and must have more chambers than one. In short, I both know, and don't know what it should be. I am almost afraid I must go and read Spenser, and wade through his allegories, and drawling ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... following scornful quotations: "Grammarians, go to your tailors and shoemakers, and learn from them the rational art of constructing your grammars!"—Neef's Method of Education, p. 62. "From a labyrinth without a clew, in which the most enlightened scholars of Europe have mazed themselves and misguided others, the author ventures to turn aside."—Cardell's Gram., 12mo, p. 15. Again: "The nations of unlettered ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... last interview? The friendly face and cordial kindness of Dr. Asbury flashed upon her memory, and she resolved to confide her doubts and difficulties to him, hoping to obtain from his clear and matured judgment some clew which might enable her to emerge from the labyrinth that involved her. She knelt and tried to pray. To what did she, on bended knees, send up passionate supplications? To nature? to heroes? These were ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... the Cafe de Paris and at the Olympia and at Longchamps and at Henry's Bar. Well, he just disappeared, that is all. He dropped completely out of sight between two days, and though the family has had a small army of detectives on his trail they've not discovered the smallest clew. It's deuced odd altogether. You might think it easy to disappear like that, ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... the postmaster with delight. And he himself harnessed the ancient horse to the creaking carriage. In the meantime Porthos was curious to behold. He imagined he had discovered a clew to the secret, and he felt pleased, because a visit to Athos, in the first place, promised him much satisfaction, and, in the next, gave him the hope of finding at the same time a good bed and good supper. The master, having got the carriage ready, ordered one of his men ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... up, but before the canvas could be handed, with claps like thunder, the main-topmast-staysail and jib were blown from the bolt-ropes, the topsails and courses were flying in shreds from the yards, the topsail sheets, clew-lines and bunt-lines were carried away, as were also the main-clew garnets, bunt-lines and leech-lines, while a more tremendous sea than I had ever before beheld got ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
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