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More "Puzzle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there used to be. And my ancestors, some of them, were Salem people. That may be where I get my taste for divination and solving problems. I just love puzzles of all sorts, and if the old Cromarty gentleman had only left a cipher message, it would have been fun to puzzle it out." ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... told. He could not imagine Edith making him the confidant of her outraged feelings. Besides, would such a strangely impassive person resent any little indiscretion in which his wife might choose to indulge? Kirk did not know—the man was a puzzle to him. ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... such as cats and rats, learn how to manipulate puzzle-boxes and how to get at the treasure at the heart of a Hampton Court maze. Some of the puzzle-boxes, with a reward of food inside, are quite difficult, for the various bolts and bars have to be dealt with in a particular order, and yet many mammals master the problem. ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... he had brought home solid comforts, useful facts, wholesome sentiments, natural manners, and sensible, but modest conversation,—instead of an astonishing variety of intellectual curiosities and intricate moral toys, whereat plain people marvelled—as in the case of a certain ingenious Chinese puzzle, ball within ball, all save the last elaborately carved—how the very diminutive plain one at the centre ever got in there, or ever ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... after the manner of the Egyptian obelisks. The slender round towers of Brechin and Abernethy, and of Devenish and other places in Ireland, capped by a conical stone roof terminating in a single stone, which were for a long time a puzzle to the antiquary, are now ascertained to be simply steeples connected with Christian churches of the tenth and eleventh centuries. And just as these towers are now left isolated and solitary without a trace of the buildings with which they were associated, ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... ocean. There are extensive stables, and to them are attached a fine tennis-court and riding-house, both constantly used by the younger Russells. Beyond is a Chinese dairy kept for show, and in a distant part of the grounds a curious puzzle-garden and rustic grotto. Woburn Park is one of the largest private enclosures in England, covering thirty-five hundred acres, and enclosed by a brick wall twelve miles long and eight feet high. It is undulating in surface, containing several pretty lakes and a large herd of deer. Its ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... guess how she enjoyed the lawn with its roses, and the beautiful river. Fresh from the poor little cabin on the hill-top, she nevertheless fell with the greatest ease into the ways and habits of her new life. It did not puzzle or disturb her in the least to live in large rooms, be waited on by servants, or have nice things about her; she took to all these naturally. For a few days Mr. and Mrs. Grant watched with some anxiety, fearing to discover a flaw in their treasure, ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... numerous boils upon his skin has often been a puzzle to his physician, who has in vain attempted to find some cause for the trouble in the general health alone. Had he known that every boil owed its origin to pus bacteria, which had infected a sweat gland or hair follicle, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... young man," said he, "say nothing of my trade in tin, for I see these are men of quality, and, having heard of me only through the newspapers, know but little of my true history. But, let my enemies say what they will, I am not a man to stand at trifles. Honors never puzzle me: it's the thickness of them. I say, though, that when fame puts a man on the pedestal he must never think of falling to the ground, for that would be a fear unworthy my profession." He now read and reread the commodore's letter, and at length ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... first saw thee, my mind laboured with a strong puzzle, whether I should put thee down for a great fool, or a smatterer in wit. Something I saw was wrong in thee, by thy dress. If this fellow, thought I, delights not so much in ridicule, that he will not spare himself, he must be plaguy ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... arise those pseudo-conceptions which we call the infinitely extended and the infinitely lasting. Under our present limitations it is impossible for us to grasp the whole of any Truth, if we could do that, there would be no such mystery of Infinity to puzzle us; we could, as it were, see all around it, but that is again looking through another window. We are now considering relativity. If we cut off the very end of the point of the finest needle, we get so minute a particle of steel that it is hardly ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... herself, could not imagine why the exclusive Eleanor should choose to exhibit a freakish tendency toward philanthropy in this one direction. Beatrice would have liked, for the satisfaction there is in solving a puzzle, to get at the root of the matter. Accordingly she always took pains to draw ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... Synne is given in Specimens of Early English, Part II, most of which can be read with ease. The obsolete words are not very numerous, and we meet now and then with half a dozen consecutive lines that would puzzle no one. It is needless to pursue the history of this dialect further. It had, by this time, become almost the standard language, differing from Modern English chiefly in date, and consequently in pronunciation. We pass on from Manning to Chaucer, from Chaucer to Lydgate ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... they're easier," Olive returned with a sigh, "but who could bear to do them when there are living, breathing, moving things; things that puzzle you by looking different every minute? No, I'll keep on trying, and when you get a little older we'll run away together and live and learn things by ourselves, in some place where ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... from head to foot, thoroughly. She wouldn't stick at murder—if she thought it safe. She'd do anything, say anything. Every word she uttered this morning had been rehearsed in her mind—with gestures, even. When I beat her, I beat this puzzle; that's sure." ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... Fretchville's house; I to stay at Mrs. Sinclair's; the stake I have in my country; my reversions; my economy; my person; my address; [something like in all this!] are brought in my favour, to induce her now not to leave me. How do I love to puzzle these ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... idea is it that you've got into that Chinese puzzle you call your head, Kong?" he replied; for this same William was one who habitually gilded unpalatable truths into the semblance of a flattering jest. "Whenever you turn off what you are saying into a willow-pattern compliment and bow seventeen times like an animated mandarin, I know that you are ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... nice puzzle for him, doesn't it?" the Operative said, and grinned. "After all, I didn't touch him—couldn't, in any way. He'd shielded himself perfectly from any telekinetic force—and I had no weapons. I couldn't even get to him barehanded because of his shield and the binder field. He had ...
— Sight Gag • Laurence Mark Janifer
... the sexual selection of sheep. As to the production of new species by the selection of variations, that is no news to your gardener. Now if you are familiar with these three processes: the survival of the fittest, sexual selection, and variation leading to new kinds, there is nothing to puzzle you in Darwinism. ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... and listened, his jaws set hard together. Fast as the man talked the thoughts of Lance flew ahead, snatched at the significance of every detail, every bit of evidence. Some things puzzled Burt Brownlee, but Lance knew the answer to the puzzle while Burt talked and talked. Finally he laid his hand over the finely traced maps that showed secret trails, unguessed, hidden little draws where stolen stock had been concealed, all the fine threads that would weave the net close around ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... rather square jaw and chin, and smooth placid cheeks were strongly expressive of quiet decision and dignified force of will. The mouth, almost always the tell-tale feature of the face, seemed in his case rather calculated to puzzle any one who would have speculated on the meanings shadowed forth by the lines of it. It was certainly, with its large rows of unexceptionably brilliant teeth, a very handsome mouth. And it was often not devoid ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... make thee understand the first, the nature of it, and the cause why most men are born to it; as for the second, it would be treason for thee and me to do more than whisper it here, and sigh for it when none are listening; but the third need hardly puzzle thee; thy hookah [Footnote: Hookah: a kind of pipe for smoking tobacco, used in Eastern Europe and Asia.] is bright with it; all thy jewels are set in it; gold is inlaid in the ivory of thy bath; ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... flatter. Although in some respects you puzzle me, I am very clear and positive as to my feeling of gratitude. While my aunt feels kindly toward me, she is formal. It seemed to me when I came out of the cold of the wintry night I found within a more ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... negroes, standing about the driveway and outside the fence, people of the village grouped along the sidewalk, everybody out upon their doorsteps to watch the coach go by, and to all the face of the bride was a puzzle and a surprise. They half expected to see another coach coming with the other ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... perpetually reckon," namely, the loss of the action and of the equivalent stage directions. It is easy to imagine "what problems Shakespeare would present if he were printed like the Poetae Scenici Graeci," and not more difficult to realize how many things there would be to puzzle us in Ghosts and The Wild Duck if we possessed nothing but the ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... movements of men-of-war, sometimes of transports, sometimes of boats, sometimes of any two of these, sometimes of all three together; sometimes there were redcoats on board one, or two, or all three kinds of craft, and sometimes not. It was a dreadful puzzle for Montcalm, a puzzle made ten times worse because all the news of the British plans that could be found out ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... arrested by two words "Logs Wanted." He read the article through which told how the price of lumber had suddenly advanced, and that logs were in great demand. When Stephen laid down the paper and went into breakfast, the puzzle had been solved. What about that heavy timber at the rear of their farm? No axe had as yet rung there, no fire had devastated the place, and the trees stood tall and straight in majestic grandeur. A brook flowed near which would bear the logs down ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... they had saved. Especially sharp in Strether meanwhile was the conviction that his companion really knew, as we have hinted, where she had come out. It was at a very particular place—only THAT she would never tell him; it would be above all what he should have to puzzle for himself. This was what he hoped for, because his interest in the girl wouldn't be complete without it. No more would the appreciation to which she was entitled—so assured was he that the more ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... things Home suggested they should see, while, on the other hand, they saw things quite on their own account, when Home was busily engaged in conversation with some one else. The whole case must be made to hang together, and if "suggestion" be the key to the puzzle, it certainly ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... telling, I have known few on whom it had not a very sensible effect. I pick up the names of their acquaintance; amours and little squabbles are easily gleaned from among servants and neighbors; and, indeed, people themselves are the best intelligencers in the world for our purpose. They dare not puzzle us for their own sakes, for everyone is anxious to hear what he wishes to believe; and they who repeat it, to laugh at it when they have done, are generally more serious than their hearers are apt to imagine. With a tolerably good memory, and some ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Tepitotons, "little ones." The greatest proportion, however, are mere heads which never had had bodies, and will not stand anyhow. They could not have been personal ornaments, for there is nothing to fasten them on by. They are rather a puzzle. I have seen a suggestion somewhere, that when a man was buried, each surviving member of his family put one of these heads into his grave. This sounds plausible enough, especially as both male and female ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... undoubted marriage brings me to the question of sex. There is, of course, not the slightest doubt about it. Mrs. Ventris was a fairy wife. Mrs. Ventris was a puzzle to me for a good many years—in fact until Despoina explained to me many things. For Mrs. Ventris had a permanent human shape, and spoke as freely as you or I. I thought at one time that she might be the offspring of a mixed marriage, like Elsie Marks (whose mother, by the way, was ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... company arrived, and the girl asked me to hold a bank till supper was ready; but I declined, with a burst of laughter that seemed to puzzle her. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... and another. Some went on very well, some with heavy travail, and with results that made me grateful for our pictures and furniture. Yet it became fascinating work; it was like piecing out some vast picture-puzzle, one that might be of some use when finished. I improved, too. I was several days finishing the up-stairs, and by the time I got it done I had got back some of the dash I started off with. I could slap on the paste and swing the strip to the wall so handily that I was ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Jerome, who had a secret sense of superiority to his tenderer brother. And after about two hundred miles of it, it got to displease him as well as puzzle him. But he tried to check this sentiment as petty and unworthy. "Souls differ like locks," said he, "and preachers must differ like keys, or the fewer should the Church open for God to pass in. And certes, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... But puzzle as he might, he never once dreamed of the truth—that his sister Madelon had promised to marry Lot Gordon in a month's time, and sent her "yes" by word of mouth of Margaret Bean that morning. Somehow, ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... astonishment, almost in awe. Could this be the sensual, passionate voluptuary he had known two days since?—the strange, unprincipled, impulsive being, who yielded like the reed, to every gust of passion—this deep, clear, vigorous thinker! It was indeed a change to puzzle sager heads than that of Arvina! a transformation, sudden and beautiful as that from the torpid earthy grub, to the swift-winged etherial butterfly! He gazed at her, until she smiled in reply to his look of bewilderment; ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... something. God stoops o'er his head, Satan looks up between his feet—both tug— He's left, himself, i' the middle: the soul wakes And grows. Prolong that battle through his life! Never leave growing till the life to come! Here, we've got callous to the Virgin's winks That used to puzzle people wholesomely: 700 Men have outgrown the shame of being fools. What are the laws of nature, not to bend If the Church bid them?—brother Newman asks. Up with the Immaculate Conception, then— On to the rack with faith!—is ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... (We refer our readers to the notes of Dr Croly's edition for a running commentary of confutation to the "Essay on Man" distinguished by solid and unanswerable acuteness of argument.) But such an eloquent and ingenious puzzle as it is! It might have issued from the work-basket of Titania herself. It is another evidence of Pope's greatness in trifles. How he would have shone in fabricating the staves of the ark, or the fringes of ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... "'Don't puzzle me,' said I. 'But it is an indubitable verity,' I continued, addressing myself to the commissary, changing only the form of my asseveration,' that I owe the King of France nothing but my good-will, for he is a very honest man, and I wish him all the health ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... magistrate. He was sitting after his habit in his splint-bottomed chair tilted against the porch wall, waiting for the breakfast which his wife was getting within. As the crowd straggled up to the porch, he tilted his chair down, and came forward with a frown of puzzle. "What's this?" he demanded; then, catching sight of a woman's eager face among the foremost, his frown relaxed and he said, "Don't ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... what "striding" meant. What fun it was to feel what a word meant! Then when you used it, you could feel it lie down flat in the sentence, and fit into the other words, like a piece in a jig-saw puzzle when you got it into the right place. Gracious! How fast you could "stride" down those rocks ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... men, who, by their former voluntary wickedness, have justly deserved to be destroyed, and are thereby brought to destruction,] is a very just one, and in him not unfrequent. Nor does Josephus ever puzzle himself, or perplex his readers, with subtle hypotheses as to the manner of such judicial infatuations by God, while the justice of them is generally so obvious. That peculiar manner of the Divine operations, or permissions, or the means God ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... But he could not see why departed souls should be regarded as the shadows of living men. Rather it was we who lived in a vain show, and would continue to do so until the spirit, the true substance of us, should be set free. Well, whatever the truth of it might be, it was all a charming puzzle, and we should learn all about it some day, and meantime he had been furnished with an entirely new idea—the revealing power of darkness. He loved the light because it was beautiful, and now he loved the darkness because it was mysterious, and held such ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... are a puzzle; botanically it is a Primrose, but it is never so called. It has many names, but its most common are Paigle and Cowslip. Paigle has never been satisfactorily explained, nor has Cowslip. Our great etymologists, Cockayne and Dr. Prior and Wedgwood, are ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... "pieces" of poetry, and a few haphazard and detached observations (called "Nature Study" nowadays) about familiar things—"the cat," "the cow," "the parsnip," "the rainbow," and so forth—this was the jumble of stuff offered to the child's mind—a jumble to which it would puzzle a philosopher to give coherence. And what could a child get from it to kindle his enthusiasm for that civilized learning in which, none the less, it all may have its place? When the boy left school his "education" had ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... form. Of all the wonders of the intellectual world he felt that the greatest is the faith of Catholics, and he knew by the lesson of his early life that it is but slightly appreciated by the non-Catholic mind. That Catholics permit this ignorance to continue was a puzzle to him. And it was all the more annoying because any single one of them can multiply his influence indefinitely by his union with the most perfect organism ever known—the Catholic Church. The quiescence of a body of men, sincere and intelligent, infallibly certain of the means ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... very pretty name, and one of those which is [sic] supposed by novelists and young ladies to be aristocratic; why so is a puzzle; as its plain meaning is a tenant farmer and nothing more or less" (Two Years ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... Mecklenburg; when they have been settled in a good living for a few years, they begin to fill out like ordinary mortals. Braesig remembered this, and did not despair of seeing Godfrey a portly parson one of these days, though how it was to come about was rather a puzzle to him. Such was Godfrey Baldrian in appearance; but his portrait would not be complete if I did not add that he had the faintest possible tinge of Phariseeism in his expression. It was only a tinge, but with Phariseeism as with rennet, a very ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... inarticulate sound seemed to say that the course might vary in different cases. 'Generally,' said Hazel, 'I wait and puzzle it out ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... presented itself to his fancy in the guise of a puzzle-picture, which, though you study it never so diligently, remains incomprehensible, until by chance you view it from an unexpected angle, when it reveals itself intelligibly. It had not yet been his good fortune to ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... rush of angry feeling. He despised himself. How could he have got into such a mess? But at the same time, for his thoughts chased one another through his brain and yet seemed to stand together, in a hopeless confusion, like the pieces of a jig-saw puzzle seen in a nightmare, he asked himself what he was going to do. Everything was so clear before him, all he had aimed at so long within reach at last, and now his inconceivable stupidity had erected this new obstacle. ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... hath a body that is now in glory, ascended from his disciples, according to the scripture (Acts 1:3 compared with verses 9-11). But thou dost only fling up a few words into the air, that thou mightest thereby puzzle thy simple reader. But I bless God, for my part I do see thee, that thou dost, like a beguiled man, seek by all means to beguile others. And whereas thou sayest, It is sufficient to salvation, to know Christ Jesus as head ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... problem did not seem to puzzle her, the problem of this feeling so ill-founded. It was so. Very ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... order can admit you to the House? And as for a 'New Way to Pay Old Debts,' commend me to Commissioner Goulburn in Bankruptcy; while 'Love's Last Shift' is daily performed at the Court of Probate, under the distinguished patronage of Judge Wills. Is there any need to puzzle one's head over the decline of the drama, then? You might as well ask if a moderate smoker will pay exorbitantly for dried cabbage-leaves, when he can have prime Cubans for ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... boy thoughtfully, for his uncle's fulminations fell blankly upon his ears as he stood trying to puzzle out some of the pencilled words upon the ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... puzzle the wisest man. David himself, was put to a stand, by beholding the quiet death of ungodly men. Verily, sayes he, I have cleansed my heart in vain, and have washed my hands in innocency. Psal. 73. 13. They, to appearance fare better by far than I: Their eyes stand out with fatness, they ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... always studying women. Years before, Grace Ferrall had snapped her slim fingers in his face; and here, at Shotover, the field was limited. Mrs. Vendenning had left; Agatha Caithness was still a pale and reticent puzzle; Rena, Katharyn, and Eileen tormented him; Marion Page, coolly au fait, yawned in his face. There remained Sylvia, who, knowing nothing about his species, met him half-way with the sweet and sensitive deference ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... could only lay claim to an honest, pleasant, fresh-coloured intelligent face, only prevented by an air of high-breeding from being milkmaid-like. It was one of those parties when the ingenuity of piercing a puzzle is required to hinder more brothers and sisters from sitting together than could ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... watched the old woman's antics. She kept on laughing for some time, and then she reached out for her stockings. She found the only one she had left, and put it on. Then she reached around for the other, but failed to find it, because I had it in my pocket. This seemed to puzzle her. She stood up and looked all around for her missing stocking, but it wasn't there. Then she sat down again, pulled off the stocking she had on, and put it on the ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris
... looks, his frank bearing, and his facile supremacy on the cricket-ground and in the racquet-court, was a popular hero; and of all his schoolfellows none paid him a more whole-hearted worship than the totally dissimilar Philip Vaughan. Their close and intimate affection was a standing puzzle to hard and dull and superficial natures; but a poet ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... in his expression that again moved Mrs. Bonnycastle to mirth. "How we do puzzle you Europeans! ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... calyx or bud of the lotus) inclose each a seated image, seventy-two more Buddhas sitting in those inner, upper circles, of Nirvana, facing a great dagaba, or final cupola, the exact function or purpose of which as key to the whole structure is still the puzzle of archaeologists. This final shrine is fifty feet in diameter, and either covered a relic of Buddha, or a central well where the ashes of priests and princes were deposited, or is a form surviving from the tree-temples of the earliest primitive East when nature-worship ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... with the obvious difficulty that if it is the nature of all phenomenal things to return to God, from whom they proceeded, the process which he calls the birth of the Son ought logically to occur in every conscious individual, for all have a like phenomenal existence. He attempts to solve this puzzle by the hypothesis of a double aspect of the new birth (see below). But I fear there is some justice in Professor Pearson's comment, "Thus his phenomenology is ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... character; while poor Abbott, to whom I now throw a few small coins in charity, was a setter of type. The rest of the party is made up of Pete Cunningham, Sam Glenn, Bill Dimond, Jim Brand, Bill Donaldson, Dan Townsend, Jack Weaver, Cal Smith, and a host of others whom it would puzzle the very ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... preparation of the work no pains have been spared to insure clearness in general directions, and every point which would be likely to puzzle the reader has been specially covered by separate illustration. In this particular it stands unique in the list of boys' books. Every difficulty has been anticipated, and in every instance the illustrations will be found thoroughly comprehensive ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... then returned to the Pilgrim Inn, dashed and fallen in spirit. He had thought that their troubles were at an end, but here was a new difficulty at which in truth he rather feared to guess. The Chevalier's departure to Spain had been a puzzle to him before; he remembered now that the Chevalier had agreed with reluctance to his enterprise, and had never been more than lukewarm in its support. That reluctance, that lukewarmness, he had attributed ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... railway-laborers, has been transmogrified into navigator. We believe that more people could tell why the month of July was so called than could explain the origin of the names for our days of the week, and that it is oftener the Saxon than the French words in Chaucer that puzzle the modern reader.] ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... of every human being is a puzzle to every other. With what is it occupied when left to its own devices? There is, in Barwood's handwriting,[1] proof that his brain was filled with a procession of changing activities and impressions which were for the most part melancholy,—aspirations for fame, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... bewilderingly girlish appearance. As he looked in upon her she raised her face so that the light shone full upon it; her brows were puckered, she nibbled at the end of her pencil, in the midst of some creative puzzle. ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... "Not these puzzle the will; Not these the yet unanswered question urge. But the unjust stricken; but the hands that kill Lopped; but the ...
— A Father of Women - and other poems • Alice Meynell
... new order of philosophers is appearing; I shall venture to baptize them by a name not without danger. As far as I understand them, as far as they allow themselves to be understood—for it is their nature to WISH to remain something of a puzzle—these philosophers of the future might rightly, perhaps also wrongly, claim to be designated as "tempters." This name itself is after all only an attempt, or, if it be ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... come along like a buck before a forest fire. But it is strange to me how you find your way so clearly out here with never track nor trail to guide you. It would puzzle me, Ephraim, to find America, to say nought of the Narrows ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... difficult attempt, as the image of her mother was the one which insisted on taking the pre-eminence in her mind. She ordered it down, with a sort of bitterness. Had her mother been alive, she would have gladly fled from this puzzle into which her life had tangled itself, and gone back to America to rest and mother-love. So she told herself, at least. But then followed the reflection that in her mother's death the refuge of love's ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... "Pilgrimage." Between this point and Ras Za'farnah, higher up, the wind seems to split: a strong southerly gale will be blowing, whilst a norther of equal pressure prevails at the Gulf-head, and vice vers. Suez, indeed, appears to be, in more ways than one, a hydrographical puzzle. When it is low water in and near the harbour, the flow is high between the Straits of Jobal and the Daedalus Light; and the ebb tide runs out about two points across the narrows, whilst the flood runs in on a line parallel with it. Finally, when we returned, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... may be of great service to many literary men, and indeed to the cause of literature in general; and this, too, without much trouble to yourself? Would you be willing to receive "Queries" respecting references? They frequently puzzle those who are engaged in literary works, and indeed those who are merely readers, and who have not access to public libraries or the manuscript treasures of the metropolis and the universities. If, for instance, a clergyman or squire, interested in the history ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 2, November 10 1849 • Various
... large dining-hall, where they may enjoy themselves in moderation, as befits sages, not without puns and repartees, epigrams, anagrams, and Attic salt, to be fatal, alas, to poor Diodorus the dialectician. For Stilpo, prince of sophists, having silenced him by some quibbling puzzle of logic, Ptolemy surnamed him Chronos the Slow. Poor Diodorus went home, took pen and ink, wrote a treatise on the awful nothing, and died in despair, leaving five "dialectical daughters" behind him, to be thorns in the sides of some five hapless men of Macedonia, as "emancipated ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... to know I'm not showing it about, or brooding over it like a bit of a jigsaw puzzle," I thought. But the eye I wished to catch remained glued to the porpoises, and only they could tell whether it darkened with dread or twinkled with suppressed laughter. Even Mrs. Shuster hadn't the "cheek" to try and attract ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... My former sad experience, as you know, has gifted me with some degree of insight into the gloomy mysteries of the human heart, through which I have wandered like one astray in a dark cavern, with his torch fast flickering to extinction. But this man, this class of men, is a hopeless puzzle." ...
— The Christmas Banquet (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the region of romance; history knows nothing of it. Even the name of Scilly is a puzzle, though perhaps the best authorities think that it derives from the widespread tribe of the Silures. Strictly speaking, the name Scilly only attaches to one small islet lying off Bryher, but somehow it ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... very still; which as it did chance, was maybe not such an utter foolishness; for my head did seem in that half-gloom to be, mayhap, no more than a little rock in the water, and I made no move to tell of life; yet should the Hound have smelled me; and that it failed in this matter, doth be a puzzle ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... Phil, struggling into a white, medallioned blouse that fastened as intricately as the working of a prize puzzle. "I've taken such a dislike to her, and she ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... playing assumed a deeper interest; here was something which she could not yet fathom. She saw what influence had driven him to her, against his inclination, but his motive for seeming to obey, while dreading success, was a puzzle. Singularly enough, a slight feeling of commiseration began to soften her previous contempt, and hastened her ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... not like a problem in arithmetic, to be solved by learning the rule; it is more like a puzzle of blocks, or wire rings—you just keep trying one way after another, until finally ...
— 21 • Frank Crane
... careless, irresponsible crowd. I'm irresponsible, too, and they understand me. They trust you, but you sometimes puzzle them. Perhaps ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... long intervals the huge hacienda of the landed lord, walled in like a fortress; but where are the ranchos, the homes of the common people? True, I have noticed the ruins of many, and that explains the puzzle. I remember, now that I am on the frontier: that for years past the banks of the Rio Bravo, from its source to the sea, have been hostile ground—a war-border of fifteen hundred miles in length! Many a red conflict has occurred—is still occurring—between those Arabs of ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... exertion, he considered such "a howwid boah," that he always most carefully avoided those occasions for distinguishing himself, which other men are wont to seek with avidity. Why on earth he ever entered the navy was a puzzle which ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... governing Influence in the Minds and upon the Actions of Men, is a Question I am not yet come to, nor indeed does it so particularly belong to the Devil's History, it seems rather a Polemick, so it may pass at School among the Metaphysicks, and puzzle the Heads of our Masters; wherefore I think to write to the learned Dr. B—— about it, imploring his most sublime Haughtiness, that when his other more momentous Avocations of Pedantry and Pedagogism will give him an Interval from Wrath and Contention, ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... smoked glasses if you'll wear them. And I don't want to go alone. David went back on me; he's got a new book. It's a puzzle to me why any man should want to read when he can ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... far as they ever got in the solution of the eternal puzzle of how one man holds a hundred under his thumb and sleeps the sleep ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... which I had been wounded three times and had campaigned from Wagram to Portugal. I could not understand why I was being treated like this, after what the Emperor and the Comte de Lobau had said to me. It was the latter who gave me the key to this puzzle. ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... wrong?—Oh, what a fool I am! The mother and daughter must have suspected that you would raise some obstacles in the way of this affair since they have kept it from you," said Madame Marneffe. "But if you did not live with the young man, my dear, all this is a greater puzzle to me than my ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... quite apart from its technicalities, puzzled Christina; and to puzzle Christina was to annoy her. To her mind it seemed to have been written for the sake of covering so much paper. Of course she wanted Macgregor to be interested in his work, but not to the exclusion of herself. She allowed the ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... blank, were torn out. Several pages are covered with mere vacant scrawling by my boyish hand; whether I threw it away in utter contempt, or concealed it back of the old chimney, in curious conjecture whether some unborn generations, would not at some distant day discover it, and puzzle over it, I cannot tell. I have no recollection of it whatever; except that I had a general impression that we used to have more of grandfather's writings than we possessed in later years. Whether we had still others I know ...
— Log-book of Timothy Boardman • Samuel W Boardman
... them in curious animal forms, and other similar things. It was known, positively, that these objects had been found in Egypt, but it was impossible to assign them a place in the known periods of Egyptian art. The puzzle was increased in difficulty by certain plates of slate with hunting and battle scenes and other representations in relief in a style so strange that many investigators considered them products of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... the Archbishop's throne, which has been replaced by a heavy modern structure, the whole eighty-eight, of which two have disappeared, cost 6961 livres to make, and the greater part of the figures were done by Pol Mosselmen (whose Flemish name was a terrible puzzle to mediaeval scribes) and Francois Trubert. Two other Flemish carvers, Laurens Hisbre and Gillet Duchastel, occur in the complete list of eleven sculptors who were paid by the piece as recorded in the Chapterhouse accounts. The designs were made by Philippot Viart, "maistre huchier" de Rouen, ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... out to the summit of the ridge in the big pasture, climbing lightly, with the springy ease born of the vigor her nineteen outdoor years had stored in the strong young body. She wanted to be alone, to puzzle out what the coming of this man meant to her. Had he intended anything by that last drawling remark of his in the store? Why was it that his careless, half insulting familiarity set the blood leaping through ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... problem must remain obscure, a welcome puzzle to antiquaries, philologists, and ethnologists. Our knowledge of Pictish religion is too scanty for the interpretation of Celtic religion to be affected by it. But we know that the Picts offered sacrifice before war—a Celtic custom, ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... function. We know what would occur. A considerable proportion of the community, more especially the more youthful members, possessed by an instinctive and legitimate curiosity, would concentrate their thoughts on the subject. They would have so many problems to puzzle over: How often ought I to eat? What ought I to eat? Is it wrong to eat fruit, which I like? Ought I to eat grass, which I don't like? Instinct notwithstanding, we may be quite sure that only a small minority would succeed in eating reasonably ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... greatly at this, and I could think of no answer to the puzzle, save that Naomi must have won the servant's heart, as she won all hearts. Or, perhaps, he knew what it was to love, and ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... chair I tried to puzzle out the probable meaning of this somewhat extraordinary happening. My acquiescence in the attitude that had been so suddenly forced upon me was owing entirely to one circumstance. Mr. Joseph H. Parker I had recognized at his first entrance as a regular habitue of the restaurant. He was usually ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... figures as th' iddycated pig they showed in th' tint las' week in Haley's vacant lot, and in joggerphy, asthronomy, algybbera, jommethry, chimisthry, physiojnomy, bassoophly an' fractions, I was often har-rd put mesilf to puzzle him. I heerd him gradyooate an' his composition was so fine very few cud make ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... who collects stamps will readily separate the great colonising powers, and group and locate their separate colonies. How many other boys, even after they have passed through the last stage of their school life, could do this? Little-known countries and states are too often a puzzle to the ordinary schoolboy, which are familiar places to the stamp collecting youth. Ask the ordinary schoolboy in which continents are such places as Angola, Annam, Curacao, Funchal, Holkar, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Nepaul, Reunion, St. Lucia, ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell
... allusions and illustrations which puzzle the non-classical reader. I add an explanatory index to some names of things and persons which have not occurred in my brief outline ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... only one thing to be done in a hurry (or sprauto); and even if he had not informed us what that one thing is, very few indeed would ever have imagined that it was fish-catching. The word sprote was a puzzle to me, and I had often questioned myself as to its meaning, but never could get a satisfactory answer; nor was it until some time after the publication of the 2nd edition of my Analecta that it occurred to me that it might ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.02.09 • Various
... only to respond to the inquiries we are constantly receiving, and to supply useful hints to those who are unable to avail themselves of lessons, and are forced to puzzle over their difficulties without help from a trained and experienced embroiderer; at the same time, the rules we have laid down and the directions we have given may serve to remind those who have passed through the classes, of many little details which might easily be forgotten ...
— Handbook of Embroidery • L. Higgin
... interesting volume is number six, containing, among other material, the famous "Man in the Iron Mask." This unsolved puzzle of history was later incorporated by Dumas in one of the D'Artagnan Romances a section of the Vicomte de Bragelonne, to which it gave its name. But in this later form, the true story of this singular man doomed to wear an iron vizor over his features during his entire lifetime could ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... that two and two make four explains why I give the same name to certain numbers; but the giving the name does not explain the belief. Meanwhile, if a class name be simply the mark which is put upon a bundle of things, we have got rid of a puzzle. Mill triumphs over the unfortunate realists who held that a class meant a mysterious entity, existing somewhere apart from all the individuals in which it is embodied. There is really nothing mysterious; a name is first the mark of an individual, the individual corresponding to a 'cluster' or a ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... with grave curiosity. Such antics he had surely never seen. Pale and silent, as he sat on Jim's big knee one evening, he watched the men intently, their crude attempts at his entertainment furnishing an obvious puzzle to his tiny mind. Then presently he looked with wonder and awe at the presents, unable to understand that all this wealth of bottles, cubes, tops, balls, ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... hour I patiently tracked my quarry, through a network of narrow streets and alleys crossing and re-crossing each other like an Eastern puzzle. By this time I was hopelessly astray, never having been in that quarter, which was one of the worst in the city. Under other circumstances I should have feared to trust myself in those horrible courts, but now I did not even remember ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... rule Moslems are absurdly ignorant of arithmetic and apparently cannot master it. Hence in Egypt they used Copts for calculating-machines and further East Hindds. The mildest numerical puzzle, like the above, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... Everyone knows that there is no such effectual means of developing the power to swallow camels as incessant watchfulness for opportunities of straining at gnats, and this should explain many passages that puzzle us in the work both of our clerics and our scientists. I, not being a man of science, still continue to do what I said I did in Alps and Sanctuaries, and make it a rule to earnestly and patiently ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... impractical?" the Marquis went on. "I am not impractical. My plan is altogether feasible. I do not merely think this. I know. My intuition tells me so. I pride myself on having a natural intuition. It takes me only a few seconds to understand a situation that other men have to puzzle over for hours. I seem to see every side of a question at once. I assure you, I am gifted in this way. ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... from all. Puzzles containing obsolete words will be received. Write contributions on one side of the paper and apart from all communications. Address 'Puzzle Editor,' ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... the villain was only crushed for the moment, and that he would shortly be revenging himself upon them. No, the only way every to get any peace and quiet was to render the Tanuki harmless for ever. Long did the old man and the hare puzzle together how this was to be done, and at last they decided that they would make two boats, a small one of wood and a large one of clay. Then they fell to work at once, and when the boats were ready and properly painted, the ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... personal history and characteristics—mental and moral—of enemy commanders. Some one else noted that the supposed speciality of the General immediately opposite us was that of making fierce attacks across impassable marshes. "Good," put in a third some one. "Let's puzzle the German staff by persuading him that we have an Etonian General in this part of the line, a very celebrated 'wet-bob.'" Which sprightly suggestion made the Brigadier-General smile. But it was my good fortune to go one better. I had to partner him at bridge, ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... men, who were filling it, and a tall thin old man who stood with his head bare, leaning upon his cane with an air of reverence. Beneath the coffin lid below Sarah Mosely lay with her hands folded, faintly smiling like a little withered girl who has done something, left a curious deed which was to puzzle those who were still awake when they discovered what she had ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... two special temptation prayers to make. The one is: "Lead us not into temptation."[66] That petition has been a practical puzzle to many of us, and the explanations not always quite clear. Would God lead us into temptation? we instinctively ask. And the answer seems to ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... never bothered with mental analysis; his effort to untangle his ideas in this case merely added to his puzzlement; it was like one of those patent trick things which he had picked up in idle moments, allowing the puzzle to bedevil attention and time, intriguing his interest, to his disgust. He had felt particularly lonely and helpless when he came away from Comas headquarters; instinctively he was seeking friendly companionship—opening ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... is Roscoe? I didn't see as much of him as you did, but I liked him. Take my tip for it, that woman will make trouble for him some day. She is the biggest puzzle I ever met. I never could tell whether she liked him or hated him; but it seems to me that either would be the ruin of any "Christom man." I know she saw something of him while she was in London, because her ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... who knew Turkish, what they would be glad to do with us. As we sat eating our lunch in the shelter of a hovel by the roadside, while the horses were baiting, a party of the fanatics watched us with growing malignity and a truculent interchange of sentiments of an evidently unfriendly nature. To puzzle them as to our status, I took the pains to repeat in conversation with my colleague the formula of adherence to the faith as it is in Islam, a scrap of Arabic I had learned in Crete, the repetition of which, according to the rite, is equivalent to the recognition of Mahomet and his teachings. ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... house that attracted him most, for it was full of toys of the most fascinating kind. A rocking-horse as big as a pony, the finest dolls' house you ever saw, boxes of tea-things, boxes of bricks—both the wooden and the terra-cotta sorts—puzzle maps, dominoes, chessmen, draughts, every kind of toy or game that you have ever had or ever ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... came the almanacs and the puzzle went to the astrophysicist. Venus was on a bearing of 300 degrees from the Duluth Municipal Airport at 5:20P.M. on March 23rd. But Venus was just below the horizon at that time and the observers said the ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... that must be quite enough for you, Mr. Ashburn! And Mabel Langton is always such a puzzle to me. I never can quite make up my mind if she is really as sweet as she seems. Sometimes I fancy I have noticed—and yet I can't be sure—I've heard people say that she's just the least bit, not exactly conceited, perhaps, but too inclined to trust her own opinion about things and ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... I know. It isn't worth while till the gentlemen come in," she said. "I know that—now. It used to puzzle me at first; but I know now. You English are so—funny! In America a girl is quite content to sing to her lady friends; but here—well, only men count as audience. They will all wake up when the men appear. I have learned that. Or perhaps you ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... slowly dying everywhere. Social idealism is growing everywhere. People who want to persuade us that social idealism depends on religion are puzzled by this. It is only because they are obstinately determined to connect everything with Christianity, in spite of its historical record. There is no puzzle. We have transferred our emotions from God to man, from heaven ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... Salt it here, and sauce it there, Saying nothing, since none care To make question, taking pay, Yes, and praise upon your way, For—well, ere the thing is through, What is what and who is who, It might puzzle you to tell; Still you "think it right"! Ah, well! This philosophy peripatetic Strikes a chord that's sympathetic In the breast of secular scribe; Nothing, it is true, would bribe Him to play the pious prig, But—he heaves ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 13, 1892 • Various
... how it was, but about this time an unaccountable, almost an imperceptible, coolness seemed to spring up between our hero and the Lady Aphrodite. If we were to puzzle our brains for ever, we could not give you the reason. Nothing happened, nothing had been said or done, which could indicate its origin. Perhaps this was the origin; perhaps the Duke's conduct had become, though unexceptionable, ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... duty. The route taken by the party was a trail, which leads direct to Rayado, and on which, just before reaching the last-named place, there are many curious piles of stones, which are scattered over the side of a mountain, and have formed a puzzle to many an inquiring mind. By some they are supposed to be Indian graves; but, by others, they are thought to have been made as a sort of landmark by the older inhabitants of the plains, when they started into New Mexico on some marauding ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... Jack and another dark-skinned potentate of South Africa. "By particular request" each of these coffins were provided with four padlocks, two outside and two inside, though how to use the latter must have been a puzzle even for a dead king. The Patent Metallic Air-tight Coffin Co., whose name pretty accurately describes their productions, in 1861 introduced hermetically-sealed coffins with plate glass panels in the lid, ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... that Molder would have danced better two hours earlier; but still he danced beautifully. Their bodies fitted like two parts of a jigsaw puzzle that have discovered each other. She realised that G.J. was middle-aged, and regret tinctured the ecstasy of the dance. Then suddenly she heard a loud, ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... Pete jammed his hands into his pockets. "Do you realize where we're standing in this thing? We're out on a limb—way out. We're fighting for time—time for Charlie and his gang to crack the puzzle, time for the Grdznth girls to gestate. But what ...
— PRoblem • Alan Edward Nourse
... pass their luncheon hour in this discussion of incomes and economies. As the dentist came to know his little woman better she grew to be more and more of a puzzle and a joy to him. She would suddenly interrupt a grave discourse upon the rents of rooms and the cost of light and fuel with a brusque outburst of affection that set him all a-tremble with delight. All at once she would set down her chocolate, ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... run everywhere in this paper and especially on this page. As I have said, the whole business of actually putting a paper together is a new game for me to play, to amuse my second childhood; and it combines some of the characters of a jigsaw and a crossword puzzle. But at least I am called upon to do a great many different sorts of things; and am not tied down to that trivial specialism of the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... The prototypical computer adventure game, first designed by Will Crowther on the {PDP-10} in the mid-1970s as an attempt at computer-refereed fantasy gaming, and expanded into a puzzle-oriented game by Don Woods at Stanford in 1976. Now better known as Adventure, but the {{TOPS-10}} operating system permitted only six-letter filenames. See ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... can't puzzle it out, sir, unless there's some other Amphitryon to manage your business, no matter if you are away, and to do your job for you when you have gone. I tell you what, that sham Sosia was monstrous surprising, but this second ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... on the peaceful waters below, taking in the slow approach of the fog that was soon to envelop the land. Neither spoke for many minutes: inscrutable thinkers, each a prey to thoughts that leaped backward to the beginning and took up the puzzle ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... letters—if these marks are letters—are incomprehensible to me. But what have these small pieces of metal to do with the question of your garments? You puzzle me." ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... advice. Elizabeth had no close confidant. John was the nearest, but there were so few things John understood. Then one never dared tell Mary anything. Mary did not mean to be a tell-tale, but somehow everything she knew always oozed out sooner or later. Yes, this was a puzzle Elizabeth must ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... day! Here's the puzzle. Passed and passed my turn is. Why complain? He's so busied! If I could but muzzle People's foolish ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... fissures ran down in this rock at intervals. Some were dark and crooked, and the bottom could not be seen. Between these cracks, the rock rounded like elephants backs sloping steeply on either side. Some could be crossed, some could not. Others resembled a "maze," the puzzle being how to get from one point to another a few away. The rock was a sandstone and presented a rough surface affording a good hold, so there was little danger of slipping. We usually sat down and "inched" way to the edge of the cracks, jumping across ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... enigmatic pipe, whose end was laid before begun, That lengthens, broadens, shrinks and breaks; —puzzle, machine, automaton; ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... the puzzle for the future and called for more cases. The next two yielded projectile type handguns for ten men, with ammunition, and standard Planeteer space knives. The space knives had hidden blades which were driven forth violently when ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... persuasiveness of its comforts. Nay, pardon me, my friend," he went on, as the Vicar's either cheekbone showed a red flush, "I did not mean to speak offensively; but, Englishman though I am, in matters of religion my countrymen are ever a puzzle to me. At a great price you won your freedom from the Bishop of Rome and his dictation. I admire the price and I love liberty; yet liberty has its drawbacks, as you have for a long while been discovering; of which the first is that every man with a maggot in his head ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... follow such subtle elusive creatures of mood and fancy. We will suppose now that it is a summer evening, that Daddy is seated smoking in his chair, that the Lady is listening somewhere near, and that the three are in a tumbled heap upon the bear-skin before the empty fireplace trying to puzzle out the little problems of their tiny lives. When three children play with a new thought it is like three kittens with a ball, one giving it a pat and another a pat, as they chase it from point to point. Daddy would interfere ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... strip, and another. Some went on very well, some with heavy travail, and with results that made me grateful for our pictures and furniture. Yet it became fascinating work; it was like piecing out some vast picture-puzzle, one that might be of some use when finished. I improved, too. I was several days finishing the up-stairs, and by the time I got it done I had got back some of the dash I started off with. I could slap on the paste and swing the strip to the wall ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... childless; whose interest one would have thought should be naturally concentrated on her adopted daughter, her sister's orphan child? In conjectures such as these, I completely lost myself. Let me hear what your ingenuity can make of the puzzle; and let me return to Mr. Farnaby's dinner, waiting ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... troubled. The various pieces of the puzzle which he had fitted into places to his satisfaction suddenly seemed inadequate to fill the places he had assigned to them. To-night he had discovered a depth in Frina Mavrodin the existence of which he had never suspected. She had fenced ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... you allow me to show you this little novelty, Sir? 'Ave you seen the noo perfume sprinkler? Do come and try this noo puzzle—no 'arm in lookin', Sir. Very nice little novelties 'ere, Sir! 'Eard the noo French Worltz, Sir? every article is really very ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 25, 1890 • Various
... inquired innocently. Her mind was occupied with the puzzle of the income which, womanlike, engrossed her ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... esteem for him," she went on; "I want him to think well of me. If I am a puzzle to him, do me a little service. ...
— The Diary of a Man of Fifty • Henry James
... the giant, gravely. "He has seen so much to puzzle him since he went away, that he ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... the friends around her, but the bare best room of the old yellow farm-house, and the man lying lonely and ill before the blazing fire. Doctor Danton sat down beside her and talked to her; but Rose answered at random, and was so absorbed, and silent, and preoccupied, as to puzzle every one. Her father asked her to sing. Rose begged to be excused—she could not sing to-night. Kate looked at ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... are unreal, and that all movement and change is a mere "seeming"—not a reality. What men call motion is only a name given to a series of conditions, each of which, considered separately, is rest. "Rest is force resistant; motion is force triumphant."[457] The famous puzzle of "Achilles and the Tortoise," by which he endeavored to prove the unreality of motion, has been rendered familiar to the ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... said gravely, "it is—well, you shall!—at least a part of it. A woman always keeps a little back," she said, looking at him with a smile. "As soon as she ceases to be a puzzle she ceases to interest." ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... in such matters. It is your soft and silken mollusc type of woman whose mind pursues a slimy and labyrinthine trail. But it is useless to say that she did not feel something of the intense personal attraction of the man. Often it used to puzzle and annoy her to find that as they sat arguing in the brisk, everyday atmosphere of office or merchandise room the air between them would suddenly become electric, vibrant. They met each other's eyes with effort. When their hands touched, accidentally, over papers or samples they snatched ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... the medical fraternity for brief and passing periods, this pernicious craze too, has about run its course. The causes from which this peculiar lust for operation emanates would be perhaps a difficult psychological puzzle to determine; the malign impulse, as regards some special function, seems to spring, as it were, by intuition, unbidden into being from the illusive depths of some perverted intellect, to rage for a while ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... saw a tall young man emerge from the tent, jump on a charger held by a soldier, and ride off at a fast pace toward the house of Las Flores, which stood in a large garden on the slope of a neighboring hill. His appearance seemed to puzzle her momentarily. His attire was that of Brazil, but neither his manner nor horsemanship was typical of the Brasileiro. In walking, he moved with an air of purposeful concentration that differed ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... support them by grubbing in dusty parish registers. It is most necessary to defend you from your friends—from such friends as the veteran and inveterate M. Arsene Houssaye, or the industrious but puzzle-headed M. Loiseleur. Truly they seek the living among the dead, and the immortal Moliere among the sweepings of attorneys' offices. As I regard them (for I have tarried in their tents) and as I behold their trivialities—the exercises of men who neglect Moliere's ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... a little talk of this, it was plain that all the town could not be told to say that the fisher was drowned on such a night, and Hodulf would leave naught undone to find the truth of the matter. So the puzzle became greater, and the one thing that was clear was that Grim was in sore danger, and ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... consideration of his patient's tenderness of brain. "We both of us fought a good fight; for though you struck no actual stroke, you took them as unflinchingly as ever I saw a man, and so turned the fortune of the battle better than if you smote with a sledge-hammer. Two things puzzle me in the affair. First, whence came my assailants, all in that moment of time, unless Satan let loose out of the infernal regions a synod of fiends, hoping thus to get a triumph over me. And secondly, whence came you, my preserver, unless you are an angel, and dropped ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the right-hand side of the fireplace was Mrs. 139Coleman, apparently absorbed in the manufacture of some mysterious article of knitting, which constantly required propitiating by the repetition of a short arithmetical puzzle, without which it would by no means allow itself to be created. At her feet, engaged in the Sisyphian labour of remedying the effects of "a great fall" in worsteds, scissors, and other "articles for the work-table," knelt Lucy Markham, looking so piquante and pretty, that ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... said the other night, as soon as they have dammed up the river and made the lake, they then build their houses; and how they manage to work under water and fix the posts in the ground is a puzzle to me, but they do fix six posts in the ground, and very firmly, and then they build their house, which is very curious; it is in the form of a large oven, and made of clay and fat earth, mixed up with branches ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... present quite an interesting pitching problem, the puzzle being to find out which of the above pitchers did the best work in the box in every respect, not only in pitching, but by his batting, fielding and base running. In percentage of victories pitched in, Meekin took the lead. In the number of batsmen struck ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick
... loose top-boots, scarlet coats, lace and periwigs of the cavaliers of the Cromwellian period, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods and others bareheaded, was assembled on the banks of a deep pond within sight of Jamestown, Va. A curious machine, one which at the present day would puzzle the beholder to guess its use, had been constructed near the edge of the water. It was a simple contrivance and rude in structure; but the freshly hewn timbers were proof of its virgin newness. This machine ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... powerful telescopes, and only at the times of opposition. Their diameters are estimated at six or seven miles. It was soon found that the first, Deimos, completes its orbit in 30h. 18m. But the other, Phobos, at first was a puzzle, owing to its incredible velocity being unsuspected. Later it was found that the period of revolution was only 7h. 39m. 22s. Since the Martian day is twenty-four and a half hours, this leads to remarkable ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... think, must be manifest even to the foreign offices most concerned. They must see already ahead of them a terrible puzzle of arrangement, a puzzle their own bad traditions will certainly never permit them to solve. "God save us," they may very well pray, "from our own cleverness and sharp dealing," and they may even welcome the promise of an enlarged outlook that ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... far as he dares) whatsoever seemeth good in his own eyes, to the subversion of Common-wealth. Their Logique which should bee the Method of Reasoning, is nothing else but Captions of Words, and Inventions how to puzzle such as should goe about to pose them. To conclude there is nothing so absurd, that the old Philosophers (as Cicero saith, who was one of them) have not some of them maintained. And I beleeve that scarce any thing can be more ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... perch on the family bed, when that full-flavoured Elysium is not on the floor. I saw an interior which contained one black cow, one black calf, some hens, some ducks, two black-and-white pigs, a mother, and eleven children. Where they all slept was a puzzle, as only one bed was visible. The hens went whir-r-r-up, and perched on the bedstead, when the lady smiled and wished me Good Evening. She looked strong and in good going order. The Achilese say Good Evening all day long. A young girl was ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... knew him, he held the master criminal in awe and admiration. The Sparrow, whatever he was, never did a mean action and never took advantage of youth or inexperience. To his finger-tips he was a sportsman, whose chief delight in life was to outwit and puzzle the police of Europe. In the underworld he was believed to be fabulously wealthy, as no doubt he was. To the outside world he was a very rich old gentleman, who contributed generously to charities, kept two fine cars, and, as well as his town house, had a pretty place down in Gloucestershire, ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... Flavia apparently did not hear. It seemed as if she were grappling in her mind with some worrying puzzle, the solution of which lay hidden up there behind that brilliant bit of blue sky which glimmered through the square ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... enjoy it hugely. 'Twill be fine sport to so puzzle the King, and when he sees me as I am—" and Mistress Penwick turned proudly to a mirror—"he ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... turned the bend in the tortuous mountain road, both drew up sharply, with a gasp of astonishment. For a long time neither spoke, their bewildered minds struggling to comprehend the vast puzzle that confronted them. Even the fagged horse pricked up his ears and looked ahead with interest. Not three hundred yards beyond the bend stood the ruins ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... house at Ivie Bridge to devide the two parishes of St. Martin's in the Fields and St. Clement's Danes in that place." I gave up theorizing until I could see the registers of St. Clement's Danes, and from various causes three years passed before I had an opportunity of clearing up the puzzle. These registers prove that in London, as in Stratford-on-Avon, I had been confused by double entries, and that there was another John Shakespeare. The St. Martin's John lost his wife Dorothy in 1608; the ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... had the youngest in his arms, and looked very much as if he had only just scrambled up from the floor; his wife was really sitting on the ground, helping two little ones to put up a puzzle of wild beasts; and there was a little herd of girls at the farther corner, all very busy over something, towards which Kate's longing eyes at once turned—even in the midst of Lord de la Poer's very kind greeting, and his wife's no less ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... evening, not unfrequently wrote down next day many of the peculiarities of my music, adopting them as his own [for instance, the Abbe Gelinek]. Concluding, therefore, that some of these things would soon appear, I resolved to anticipate this. Another reason also was to puzzle some of the pianoforte teachers here, many of whom are my mortal foes; so I wished to revenge myself on them in this way, knowing that they would occasionally be asked to play the variations, when these gentlemen would ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... a great deal to understand in you," she replied. "You are a puzzle to me often. You seem so frank, and yet one knows so little about you after all. For instance," Lucia went on, "who would imagine that you ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... in the figures and figuring of statistics. We admit honestly that we know no more to-day than when Paul de Decker discussed Quetelet's labors in statistics of morality in the Brussels Academy of Science, and confessed what a puzzle it was that human conduct, even in its smallest manifestations, obeyed in their totality constant and immutable laws. Concerning this curious fact Adolf Wagner says: "If a traveler had told us something about some people where a statute determines exactly how many persons per year shall ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... of them tackled Fred. He went into battle very promptly, the wagon jumping and rattling until it turned bottom up. Re-enforced by Uncle Eb's cane he soon saw the heels of his aggressor and stood growling savagely. He was like the goal in a puzzle maze all wound and tangled in his harness and it took some time to get his face before him ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... you should have said yes, we do own this, that Christ hath a body that is now in glory, ascended from his disciples, according to the scripture (Acts 1:3 compared with verses 9-11). But thou dost only fling up a few words into the air, that thou mightest thereby puzzle thy simple reader. But I bless God, for my part I do see thee, that thou dost, like a beguiled man, seek by all means to beguile others. And whereas thou sayest, It is sufficient to salvation, to know Christ Jesus as head in us, and over us. To this I answer, whatsoever ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... to which of the two men Bok was the more attracted, and when it came, each quarter, to figuring how many articles could go into the Review without exceeding the cost limit fixed by the house, it was always a puzzle to Doctor Briggs why the majority of the articles left out were invariably those that he had brought in, while many of those which Doctor Patton handed in somehow found their place, upon the ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... light on his puzzle, Ben turned into the stone gateway, and strode up to the east porch to let himself in as usual, with his latch key. As he was fitting it absently, all the while his mind more intent on Pickering and his changed demeanor than on his own affairs, he heard a little rustling noise ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... from one time to another time, demand explanations which repel the attention; one should also avoid leaving, in the midst of a plot, gaps which prevent the different parts of the drama from adhering closely to one another, and which, moreover, puzzle the spectator because he does not know what there may be in those gaps." But these are precisely the difficulties which art has to meet. These are some of the obstacles peculiar to one subject or another, as to which it would be impossible to pass judgment once for all. It is for genius to ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... guess the word, you go into the parlor, take part in a discussion, and return at the call of a smiling young lady. They have selected a word that may be applied to the most enigmatical replies. Everybody knows that, in order to puzzle the strongest heads, the best way is to choose a very ordinary word, and to invent phrases that will send the parlor Oedipus a thousand leagues from each of ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... sulphureted hydrogen!—we would dive into another tunnel and out again—gasping—on a breathtaking panorama of mountains. Some of them would be standing up against the sky like the jagged top of a half-finished cutout puzzle, and some would be buried so deeply in clouds that only their peaked blue noses showed sharp above the featherbed mattresses of mist in which they were snuggled, as befitted mountains of Teutonic extraction. And nearly every eminence was crowned with a ruined castle or a hotel. It was ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... stupid speeches. I'm going to bed. Come, Peggy," said Jo, unfolding herself like an animated puzzle. ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... future, "it strikes me you're not doing much good up here. You're always fooling about with those precious juniors of yours, instead of sticking to cricket and tennis and your books. Here's young Aspinall here, ahead of you, by long chalks, in classics, and getting a break on at tennis that'll puzzle you to pick up unless you wake up. You can do as you like; only don't blame me if you get stuck among ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... not understand!" she cried. "You are so very much perplexed. It is enough for me that you are perplexed. I am content. I am the puzzle you will never solve. So! La la! You will never cease ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... hot, to-night, and I'm too tired and sleepy to try and puzzle out your conundrums, so if you want me to understand what you're about you had better speak out. What a rum ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... which they suspected to be a nursery for a popish army, and seemed disinclined to maintain it any longer. The king consequently, in 1683, sent Lord Dartmouth to bring home the troops, and destroy the works; which he performed so effectually, that it would puzzle all our engineers to restore the harbour. It were idle to speculate on the benefits which might have accrued to England, by its preservation and retention; Tangier fell into the hands of the Moors, its importance having ceased, with the demolition of the mole. Many ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... unnoticed. At this very moment there might be a pair of eyes somewhere in that hurrying throng on La Salle Street ready to follow his every move. However much they might suspect him, his exact status in the case was probably still a puzzle to them. He did not believe it safe as yet to betray his connection with the Government. The problem then was to reach the Federal ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne
... or galvanism in Catholic, or Protestant, or Presbyterian Colleges, or in all of them at once; and we should have no practical controversy with philosophers who, after the fashion of the author I have been quoting, are so smart in proving that we, who differ from them, must needs be so bigotted and puzzle-headed. ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... to be able to sue B, since performance or readiness to perform was all that was necessary to give him that right, and conversely the same might be said of B. On the other hand, considering either B or A as defendant, the same facts would be a complete defence. The puzzle is largely one ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... totally different literary conventions, has difficulty in bringing himself to regard Japanese verse as a literary form or in thinking of it otherwise than as an exercise in ingenuity, an Oriental puzzle; and this notion is heightened by the prevalence of the couplet-composing contests, which did much to heighten ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... the discarnin' eye in yer head—ye an' the skipper," he said. "However the skipper kep' himself away from Chance Along for t'ree entire days, wid herself a-singin' an' a-flashin' her eyes right in his own house, bes a puzzle to me. Aye, sure it do, for didn't I see her put the spell o' women on to him the very first minute she opened her eyes at him on the fore-top o' ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... "They will puzzle it out soon. Get your floating mines ready," ordered Captain Blaise. That was my work, and in anticipation of it I had knocked together two small rafts loaded with explosives and a large one with explosives and combustible stuff ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... never could conceive how it came about that he ever wedded the Lady Alianora. One of the enemies of her own husband, and she herself set prisoner in his kinsman's keeping, and to wed her gaoler's cousin, all against the King's pleasure and without his licence—canst solve the puzzle?" ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... PUTTING IT.—Mrs. R. thinks she has an excellent memory for riddles. She was delighted with that somewhat old conundrum about "What is more wonderful than JONAH in the whale?" to which the answer is, "Two men in a fly," and determined to puzzle her nephew with it the very next time she met him. "Such a capital riddle I've got for you, JOHN!" she exclaimed, "Let me see. Oh, yes—I remember—yes, that's it;" and then, having settled the form ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 28, 1893 • Various
... in writing, is to me an intellectual puzzle. The strength, affluence and terseness may easily be accounted for, because the style of a man is the man; but how are we to account for that rare polish in his style of writing, which, most critically examined, seems the result of careful early ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... Perhaps. He might have gained courage regarding the girl's attitude toward him had he known that, on the nights he was at home, she sat in her darkened, upper room and watched the lamp he burned until it was extinguished. On the other hand, Tunis Latham's brotherly manner and cheerful kindness were a puzzle to Sheila. She knew that he had been kinder to her than any other man she had ever met. But what was the ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... Parisian way. Army officers, whose pay is infinitesimal, all live like Russian Grand Dukes. How they are able to manage this on the official Servian army salaries of 65 cents a day would naturally puzzle an outsider. The answer is, Russian gold. It buys anything and everything south of Budapest. It cannot buy in Montenegro where patriotism is supreme, nor can it buy what it wants among the Osmans. To be sure it can buy the Turk; but there is a vast difference between ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... which he had parted from me. What was this nocturnal expedition, and why should I go armed? Where were we going, and what were we to do? I had the hint from Holmes that this smooth-faced pawnbroker's assistant was a formidable man—a man who might play a deep game. I tried to puzzle it out, but gave it up in despair, and set the matter aside until night should ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... some spree and keep it up till dawn. How we used to dance and flirt, and drink, too! Or sometimes we would sit and chatter and discuss everything under the sun until we almost wagged our tongues off. But now—[He waves his hand] Boys are a puzzle to me. They are not willing either to give a candle to God or a pitchfork to the devil! There is only one young fellow in the country who is worth a penny, and he is married. [Sighs] They say, too, that ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... tunnel through a mountain, but ignorant of how near he was to the pleasant valley on the other side; and, above all, ignorant how rapidly he was being met by a much more mighty excavation from the other side. To use what is perhaps a more exact simile: he was like a child with half the pieces of a puzzle-map, slowly linking them together as far as they would fit, and quite ignorant that presently the remaining half would suddenly be given him, and with almost no trouble would at once fit into the gaps he had necessarily left, and transform a meaningless pattern into ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... here—and how shall I proceed to enunciate the conception which I have ventured to form of what may prove to be its proper solution! It is an idea by no means calculated to impress by its greatness, or to puzzle by its profoundness. It is an idea more marked by simplicity than perhaps any other of those which have explained the great secrets of nature. But in this lies, perhaps, one of its strongest claims ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... are mistaken, Jasper. I am not cunning. If people think I am, it is because, being made up of art themselves, simplicity of character is a puzzle to them. Your women are certainly ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... have been a sad puzzle to the hunters, who hardly knew how to come at so valuable a piece of game. Some described the horn as movable at the will of the animal, a kind of small sword, in short, with which no hunter who was not exceedingly cunning in fence could have a chance. Others ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... round so as not to see the keys; I will strike two keys, one after the other; now which is the highest (the sharpest), the first or the second? (I go on in this way, gradually touching keys nearer and nearer together; sometimes, in order to puzzle her and to excite close attention, I strike the lower one gently and the higher one stronger, and keep on sounding them, lower and lower towards the bass, according to the capacity of the pupil.) I suppose ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... show preference for the earlier cups and drinking vessels of commoner materials, and for those eccentricities of the table found in curious hunting cups, vessels which had to be emptied at a draught, or to be drunk under the most difficult conditions like the puzzle cups of Staffordshire make. The peg tankards of ancient date, a very fine example originally belonging to the Abbey of Glastonbury, afterwards in the possession of Lord Arundel of Wardour, held two quarts, the pegs dividing its contents into half-pints according to the Winchester ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... and drank, hacked at his ham-bone and ate. "By the Lord," he went on commenting, "they've not had bite or sup. Too busy with their match-making? Too delicate to feast without invitation? Which?" He pondered the puzzle. He had invited Manuela, he was sure: had he included her swain? If not, the thing was clear. She wouldn't eat without him, and he couldn't eat without his host. It was the best thing he ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... 'mystic dream.'—The interior of the house has been modernized: so that a beam covered with small carvings is the only remaining object of curiosity. On the top, a bunch of leaden thistles has been a sad puzzle to antiquaries, who would fain find some connection between the building and Scotland; but neither record nor tradition throw any light upon their researches. Montfaucon, copying from a manuscript written by the Abbe Noel, says, 'I have more than once been told, that Francis I. on his way ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... "but what shall we do, Enos, about bringing her home? Mr. Freeman truly says that, while Rose is eager to take Anne to Boston, we may feel that it would not be right for her to go. It is indeed a puzzle, is it not? Whatever possessed Anne to turn upon Amanda in such fashion, and then to run off?" and the good woman ...
— A Little Maid of Massachusetts Colony • Alice Turner Curtis
... a sparkle to her eyes; she could not rest when he was out of her sight. His appeal, unconscious on his part, struck to the very core of her being. To discover that she lacked a similar appeal for him roused the girl to desperation; she lay awake nights, trying to puzzle out the reason, for this was a new experience to her. Recalling their meeting and the incidents of that first night at White Horse, she realized that here was a baffling secret and that she did not ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... softly out, leaving Tom bent over the paper. Again he smoothed it out carefully on the table, bringing the two candles nearer, and tried to puzzle out ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... smart yawl to the outlandishly rigged Turkish schooner, her masts raking forward like the antlers of a stag at bay, and spreading a motley collection of lateen-sails, stay-sails, square top-sails, and vast spinnakers rigged out with booms and sprits, which it would puzzle a northern sailor to name. Far to the right, towards Therapia, glimmer the brilliant uniforms and the long bright oars of an ambassador's twelve-oared caique, returning from an official visit at the palace; and near the shore are loitering half a dozen barcas,—commodious row-boats, ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... Beethoven as a "Theme and Variations for the Pianoforte," Op. 35, dedicated to Moritz Lichnowsky. The theme is from the finale of the "Prometheus." Now what could induce Beethoven to make this use of so important a work, as such a finale to such a symphony, is to our Professor a puzzle. It troubles him on page 70, (Vol. I.,) again on page 212, and finally on page 274. The same theme three times employed,—he may say four, for it is one of the six "Contredanses" by Beethoven, which appeared about that time,—and the third time so employed! Lenz happens ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... unrest and trouble that had swept over England, and he had remained a convinced and a stubborn Catholic, yet his spiritual system was sore and inflamed within him. To his simple and obstinate soul it was an irritating puzzle as to how any man could pass from the old to a new faith, and he had been known to lay his whip across the back of a servant who had professed a desire to try ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... statesman who was bone of their bone, and flesh of their flesh; a good man of business, cautious, but open to practical suggestions, one who would satisfy their ideal of industry and economy; one who would always be grave and decorous, never puzzle them with epigrams or alarm them with rhetoric; in short, such a great man as they could conceive. Such Sir Robert Peel was. There never breathed a politician more truly congenial to them. He represented their virtues and their failings; ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... latter before passing through the former, is no true taste. Graduation from the simple to the complex is compatible with a natural taste, but this simple may be first class, as much music and literature is. New forms of beauty may puzzle the possessor of natural taste, but not for long. He does not require preparation in ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... else she was an adept in deception such as few of us had ever encountered. The gentleness of her manner, the easy tone, the quiet eyes, eyes in whose dark depths great passions were visible, but passions that were under the control of an equally forcible will, made her a puzzle to all men's minds; but it was a fascinating puzzle that awoke a species of awe in those who attempted to understand her. To all appearances she was the unlikeliest woman possible to cherish criminal intents, yet her answers were rather clever than convincing, unless ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... really becoming discoloured. To upbraid him would be cruel. Richard lifted his head, surveyed the position, and exclaiming "Here!" dropped down on a withered bank, leaving Ripton to contemplate him as a puzzle whose every new ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... bedclothes. But come, my friend, plunge in, for if you passed any such night as mine, the clear cold water of Holywell Spring has marvellous healing properties, and it will freshen your wits for whatever the day may bring for them to puzzle over." ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... room, and I went in after her, and there, in a bed, was a patient of some kind. I was took back dreadful, for the state of the case came to me like a flash. Your uncle had been sent for, and I was mistook for him. Now, what to say was a puzzle to me, and I began to think pretty fast. It was an awkward business to have to explain things to that sharp-set old woman. The fact is, I didn't know how to begin, and was a good deal afraid, besides, but she didn't give me ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... in much haste. As this is the first time you have been away from home, perhaps you have not learned to write letters yet; but if you have, I would like to hear from you, how you come on—what convictions you feel, if you feel any—what difficulties, what parts of the Bible puzzle you, and then I would do my best to unravel them. You read your Bible regularly, of course; but do try and understand it, and still more, to feel it. Read more parts than one at a time. For example, if you are ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... for a long time afterwards, until they became something like the puzzle: Which was created first, the egg or ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... and methods of dissemination of this disease had been a puzzle to physicians and scientists. Very early it was believed that it might be transmitted through the air, and the fact that infection usually occurred in the vicinity of the water and in the tropics or in midsummer led to the belief that the disease was due to fermentation. This theory received ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane
... a different stamp. Her real ancestry was a puzzle. In some respects she resembled her father. Knowing that she was Giacomo's child, it was easy for the observer to trace the lineage of some of her qualities; but nevertheless they reappeared in her on a different scale, in different proportions, so that in action they became ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... nor daughter spoke. Sue waited, trying to puzzle out the significance of what she had caught; and scarcely daring to charge an indiscretion. Mrs. Milo waited, forcing Sue to speak first, and thus betray how ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... law and chicanery, and a respect amounting to veneration for written documents, red tape, and sealing-wax. Master Pothier's acuteness in picking holes in the actes of a rival notary was only surpassed by the elaborate intricacy of his own, which he boasted, not without reason, would puzzle the Parliament of Paris, and confound the ingenuity of the sharpest advocates of Rouen. Master Pothier's actes were as full of embryo disputes as a fig is full of seeds, and usually kept all parties in hot water and litigation for the rest of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... big a puzzle for me," he answered. "Five minutes ago I would have said three hundred at the utmost, but I don't ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... these children been fed, and by dint of wonderful care and economy, the matron had managed to keep within the mark. How she could do it had been rather a puzzle to me. The only time that I had undertaken to cater for them, was in the Fall, when I took a number of them down to Garden River, to dig potatoes on our land there, and on that occasion I remember I gave them bread and jam for tea, and found that the jam alone which they devoured cost more than four ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... chooses work for every creature which will be delightful to them, if they do it simply and humbly. He gives us always strength enough, and sense enough, for what He wants us to do; if we either tire ourselves or puzzle ourselves, it is our own fault. And we may always be sure, whatever we are doing, that we cannot be pleasing Him, if we are ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... means for keeping the ships up. My dear Cassall, you do not know what a devourer of money a vessel is. Every hour at sea means wear and tear somewhere, and if we are to make our ships quite safe we must be constantly renewing. It's the maintenance funds that puzzle us. If you give us a ship without a fund for renewals of gear, wages, and so on, it is exactly as though you graciously made a City clerk a present of a couple of Irish hunters, and requested him not to sell them. The vessel Fullerton has in his mind will ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... gazing at him with an air of bored inquiry, behind my mask of indifference I racked my brain. What did he want of me? What did he want of Miss Falconer? What was he doing in this military galley? Hopeless queries, without the key to the puzzle! ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... minds. The wilder nymphs, lov's power could not comand, Are by thy almighty numbers brought to hand, And flying Daphnes, caught, amazed vow They never heard Apollo court till now. 'Tis not by force of armes this feat is done, For that would puzzle even the Knight o' th' Sun; But 'tis by pow'r of art, and such a way As Orpheus us'd, when he made fiends obay. J. ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... Longfellow and Whittier, or, if we want to study harder, there is Mrs. Browning, Tennyson, and Shakespeare. It would be excellent discipline to try and get at the exact meaning of the authors, and puzzle out all the obscurities, it would not be long before we should feel quite rich in a literary way. In reading such works together, and talking them over, of course we make them ours as we can in no ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... from an ungrateful country in consideration of his valuable services on behalf of the state. How he contrived merely to dress himself and follow the ever-changing fashions on that sum, paid quarterly though it was, appeared a puzzle to many; but he did, and well, too. It was currently believed, besides, by his congeners, that he never got into debt, happy fellow that he was! notwithstanding that, in addition to his hopes of promotion at "the office," he had considerable "expectations" ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... some days, and the housekeeping was a puzzle when she first began. She had only been able to bring the most precious of her possessions, her books and papers, and clothes enough for the moment, away with her from Slane; the rest she had left ready packed to be sent to her when she should be settled. When she wrote to Maclure for them, she ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... it. I believe I won't try for that creek. It's a regular Chinese puzzle up among the mangroves, and I'm not a bit sure I could follow our trail back to fresh water. I'd rather take chances of that river that leads more to the east. I know it can't go through to our bay, but it must lead up to the Everglade country where the mangroves won't be so bad. We may have ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... comparative power of the North and South, matters of finance, tariffs, and internal improvements, involving the deepest problems of political economy, education, and constitutional law; and as time moves on, new questions will arise to puzzle the profoundest intellects; but the question of the ascendency of the people is settled beyond all human calculations. And it is in this matter especially that Jefferson left his mark on the institutions of his country,—as ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... merited—that there was some compensation in the world for such charitable deeds as hers, even when they involved a fair amount of sacrifice. And little Gabriel, before whom many of these remarks were uttered, pondered over them in secret, and gradually evolved three facts from the curious puzzle of his life—first, that he did not really belong to what seemed to be his home; second, that he was not loved in it as was Kala; third, that Kala was pretty and he was ugly. So with these three melancholy scraps of knowledge the poor ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... attempt, and so chivalrously suppressed that part of the truth. And so effectually was it suppressed, that it was not until about a year afterwards that Mr. Ernest Reed found a rather difficult matrimonial puzzle solved for him by the receipt of Mr. Cecil Rayburn's cheque for a ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... person who wishes to gain a wide command over his mother tongue. Its vocabulary is the vocabulary of the common people. "There is not," he truly says, "in 'The Pilgrim's Progress' a single expression, if we except a few technical terms of theology, that would puzzle the rudest peasant." We may, look through whole pages, and not find a word of more than two syllables. Nor is the source of this pellucid clearness and imaginative power far to seek. Bunyan was essentially ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... Muses, For using thy name, offers fifty excuses. Good Lord, what is Man! for as simple he looks, Do but try to develop his hooks and his crooks; With his depths and his shallows, his good and his evil, All in all he's a problem must puzzle ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... any description, without either position, career or any visible means of livelihood, often passably destitute of education and character as well. How they contrive to be satisfied with their bargain in this case is a puzzle, but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... Enforce her dictates, and sustain her laws; Rich with her spoils, his sanction will dismay, And bid the insurgents tremble and obey. He comes!—but where, the amazing theme to hit, Discover language or ideas fit? Splay-footed words, that hector, bounce, and swagger, 380 The sense to puzzle, and the brain to stagger? Our patriot comes! with frenzy fired, the Muse With allegoric eye his figure views! Like the grim portress of hell-gate he stands, Bellona's scourge hangs trembling in his hands! Around him, fiercer than the ravenous ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... sometimes she sat looking at her as a perfect enigma; with a heart so capable of loving devotedly, and yet so steeled against her own child, and so lovely and winning a little creature as Agnes. It was a puzzle which she had often ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... attitude toward him had he known that, on the nights he was at home, she sat in her darkened, upper room and watched the lamp he burned until it was extinguished. On the other hand, Tunis Latham's brotherly manner and cheerful kindness were a puzzle to Sheila. She knew that he had been kinder to her than any other man she had ever met. But what was the root ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... would be relieved by opening the British ports in the West Indies. It remains to consider, whether a temporary continuance under these sufferings would be paid for, by the amendment it is likely to produce. However, I believe there is no fear that Great Britain will puzzle us, by leaving it in our choice to hasten ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... as a well-authenticated dream which strikes the bull's eye of facts not known to the dreamer nor capable of being guessed by him. If the events beheld in the dream are far away in space, or are remote in time past, the puzzle is difficult enough. But if the events are still in the future, perhaps no kind of explanation except a mere "fluke" can even be suggested. Say that I dream of an event occurring at a distance, and that I record or act on my dream ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... the sneezer becomes intelligible when we learn that the savage has a good reason for it. He thinks the sneeze expels an evil spirit. Proverbs, again, and riddles are as universally scattered, and the Wolufs puzzle over the same devinettes as the Scotch schoolboy or the Breton peasant. Thus, for instance, the Wolufs of Senegal ask each other, 'What flies for ever, and rests never?'—Answer, 'The Wind.' 'Who are the comrades that always fight, and never hurt each other?'—'The Teeth.' In France, as we read ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... ear, her secret stood solved, and the truth of Timothy's parentage confronted him in a lightning flash of the soul. He looked at Chris as a man might gaze upon a spectre; he stared at her and through her into her past; he pieced each part of the puzzle to its kindred parts until all stood complete; he read "mother" in her voice, in her caressing hands and gleaming eyes as surely as man reads morning in the first light of dawn; and he marvelled that a thing so clear and naked had been left to his discovery. The revelation shook him not a little, ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... just growing up to questions that had first come to this other girl of nineteen four years ago, that this other had so met them one by one, and decided them half unconsciously as she went along, that now, for the great puzzle of the "outside," which is setting more and more between us and our real living, there was this one more visible, unobtrusive answer put ready, and with such a charm of ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... and to puzzle him, Who never knew their force, Because his unfreed spirit kept A ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... answer. So this was the explanation of the Monny puzzle! Yet it was but the first word of another enigma. Who was responsible for the wild story? There was more than met the eye—or ear—in this. I could hardly believe that Monny would have chosen, or Rachel dared, to start this rumour, though it might have amused the real heiress, and suited the ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... reasons for my fellow-traveller's anxiety about my name and occupation, I knew not, yet could not help feeling gratified at thinking that as I had not given my name at the coach office, I was a great a puzzle to him as he ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... There were vague misgivings in him which he was not able to realize. The state of his own mind was fast becoming a puzzle to him. ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins
... have been taken before now. And that makes what was simple before more and more of a puzzle in my opinion. I don't believe that the man was mad. I believe he was and is all there; and that being so, you've got to begin over again, Brendon, and find why he did it. Once grant that this was a deliberately planned murder and a mighty sight cleverer than it looked at first ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... assertion that Grace is the missing nurse, and that she is Grace. But you have not explained yet how the idea first got into her head; and, more than that, how it is that she is acquainted with my name and address, and perfectly familiar with Grace's papers and Grace's affairs. These things are a puzzle to a person of my average intelligence. Can your clever friend, ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... hear,' said Burney simply. 'It's always been a bit of a puzzle to me how a chap like you came to be a Tommy in this outfit. With your education, you ought to be an ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... perambulatory adviser of the community—then that solicitor would solicit in vain. If he will insist on walking behind me through woodland ways, pointing out with his walking-stick likely avenues and attractive short-cuts, I shall turn on him with passion, saying: "Sir, I pay you to know one particular puzzle in Latin and Norman-French, which they call the law of England; and you do know the law of England. I have never had any earthly reason to suppose that you know England. If you did, you would leave a man alone when he was looking ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... little doubt that my writing has been in the main too hard for many I should have been pleased to communicate with; but I never designedly tried to puzzle people, as some of my critics have supposed. On the other hand, I never pretended to offer such literature as should be a substitute for a cigar or a game at dominoes to an idle man. So, perhaps, on the whole I get my ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... moved by curiosity, I followed him. He passed through the hall without looking at the gambling-rooms, and went into the concert. It became my habit after that to watch for him. When he sat in the Place I could see him from the window of my room. The chief puzzle to me was the matter of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... was his aim to be as much of a sailor as possible. Why the Captain did it, I cannot say, unless it was for the reason that sailors often seem to enjoy doing things in an odd and awkward fashion, so as to puzzle landsmen. Neither of them made very good progress by it, and Clarence wabbled the boat, and caught crabs ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... also the Pearl Mosque, the rival of the little royal temple of similar character which we had seen at Delhi. The front of this Moli Musjed is supported by marble pillars, and is surmounted by three beautiful marble domes, of such perfection and loveliness of outline as to be the puzzle of modern architects, just as our best sculptors are nonplused before the Venus of Milo, and some other examples of Greek art; they may imitate, but they cannot hope to equal them. "Indeed," said a well-known artist to us in the gallery of the Louvre, in presence ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... locks more bright then gold, Or silver sheen purg'd from all drossie clay. But how they could themselves in this array Expose to humane sight, who did before Lie hid, is that which well amazen may The wisest man and puzzle evermore: Yet my unwearied thoughts this search could ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... Gravesend, and then to work round to the Downs, where she will be to-morrow. It will be a Sunday, so no news can get about. If we get away with him they will lose all trace of us. We'll get him to land up upon the Spanish coast. I think it will fairly puzzle the police. No doubt they are watching every station on the line by this time. I wonder what ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with Balty to Sir G. Carteret's office, and there with Mr. Fenn despatched the business of Balty's L1500 he received for the contingencies of the fleete, whereof he received about L253 in pieces of eight at a goldsmith's there hard by, which did puzzle me and him to tell; for I could not tell the difference by sight, only by bigness, and that is not always discernible, between a whole and half-piece and quarterpiece. Having received this money I home ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... I come here? I scarcely know myself. It's everything or nothing. The key to the puzzle. I tell you, M. Fuselier, things are ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... time she began to puzzle, and the old uneasiness came back. The last trailing banner of cloud vanished, and the sun rode clear in an opal sky, smiling benignly down on the forested land. She was thus enabled to locate the cardinal points of the compass. ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Culdees of Abernethy, while some disposals of a strictly ecclesiastical character are made by the same document. Thus we find an abbot who makes disposal for his heirs—a counterpart to those references to the legitimate progeny of churchmen, which frequently puzzle the antiquary in his researches through ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... of the shell; owing, I presume, to condensation in their shell boxes under the change of heat and cold. Still they did very well and I think seldom failed to burst when set the right distance. I say the right distance because this at first was a slight puzzle to us, the subject of height in feet above the sea-level of course never having before presented itself to us as altering very considerably the setting of the time fuse; and I don't think that a table of correction for this exists ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... Aeneid immortalized the mythic voyage of the Trojan adventurer, who passed along this iron-bound coast on his way towards the mouth of Tiber. Their modern, or rather medieval name of I Galli is somewhat of a puzzle. Erudite scholars affect to derive it from Guallo, a fortress captured during a war between King Roger and the Republic of Amalfi, but this explanation, we confess, does not sound very reasonable. ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... not answer him. She only moved her head upon the pillow with a gesture of weariness. She knew that she would search those pitiless eyes in vain for the key to the puzzle, and she only longed to be left alone. He could not, surely, refuse ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... rate, he had loved her—probably for years; he had loved her with all his heart, and she with, perhaps, a small half; she had thrown him over to marry a wealthy man—and yet, that theory seemed scarcely consistent; for a wealthy man would not need to commit forgery. It was a mystery and a puzzle; but the grim fact remained that the young man was going to take upon himself the terrible stigma of a convict for the sake of a ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... and offered him the book at an immense loss on the sale price. 'If you were,' replied the doctor, 'to bring the book at my door for nothing, I would take it with a pair of tongs and drop it into the gutter.' It was a puzzle to everyone what the little doctor did with all his purchases, which were limited chiefly to classical books. At his death, however, it transpired that he bought for the various Universities of the United Kingdom. The doctor's son, a poor curate, ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... government. The late distinguished under-secretary for foreign affairs, as every one knows, not regarding as infra dig. certain great, winged, human-headed bulls,[2] that would have astonished Mr. Edgeworth, not less than they puzzle all Smithfield, and the rest of the learned "whose speech is of oxen," has imported those extraordinary grand-junction specimens, which, with their countryfolk, the Yezidis, Dr. Layard has particularly described ...
— The True Legend of St. Dunstan and the Devil • Edward G. Flight
... the boys and girls are fond of puzzle pictures? Hold up your hands. Ah, I thought so. I believe nearly everyone likes puzzles; we are attracted to many things which possess an element of mystery. So I am going to draw a little puzzle landscape today and see if ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... and many a predecessor, and had been defaced in one spot, and retouched in another, and had peeled from the wall in patches, and had hidden some of their brightest portions under dreary dust, till the joyousness had quite vanished out of them all. It was often difficult to puzzle out the design; and even where it was more readily intelligible, the figures showed like the ghosts of dead and buried joys,—the closer their resemblance to the happy past, the gloomier now. For it is thus, that with only an inconsiderable change, the gladdest objects ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... question rhetorical, my little one, and the question interrogative. However, we'll not puzzle thee with Quintilian. Run away to thy lute. And so it is, Senhor da Costa. I love my Judaism more than my Portugal; but while I can keep both my mistresses at the cost of ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... that had hidden gold and stone and amber. All these investigations were necessary for the scheme he had in view, so he became for some time quite a familiar figure in the dusty deserted streets and in the meadows by the river. His continual visits to Caermaen were a tortuous puzzle to the inhabitants, who flew to their windows at the sound of a step on the uneven pavements. They were at a loss in their conjectures; his motive for coming down three times a week must of course be bad, but it ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... to be considered the great difficulty of this book of the Republic, the so-called number of the State. This is a puzzle almost as great as the Number of the Beast in the Book of Revelation, and though apparently known to Aristotle, is referred to by Cicero as a proverb of obscurity (Ep. ad Att.). And some have imagined that there is no answer to the puzzle, ...
— The Republic • Plato
... know, dear; but what can puzzle you about him? He seems to me the most simple and charming old gentleman I have seen in this house for ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... examined Horsechestnut buds I found, in many cases, that the axillary shoots had from a quarter of an inch to an inch of wood before the first set of rings. I could not imagine what had formed this wood, and it remained a complete puzzle to me until the following spring, when I found in the expanding shoots, that, wherever a flower-cluster was present, there were one or two pairs of leaflets already well developed in the axils, and that the next season's buds were forming between them, while the internodes ...
— Outlines of Lessons in Botany, Part I; From Seed to Leaf • Jane H. Newell
... Hogmanay—it is found in various forms in the northern English counties as well as in Scotland—has been a puzzle to etymologists. It is used both for the last day of the year and for the gift of the oaten cake or the like; and, as we have seen, it is shouted by the children in their quest. Exactly corresponding to it in sense and use is the French word aguillanneuf, from which ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... the chief pieces of the puzzle were before him, but the difficulty was to put them together. He felt sure there was a connection between these facts, which, if brought to light, would solve the Riversbrook mystery. Without knowing it, he had been so influenced by Crewe's analysis of the ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... it. The February fog deepens the darkness, and the faces one passes are indistinguishable. As for the numbers of the houses, no one thinks of looking for them. If you know the quarter you count doors from the corner, or try to puzzle out the familiar outline of a balcony or a pediment; if you are in a strange street, you must ask at the nearest tobacconist's—for, as for finding a policeman, a yard off you couldn't tell him ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... account for the mystery of the vanished plates any more than he could for the sweeping of the library in the still hours of the night. He had an idea as to who the culprit was, and what that idea was is plain enough to us, but the question of motive was the great puzzle to him now. ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... thick with the clamor of a rising fear. The river road was the one she would take when she was turned out, even if the willows did look at her as she went by and lay that moist, cool hand of foreboding on her heart. She had a plan, sprung together like the pieces of a puzzle since she had known he was to send her away. There was a sawmill over the other side of the mountain and the men's boarding house. She could get work there. It would be strange if a woman so strong and ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... produce some modification in the final stage of its history. And now, Shiel, let us sit together and confer on this matter. From the manner in which you have expressed yourself, it is evident that there are points which puzzle you—you do not get a clean coup d'oeil of the whole regiment of facts, and their causes, and their consequences, as they occurred. Let us see if out of that confusion we cannot produce a coherence, a symmetry. A great ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... then jump to the ground. This trick would soon be found out. Then he'd try another. He would make a circle of a quarter of a mile in circumference. By making a loop in his course, he would come in behind the hounds, and puzzle them between the scent of his first and following tracks. If the snow was deep, the hounds had made a good track for him. Over this he could run easily, and they would have to feel their way along, for after he had gone around the circle a few times, he would jump from the beaten path ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... those who find Sunday wearisome, and it is thought an appropriate birth-day present for young people of both sexes. I dare say these books are harmless enough, but their success is wonderfully disproportioned to their merits. They must be such easy writing, too, for you need never puzzle yourself as to whether it would be natural or consistent for such a character to steal, or for another to murder. 'The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked,' and the novelist at least takes no pains ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... begin to puzzle his brains about the meaning of this departure, another pigeon came flying in from ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... smelt the outside edge of battle No enemy's shot is equal to a weak heart in the act Not afford to lose, and a disposition free of the craving to win Past, future, and present, the three weights upon humanity Put material aid at a lower mark than gentleness Puzzle to connect the foregoing and the succeeding Seventy, when most men are reaping and stacking their sins Should we leave a good deed half done Showery, replied the admiral, as his cocked-hat was knocked off So indulgent when they drop their blot on a lady's character ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... strokes! The Western critic, with his totally different literary conventions, has difficulty in bringing himself to regard Japanese verse as a literary form or in thinking of it otherwise than as an exercise in ingenuity, an Oriental puzzle; and this notion is heightened by the prevalence of the couplet-composing contests, which did much to heighten the artificiality ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... young man's shoulder. "My boy," he cried, laughing and crying at the same time, "forgive me—forgive me. I was hasty. I should have let you speak, first. God be praised, everything is well. De Grissac—think of it—they will puzzle their brains over that cipher for weeks and weeks and they will discover nothing—nothing! Is it not splendid!" He grasped the Ambassador's hand and embraced ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... Siwash people puzzle me. Professor Grubb is always a trial. That man alternates a smooth-shaven face with a full beard in the most startling manner. Petey Simmons is short and flaxen-haired, long and black-haired, and wide and hatchet-faced in turns, depending on the illustrator. I never ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... took from the Sevenoaks Post-Office a letter for Paul Benedict, bearing the New York post mark, and addressed in the handwriting of a lady. The letter was a great puzzle to Jim, and he watched its effect upon his companion with much curiosity. Benedict wept over it, and went away where he could weep alone. When he came back, he was a transformed man. A new light was in his eye, a new elasticity in ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... seen in the hide-and-seek of darkness and light? There the wind is wild and restless, everything is dance and swift movement—will it not puzzle ...
— The King of the Dark Chamber • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... some other fellows, that's all," is the way he accounts for himself. "If a puzzle is put in front of me I can't rest till I know the answer." At any rate his natural bent has always been to make plain the mysterious; each well hidden step in the perpetration of a crime has always been for him an exciting ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... piece of metal, like a blade through a sword guard. He felt sure it was an electrode of some sort, a tool to convert stolen electricity into a weapon of offense and assault. But he neither waited to strike a light nor stooped to puzzle over ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... intimates to be an enlightened patron of the art of female dancing. Later on the larger world first heard of him in the very hour of his downfall, during one of those State trials which astonish and puzzle the average plain man who reads the newspapers, by a glimpse of unsuspected intrigues. And in the stir of vaguely seen monstrosities, in that momentary, mysterious disturbance of muddy waters, Councillor Mikulin went under, dignified, with only ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... draw your attention to an important fact. It will be my pleasure to introduce to you ... ("The real American popcorn, equally famous in Paris and London, tuppence each packet!" from Vendor in gangway) ... history and life of the ... ("'Buffalo Bill Puzzle,' one penny!" from another vendor behind) ... impress one fact upon your minds; this is not ... (roar and rattle of passing train) ... in the ordinary or common acceptation of ... ("Puff-puff-puff!" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various
... will look too small. There is no getting over this difficulty, as the standard of actual Nature is set up on the stage by the men and women appearing on it at a known distance. It used to be asked in classical times by ingenious puzzle-makers—"What is the size of the moon?" A true answer to that question would be "that of a plate a foot in diameter seen at a distance of a hundred ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... through these relics of battle until even they were lost altogether; and it came out into a region where it was really a puzzle to say what was trench and what was not. Around one stretched a desert of shell craters—hole bordering upon hole so that there was no space at all between them. Each hole was circular like the ring of earth at the mouth of an ants' nest several thousand ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... time went on and John had come to a better insight of the character of the eccentric person whom Dick had failed to fathom, his half-formed prejudices had fallen away, it must be admitted that he ofttimes found him a good deal of a puzzle. The domains of the serious and the facetious in David's mind seemed to have no ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... occupation these days, and her thoughts had been of Braxmar, Cowperwood, Kilmer Duelma, a half-dozen others, as well as of the stage, dancing, painting. Her life was in a melting-pot, as it were, before her; again it was like a disarranged puzzle, the pieces of which might be fitted together into some interesting picture if she ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... and to us hungry mortals appeared excellent. The third course was tongue, followed by tinned apricots and thick cream. Alas! we had no spoons, and how to eat our cream and apricots was a puzzle. Our guide, whom we had christened 'Johnny,' to his great delight, helped us out of this difficulty. He produced some horn spoons which he had carved during the long winter evenings, and which he offered to sell to ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... British Empire caused by the war made itself apparent. It was found to be impossible to maintain in the field four battalions per brigade, and a reduction to three was ordered. Then took place the solution of a most confusing Chinese puzzle. Some battalions were broken up, and the fragments sent to others either in the same division or in other divisions, while in the case of many units, particularly territorials, there was a transfer of a sort of cadre which was amplified to full ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... paper"—Peter was reminded of it, and it became a distracting puzzle. Hilary thought Diana and Actaeon and the Siena chalice good things—and Hilary edited an art paper. What in the name of all that was horrible did he put in it? A light was shed on Signor Leroni, who was, said the Gem, a good dealer in plaques, and who was, Peter had ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... this puzzle? He the birthday-wit, For so we thought him—keener yet, if aught is so— Becomes a dunce more boorish e'en than hedge-born boor, If e'er he faults on verses; yet in heart is then 15 Most happy, writing verses, happy past compare, ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... things which seem to greatly puzzle the average student of the subject of mental vibrations, and thought-transference, is that which may be called "thought waves." The student is unable to conceive of a wave of "thought" being projected into the air, and then traveling along until it reaches the mind of other persons. ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... "stylishness" of her establishment. She got through her task tolerably well, though somewhat bewildered between Mrs. Williams' quick, sharp reminders and the "chaffing" of one or two of the gentlemen, who thought it "good fun" to puzzle the "new hand" with ironical remarks, some of them being aimed at their landlady ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... long, tireless, strides. The girl continued to puzzle him. Even her manner of walking expressed personality. There was none of the flat-footed Indian shuffle about her gait. She moved lightly, springily, as one does who finds in it the joy of calling ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... ready to go nobly to death in defence of the prerogatives of his "apostolic succession"; and has not the slightest doubts that he can make out his spiritual genealogy, without a broken link, from the first Bishop of Rome, downwards!—though, poor fellow, it would puzzle him to say who was his great-grandfather. E——, you are aware, has long since joined the Church of Rome, and has disclosed such a bottomless abyss of "faith," that whole cart-loads of mediaeval fables, abandoned even by Romanists (who, by the way, ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... you," he almost shouted. "I never knew anyone named Goodwin! I don't care a hoot about your invention. And as for letting me die—why didn't you? That's a puzzle: you were about to kill ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... Though the rude stone no polish will display, Yet you may strip the rugged coat away." Stephen beheld his books—"I love to know How money goes—now here is that to show: And now" he cried, "I shall be pleased to get Beyond the Bible—there I puzzle yet." He spoke abash'd—"Nay, nay!" the friend replied, "You need not lay the good old book aside; Antique and curious, I myself indeed Read it at times, but as a man should read;. A fine old work it is, and I protest I hate to ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... if I had not read that will many times—he inherited after the old woman's sickly brother, who died at sea." After this his thoughts wandered into all sorts of vague and intricate paths that led to no certain goal; he was not even certain at last that there was anything real to puzzle about. His father might have been ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... came sailing over the stairs, peeping out from that bunch of lace. I loitered and spoke. Were the eyes green, or blue, or gray; ambition, or love, or indifference to the world? I was at my old puzzle again, while you unfastened the pinks, and, before the butler, who acquiesced at your frivolity in impertinent silence, you held them out to me. Only you know the preciousness of unsought-for favors. "Write me," you said; and ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... summer garments laid away, for a peek beneath—a journey on one's stomach under the spare-room bed—a pilgrimage around the cellar with a flaring candle—furtive explorations of the storeroom. And when we came to a door that was locked—Aha! Here was a puzzle and a problem! We tried every key in the house, right side up and upside down. Bluebeard's wife, poor creature,—if I read the tale aright,—was merely seeking her Christmas presents around the house before ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... you've put me in a sort of a puzzle. You said a little while ago, or you spoke as if you thought, that all those grand old Roman emperors were not after all great men. Then, if they were not great, what's a fellow to try for? If a common fellow does his best, he will not get to the hundredth or the thousandth part of what ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... decided to settle it that way, after a great deal of talking. You can't imagine, Ring-tail, how queer it makes me feel to be divided up in such a fashion. Sometimes I puzzle over it until I am dizzy. Which of me belongs to Stuart, and which of ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... think, to divide football men into two distinct classes—those who are made into players (and often very good ones) by the coaches and those who are born with the football instinct. Just how to define football instinct is a puzzle, but it is very easy to discern it in a candidate, even if he never saw a football till he set foot on the campus. By and large, it will be read first in a natural aptitude for following the ball. After that, in the general way he has of handling himself, from falling on the ball to dodging and ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... force and life in the universe is a great puzzle to materialistic scientists. In the azoic period of our earth there was no life on it. The living creatures now on the earth must, therefore, have had some origin. That origin is not due to spontaneous generation, according to the testimony of the most enlightened scientists, ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 11, November, 1880 • Various
... the souls of many; election, predestination, reprobation, preposterously conceived, offend divers, with a deal of foolish presumption, curiosity, needless speculation, contemplation, solicitude, wherein they trouble and puzzle themselves about those questions of grace, free will, perseverance, God's secrets; they will know more than is revealed of God in his word, human capacity, or ignorance can apprehend, and too importunate inquiry after that which ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... joy. There are some severe and sour-complexioned theologians who would call this devotion to objects so far outside of his parish an illicit passion. But to me it seems a blessing conferred by heavenly wisdom upon a good man, and I doubt not he escapes from many an insoluble theological puzzle, and perhaps from many an unprofitable religious wrangle, to find refreshment and invigoration in the society ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... selection being made in due course, with a bit of criticism to take the vanity out of him, thus: "Very good subject. The man is far too big for the horse, which is a 15.3 if he's an inch. This was generally Leech's mistake; so you err in remarkably good company. Why 'Hunting Puzzle'? It's ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... paddock where he grazed; but he wanted no beating, while with his young master on his back: he would trot off with his little hoofs going pitter-patter, twinkle-twinkle over the road, at a rate that it used to puzzle old Dumpling, the fat ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... playful. When the nightingale sings, in Paradise Lost, "Silence was pleased." When Adam begs the Angel to tell the story of the Creation, he adds, "Sleep, listening to thee, will watch." Either of these paradoxes would have been tormented and elaborated into a puzzle by ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... get the balls over the plate, but he used his head in a wonderful manner, and the slow ball proved a complete puzzle for Harvard after they had been batting speed all through the game, so they got but one safe hit off Heffiner that inning ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... years at the primary school. The child learns that if it does bad things it will be laughed at and despised by the neighbours and scolded by its parents. We are busy with the betterment of economic conditions and questions about morality and religion puzzle us." ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... turned on the current of an induction coil and I had been holding the handles I don't think the thrill I received could have been any more sudden. The Vandam case was the sensation of the moment, a triple puzzle, as both Kennedy and myself had agreed. Was it suicide, murder, or sudden death? Every theory, ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... the concoction of a squib or the sketching of a caricature— Wake was always ready to take the work upon himself, and let who liked take the credit. He had a mania for verses and epigrams; he was reputed a bit of a conjuror, and no one ever brought a new puzzle to Grandcourt which Wake, of Railsford's, could not, sooner or ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... in town, whilst I am following one character, it is ten to one but I am crossed in my way by another, and put up such a variety of odd creatures in both sexes, that they foil the scent of one another, and puzzle the chace. My greatest difficulty in the country is to find sport, and in town to chuse it. In the mean time, as I have given a whole month's rest to the cities of London and Westminster, I promise myself abundance of new game upon ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... had seemed so real, it could not be a dream, he thought; a desire to throw light upon the puzzle excited him; he managed to reach the door, opened it after many efforts, and stood on the threshold of his salon. There they were—his dear pictures, his statues, his Florentine bronzes, his porcelain; the sight of them revived him. ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... Armand, why did you not tell me that the Duchess was a puzzle to you? I would have given you a little advice which might have brought your flirtation properly through. You must know, to begin with, that the women of our Faubourg, like any other women, love to steep themselves in love; but they have a mind to possess and not to be possessed. ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... the versifier may draw the knot of logic, yet for the ear he still leaves the tissue of the sentence floating somewhat loose. In prose, the sentence turns upon a pivot, nicely balanced, and fits into itself with an obtrusive neatness like a puzzle. The ear remarks and is singly gratified by this return and balance; while in verse it is all diverted to the measure. To find comparable passages is hard; for either the versifier is hugely the superior of the rival, or, if he be not, ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... my costume, because I could soap my hair and make it lie flat, and put on the robe, and there I was. But how to get a pair of pants for Katie Freeman was a puzzle. ...
— Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha" • Kate Langley Bosher
... counsel, I take off my shoes and put on a pair of zori, or straw sandals provided for me, as the rock is extremely slippery. The others land barefoot. But how to proceed soon becomes a puzzle: the countless stone-piles stand so close together that no space for the foot seems ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... makes the clouds stay up in the sky, and where the stars go in the day time. Wish I could go over on that high hill, where the bright sun is going down, and just touch it with my finger. Wish I didn't keep thinking of things which puzzle me, when nobody will stop to tell me the reason for anything. If I ask Betty, she says, "Don't be a fool, Master Freddy!" I wonder if I am a fool? I wonder if Betty knows much herself? I wonder why my mamma don't love her own little boy? I wonder when I'm grown a man, if I shall have to look ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... John Puzzle made the muzzle, And John Crowder made the powder, And John Block made the stock, And John Wyming made the priming, And John Brammer made the rammer, And John Scott made the shot, But ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... make up the account, because he was sharper than herself, and would not be imposed upon so easily. The ensuing week the brother came, and he proved to be the very pawnbroker to whom Manon formerly offered the stolen box: he knew her immediately; it was in vain that she attempted to puzzle him, and to persuade him that she was not the same person. The man was clear and firm. Sister Frances could scarcely believe what she heard. Struck with horror, the children shrunk back from Manon, and stood in silence. Mad. de Fleury immediately wrote to the lady who had recommended ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... the Pedlars, The, v. Last Scrap, The, xxiii. Leaves from the Life of Alexander Hamilton, xix. Leaves from the Diary of an Aged Spinster, vi. Leein' Jamie Murdieston, viii. Leveller, The, xvi. Linton Lairds, The; or, Exclusives and Inclusives, iv. Lord Durie and Christie's Will, ii. Lord Kames's Puzzle, xxiii, Lost Heir of the House of Elphinstone, xx. Lottery Hall, xiii. Lykewake, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... these hieroglyphics might well puzzle a more practised decipherer than myself. Still, I can point out even here a clue which might help detection. There occur, even in these two lines, three or four symbols which, from their size and complication, are ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... of many of those anomalous types of the Coal Measures which so puzzle the botanist, and the extensive introduction of types that still exist, we can better conceive of the general features and relations of the flora of the Oolite than of those of the earlier floras. And yet the general result at which we arrive may be found not without its bearing on the older vegetations ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... believed, but hard to be resisted. As an ethical scheme clearing up on principles of poetic justice the most perplexed and awful problems in the world, it throws streams of light through the abysses of evil, gives dramatic solution to many a puzzle, and, abstractly considered, charms the understanding and the conscience. As a philosophical dogma answering to some strange, vague passages in human nature and experience, it echoes with dreamy sweetness through the deep mystic chambers of our being. As the undisputed creed ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... procured, and, working under the signorina's directions, after a good deal of trouble, we laid bare a neat little safe embedded in the wall. This safe was legibly inscribed on the outside "Burglar's Puzzle." We however, were not afraid of making a noise, and it only puzzled us ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... to puzzle it out for himself while he played with the Japanese frog. That was an extraordinary frog! You should have seen nurse's start when Olly hid himself in the passage and sent the frog hopping and squeaking through the open ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... we have the puzzle!" replied the man Krail, his accent being an unfamiliar one—so unfamiliar, indeed, that those unacquainted with the truth were always placed in doubt ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... godmother in a pantomime before she throws off her hood and announces her real character, and this lady, called Taven in the bill, is Mlle. PASSAMA, who sings a song about a papillon, for what particular reason I do not know, except to please the audience, which it did, being encored, and to puzzle Mireille, in which it also succeeded, if I might judge by Miss EAMES's expressive countenance. And here I must observe that I found my intimate acquaintance with the French language almost useless, for except an occasional "oui," given, as Jeames has it, "in excellent French," ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 27, 1891 • Various
... the Two-Surface Flying Machine Introductory Chapter by Octave Chanute, C. E. II. Theory Development and Use Origin of the Aeroplane—Developments by Chanute and the Wrights—Practical Uses and Limits. III. Mechanical Bird Action What the Motor Does—Puzzle in Bird Soaring. IV. Various Forms of Flying Machines Helicopters, Ornithopters and Aeroplanes— Monoplanes, Biplanes and Triplanes. V. Constructing a Gliding Machine Plans and Materials Required—Estimate of Cost— Sizes and Preparation ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... Fred. He went into battle very promptly, the wagon jumping and rattling until it turned bottom up. Re-enforced by Uncle Eb's cane he soon saw the heels of his aggressor and stood growling savagely. He was like the goal in a puzzle maze all wound and tangled in his harness and it took some time to get his face before him and ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... cuckoo sounded," continued the collector without the slightest change of intonation, "she used to imitate it to puzzle Willy Woolly. A merry heart! ... All was so still after it stopped beating. The clocks ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Public spirit, and public spirits, were about the year 1700 household words with us. Leibnitz was struck by their significance, but it might now puzzle us to find synonyms, or even to explain the very ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... her hands and looked at him with flaming cheeks and smiling eyes. There was more in her look than he could fathom, but he did not puzzle longer when she came back to her place and hid ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... Barney, "I'm half a prophet, but I can say no more than I've said. There's mischief in the wind; but whether against Masther Charles or his mother, is a puzzle to me. What a dutiful son, too! A she-devil! Well, upon my sowl, if he weren't her son I could forgive him for that, because it hits her off to a hair—but from the lips of a son! O, the blasted scoundrel! Well, no matther, there's ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... nothing, sooth to say, Requiring knife and fork. That sly old gentleman, the dinner-giver, Was, you must understand, a frugal liver. This once, at least, the total matter Was thinnish soup served on a platter, For madam's slender beak a fruitless puzzle, Till all had pass'd the fox's lapping muzzle. But, little relishing his laughter, Old gossip Stork, some few days after, Return'd his Foxship's invitation. Without a moment's hesitation, He said he'd go, for he must own he Ne'er stood with friends for ceremony. And so, precisely at the hour, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... what might be called a real chance to get in the know in New York, could so quickly pass him who had been born and bred in New York, had spent the last ten years in cultivating style and all the other luxurious tastes. He did not like to linger on this puzzle; the more he worked at it, the farther away from him Susan seemed to get. Yet the puzzle would not ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... time she went on talking. "Dear, dear! How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual. Was I the same when I got up this morning? But if I'm not the same, the next question is, 'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle!" ...
— Alice in Wonderland • Lewis Carroll
... telling a painter that color had no emotion, or a scientist that science had no reasonableness. The old puzzle-maker gasped. ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... guess what he had done. It must be very, very wrong, or else Fav-ver Doctor wouldn't be standing there like that. He would talk and take notice. David knew this was so, but, try as he might, he could not think what sin he was guilty of. It was a great puzzle, and, in truth, David was frequently puzzled in the same way. For the laws which grown-ups have for little boys are so much like any other kind of laws that it is hard to get any ...
— A Melody in Silver • Keene Abbott
... more complicated variety is the "logogram'' (Gr. logos, word), a versified puzzle containing several words derived from recombining the letters of the original word, the difficulty lying in the fact that synonyms of the derived words may be used. Thus, if the original word be "curtain,'' the word "dog'' may be used instead of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... such a contract. I afterwards played for him at many dinners and parties of one kind or another. Occasionally he "loaned" me to some of his friends. And, too, I often played for him alone at his apartments. At such times he was quite a puzzle to me until I became accustomed to his manners. He would sometimes sit for three or four hours hearing me play, his eyes almost closed, making scarcely a motion except to light a fresh cigarette, and never commenting one way or another on the music. At first I sometimes thought he had fallen ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... this strange adventure upon which we are embarked. For thousands of years we have been wandering in this wilderness of the world and speculating about why we are here, where we are going, and what it is all about. It can never have been a greater puzzle than now, when we are all busily engaged in killing each other. And at every stage there have been those who have cried, "Lo, here!" and "Lo, there!" and have called men to witness that they have read the ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... convention of building, the Cathedral is not only artistically poor, but mathematically insupportable. The proportions are execrable; and the interior, the finest part of the church, reminds one irresistibly of a good puzzle badly put together. The weak tower is a sufficient excuse for the absence of the other; from the tower the roof slopes sharply and unreasonably, and the rose-window is perched, with inappropriate jauntiness, to the left of the main portal. The ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... explain my actions to every one, am I, Rose?" said the lady. "Children are a sort of a puzzle to me, never having had any of my own; and I don't believe I know how to bring them up. But these of Helen's are ...
— Five Happy Weeks • Margaret E. Sangster
... certain that there are Earthquakers, otherwise how can we account for earthquakes? But how to tackle an Earthquaker, how to get at him, and what to do with him when you have got at him, are questions which might puzzle even ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... before they arrive, sir," said Ready, "and even then the reefs will puzzle them not a little; I doubt if they are disembarked under two hours. We have plenty of time for all we wish to do. Juno, go for the wheels, and William, come down with the spear, and we will have some of the turtle ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... invoked; and after all this solemn, and more than solemn preparation made for our initiation into the mysteries, we are put off with a well-merited encomium on the Church of England, from Bishop to Curate inclusive; and though we have much fine poetry, and some high philosophy, it would puzzle the most ingenious to detect much, or any, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... read. He soon found, however, that reading, alone, would not make him an educated man, and he proceeded to act upon this discovery at once. At school he had been unable to understand arithmetic. Twice he had given it up as a hopeless puzzle, and finally left school almost hopelessly ignorant upon the subject. But the printer's boy soon found his ignorance of figures extremely inconvenient. When he was about fourteen he took up for the third time the "Cocker's ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... one pleased with a puzzle, "the expression in your face is one that comes out in different things. You get the same thing in a pathetic song, or any picture which moves you deeply. It's a thing the world likes to see, because it's a ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... Puzzle as I did over the words, I managed to eat a good breakfast, and then went into the Cullens' car and electrified the party by telling them of Camp's and Fred's despatches, and how I had come to overhear the former. ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... mind that dream book," Tommy replied. "Whenever you want to find the answer to any puzzle, you look ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... answer seemed both to puzzle and to surprise her. She regarded me doubtfully. I could see that she thought, for some ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... substitutions of one reading for another, and discussions of the condition of the Ms. Until Wlker's text and the photographic fac-simile of the original Ms. are in the hands of all scholars, it will be better not to introduce such matters in the school room, where they would puzzle without instructing. ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... public spirits, were about the year 1700 household words with us. Leibnitz was struck by their significance, but it might now puzzle us to find synonyms, or even to explain the very ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... themselves. This was not the kind of conciliation that any one wanted; and so the real antithesis which now confronted Congress was between war and non-intercourse. Mr. Livingston put the situation clearly when he said: "We are between hawk and buzzard; we puzzle ourselves between the ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... of her fascination over Henry was a puzzle to observers. "Madame Anne," wrote a Venetian, "is not one of the handsomest women in the world. She is of middling stature, swarthy complexion, long neck, wide mouth, bosom not much raised, and in fact has nothing ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... balcony. It was, after all, absurd to worry and puzzle over his envelope. It could have no meaning. Some stray tourist perhaps, sight-seeing far from all beaten tracks, had made his way into the house. Tourists are notorious for leaving paper behind them. As for Smith and his boating at dawn—could Smith possibly have gone ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... so very much, either," laughed the machinist. "Things are always happening, where you are, and mysteries have ceased to puzzle me." ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham
... all, he was not entitled to it, whether he had paid me half or the whole of the money? He seemed to think, that he for once had been duped; and very luckily his rage was averted from me to the daroga, who he very freely accused of being a puzzle-headed fool, and one who had no more pretension to law ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... so handsome,—it's a pity. But I do believe in his secret heart he is in love with Mara; he is in love with some one, I know. I have seen looks that must come from something real; but they were not for me. I have a kind of power over him, though," she said, resuming her old wicked look, "and I'll puzzle him a little, and torment him. He shall find his match in me," and Sally nodded to a cat-bird that sat perched on a pine-tree, as if she had a secret understanding with him, and the cat-bird went off into a perfect roulade of imitations of all ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Brougham, in writing to Reeve, invariably refers to him as either 'Hortensius' or 'your neighbour.' In 1872 he published Letters from Lord Brougham to William Forsyth, with some facsimiles to show his 'extraordinary hand.' 'I think,' wrote Mr. Forsyth, 'the hieroglyphics will puzzle most readers;' but the samples he has given are as copper-plate compared with some of the letters to Reeve of about the same date.] appointment was, I believe, purely an act of Lord Stanley's, and I dare say your kindness in mentioning his name had due effect. Hortensius ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... almost frightened at his own conclusion. The clean, shiny mess plate and the phrase out of that letter seemed to fit together like the sections of a picture puzzle. The black spot and the match-end (if there was any match-end) meant just nothing at all. The dim light out in the passageway down below hardly ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... illustration—or a symbol; and then that she had failed to grasp the idea of time, or that it had slipped from her, and she had fallen back, as it were, to the notion that a hundred meant a hundred objects, which you could see and feel. There appeared to be no way out of the puzzle- dom into which we had both got, so that it came as a relief to both of us when she heard her mother calling—calling her back into ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... power of the geyser was probably by Hero, of Alexandria, about a hundred and thirty years before Christ. His machine was also the first known illustration of what is now called the "turbine" principle; the principle of reaction in mechanics. [Footnote: This principle is often a puzzle to students. There is an old story of the man who put a bellows in his boat to make wind against the sail, and the wind did not affect the sail, but the boat went backward in an opposite direction from the ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... though his convictions had survived the tempest of unrest and trouble that had swept over England, and he had remained a convinced and a stubborn Catholic, yet his spiritual system was sore and inflamed within him. To his simple and obstinate soul it was an irritating puzzle as to how any man could pass from the old to a new faith, and he had been known to lay his whip across the back of a servant who had professed a desire to try ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... how the immortall spirit and incorruptible substance of my soule may lye obscure, and sleepe a while within this house of flesh. Those strange and mysticall transmigrations that I have observed in Silkewormes, turn'd my Philosophy into Divinity. There is in those workes of nature, which seeme to puzzle reason, something Divine, and [that] hath more in it then the eye of ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... wondered over the same fact that used to puzzle me when a boy. While the civilized world was interested, as it has been for hundreds of years, in trying to reach the Pole, and the nations were constantly sending expeditions to search for it, to be followed by others to hunt ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... glen or town, I make no doubt, has its own peculiar air or atmosphere that one familiar with the same may never puzzle about in his mind, but finds come over him with a waft at odd moments like the scent of bog-myrtle and tansy in an old clothes-press. Our own air in Glen Shira had ever been very genial and encouraging to me. Even when a young lad, coming back from the low country or the scaling of school, ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... address. He carried the card and the fragments of paper to the round table. There he sat down and, with infinite patience, gummed the fragments on to the card, fitting them together like the pieces of a Chinese puzzle. ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... won't? I know. It isn't worth while till the gentlemen come in," she said. "I know that—now. It used to puzzle me at first; but I know now. You English are so—funny! In America a girl is quite content to sing to her lady friends; but here—well, only men count as audience. They will all wake up when the men appear. I have learned that. Or perhaps you will ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... wishing that her sister would not trouble herself. Presently Jane came running up with a saucer in her hand, containing a quarter of a quince and some syrup, which she said she had found in the nursery cupboard, in searching for a puzzle which Ada wanted. ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... there was a row of simple notches, and there another row of marks resembling crosses. Then there were rows of double crosses; and also one of triple crosses; and finally a series of stars. All these hieroglyphics appeared to have been cut with the blade of a knife; but their purpose was a puzzle to Tiburcio. ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... men may puzzle a careful observer on one point—as to the extent of his stupidity. I did not always know whether Bederhof was so superlatively dull as to believe a thing, or merely so permissibly dull as to consider that he ought to pretend to believe it. Perhaps he had come himself not to know ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... that in her own mind during these few weeks a light had been steadily growing, illuminating many things she had been wont to puzzle over or habitually to pass by as teasing and obscure. She saw the whole world constructed on one purpose, that all living creatures should love and help one another to be happy. Even such a man as Rosewarne ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sedate and steady, On the barrel of the gun Little mischief could be done; But on that sad morn a whim Suddenly seized hold of him; 'Twas the lunatic desire To observe how shot-guns fire; So he boldly took his stand Where the barrel ended, and, All agog to solve the puzzle, Poked his napper up ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... wasn't much use looking about, for there was nothing to guide us. We tried to track your pony's footmarks, but as there had been more snow in the night, and it had now set in to thaw, we could see nothing anywhere in the way of footmarks to trust to. Certainly it was a regular puzzle, for we hadn't the slightest idea which way to turn. 'Well, Harry?' I said. 'Well, Master Walter?' he said in reply; but that didn't help us forward many steps. 'Let us ride on till we get to some house where we may make inquiries,' I said. So we set ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... is derived from CLAVIS—a key—the reference being to the fact that the clef unlocks or makes clear the meaning of the staff, as a key to a puzzle enables us to solve ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... of a bevelled dovetail half-lapped joint. This is only used as a puzzle joint. When neatly constructed and glued together it is apparently impossible to make it, showing as it does a half lap on one side and a dovetailed half lap ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham
... to himself after that rough tumble he felt bruised from crown to heel, and his head was aching dully. For a few moments his mind was in a puzzle as returning consciousness began slowly to array before him the last things he remembered. Then he came to himself with a start, and looked round eagerly to see where he was and what had ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... in Aubrey in which he says: "The curing of the King's Evil by the touch of the king, does much puzzle our philosophers, for whether our kings were of the house of York or Lancaster, it did the cure for the most part." Sir John Fortescue, in defending the House of Lancaster against the House of York, claimed that the crown could not descend to a female because the Queen was not qualified by the form ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... scandals of Le Boulanger, and trying vainly to support them by grubbing in dusty parish registers. It is most necessary to defend you from your friends—from such friends as the veteran and inveterate M. Arsene Houssaye, or the industrious but puzzle-headed M. Loiseleur. Truly they seek the living among the dead, and the immortal Moliere among the sweepings of attorneys' offices. As I regard them (for I have tarried in their tents) and as I behold their trivialities—the exercises of men who neglect Moliere's works to gossip about ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... Bettina, who came to us from a village on the mainland. She was very dark, so dark and so Southern in appearance as almost to verge upon the negro type; yet she bore the English-sounding name of Scarbro, and how she ever came by it remains a puzzle to this day, for she was one of the most pure and entire of Italians. I mean this was her maiden name; she was married to a trumpeter in the Austrian service, whose Bohemian name she was unable to pronounce, and consequently ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... whole, may puzzle his head over many paragraphs in the Notes, but he will hardly find explanations each time. What the reader has to remember is that the Notes are material used by C. in his creative activity and as such it throws a great deal of light on C.'s ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... in evidence, and there is the orchestra and its leader. Others than these have not been seen or heard, and so perhaps are given no consideration. Who the "others" may be, or if there are any others, and of what their services to and interests in the show may consist, would puzzle many theatre-goers to determine with any degree ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... shell boxes under the change of heat and cold. Still they did very well and I think seldom failed to burst when set the right distance. I say the right distance because this at first was a slight puzzle to us, the subject of height in feet above the sea-level of course never having before presented itself to us as altering very considerably the setting of the time fuse; and I don't think that a table of correction for this exists in the Naval Service; ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... gender of the doubtful kind; A something, nothing, not to be defined; 'Twould puzzle worlds its sex to ascertain, So very empty, and ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... was alone with Kippy, struggling with her whims, while he tried to puzzle out the oldest and most universal of conundrums,—that of making ends meet,—the future seemed entirely blotted out by the great blank wall of ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... not be imposed upon so easily. The ensuing week the brother came, and he proved to be the very pawnbroker to whom Manon formerly offered the stolen box: he knew her immediately; it was in vain that she attempted to puzzle him, and to persuade him that she was not the same person. The man was clear and firm. Sister Frances could scarcely believe what she heard. Struck with horror, the children shrunk back from Manon, and stood in silence. Mad. de Fleury ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... if you walk the whole length of it, to the last inch, keeping in the centre of the path, it's exactly two miles and half a furlong. Now, while you find out the length and breadth of the garden, I'll see if I can think out that sea-water puzzle." ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... characteristic audacity of comment, "you are extremely eloquent, even without speaking? To resist you a woman must have a very fixed idea in her head. I wish I had done you a wrong, that you might come to me in that fine fashion! But go to Madame de Cintre at any rate, and tell her that she is a puzzle even to me. I am very curious to see how far family ...
— The American • Henry James
... dramatic entertainments, pageants and tableaus, of varying degrees of grossness, similar to the more elaborate and polished products of the early Javanese and Peruvian drama ... one cannot help fancying must be all pieces out of the same puzzle ... I have with some pains discovered the origin of the name "Arioi." It throws a lurid light on the character of some of the Asiatic explorers who must have visited this part of the Eastern Pacific prior to ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... moment at the sky, then his glance dropped to the ground at his feet. A second later he jerked his head—it was bare, and I saw the dark red hair stir with the movement—like a man who has settled something which caused him a puzzle. In an instant we knew, by the quick intuition of contagious emotion, that the question had found its answer. He was by now king or a fugitive. The Lady of the Skies had given her decision. The thrill ran through us; I felt the queen draw ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... is altogether a more dramatic, livelier, and less conceited performance than anything by the author of Euphues. As for David and Bethsabe, it is crammed with beauties, and Lamb's curiously faint praise of it has always been a puzzle to me. As Marlowe's are the mightiest, so are Peele's the softest, lines in the drama before Shakespere; while the spirit and humour, which the author also had in plenty, save his work from the merely cloying sweetness of some contemporary writers. Two of his ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... local allusions and illustrations which puzzle the non-classical reader. I add an explanatory index to some names of things and persons which have not occurred in my brief ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... for thy puzzle—to amuse thee, carinissima; for verily thy brain is dull. It is no wonder with the gravity of this court! But happily to-morrow—thou shalt see to-morrow how the people shout to him, for Cyprus ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... few paper pedantries, such as his foolish Civil Rights Bill, which would have been torn up before their ink was dry. The will and intelligence which dictated the Reconstruction belonged to a very different man, a man entitled to a place not with puzzle-headed pedants or coat-turning professionals but with ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... for your kind long letter. It brought me back to the green before the house at Freestone, and the old schoolroom in it. I have always felt within myself that if ever I did go again to Freestone, I should puzzle myself and every one else by bringing back old associations among existing things: I should have felt awkward. The place remains quite whole in my mind: Anne Allen's damask cheek forming part of the ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... the management of the garrison, which they suspected to be a nursery for a popish army, and seemed disinclined to maintain it any longer. The king consequently, in 1683, sent Lord Dartmouth to bring home the troops, and destroy the works; which he performed so effectually, that it would puzzle all our engineers to restore the harbour. It were idle to speculate on the benefits which might have accrued to England, by its preservation and retention; Tangier fell into the hands of the Moors, its importance having ceased, with the demolition of the mole. Many ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... her daughters wore on Sundays in spite of hard times and poor crops and debt were the wonder of the whole congregation, and in Mrs White's case the wonder was mixed with scorn. "Peter's the only one among 'em as is good for anything," she sometimes said, "an' he's naught but a puzzle-headed sort of a chap." Peter was the farmer's only son, a loutish youth of fifteen, steady and plodding as his plough horses and ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... if such a book should be made the subject of special attack by the evil one. It is not surprising, though it is deeply grievous, that the common idea about this book among Christian people is that it is a sort of a puzzle, that it is impossible to get a simple, clear, workable understanding of its message. Parts of it are conned over tenderly and loved, a paragraph here, a verse there, and so on, but a grasp of the one simple message of the book seems not ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... The problem did not seem to puzzle her, the problem of this feeling so ill-founded. It was so. Very well, then—so ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... pull : tiri. pulley : rulbloko. pulp : molajxo. pump : pump'i, -ilo. pumice-stone : pumiko. pupil : lernanto; (of eye) pupilo. pure : pura, virta. purple : purpura. purpose : cel'i, -o; intenci. push : pusxi; (along) sxovi. put : meti. —"off", prokrasti. —"aside", apartigi. putrid : putra. puzzle : enigmo. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... difficult,' said the doctor, frowning, his lower lip pushed forward in a stress of thought, 'but it would have to be attempted. Only, on the temporal bone it will be a puzzle to ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... reading memoirs and delving into the musty archives of the castle. Everything relating to Thibermesnil interests him greatly. But the quotations that he mentions only serve to complicate the mystery. He has read somewhere that two kings of France have known the key to the puzzle." ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... her objection, expressed with quite passionate earnestness, to play a part in which we gathered from many chance indications that she was eminently qualified to have excelled, that constituted the puzzle. Her natural bent was certainly in that direction, but something had changed it; and here in particular the external tormenting difficulty with regard to her occurred with full force. At a very early period of our acquaintance, however, I discovered that her attitude in ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Church is the natural home of the human spirit. The odd perspective picture of life which looks like a meaningless puzzle at first, seen from that one standpoint takes a complete order and meaning, like the skull in ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... do not understand the ways of destiny. Why you and I have to suffer this torture I cannot say. I can see nothing in our lives that deserves such punishment. Heaven knows best. Why we have met and loved, only to undergo such anguish, is a puzzle I cannot solve. There is only one thing plain to me, and that is ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... trying to piece the puzzle together in his mind, but so far without success. He was not in the least surprised to find ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... But why puzzle any longer over that preposterous telegram? If my friend Talbert was in any kind of trouble under the sun, there was just one thing that I wanted—to get to him as quickly as possible. Find when the first train started and arrived—send a lucid despatch—no ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... binds his class. He held his place by force of intellect, and it was said of him that had he possessed the faintest conception of his duties toward his fellow men, nothing could have prevented him from becoming Prime Minister. He was a puzzle to all who knew him. Following a most brilliant speech in the House, which would win admiration and applause from end to end of the Empire, he would, perhaps on the following day, exhibit something very like stupidity in debate. ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... last, as though forced to give up hope of finding any positive signs pointing to the solution of the puzzle, the officer remounted, slowly. "I can't make it out," he said. "The road is so dry and cut up with tracks, and the trail is so gravelly, that there are no clear signs at all. Come, we better get back to Carleton's, and start the boys out. When ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... half a prophet, but I can say no more than I've said. There's mischief in the wind; but whether against Masther Charles or his mother, is a puzzle to me. What a dutiful son, too! A she-devil! Well, upon my sowl, if he weren't her son I could forgive him for that, because it hits her off to a hair—but from the lips of a son! O, the blasted scoundrel! Well, no matther, there's a sharp pair of eyes upon him; and ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... know how much of the case you remember," he went on quietly. "It certainly, at first, began even to puzzle me. On the 12th of last December a woman, poorly dressed, but with an unmistakable air of having seen better days, gave information at Scotland Yard of the disappearance of her husband, William Kershaw, of no occupation, and apparently of no fixed abode. She was accompanied by a friend—a ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... Freddy," Willy said, sitting down on the bench and helping himself to some peanuts. "Workin' a crossword puzzle?" ...
— Master of None • Lloyd Neil Goble
... not always pass their luncheon hour in this discussion of incomes and economies. As the dentist came to know his little woman better she grew to be more and more of a puzzle and a joy to him. She would suddenly interrupt a grave discourse upon the rents of rooms and the cost of light and fuel with a brusque outburst of affection that set him all a-tremble with delight. All at once she would set down ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... When driven from their usual course, they must take SOME new course or die. There is nothing strange in the fact that similar beings puzzled similarly should take a similar line of action. I grant, however, that it is hard to see how change of food and treatment can puzzle an insect into such "complex growth" as that it should make a cavity in its thigh, grow an invaluable proboscis, and betray a practical knowledge ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... dismal, wretched, man-forsaken stretch of country it beats anything I ever saw," Walter exclaimed in disgust. "The river itself is about a half mile wide, but it twists, turns, and forks every few yards so as to puzzle a corporation lawyer. The shores for half a mile back from the water are nothing but boggy marsh, with here and there a wooded island. Ugh, the sight of it is enough to make ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... that the good old man had already been casting covetous eyes on my property, and that his granddaughter had taken care of it for me. But how the silent, demure girl had kept it from him was a puzzle, so intensely did he seem now to enjoy it, drawing the smoke vigorously into his lungs and, after keeping it ten or fifteen seconds there, letting it fly out again from mouth and nose in blue jets and clouds. His face softened visibly, he became ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... Mr. Randolph fancied sometimes when she was looking down, that he saw the signs of sadness about her mouth; but whenever she looked up again, he met such quiet, steady eyes, that he wondered. He was puzzled; but it was no puzzle that Daisy's cheeks grew every day paler, and her ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... wounded were coming in droves and the boys were pouring in from the front half-starved, having been fighting all night with nothing to eat except reserve rations. Some had been longer with only such rations as they took from their dead comrades. The need was most urgent, but the puzzle was how to get there. The roads had been shelled and ploughed by explosives until there was no possible semblance of a way, and there were no conveyances to be had. The Zone Major had gone back for supplies, telling the girls to get the first conveyance ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... but live on the eve of the day that cumbered its mouth with phrases of such foolish burden and made literature stiff with them. Andrew Marvell's political rectitude, it is true, seems to have been of a robustious kind; but his poetry, at its rare best, has a "wild civility," which might puzzle the triumph of him, whoever he was, who made a success of this phrase of the "British Aristides." Nay, it is difficult not to think that Marvell too, who was "of middling stature, roundish- faced, cherry-cheeked," a ...
— Flower of the Mind • Alice Meynell
... baffled her, and which he had preserved inviolable through all these years. She now saw that her suspicions of the man "John Wiggins" must have been unfounded, and indeed the personality of "Wiggins" became a complete puzzle ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... understand the first, the nature of it, and the cause why most men are born to it; as for the second, it would be treason for thee and me to do more than whisper it here, and sigh for it when none are listening; but the third need hardly puzzle thee; thy hookah[4] is bright with it; all thy jewels are set in it; gold is inlaid in the ivory of thy bath; thy cup and thy dish are of gold, and golden threads are wrought ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow
... before we leave here," declared Tom. "We can't have folks following us up in a ticklish place like this. Besides, Harry, I'm willing to wager that your vision—-whatever it was—-has some real connection with the mystery that we're going out yonder to investigate. So we'll solve the puzzle that's right here before we go forward to look at the bigger riddle that the dark now hides from us out yonder. Use your eyes, lad, an I'll do the same ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... Kingdom, that request I would give them an exact Account of the Stature, the Mein, the Aspect of the Prince [2] who lately visited England, and has done such Wonders for the Liberty of Europe. It would puzzle the most Curious to form to himself the sort of Man my several Correspondents expect to hear of, by the Action mentioned when they desire a Description of him: There is always something that concerns ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... bothered with mental analysis; his effort to untangle his ideas in this case merely added to his puzzlement; it was like one of those patent trick things which he had picked up in idle moments, allowing the puzzle to bedevil attention and time, intriguing his interest, to his disgust. He had felt particularly lonely and helpless when he came away from Comas headquarters; instinctively he was seeking friendly companionship—opening ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... think you do," Joan smiled at him; "I think I puzzle you terribly, but some day I am going to explain everything. All my life I have been, as I am now, in a narrow little room—peeping out and never touching others any more than I am touching"—she pointed to the right and left—"my neighbours, here. But we were ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... that," he said quickly, "but it is a great puzzle at present and I am thankful to say, I think it is quite safe to wait a year or two yet. You and I live so much apart from society that we idealize it a good deal, though you are a stray-away bit of it. ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... stopping before the small white house in which Mrs. Patterson managed by ingenuity to fit in a husband, a mother-in-law, an aged father, seven children of her own, the Conroy orphan, and a constantly changing number of cats. Nobody could have done it but Mrs. Patterson. The house resembled one of those puzzle boxes containing a number of curiously sawn pieces of wood, which, once removed, can be returned and fitted into place again only by some one who ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... the girl's mind—the puzzle about Cap'n Abe's chest—but it did not come to her lips. Looking across the table that evening, after the store was closed, as they sat together under the hanging lamp, she wondered that Cap'n Amazon did not speak of it if he knew ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... This Puzzle appeared in No. 25, page 344. It was, with two straight cuts of the scissors, to change the fish, Fig. 1, into an absurd penguin catching a herring, as is ...
— Harper's Young People, May 11, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... thought, which seemed to her a bright solution of the puzzle, and saw James rise and stretch his length without mutiny. She received the taps on the cheek of his rolled Punch, allowed, nay, procured, another chilly peck, with no pouting lips, no reproachful eyes. Then came a jar, and her puzzlement ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... of laughter, and full of droll anecdotes of all the country round? Should I not hear of the farmer who never wrote but one letter in his life, and that was to a gentleman forty miles off; who, on opening it, and not being able to puzzle out more than the name and address of his correspondent, mounted his horse in his vexation, and rode all the way to ask the farmer to read the letter himself; and he could not do it—could not read his own writing? ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... seemed hopeless to disenchant him with his exploit, and I therefore left him, wholly at a loss to make out this strange puzzle ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... Psalms are occupied with that standing puzzle to Old Testament worthies—the good fortune of bad men, and the bad fortune of good ones. The former recounts the personal calamities of David, its author. The latter gives us the picture of the perplexity of Asaph its writer, when he 'saw ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the purpose of managing a system of balance cars united by ropes from one passage to another; but this explanation is open, as Beckett points out, to the fatal objection that the passages meet at their lowest point, not at their highest, so that it would be rather a puzzle "to work out the mechanical idea." The reflection explanation is not only open to no such objections, but involves precisely such an application of optical laws as we should expect from men so ingenious as the pyramid builders certainly ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... sincerely, and promised to be All worthy of such a sweet bride. In the morning she'd gossip with William, and then The noon will be spent with young Harry, The evening with Tom; so, amongst all the men, She never could tell which to marry. Heigho! I am afraid Too many lovers will puzzle a maid. ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... we resumed our journey, and after a long day of toiling through treacherous marshes and tangled brushwood came at sunset upon an object whose presence there was a wonder, and its past a puzzle,—a ridge or embankment of ten or twelve feet elevation, which, to our astonishment, ran high and dry through the swampy lowlands. In the heart of an interminable forest it stretches along one side of the tangled trail, in some places walling it in, at others crossing ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... time of her tears, of her loneliness was over. Above her, yet distant, was a golden cloud, soft, iridescent, and in the heart of this lay, she knew, the solution of the mystery; when she reached it the puzzle would be resolved, and in a wonderful tranquillity she could rest after her journey. Nearer and nearer she swung; the cloud was a blaze of gold so that she must not look, but could feel its warmth and heat already irradiating about her. Only to know! ... to connect the two worlds, to find the bridge, ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... interested on the subject. Indeed, I rather suspect that children derive impulses of a powerful and important kind in hearing things which they cannot entirely comprehend; and therefore, that to write down to children's understanding is a mistake: set them on the scent, and let them puzzle it out. To return to George Constable, I knew him well at a much later period. He used always to dine at my father's house of a Sunday, and was authorized to turn the conversation out of the austere and Calvinistic tone, which it usually maintained on that day, upon ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... thought, and money; and many times it was a puzzle to find the latter, though she had been drawing a slight advance in salary for several months, and Morton, by working in the college laboratory at odd hours, was now earning enough to ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... be told. He could not imagine Edith making him the confidant of her outraged feelings. Besides, would such a strangely impassive person resent any little indiscretion in which his wife might choose to indulge? Kirk did not know—the man was a puzzle to him. ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... early. The factory whistle had not yet blown when he reached the gates, but already men carrying lunch boxes were arriving in a yawning, sleepy stream.... Now Bonbright knew why he had arisen early and why he had come here. It was to see this flood of workmen again; to scrutinize them, to puzzle over them and their motives and their unrest. He leaned against the wall ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... knot!" Leila flipped the undesired net from Marjorie. Rolling it up she tucked it under her arm. "Unmasking is at nine-thirty. Let us be there. We can just make it, and it will puzzle some persons to tell who interrupted them tonight. Our talk will wait until after unmasking. Then we can dodge into one of the side rooms and have ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... been seen making their way from different parts of the village toward the Fellows mansion. The families of the members of the club were necessarily in the secret, and watched their exit with considerable laughter from behind blinds. But to the rest of the villagers it has never ceased to be a puzzle who those elderly strangers were who appeared that evening and were never before or since visible. For once the Argus-eyed curiosity of a Yankee village, compared with which French or Austrian police are easy to baffle, was ...
— The Old Folks' Party - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... very family that the scandal had arisen. How it arose was the puzzle; since the ladies themselves never spoke to anybody, and Dr. West would not be likely to invent or to spread stories affecting himself. Its precise nature was buried in uncertainty, also its precise object. Some said one thing, some ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... flowed on. He explained a puzzle, presenting it diffidently as he had presented it to other men in his own field. Then he had been playing—for fun. Now he played for perhaps the highest stakes that ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... an arithmetical puzzle which he had learned from his father, and which many of the readers of this story ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... "Dear me, what a puzzle you are!" she exclaimed. "All the same, I am going to wait for Mr. Fischer. It doesn't matter whether one dines or sups. I suppose he will get away from the police ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... their teacher may show them how to master the more difficult words in their reading lesson? This may be the reason, in some schools; but there are others, perhaps a majority, in which the teacher tells his pupils the words that puzzle them instead of helping them to make them out for themselves. Besides, if reading were properly taught in the lower classes, the children in the upper classes would surely be able to master unaided the difficulties that might ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... the little convalescent looked with grave curiosity. Such antics he had surely never seen. Pale and silent, as he sat on Jim's big knee one evening, he watched the men intently, their crude attempts at his entertainment furnishing an obvious puzzle to his tiny mind. Then presently he looked with wonder and awe at the presents, unable to understand that all this wealth of bottles, cubes, tops, balls, and ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... India has a stiffer task than you have now! It may encourage you to know that I realize that! She's the key to the puzzle, and she happens to be in Delhi. Go to Delhi, then. A jihad launched from the 'Hills' would mean anarchy in the plains. That would entail sending back from France an army that can't be spared. There must be no jihad, King!—There must—not—be—one! ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... finished. He had received high praise for his share in it. Every one who had seen him that day spoke of him as in absolutely capital form. Suddenly he whips out a revolver from his desk and shoots himself, and all that any one knows is that he was rung up by some one on the telephone. There's a puzzle ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... course, systems of opening which deviate absolutely from those which have been proved sound and are in general use, and it is those openings that puzzle the beginner most of all. He says: What is the good of learning correct openings, if my opponent plays incorrectly and wins all the same? This line of thought is wrong from its inception. The student is not supposed to "learn" openings by heart, but to UNDERSTAND how the general principles ...
— Chess Strategy • Edward Lasker
... shiverings, and his heart was already a lump of ice. He dragged some sharp, flat pieces of ice to and fro, and placed them together in all kinds of positions, as if he wished to make something out of them; just as we try to form various figures with little tablets of wood which we call "a Chinese puzzle." Kay's fingers were very artistic; it was the icy game of reason at which he played, and in his eyes the figures were very remarkable, and of the highest importance; this opinion was owing to the piece of glass still sticking in his eye. He ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... just now you decline though by-and-by you intend to accept; or unless you mean that you do accept now, though you have no pleasure in doing so, but look forward to be more pleased by-and-by. In fact the sequence of the compound tenses puzzle experienced writers. The best plan is to go back in thought to the time in question and use the tense you would then naturally use. Now in the sentence "I should have liked to have gone to see the circus" the way to find out the proper sequence is to ask yourself ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... is now in high relief on a flat background, but, though having correct form, it still lacks colour. How to colour plaster satisfactorily is a puzzle which has perplexed more persons than taxidermists. Speaking for myself, I say that, having coloured the cast, when wet and when dry, with water-colours, used paper varnish when dry, with water-colours and varnished ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... apprehension even. Still, when he thought about her it seemed impossible to connect anything sinister with a personality so charming, with a disposition so amiable. No, it was beyond him; it was useless his attempting to puzzle out the problem. Only time could explain it. As they had met at the Savoy, so sooner or later they would meet again. He knew it was useless to try and forget her; that was impossible, but, in ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... a grand saturnalia is best when Mr. Smith goes from home for a day or two. Then I can deny myself to visitors—take full license—set the hydrant running, and puzzle the water commissioners with an extra consumption of Schuylkill. My last exploit in this way was rather disastrous; and I am patiently waiting for its memory to pass away, before I venture even to think ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... give him short answers, and say that the matter is too deep for us," observed Arthur. "We may perhaps puzzle him slightly, and at the worst make him suppose that we are very ill informed on religious matters; but we must ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... prone to moralize In scientific doubt On certain facts that Nature tries To puzzle us about,— For I am no philosopher Of wise elucidation, But speak of things as they occur, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... then, that the perplexities which uniformly puzzle man in the physical world, and even in the little world of his own mind, when he passes a certain limit, are just as unmanageable as those found in the moral constitution and government of the universe, or in the disclosures of the volume Revelation. ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... very well for you to say that now, but you know well enough that you would rather have lost your ears than have missed such a chance as this. But, I say, it'll puzzle you to ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... "You puzzle me to explain," said Monnier, with an ingenuous laugh, that brightened up features stern and hard, though comely when in repose. "Partly, because you are so straightforward, and do not talk blague; partly, because I don't think the class I belong ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... him, making strange, fantastic shapes in the air of the office. Malone puffed away, frowning slightly and trying to force the puzzle he was working ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... old gentleman, suddenly opening his umbrella—or sneezing was it? Anyhow, Kruger went, and you came "home a back way," and scraped your boots. Yes. And now you lay across your knees a pocket-handkerchief into which drop little angular fragments of eggshell—fragments of a map—a puzzle. I wish I could piece them together! If you would only sit still. She's moved her knees—the map's in bits again. Down the slopes of the Andes the white blocks of marble go bounding and hurtling, crushing to death a whole troop of Spanish muleteers, ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... and said nothing, and things fitted themselves together, little patches of information going in here and there like the pieces of a puzzle map. O'Brien had gone on to Havana in the ship from which I had escaped, to render an account of the pirates that had been hung at Kingston; the Riegos had been landed in boats at ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... military operations at this time formed a puzzle that, had the British not been too gravely interested, would have afforded them entertainment. The rules of no known military war game could be applied to the situation, and its uniqueness was a matter as incomprehensible to the tactician as to ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... with, as if to say, "Come, eat me." The tail was the tail of Sam, whose body was concealed far down in the interior of the tower of beef, into which he had cut his way with great perseverance and success. But the puzzle was, how he got there; for there was no chair within reach of the table, and he was much too small to have jumped up on it; while the theory of the servant, who propounded that he must have climbed up by the table-cloth, tooth over claw, was wild, and simply entitled to the contempt of any person ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... and John had come to a better insight of the character of the eccentric person whom Dick had failed to fathom, his half-formed prejudices had fallen away, it must be admitted that he ofttimes found him a good deal of a puzzle. The domains of the serious and the facetious in David's mind seemed to have ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... self-evident fact that the Bible story of creation was the work of unscientific men of strong imagination into a far-fetched and unsatisfactory puzzle of symbol and allegory? It would be just as easy and just as reasonable to take the Morte d'Arthur and try to prove that it contained a veiled revelation of ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... more successful; for he had polished his sword, pipe-clayed his belt, gloves, and the little leather pouch which held his music-cards, and now, with a brush ready, he was performing a task which looked like a puzzle, for he was passing the gilt buttons of his uniform through a hole in a flat stick, and then running them one after another along ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... Island had slowed up to a walk, which caused Cicero to grow impatient, as he wanted a ride on the shoot-the-chutes. Henry Clay, along with Napoleon and a Roman sausage-maker named Hannibal, were in the bow of the craft trying to solve the fifteen puzzle by the aid of a compass and a book on etiquette. Suddenly a great commotion arose to a height of a mile or more. The boat sank to the bottom of the sea, turned over three times, and came to the surface again. A shriek arose from one of the ladies, Cleopatra's waiting-maid: ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... was nothing, sooth to say, Requiring knife and fork. That sly old gentleman, the dinner-giver, Was, you must understand, a frugal liver. This once, at least, the total matter Was thinnish soup served on a platter, For madam's slender beak a fruitless puzzle, Till all had pass'd the fox's lapping muzzle. But, little relishing his laughter, Old gossip Stork, some few days after, Return'd his Foxship's invitation. Without a moment's hesitation, He said he'd go, for he must own he Ne'er ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... and law, in manuscript and marble, in folk-lore and chronicle, right from history's dawn, is still a puzzle of personality, and only equalled by syphilis in the protean nature ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... cried Margaret, gazing in bewilderment from Belasez to Doucebelle, as if she expected one of them to help her out of the puzzle. ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... I offended. On the contrary, I found amusement in alternately exciting, and lulling to sleep, the suspicions of my timorous companion, and in purposely so acting as still farther to puzzle a brain which nature and apprehension had combined to render none of the clearest. When my free conversation had lulled him into complete security, it required only a passing inquiry concerning the ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... mesquites. Then Blanco Sol stopped. His shrill, ringing whistle came distinctly to Gale's ears. The raiders were mounted on dark horses, and they stood abreast in a motionless line. Gale chuckled as he appreciated what a puzzle the situation presented for them. A lone horseman in the middle of the valley did not perhaps seem so menacing himself as the possibilities ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... to Marteau, who understood his language perfectly, he told him, to the surprise of all, that his double wound was indeed the result of an accident, and, moreover, that he had done the deed with his own hand. Doubtless it will puzzle the reader to imagine how a man could so twist himself, that with an unusually long gun he could send a bullet at one shot through his right arm and right thigh. It puzzled Jack and his men so much, that they were half inclined to think the Indian ...
— Fort Desolation - Red Indians and Fur Traders of Rupert's Land • R.M. Ballantyne
... the great Italian landscape painters that they did not discriminate between one tree and another, but indulged in a "painter's tree." There is far more variety in those of our native artist, yet it would puzzle a critic to say what his trees really are, and to point out in his landscapes the distinctive differences between oak and beech, and elm. The weeds, too, in his foregrounds, have neither form nor species. On the margins of his brooks or pools a few sword-shaped dashes ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... the Fantinelli, whose house was close to this church, where now she has a chapel to herself at the west end of the south aisle, with a fine Annunciation of the della Robbia. To think of it!—but in those days it was different; it would puzzle Our Lord to find a S. Zita among our housemaids of to-day. For hear and consider well the virtues of this pearl above price, whose daughters, alas! are so sadly to seek while she dusts the Apostles' chairs in heaven. She was persuaded that labour was according to the will of ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... but read. He soon found, however, that reading, alone, would not make him an educated man, and he proceeded to act upon this discovery at once. At school he had been unable to understand arithmetic. Twice he had given it up as a hopeless puzzle, and finally left school almost hopelessly ignorant upon the subject. But the printer's boy soon found his ignorance of figures extremely inconvenient. When he was about fourteen he took up for the third time the "Cocker's Arithmetic," which had baffled him at school, and ciphered ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... thick growth of hair hiding your face gives you an air of mystery and romance no woman could possibly resist. You're a perpetual puzzle, and to pique a woman's curiosity is the surest way to interest her. Why, there are plenty of women who would marry you simply to find out what is under all that ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... write it, but studied something else. "Manage it some other way"—she had said she would; it was not easy! What was she going to do? the doctor asked nothing of her but ordinary civility; how could she refuse him that? It was a puzzle, and Faith found it so as the weeks went on. It seemed to be as Mr. Linden had said; that she could do little but be as she had been, herself. ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... had gone did she recall his words, "I am going that way myself." Why, she had not told him where the pension was! Never mind, perhaps he was sorry for his behaviour to her; she would give him the benefit of the doubt. It was surely unlike him to be so gracious. She shook her head over the puzzle he presented. ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... written documents, red tape, and sealing-wax. Master Pothier's acuteness in picking holes in the actes of a rival notary was only surpassed by the elaborate intricacy of his own, which he boasted, not without reason, would puzzle the Parliament of Paris, and confound the ingenuity of the sharpest advocates of Rouen. Master Pothier's actes were as full of embryo disputes as a fig is full of seeds, and usually kept all parties in hot water and litigation for the rest of their ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... was, naturally enough, a little perplexed by the man's discovery of an animal completely hidden in the curtain. She appeared to think that a person who was only a groom had taken a liberty in presuming to puzzle her. Like her husband, she ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... very pleasant-looking man, also one who took a pleasant view of other men and things; but he could not help pulling a long and sad face as he thought of the puzzle before him. Duncan Yordas had not been heard of among his own hills and valleys since 1778, when he embarked for India. None of the family ever had cared to write or read long letters, their correspondence (if any) was short, without being sweet by any means. It might be a subject for prayer ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... absurdity, she did not watch keenly for the signs of expression by which she usually knew what was passing in her father's mind. But she was not too preoccupied to see that he was relieved over her assent that there was a devil in Jack Wingfield, which struck her as a puzzle in keeping with all that morning's experience. It added to the inward demoralization which had suddenly dammed her ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... would not be so easy of execution as it sounded. To find the ranch and make a safe landing would be a fairly easy task. The ranch was not more than fifty miles distant by air line, and in that sparsely habited country there would be no other similar group of lights to puzzle Bob. Once they had alighted, however, the difficulties ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... regimen there, was so nearly that of a boy's regimen, that it would puzzle a physiologist to determine from that alone, whether the subject of it were male or female." Of course, these words are intended to express disapprobation, and carry a doubt as to the fitness of Vassar College to educate girls. ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... for setting the god's temple on fire in resentment for the violation of his daughter Coronis. The actions of gods were not to be questioned, in Dante's opinion, even though the gods turned out to be false Jugghanaut is as good as any, while he lasts. It is an ethico-theological puzzle, involving very nice questions; but at any rate, had our poet been a Brahmin of Benares, we know how he would have ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... the bridge the river flowed maunderingly, blundering out unintelligible news of its parent bog and all the dreary places it had come through on its way to the strath of Glamerton, which nobody listened to but one glad-hearted, puzzle-brained girl, who stood looking down into it from the bridge when she ought to have been in bed and asleep. She was not far from Clippenstrae, but she could not go there so early, for her aunt would be frightened ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... Squirrel thought that that was the strangest path he had ever seen, for it seemed to lead to nowhere, and why it should have a bar at the top, to keep anyone from going nowhere at all, was more than even his lively mind could puzzle out. ...
— The Tale of Frisky Squirrel • Arthur Scott Bailey
... attention to my scolding. I went back with the raft, which drifted a good way down stream, and caught the rascal and started him over again, but when I got half way across he jumped and played the same joke on me again. I began to think of the old puzzle of the story of the man with the fox, the goose and a peck of corn, but I solved it by making a basswood rope to which I tied a stone and threw across, then sending the pony over with the other end. He staid this time, and after three ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... then," I said, "you puzzle me a little. The columns in the evening papers go fairly straight to the point, but you are not always so direct. One now and then has to search for the true purpose of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various
... President, he continued to be a surprise to those who shrank from levity. Lincoln was their puzzle; for he had a sweet sauce for every "roast," and showed the smile of invigoration to every croaking prophet. His state papers suited the war tragedies, but still he delighted the people with those tales, tagging ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... she thought she had found the answer to the latter puzzle. She had hardly finished breakfast when Judge Cutler was announced, his hawk's eyes frowning and never a trace of ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... of this case rather puzzle me," said the inspector. "From what I heard at Halvey I guessed it might be common robbery and murder by some tramp, though such a thing is very far from common in these parts. But as soon as I began ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... into dreaming and wondering how it had all happened. Not being able to solve the puzzle, she drifted into reminiscence once more. She could see him—him—and feel his impassioned eyes fixed on her face. "Oh, make haste back! I am so afraid he will not come yet! Besides, it is all very ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... Wentworth's desk, and came upon an obstacle at the very beginning. He did not know how to address the young woman. Whether to say 'My dear Miss Longworth,' or 'My dear madam,' or whether to use the adjective 'dear' at all, was a puzzle to him; and over this he was meditating when ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... all more or less of a puzzle to her, but it was one which her taskmaster never explained further than the revelations of each day explained it. She understood that he was a scientist, that he undoubtedly had been an operator in some surgical field or was putting into ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... where busy till evening, and then with Balty to Sir G. Carteret's office, and there with Mr. Fenn despatched the business of Balty's L1500 he received for the contingencies of the fleete, whereof he received about L253 in pieces of eight at a goldsmith's there hard by, which did puzzle me and him to tell; for I could not tell the difference by sight, only by bigness, and that is not always discernible, between a whole and half-piece and quarterpiece. Having received this money ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... could be heard but the wind blowing through the trees, and the discordant noises of frogs and other denizens of the swamp. So dark was the night that we could hardly see fifty yards across the river. I suppose this was all in our favour; but how our guide knew the marks by which to steer was a puzzle to me, and as I never meant to profit by this experience I asked ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... Such are the short cuts of ignorance to be expected of ordinary carpenters and handy men. And when the old house is on the ground they will display exasperating unconcern regarding what goes where and how to put the structure back together. The most complicated jig-saw puzzle is simplicity itself compared with an Early American house taken apart without predetermined marking ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... they were about when they laid it down that if you have a mystery to solve, you must look for the woman. What they meant was, that, having found a woman, you may make any statements you please about her; the world will accept them unquestioningly and your puzzle will consequently ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... was a puzzle. He was almost deceived by this careless gaiety. Almost—because he did not fail to mark her eyes often fixed on nothing, and the film of light shining from her bedroom window late at night. What ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... mistaken, Jasper. I am not cunning. If people think I am, it is because, being made up of art themselves, simplicity of character is a puzzle to them. Your women are certainly ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... the two contrasts which puzzle us at first in Milton, and which distinguish him from other poets in our remembrance afterwards. We have a superficial complexity in illustration and imagery and metaphor; and in contrast with it we observe a latent simplicity of idea, an almost rude strength of conception. The underlying thoughts ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... last scene—"and my poor fool is hanged"—caused the misapprehension until of late years[G] that Lear's court Fool was hanged—although why Edmund's creatures should have been at the trouble in the stress of their disaster to hang a Fool it would puzzle any ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... destruction of the ancient cloister a covered way of some kind was erected here. Marks can also be seen, in the masonry, which indicate that the building once had three gables. Two of the Norman buttresses of the south nave aisle have very curious terminations, which might well puzzle any observer. They are fireplaces for the use of plumbers. Passing through the Norman doorway at the north-western corner of the Laurel Court, we come into a narrow passage leading to ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... spikes. Beneath the bridge the river flowed maunderingly, blundering out unintelligible news of its parent bog and all the dreary places it had come through on its way to the strath of Glamerton, which nobody listened to but one glad-hearted, puzzle-brained girl, who stood looking down into it from the bridge when she ought to have been in bed and asleep. She was not far from Clippenstrae, but she could not go there so early, for her aunt would be frightened first and angry next. So she wandered ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... they had visited, and Sunny Boy had to see all the toys before he could settle down to choosing gifts for Ruth and Nelson. Finally, by Mother's advice, he settled on a quaint little painted music box for Ruth that played four different tunes, and a picture puzzle game for Nelson, who liked to put things together. These were sent home to the hotel so that Sunny Boy and Mother would not have to carry packages with them the rest of ...
— Sunny Boy in the Big City • Ramy Allison White
... force composed of a limited number of brush strokes! The Western critic, with his totally different literary conventions, has difficulty in bringing himself to regard Japanese verse as a literary form or in thinking of it otherwise than as an exercise in ingenuity, an Oriental puzzle; and this notion is heightened by the prevalence of the couplet-composing contests, which did much to heighten the artificiality ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... in St. Joseph's street above the Citadel," said Jeanne. "Oh, will you come? And perhaps you will not mind if I ask you some questions about the things that puzzle me," and an eager light ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... moment's pause—rather an awkward pause. Lescott's mind began piecing together fragments of conversation he had heard, until he had assembled a sort of mental jig-saw puzzle. ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... Roman statues, representing the gods and athletes of ancient Greece and Rome, are a puzzle to many, owing to the diminutive and phimosed virile organ that the artists have attached to them. Galen represents that the disuse of the organ by the athletes was the cause of its undeveloped form, and that as the ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... still more wonderful thing to the child, but how one could ever be written puzzled her beyond all. A composition on something she had seen or read was within the scope of her thought, but to tell about people and make them talk, and have pleasant and curious and sad and joyous happenings, did puzzle her greatly. ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... old house which had come to be his. How disappointed he had been by Geoff's selfish, discontented temper, and grumbling, worrying ways, and had been casting about how best to give him a lesson which should last, when Geoff solved the puzzle for him by going off ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... contrary within. For they are the first, that find their own griefs, though they be the last, that find their own faults. Certainly men in great fortunes are strangers to themselves, and while they are in the puzzle of business, they have no time to tend their health, either of body or mind. Illi mors gravis incubat, qui notus nimis omnibus, ignotus moritur sibi. In place, there is license to do good, and evil; whereof the latter is a curse: for in evil, the best condition ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... an old tale, and when he was wrong, U used to set him right. V was a virtuoso. W warred against Warburton. X excelled in algebra. Y yearned for immortality in rhyme, and Z in his zeal was always in a puzzle." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 20, March 16, 1850 • Various
... a puzzle," I admitted. "I suppose they might very well be father and daughter. It is certain that she is fresh from some convent boarding-school. I don't like the way she looks at the man, do you? ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the world, I wonder, did you all get that grand look of yours from?—I don't mean your good looks merely, but that look of distinction. Your father and mother have it too; but where did they get it from? You're a puzzle-family—all of you. But wouldn't you like a cup of tea? Come in," and she led the way indoors to a tiny, sweet-smelling boudoir on the left of the hall, of which a dainty glimpse, with its books and water-colours and bibelots, was to ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... thought, more mindful than others of the law which dooms all the works of men to decay, has caused a relation of the principal events of his reign to be engraved in those curious characters which have for centuries been a puzzle and an enigma. Many tombs also, besides the remains of the renowned or wealthy dead, for whom they have been erected at a cost as extravagant and with art as elaborate as the abodes of the living, contain the full description ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... events as being what they are through designed laws (whatever that expression means), but as not themselves specially ordained, or who, in another connection, believes in general, but not in particular Providence. We could sadly puzzle him with questions; but in return he might equally puzzle us. Then, to deny that anything was specially designed to be what it is, is one proposition; while to deny that the Designer supernaturally or immediately made it ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... could quite easily discern the upstanding wing of Friar's Park, actually the house and the park were some two miles distant. Where the park ended and the woods began it was impossible to determine, yet such was my curious mood that I lingered there endeavoring to puzzle out those details which were ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... "buzzer," are to be heard within the range of their pellucid course. They are consecrated to more lofty, if not to more useful purposes. But with the Clyde the case is different. It is almost a puzzle to say whether Glasgow excels more as the seat of a famous University or as the centre of a hundred busy, important, and prosperous industries. Certainly, the decadence of the one has not followed the development of the other. Learning and commerce ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... vacant—was again filled by the new scholar, the Mdlle. Henri so ostentatiously recommended to me by the directress. To-day I had on my spectacles; her appearance, therefore, was clear to me at the first glance; I had not to puzzle over it. She looked young; yet, had I been required to name her exact age, I should have been somewhat nonplussed; the slightness of her figure might have suited seventeen; a certain anxious and pre-occupied ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... the North and South, matters of finance, tariffs, and internal improvements, involving the deepest problems of political economy, education, and constitutional law; and as time moves on, new questions will arise to puzzle the profoundest intellects; but the question of the ascendency of the people is settled beyond all human calculations. And it is in this matter especially that Jefferson left his mark on the institutions of his country,—as the champion of democracy, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... think we are safe here. They'll make for the camp as sure as fate. It will be their first idea. But this should puzzle 'em." ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... this natural function. We know what would occur. A considerable proportion of the community, more especially the more youthful members, possessed by an instinctive and legitimate curiosity, would concentrate their thoughts on the subject. They would have so many problems to puzzle over: How often ought I to eat? What ought I to eat? Is it wrong to eat fruit, which I like? Ought I to eat grass, which I don't like? Instinct notwithstanding, we may be quite sure that only a small minority would succeed ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... for I can't recollect it all myself, only the stupid and muddled part of it. But I have been trying to puzzle it out this morning, and that set me thinking about other things as well, till at last, all of a sudden, I got the ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... his deeds and of his strange gospel were floating through Cuckoo's mind as fragments of broken wood float by on a stream, fragments of broken wood that were part of a puzzle, that should be rescued by some strong hand from the stream, and fitted together into ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... thinking only of the Ayrshire poet, I said, "Burns is dead!" "Oh," he said, "there is a man here in San Francisco, whom I call Bobby Burns, and T thought that you were he." So the mystery was explained; and I could not but reflect that many other things which puzzle us are just as easy of solution when we have ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... rise by their industry to great wealth in the colony; to such the preference shown to the educated man always seems a puzzle. Their ideas of gentility consist in being the owners of fine clothes, fine houses, splendid furniture, expensive equipages, and plenty of money. They have all these, yet even the most ignorant feel that something else ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... feared nothing mortal. The mystery in part explained, he did not bother to puzzle out the remainder of it. Impossible as it seemed, his bag was carried by some living thing. All that remained for him was to capture the thing, and recover his bag. The weak light still turned ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... blow their shrill salute to the returning soldiers. The men square their shoulders and smile knowingly at one another; some of them look a little bored. Hicks slowly lights a cigarette and regards the end of it with an expression which will puzzle his friends when he ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... for it will cause the whole army of savages to rush to the protection of their women and children, thereby disconcerting their plans—supposing them to have any—and enabling us to attack them while assembled in force. It is the nature of savages to scatter, and so to puzzle trained forces; and no doubt those of His Majesty are well trained. But 'one touch of nature makes the whole world kin,' says a great authority; it is wonderful how useful a knowledge of various touches of nature is in the art ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... had better explain our use of the manual alphabet, which seems to puzzle people who do not know us. One who reads or talks to me spells with his hand, using the single-hand manual alphabet generally employed by the deaf. I place my hand on the hand of the speaker so lightly as not to impede its movements. The ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... was full of children, crowds of them, an intricate and ever shifting maze. For years he had known no dealings with the breed, and their movements now were so light and rapid that it rather bewildered him. They were in and out between the kitchen, corridor, and bedroom like bits of a fluid puzzle. One moment a child was beside him, and the next, just as he had a suitable sentence ready to discharge at it, the place was vacant. A minute later 'it' appeared through another door, carrying the samovar, or was on the roof outside struggling ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... Helen, as she bent forward to kiss her. "And one last word, Katy. In this school, to which you and I belong, there is one great comfort, and that is that the Teacher is always at hand. He never goes away. If things puzzle us, there He is, close by, ready to explain and make all easy. Try to think of this, darling, and don't be afraid to ask Him for help if the lesson ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... had begun to clear. She remembered the heavy boxes she and Chess had seen brought ashore, and the Chinaman in the speed launch, and then the yellow-faced woman being taken on this very day toward the American shore. The whole puzzle began to fit together like a piece ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... upon the subject," said Holmes. "He remarks that, while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will do, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says the statistician. But do I see a handkerchief? ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to the assistance of a strange girl, whose real identity is a puzzle to all the Blythe girls. Who the girl really was comes as a ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... must have vexed the Senorita," she thought, "to make her speak like that to me." But the incident was not so easily dismissed from Margarita's thoughts. Many times in the day it recurred to her, still a bewilderment and a puzzle, as far from solution as ever. It was a tiny seed, whose name she did not dream of; but it was dropped in soil where it would grow some day,—forcing-house soil, and a bitter seed; and when it blossomed, ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... to come in, you could eat all the mulberries you wanted, for nothing. There was a tame crow that my boy understood could talk if it liked; but it only ran after him, and tried to bite his legs. Besides this attraction, there was a labyrinth, or puzzle, as the boys called it, of paths that wound in and out among bushes, so that when you got inside you were lucky if you could find your way out. My boy, though he had hold of his brother's hand, did not expect to get out; he expected to perish in that ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... seated image, seventy-two more Buddhas sitting in those inner, upper circles, of Nirvana, facing a great dagaba, or final cupola, the exact function or purpose of which as key to the whole structure is still the puzzle of archaeologists. This final shrine is fifty feet in diameter, and either covered a relic of Buddha, or a central well where the ashes of priests and princes were deposited, or is a form surviving ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... vapor weighs less than the air by itself. One would think that by adding water vapor which, while light, still has weight, the total weight would be the sum of both. It really is so, notwithstanding the above figures, and the explanation of the puzzle is that there was an increase in pressure with expansion, so that the volume of the air and saturated vapor was greater than one cubic meter. Since then a cubic meter of air and saturated vapor weighs less ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... undoubtedly the province of every commander-in-chief. It is indeed true that Buonaparte, who was at Erfurth when the Emperor Alexander received his letter, made this the basis of a deceitful overture for peace, in order to gain time, and thereby puzzle the ministers a little; but this circumstance can never be held out as a reason for preventing a commander-in-chief at a great distance from home concluding an armistice, when he is confident it would be beneficial to the cause on which he ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... same old UFO jigsaw puzzle. By assuming the shape of one piece, a balloon launched from southwestern Ohio, the whole picture neatly falls together. It shows a huge balloon that Captain Thomas Mantell died trying to reach. He didn't know that he ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... take me in the right way, I am quiet enough, a child may guide me with a snaffle; but stick a sharp bit in my mouth, and tickle my sides with the rowels, and I rear up before, and lash out behind, so that it would puzzle half the rough-riders in the country to back me. I always mean to go ahead straight enough if I can see my way clearly before me, but it's awkward driving when one gets among women, with their feelings, and sympathies, and all that ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... brother," said Madame Tiphaine, "one might put up with him; he is not so aggressive. Give him a Chinese puzzle and he will stay in a corner quietly enough; it would take him a whole winter to find it out. But Mademoiselle Sylvie, with that voice like a hoarse hyena and those lobster-claws of hands! Don't ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... said lightly. But it was with a kind of startled puzzle too, as if she had sooner expected dynamite. "I can't think why; I mean, I wonder what's ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... so good as white man" (he shakes his head, philosophically). "White man sharp; puzzle nigger to find out what 'e don, know ven 'e mind t'." Thus saying, he takes a small hymn- book from his pocket, and, Franconia setting the light beside him, commences reading to ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... dear Cassall, you do not know what a devourer of money a vessel is. Every hour at sea means wear and tear somewhere, and if we are to make our ships quite safe we must be constantly renewing. It's the maintenance funds that puzzle us. If you give us a ship without a fund for renewals of gear, wages, and so on, it is exactly as though you graciously made a City clerk a present of a couple of Irish hunters, and requested him not to sell them. The vessel Fullerton has in his mind will need ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... they were in bed. "There is another secret somewhere, and I cannot puzzle it out. Mamma wants Mrs. Hardy to be fond of me, and Rock is likely to be my ...
— A Sweet Little Maid • Amy E. Blanchard
... shall be going to live with the R.F.C., so as to be able to snatch their photographs the instant they come in—puzzle them out—put them quickly on to a map—and send them off. Everyone then will know far more quickly what ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... when the limited capacity of a single mortal is taken in view. BOOTSBY stands round among every class of people, and especially of politicians and potationers. He stands round to talk, to hear, and especially to drink. The power of the man in this last matter is wonderful, and the puzzle is, that his standing (and perpendicularity) is not perceptibly affected. Of course there are times when BOOTSBY'S standing is not so good. In so slippery a place as Wall Street, it is found to be less certain; while in a crowd on Broadway, waiting for a bus, it ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 5, April 30, 1870 • Various
... complacently and went on, with her old easy, don't-care swing, as she undoubtedly will, whithersoever her inclinations lead, to the end of her life. To crystallize such wayward, human atoms into proper forms, and make them useful, is a problem that would puzzle wiser heads ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... head sadly, "these women are indeed a puzzle. I fear much that Rosa's mind has changed since your departure. Absence, as the poets say, is love's worst bane. But let her go, Gulielmo; fairer charms than hers will soon ease ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... She saw a tall young man emerge from the tent, jump on a charger held by a soldier, and ride off at a fast pace toward the house of Las Flores, which stood in a large garden on the slope of a neighboring hill. His appearance seemed to puzzle her momentarily. His attire was that of Brazil, but neither his manner nor horsemanship was typical of the Brasileiro. In walking, he moved with an air of purposeful concentration that differed singularly from the languorous stroll of the average Brazilian officer, ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... clergyman and his wife, with a few others whom she had met in church circles, to dinner, and manifested such an interest in the sewing society that the principal ladies of the congregation called on her in succession; and although they never got beyond an interchange of formal visits, yet it served to puzzle the gossips in the streets, and one or two who had "forgotten" to call on Mrs. McClintock when she first came to the locality paid her a formal visit; their shaky position in society being secured ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... information out of the biblical commentators. Cocceius has told me the most; but he, and all of them, have a notable trick of passing siccissimis pedibus over the parts which puzzle ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... of you, Hunky, to take so much interest in me, and incur so much risk and trouble; but do you know," said Leather, with a look of surprise, not unmingled with amusement, "you are a puzzle to me, for I can't understand how you could tell Captain Wilmot such a heap o' lies—you that has got the name of bein' the truest-hearted scout on ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... "Castor and Pollux." In this mode of portrait-painting it would be absolutely necessary to go back to the old plan of putting the names underneath the personages; and even then, though you write under such, this is Castor, this Pollux, and this the sea-insurer, it will ever puzzle the whole ship's crew to conjecture how they came there together. Gerard admits we cannot paint what we have not seen, and by example rather condemns his own recommendations. Fewer have seen Castor and Pollux, than have ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... there were human habitations to be found. Stalking along with giant strides on the highest part of some rising ground not very far off was a grotesque figure, clearly defined against the bright eastern sky, which would have been a puzzle to a stranger, but was a familiar sight to de Sigognac—a shepherd mounted on his high stilts, such as are to be met ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... dreams marched through my mind—dreams of Jim as he must have looked in khaki, dreams which made an air raid more or less seem unimportant. As the clocks of Nancy told the hours, I was in a mood for the first time since Gerbeviller to puzzle out the meaning ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... we managed to puzzle and mystify the uninitiated, English and French alike. The intelligent reader, who sees it all in print, will not be so easily ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... Beauchamp had to a certain extent restored himself to favour with his uncle Everard by offering a fair suggestion on the fatal field to account for the accident, after the latter had taken measurements and examined the place in perplexity. His elucidation of the puzzle was referred to by Lord Avonley at Romfrey, and finally accepted as possible and this from a wiseacre who went quacking about the county, expecting to upset the order of things in England! Such a mixing of sense and nonsense in a fellow's noddle was never before met with, Lord Avonley said. Cecil ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... work progressed and children stood and gazed in open-eyed wonder at the place where they were to gain a world of information. The work was finished; teachers came from foreign lands, masters of languages, teachers of science, and metaphysicians to puzzle the heads of the old and weary the brain of the young. Teachers of music with massive organs for the music rooms of the college arrived, teachers of piano and harp, all of which were a revelation to these simple people, who could not conceive of any sweeter music ...
— Bohemian Society • Lydia Leavitt
... said he, "you must alter the colour of your hair, then you must have a false nose, and put a spot on some part of your face, or a wart, or a few hairs." I laughed, and said, "Help me to contrive this for the next ball; I have not been to one for twenty years; but I am dying to puzzle somebody, and to tell him things which no one but I can tell him. I shall come home, and go to bed, in a quarter of an hour." "I must take the measure of your nose," said he; "or do you take it with wax, and I will have a nose made: you can get a flaxen or brown ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... of literary sport—in the concoction of a squib or the sketching of a caricature— Wake was always ready to take the work upon himself, and let who liked take the credit. He had a mania for verses and epigrams; he was reputed a bit of a conjuror, and no one ever brought a new puzzle to Grandcourt which Wake, of Railsford's, could not, sooner or later, ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... that; won't you? If I hadn't I'd been burning the midnight oil yet, I reckon. 'Taint safe to make me a present of a puzzle, because I'm just dead sure to nearly split my poor weak brain trying to figger it out. And Jack, I'll never be happy till I know what was in those boxes; and why did that sly little professor believe someone wanted to ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... him to suppose that," said Mrs Clagget; "though, to be sure, I do wish he would talk more about himself. I like a person to be communicative; those reticent people always puzzle me." ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... few on whom it had not a very sensible effect. I pick up the names of their acquaintance; amours and little squabbles are easily gleaned from among servants and neighbors; and, indeed, people themselves are the best intelligencers in the world for our purpose. They dare not puzzle us for their own sakes, for everyone is anxious to hear what he wishes to believe; and they who repeat it, to laugh at it when they have done, are generally more serious than their hearers are apt to ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... that the reef is continued, at the various heights where special kinds die out, by those that prosper at shallower depths; otherwise it would be impossible to understand how this variety of building material, as it were, is introduced wherever it is needed. This point, formerly a puzzle to naturalists, has become quite clear since it has been found that myriads of these little germs are poured into the water surrounding a reef. There they swim about till they find a genial spot on which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... on the whole, may puzzle his head over many paragraphs in the Notes, but he will hardly find explanations each time. What the reader has to remember is that the Notes are material used by C. in his creative activity and as such it throws a great deal ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... dilemma indeed, and the boy began to believe that he had gotten himself into an inextricable difficulty, for how to reach the steam man and renew the fire, under the circumstances, was a question which might well puzzle an older ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... way out of another contradictious puzzle, that which confronts my argument from the ears of an ass. It roams treeless deserts where no foe can approach unseen. Thistles make no sound. Why should it be adorned with ears which in their amplitude are scarcely surpassed by those of ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... of that," he said quickly, "but it is a great puzzle at present and I am thankful to say, I think it is quite safe to wait a year or two yet. You and I live so much apart from society that we idealize it a good deal, though you are a stray-away bit of it. We too ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... much concern about Monsieur Roquion and his bill; but we had unfortunately come to the end of our stock of wine and tea, and a few other luxuries, and where to obtain them except from Monsieur Roquion was a puzzle. The next morning we determined to try, so we went to his shop to order what we wanted; but he instantly met us with a hint that "Le petit compte must first ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... picked up the beads, and put them back into the drawer which she left upon the floor. Then she attacked Tom's image. It took her fully fifteen minutes merely to get the thing to pieces, for the true boy-fashion in which it was tied, pinned, sewed, and nailed together, would have been a puzzle to any feminine mind. She would have called Tom up to help her, but she was just a ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... it without their seeing you." Kristian put it down on the little bench underneath the elder; but when later on he crept past, to see if it had been taken, only the tail and the fins remained—the cat had eaten it up. Ditte scolded him well, and Kristian had to puzzle his ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... up-to-date Parisian style. Everybody lives in the Parisian way. Army officers, whose pay is infinitesimal, all live like Russian Grand Dukes. How they are able to manage this on the official Servian army salaries of 65 cents a day would naturally puzzle an outsider. The answer is, Russian gold. It buys anything and everything south of Budapest. It cannot buy in Montenegro where patriotism is supreme, nor can it buy what it wants among the Osmans. To be sure it can buy the ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... surprise, they found a party of apes and monkeys calmly trying the things on, and apparently enjoying themselves very much indeed. The snowshoes seemed to puzzle them considerably, however, and they were undecided whether to regard them as musical instruments or a ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... occupation arising from these causes may perhaps explain some peculiarities in this book which might otherwise puzzle my reader. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... of opening the British Museum to respectable people on Sunday, has lately been the subject of some discussion. I think it would puzzle the most austere of the Sunday legislators to assign any valid reason for opposing so sensible a proposition. The Museum contains rich specimens from all the vast museums and repositories of Nature, and rare ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... you please give you a sketch of my plan. On Monday, the day on which the examination subjects are given out, I shall begin. My first performance will be my verses and my declamation. I shall then translate the Greek and Latin. The first time of going over I shall mark the passages which puzzle me, and then return to them again. But I shall have also to rub up my Mathematics, (by the bye, I begin the second book of Euclid to-day,) and to study whatever History may be appointed for the examination. I shall ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... her that in her own mind during these few weeks a light had been steadily growing, illuminating many things she had been wont to puzzle over or habitually to pass by as teasing and obscure. She saw the whole world constructed on one purpose, that all living creatures should love and help one another to be happy. Even such a man as Rosewarne found ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... proof that fond passion can die, In this prosaic meeting we had! Now, ought we to laugh or to cry— Was it sorrowful, or was it sad? 'Tis a puzzle not worthy our time, So let's give ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Hamilton, xix. Leaves from the Diary of an Aged Spinster, vi. Leein' Jamie Murdieston, viii. Leveller, The, xvi. Linton Lairds, The; or, Exclusives and Inclusives, iv. Lord Durie and Christie's Will, ii. Lord Kames's Puzzle, xxiii, Lost Heir of the House of Elphinstone, xx. Lottery Hall, xiii. ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... Ned Ward, who informs us, in the "Delectable History of Whittington's College," that "When the prisoners are disposed to recreate themselves with walking, they go up into a spacious room, called the Stone Hall; where, when you see them taking a turn together, it would puzzle one to know which is the gentleman, which the mechanic, and which the beggar, for they are all suited in the same garb of squalid poverty, making a spectacle of more pity than executions; only to be out at the elbows is in fashion here, and a ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... wastes themselves. Whence they came, where they went, and why, must long remain questions with many answers and therefore none at all. But he could tell her a few things of the ancient civilization . . . and a civilization it truly was . . . and of the signs left for posterity to puzzle over. ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... conceal from me his acquaintance with Rachel Leonard? Why had they both been so strangely moved at meeting? I longed to ask a question; but I could not find my voice. I longed for John to speak, and tell me something—anything at all that he liked; and were it the strangest puzzle that ever failed to be unriddled, I swore to my own heart that I ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... distinction of method in the web. Tight as the versifier may draw the knot of logic, yet for the ear he still leaves the tissue of the sentence floating somewhat loose. In prose, the sentence turns upon a pivot, nicely balanced, and fits into itself with an obtrusive neatness like a puzzle. The ear remarks and is singly gratified by this return and balance; while in verse it is all diverted to the measure. To find comparable passages is hard; for either the versifier is hugely the superior of the rival, or, if he be not, and still persist ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a very pretty name, and one of those which is [sic] supposed by novelists and young ladies to be aristocratic; why so is a puzzle; as its plain meaning is a tenant farmer and nothing more or less" (Two ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... let their fancy run. I'm livin' over all the things that happened that night—livin' them over to-day, when everything's so quiet about me here, so lonesome. I wanted to go over it all, bit by bit, and work it out in my head, just as you and I used to do the puzzle games we played in the sands. And maybe, when you're a long way off from things you once lived, you can see them and understand them better. Out here, where it's so lonely, and yet so good a place to live in, I seem to get the hang o' the world better, and why some things are, and other ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... indignantly, one day. "It is like a baby to have to run after a girl if you want a button sewn on," quoth Auntie. Geography was learned by painting skeleton maps—an exercise much delighted in by small fingers—and by putting together puzzle maps, in which countries in the map of a continent, or counties in the map of a country, were always cut out in their proper shapes. I liked big empires in those days; there was a solid satisfaction in putting down Russia, and seeing what a large ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... faith, thrusting his own, with its mysteries which puzzle even theologians, upon them, they will be but as whited sepulchres, or, at ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... has been styled "The Master of Mysteries," has here woven one of his most mystifying tales. It is like a Chinese puzzle in its ingenuity, and holds the reader breathless from the first line ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... is really moved to an effort of memory by this, and blubbers out something that proves in the end to resemble the family name, though for the present it is merely a puzzle of unintelligible sounds." ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... fine blazing fire, and plenty of hot tea, toast, and eggs, it was easy to remedy one class of these poor people's wants; but how to rig them out in dry clothes was a puzzle, till the captain bethought him of a resource which answered very well. He sent to several of the officers for their dressing-gowns; and these, together with supplies from his own wardrobe, made capital gowns and petticoats—at least, till the more fitting ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... say, and what they can't see, some men won't in the least give credit to. Neverthless, chief, that isn't quite as good reason as it mayat first seem. You believe in the Great Spirit, I know, and yet, I conclude, it would puzzle you to show where ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... drew Robin between his Knees, stroked his Haire, and askt what we were talking about. Robin sayd I had beene telling them a fairie Story; and Mr. Milton observed that was an infinite Improvement on the jangling, puzzle-headed Prating of Country Justices, and wished I woulde tell it agayn. But I was afrayd. But Robin had no Feares; soe tolde the Tale roundlie; onlie he forgot the End. Soe he found his Way backe to the Middle, and seemed likelie to make it last alle Night; onlie Mr. Milton sayd he seemed ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... figure; and we also see her feet and the lower part of her legs. Her humanity is not extinguished, her means of locomotion are visible;—but in looking at a lady nowadays, we see nothing of the kind; from the waist down, she is a puzzle of silk and conic sections, a marvellous machine that moves in a mysterious way. See, again, how beautiful in color this peasant's costume is. The gown of a rich red, not glaring, but yet positive and pure; the apron, blue; she is a brunette, and so has wisely chosen to have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... so tall. One imagined rightly that he was very strong, that he could be swift and purposeful in his movements, despite an apparent deliberation. His face was boyishly expressive. He had a way of smiling at trifles. And one did not have to puzzle over his nationality. He was English. His accent and certain intonations ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... was my fault, and the cause of my failure. I could not give myself up to finance, nor puzzle through the intricacies of commerce: even the common parliamentary drudgeries of constant attendance and late hours were insupportable to me; and so after two or three "splendid orations," as my friends termed them, I was satisfied ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... humbly asked for absolution, and offered him the book at an immense loss on the sale price. 'If you were,' replied the doctor, 'to bring the book at my door for nothing, I would take it with a pair of tongs and drop it into the gutter.' It was a puzzle to everyone what the little doctor did with all his purchases, which were limited chiefly to classical books. At his death, however, it transpired that he bought for the various Universities of the United Kingdom. The doctor's son, a poor curate, entered his late father's library for the ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... he, "a philosopher ought to understand the management of books better than a skipper; but when a book is glued hard and fast like that, it may puzzle even a philosopher ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... He was a continual puzzle to her, this man. There was no servility about him, but she had a feeling that he, too, was in some fashion under Mercer's heel. He made himself exceedingly useful to her in his silent, unobtrusive way; but he seldom spoke on his own initiative, and it was some time before she felt herself to ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... our Puzzle this month is based, though the two classical dangers will be now only two little children who will try to seize on the argosies which their brothers and sisters ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... in a sort of a puzzle. You said a little while ago, or you spoke as if you thought, that all those grand old Roman emperors were not after all great men. Then, if they were not great, what's a fellow to try for? If a common fellow does his best, he will not get to the hundredth or the thousandth part ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... head sadly, 'I shall never understand human nature; there is always an abyss below an abyss, and the firmest seeming ground is usually quagmire when you come to step on it. George Pendle is a riddle which would puzzle the Sphinx. Hum! hum! another fabulous beast. Well, well, I can only wait and watch until I discover the truth, and then—well, what then?—why, nothing!' And Graham, having talked himself into a ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... delightful to every reader, and invaluable as a study to every person who wishes to obtain a wide command over the English language. The vocabulary is the vocabulary of the common people. There is not an expression, if we except a few technical terms of theology, which would puzzle the rudest peasant. We have observed several pages which do not contain a single word of more than two syllables. Yet no writer has said more exactly what he meant to say. For magnificence, for pathos, for vehement exhortation, for subtle disquisition, for every purpose of the poet, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... an Aboriginal," he said; "and to tell you the truth, your origin has been the great puzzle of my life, sir." ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... all around his room again, as if trying to solve the puzzle. But he could not guess what had happened. He remembered how he and Sue had gotten up in the middle of the night, and how they had crept inside the tent. Then Splash had come; and how funny it was when Sue thought their dog was a bear. Then they ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Camp Rest-A-While • Laura Lee Hope
... appearance of humility, Dennis asked leave to venture on a guess. The perforated paper looked, as he thought, like a Puzzle. "If we wait for a day or two," he suggested, "the Key to it may possibly ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... the "blind" man's solution next month. Meantime, here is a puzzle for your merry crowd. You shall have an answer in that same postscript; but I should like to have the Little Schoolma'am and the rest work it ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... there, they must be badly scared. The light of the lantern, striking among all these trunks and forked branches and twisted rope-ends of lianas, made the whole place, or all that you could see of it, a kind of a puzzle of turning shadows. They came to meet you, solid and quick like giants, and then span off and vanished; they hove up over your head like clubs, and flew away into the night like birds. The floor of the bush glimmered ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... children that are not only picture books but play books. Beautifully printed in four colors. Books that children can cut out, paint or puzzle over. More entertaining than ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... explore every hut upon the moor until I lighted upon the right one. If this man were inside it I should find out from his own lips, at the point of my revolver if necessary, who he was and why he had dogged us so long. He might slip away from us in the crowd of Regent Street, but it would puzzle him to do so upon the lonely moor. On the other hand, if I should find the hut and its tenant should not be within it I must remain there, however long the vigil, until he returned. Holmes had missed him in London. It would indeed be a triumph for me if I could run him to earth where ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... imposed upon so easily. The ensuing week the brother came, and he proved to be the very pawnbroker to whom Manon formerly offered the stolen box: he knew her immediately; it was in vain that she attempted to puzzle him, and to persuade him that she was not the same person. The man was clear and firm. Sister Frances could scarcely believe what she heard. Struck with horror, the children shrunk back from Manon, and stood in silence. Mad. de Fleury immediately wrote to the lady who had ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... management of the garrison, which they suspected to be a nursery for a popish army, and seemed disinclined to maintain it any longer. The king consequently, in 1683, sent Lord Dartmouth to bring home the troops, and destroy the works; which he performed so effectually, that it would puzzle all our engineers to restore the harbour. It were idle to speculate on the benefits which might have accrued to England, by its preservation and retention; Tangier fell into the hands of the Moors, its importance having ceased, with ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... evidence of a warm and almost West Indian climate among the low basking islets of our northern carboniferous seas. Or take once more the oolitic epoch in England, lithographed on its own mud, with its puzzle-monkeys and its sago-palms, its crocodiles and its deinosaurs, its winged pterodactyls and its whale-like lizards. All these huge creatures and these broad-leaved trees plainly indicate the existence of a temperature over the whole of Northern ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... was feverish with the desire to go farther. It was the exciting finish to a long race; the last move in a puzzle which had challenged men ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
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