"Baffling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... very well what the law says," was her baffling rejoinder; "I have taken the trouble to find out since I came home. I am not hiding ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... no speculation, no philosophising. He had no mental process in him worthy the dignity of either of those terms. In his good clothes and fine health, he was a merry, unthinking moth of the lamp. Deprived of his position, and struck by a few of the involved and baffling forces which sometimes play upon man, he would have been as helpless as Carrie—as helpless, as non-understanding, as pitiable, if you will, ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... bow even with his left hand. Arjuna, in great wrath, dispelled with his arrows that thick shower. Then he of a hundred sacrifices beholding that shower baffled, once more caused a thicker shower of stones. But the son of the chastiser of Paka (viz., Arjuna) gratified his father by baffling that shower also with his swift arrows. Then Sakra, desirous of smiting down the son of Pandu, tore up with his hands a large peak from Mandara, with tall trees on it, and hurled it against him. But Arjuna divided that mountain-peak ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... strange reversal of the common notion in which we think of our relation to other lives. We fancy that another life is perfectly interpretable in its motives and aims, but that our own lives are much disguised; whereas the fact is that nothing is more mysterious and baffling than the interior purposes of another soul, and nothing is more self-disclosed and transparent than the nature of a judging life. One man goes through the world and finds it suspicious, inclined to wrong-doing, ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... the Indians, his cross-examination had borne scant results. The best of his questions but involved him in a maze of baffling surmises. Gradually his anger had mounted, until now the Indian at the door knew by the wax-like appearance of the more prominent places on his deeply carved countenance that he had nearly reached the point ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... him briefly, inquiringly. What a baffling light it was that played in the depths of his eyes! What manner of being was he, after all? She could not tell. And yet she felt she could trust him—she certainly knew not why. Despite his ways of raillery ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... farther we called for refreshments, and learned that a steamboat called periodically at Luss. We left this favourite resort by the Dumbarton road, walking alongside Loch Lomond—one of the finest walks we ever took and quite baffling description. It was rather provoking, therefore, when darkness came on just as we reached the widest part of the Loch where quite a number of islands could be seen. The road still continued beautiful, being arched over with trees ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... in the strange incidents, it lay in the fact of a subtle undercurrent of connections, as if Fate were dimly pointing all the while toward the invisible culmination. Suddenly there would be a new manifestation of Auber's faculty, and a new instance would be added, illusive, baffling, and yet forming each time new threads in the vague warp and woof of something that we called our theory. "There it is again," we would say to ourselves, as we sent the ghostly shuttle flying ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... There were very few resident landlords in the neighborhood and also very few domestic or literate serfs, and in the lives of the peasantry of those parts the mysterious undercurrents in the life of the Russian people, the causes and meaning of which are so baffling to contemporaries, were more clearly and strongly noticeable than among others. One instance, which had occurred some twenty years before, was a movement among the peasants to emigrate to some unknown "warm rivers." Hundreds of peasants, among them the Bogucharovo folk, suddenly began ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... bar of politics, Octavio's conduct is unimpeachable. He does his duty in baffling a powerful traitor in the most effective way. It is not his fault that Wallenstein is deceived in him, and nothing requires that he go and undeceive him. He resorts to no tricks, he feigns no sentiments that are not his. He but tells the truth to Butler in regard to the ancient ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... had succeeded, at the point of the pike, in establishing a safe egress for the twelve hundred visitors, it was then first ascertained that all traces of The Masque had been lost in the smoke and subsequent confusion; and that, with his usual good fortune, he had succeeded in baffling his pursuers. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... left over from earth's earlier and more innocent time, till a little cloud formed in the north. That cloud did not rise. It blew towards us straight over the seas, rigid and formless; becoming at last a barque under full sail, heading east of south of us. She was, when at a distance, a baffling mass of canvas, from which a square-sail occasionally heliographed. She got abeam of us. Before the clippers have quite gone, it is proper to give grace for the privilege of having seen one, superlative ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... now by his gleaming eyes and the trembling hand which pulled nervously at his short, black moustache. Goldberger's moustache was a good index to his mental state—the more ragged it grew, the more baffling he ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... Chris carried his well-known tendency for philandering into his own family, as it were. But as the full days went by, and she encountered in him, wherever they met, the same grave, kindly attention, the same pleasant mouth and curiously baffling eyes, in spite of herself she began to experience a certain breathless and half-flattered and half-frightened pride in ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... The winds were baffling and light, so we made but slow progress. Fortunately frequent rains, with sometimes a genuine tropical downpour or cloud-burst, gave us an opportunity of replenishing our water casks, and by spreading the awnings we were ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... difficulties; yet what noble or aspiring mind does not find interior warranties for the truth of that audacious synthesis? Is it that the soul darts responsive impartments to the heavens? that the whirl is elemental in the mind? that baffling intervals stretch deeper within us, and shoals of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... I stand With foot set firm upon a finished thing! I turn not to denial: thus I wrought So that he could nor flee nor ward his doom, Even as the trammel hems the scaly shoal, I trapped him with inextricable toils, The ill abundance of a baffling robe; Then smote him, once, again—and at each wound He cried aloud, then as in death relaxed Each limb and sank to earth; and as he lay, Once more I smote him, with the last third blow, Sacred to Hades, saviour of the dead. And thus he ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... apply for employment as wood-choppers in the upper part of this State, until they could raise money enough to dress fine, then set off for the State of Illinois. It is highly probable they will resort to fictitious names, for the purpose of baffling pursuit. ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... nodded. "I take it we are still talking for nonpublication?" When Miles nodded, he continued: "This whole situation is baffling, Miles. It seems that the government here knew all about the weather conditions they could expect at periastron, and had made plans for them. Some of them excellent plans, too, but all based on the presumption that the natives would co-operate or ...
— Oomphel in the Sky • Henry Beam Piper
... hard voyage of it and much of baffling gales from the south, and drove north into the main; but they made Iceland, and were by then come to the north off Longness when they found where they were: so little space there was betwixt them that they spake together; and Asmund said that ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... Erebus was the interior, baffling the peering eyes of the scouts, until Mr. Newton, hanging a lantern on each point of a pickax, dangled it into the depths. A vault some four or five feet deep and running far back into the cave was disclosed. It was partly filled with an assortment almost ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... that sixty miles of peaceful water that had so long remained hidden from European explorers, baffling the anxious gaze of Cabrillo, the faithful explorations of Ferrelo, the eagle eyes of Drake, and ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... These baffling winds blew upon the smouldering anxiety in his breast, as wind blows upon embers, causing them to glow. They lasted some days, and then, as if Fate had relented, up sprang on the starboard quarter a spanking breeze, making the rigging ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... miles. Only the big metal hood saved them from being cut to ribbons by the wind and the flying dirt and stones that their mad rush threw back from the road before them. But Jack had one big advantage, as he guessed. He knew the country better, and he was making baffling turns every few minutes. One thing he dared not do. He stuck to the road, afraid, at the frightful speed, to risk a side trip into the fields, and equally afraid to slow down, since that would mean that the other ...
— The Boy Scout Automobilists - or, Jack Danby in the Woods • Robert Maitland
... once into a narrative of the passage home—how they had picked up a slant off Heligoland and carried it with them well past the Wight; how on this side of Portland they had met with slight and baffling head-winds, and for two days had done little more than drift with the tides. The vessel was foul with weed, and must go into dock. "You could graze a cow on her for a fortnight," Mrs. Purchase declared. "Benny and I have just finished checking ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... them. The stupidest fourth cousin had more, even though she had been nothing in such a person's life. She had been a feature of features in his, for what else was it to have been so indispensable? Strange beyond saying were the ways of existence, baffling for him the anomaly of his lack, as he felt it to be, of producible claim. A woman might have been, as it were, everything to him, and it might yet present him, in no connexion that any one seemed held to recognise. If ...
— The Beast in the Jungle • Henry James
... stole silently over the heads of the old man and the young child in Welch's Court brought a period of wild prosperity to Stillwater. The breath of war blew the forges to a white heat, and the baffling problem of the mediaeval alchemists was solved. The baser metals were transmuted into gold. A disastrous, prosperous time, with the air rent periodically by the cries of newsboys as battles were fought, and by the roll of the drum in the busy streets as fresh recruits ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... speaker only an occasional detached glance. The two representatives of their country sitting nearest to him were, not at all furtively, eating apples and casting their cores and parings into their particular waste-paper baskets. This was discouraging and baffling. To quote the Judge himself, no one knew anything about Hamlin County, and certainly no one was disturbed by any desire ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... appreciate the beauty of its design, or the boldness of the group it forms with the cathedral dome and tower and the square masses of numerous out-buildings. Yet this peculiar position of the palace, though baffling to a close observer of its details, is one of singular advantage to the inhabitants. Set on the verge of Urbino's towering eminence, it fronts a wave-tossed sea of vales and mountain summits toward the rising and the setting sun. There is nothing but illimitable ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... affectations which Mrs. Smithers was playing off, and the grave diversion with which Louis received them. The lady was evidently trying to discover what had been the intermediate history of Mrs. and Miss Dynevor; and Louis was taking pleasure in baffling her, with cool, quiet answers, especially when she came to the question whether Miss Dynevor had not a brother, and why he was not present. It appeared that Oliver had made almost as if his mother ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... harvest they should have been the first to reap. The very men who most insisted that specific difference was the accumulation of differences so minute as to be often hardly, if at all, perceptible, could not see that the striking and baffling phenomena of design in connection with organism admitted of exactly the same solution as the riddle of organic development, and should be seen not as a result reached per saltum, but as an accumulation ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... Approached from behind, as the present writer approached it, this has very much the air of an important work of art; and that it well may be. Closer examination, however, raises some doubts. Is it, perhaps, only the imitation of one? Mr. Epstein is a baffling artist. His skill and scholarship are amazing, and he seems to have convictions; but what are they? Has he merely a brilliant gift for description, helped out and sophisticated by a subtle taste? Or has he a queer entangled ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... with an air of helplessness. She loved her brother's daughter tenderly enough, but she admitted to herself that she did not understand young girls. Having borne only sons, she had never been called upon to struggle with the baffling. ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... with a sort of wonder in her eyes. It was as if there were more in him—more of him—than she had ever expected. And he returned her glance with a simplicity and directness which were baffling enough. He looked down at her. He was taller than she, which was as it should be. For half the trouble of this troubled world comes from the fact that, for one reason or another, women are not always able to look up to the men ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... who with his pal Scotty lives on an island called Spindrift and takes part in so many thrilling adventures and baffling mysteries involving science and electronics. You can share every one of these adventures in the pages of Rick's books. They are available at your book ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... Mass. But he was not entirely engrossed in his devotions. Starting from the front entrance of the church he moved slowly nearer and nearer to the altar, and, slipping from the shelter of one pillar to another, anxiously scanned the rows of kneeling women. He found the mantilla a baffling disguise, and as each woman present in the church wore one, and as the hair of each was black, and as the back of the head of one woman is very much like that of another, it was not until the worshippers had turned to leave that he discovered the Senorita ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... smooth as alabaster, it gave an air of extreme refinement and sensibility to his face, without detracting from its manliness or intellectual power. It was a face to peruse, to study, to think of,—it was a baffling, haunting face. Hieroglyphics of thought were there, too mysterious for the common eye to interpret. It was a dark lantern, flashing light before it, ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... Nations which could not with equal force be applied to the Four-Power and Naval Treaties. The Four-Power Treaty was the main object of attack, and Senators Lodge and Underwood were greatly embarrassed in attempting to explain its meaning. Its "baffling brevity" demanded explanations, but no satisfactory explanations were forthcoming. They talked in general terms about the tremendous importance of the treaty, but they dared not state the real fact that the treaty was drafted ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane
... his wife Michal, and Aprile, an Italian poet, are the characters who are the personal media through which Browning's already powerful genius found expression. The poem is, of a kind, an epic: the epic of a brave soul striving against baffling circumstance. It is full of passages of rare technical excellence, as well as of conceptive beauty: so full, indeed, that the sympathetic reader of it as a drama will be too apt to overlook its radical shortcomings, cast as it is in the dramatic mould. But it must not be forgotten that Browning ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... these," said he, "where one cannot discover precisely what is the matter, are more baffling to a doctor than the gravest disorders—like pneumonia now, or even typhoid fever which carry off three-quarters of the people hereabouts who do not die of old age. Well, typhoid and pneumonia, I cure these every ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... the crusade in order to build up a power in Sicily, which he was now trying to extend to North Italy by crushing the Lombard League. This was a fatal bar to the policy of a papal state in Central Italy, inaugurated by Innocent III. No less imminent was the danger from the success of Frederick in baffling the papal schemes for the separation of the Sicilian and German crowns. It was becoming apparent that only by the extinction of the Hohenstaufen line could the ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... consideration for the demands of libertines, and consideration for Chinese "custom." Neither of these arguments has any worth when applied to the slave conditions of California, and therefore the most serious, baffling obstacles to a removal of the evil are out of the way. Both pretexts, we maintain, were false. There is no necessity for furnishing vice to libertines; there was no lawful Chinese custom to be opposed in opposing brothel slavery. But even if these were ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... of his tone proved startling to her by virtue of its unusualness. What might it portend, she wondered, and sought with grave eyes to read his baffling countenance; and then a wild alarm swept into her and shook her spirit in its grip; there was something of which until this moment she had not thought—something connected with the fateful matter of that ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... baffling as a labyrinth, with unexpected turnings, and he kept gingerly close to the wall with one hand clutching a bit of iron which he had taken into his possession and his pocket when Aziza had led him out of the underground walls—the very bit of pointed iron, it was, with which the volatile ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... secrecy, General Gage quietly got ready eight hundred picked troops, which he meant to convey under cover of night across the West Bay, and to land on the Cambridge side, thus baffling the vigilance of the townspeople, and at the same time considerably shortening the distance his troops would have to march. So much pains were taken to keep the actual destination of these troops a profound secret, that even the officer who was selected ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... stubbornly to their posts. Perched beyond reach of shattering wavecrests, the passengers on the boat-deck huddled unhappily in the lee of the superstructure—and snarled in response to the cheering information that better conditions for baffling the ubiquitous U-boat could hardly have been brewed by an indulgent Providence. Sheeting spindrift contributed to lower visibility: two destroyers standing on parallel courses about a mile distant to port and to starboard were more often than not barely discernible, spectral vessels ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... statesman, for whom Mat had once trained, had imitated. He walked with a curious and characteristic lilt, as of a boy, rising on his toes as though reaching after heaven. And his eye underlined, as it were, the mischievous gaiety of his walk. It was a baffling eye: bright, blue, merry as a robin's and very shrewd; "the eye of a cherubim," Mat once described it himself. When it turned on you, grave yet twinkling, you knew that it summed you up, saw through you, was aware of your wickedness, condoned it, pitied you, comforted you, and bade ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... vivacity which had seldom been absent from Hamilton's face in life withdrew its very impress with his spirit. His features had something more than the noble repose, the baffling peace, of death; they looked as if they had been cast long ago with the heads of the Caesars. Gouverneur Morris, staring at him through blistered eyeballs as he lay in his coffin, recalled the history of the House of Hamilton, of its direct and unbroken descent—through the fortunate, and famed, ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... a pool, composed of all the various liquids that had been poured, upstairs, into that baffling spot ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... a tacit engagement to study the matter alone, I read the book. Never shall I forget the effect it produced on me. I seemed to be holding communion with Satan himself, robed as an angel of light, the transparent drapery revealing his hideous form but baffling my endeavors to rend it away. Such sophistry, such impudence of unsupported assertion, such distortion of truth and gilding of gross falsehood, I never met with. I tried in vain to find an answer to things that I saw and felt to be antiscriptural and destructive; but this "End" was the beginning ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... qualities of Stephen Austin and he could not understand the vast web of intrigue in which the Mexican capital was continually involved. And to the young mind of the boy, cast in the same mold, it was yet more baffling and repellent. ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the quick by the attack of France, backed passionately the obstinacy of the king. But unlike George the Third, it instinctively felt that if a hope still remained of retaining the friendship of the Colonies and of baffling the efforts of the Bourbons, it lay in Lord Chatham; and in spite of the king's resistance the voice of the whole country called him back to power. The danger indeed which had scared Lord North into resignation, and before ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... which the Sister-portress peeps and talks, is pasted a printed form, an arrangement of holy names and texts in triangles, and the stigmatized hands of St. Francis, and a variety of other devices, for the purpose, as is explained in a special notice, of baffling the Evil One, and preventing his entrance into that building? Had you seen Dionea, and the stolid, contemptuous way in which she took, without attempting to refute, the various shocking allegations against her, your Excellency would have reflected, as I did, that the door ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... breathed a spirit that defied all human dangers. What though death confronted the poet and the brutal malice of nocturnal marauders threatened the object of his adoration, what, short of superhuman intervention, should prevent the poet from baffling all hostile environments and placing the queen of his heart securely upon his throne beside him, etc., etc.? We all know how the poets go it when they once get started. The Magpie Glen affair gave Jake Dodsley a new impulse, and marked copies of his wonderful effusions ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... hugely amused to see their C.-in-C. having a hot time of it. After ten minutes hard rowing we got close to the destroyer and she, making a big circle at fairly high speed, came along fast as if she was going to run us down, with the idea of baffling the aim of the enemy. Not a bad notion as far as the destroyer was concerned but one demanding acrobatic qualities of a very high order on the part of the Commander-in-Chief. Anyway just as she was drawing abreast and I was standing up to make my spring a shell hit her plump and ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... the written orders which he was actually waiting for, or if his corporal had returned sooner than I anticipated, there might have been trouble. But even then," he added with his usual careless insouciance, "I should have thought of some way of baffling those brutes." ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... be called poetical justice has thus evolved itself from the schemes in which Randal Leslie had wasted rare intellect in baffling his own fortunes, no outward signs of adversity evince the punishment of Providence on the head of the more powerful offender, Baron Levy. No fall in the Funds has shaken the sumptuous fabric, built from the ruined houses of other men. Baron Levy is still Baron Levy the millionaire; ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... been so quiet about it," said Jo, crossly. This little rat always had a way of baffling and irritating him, because he did not have Jim's force, which could beat down the dwarf when occasion demanded it, or the stoicism of Juarez, ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... depart, assuring everybody that they have enjoyed themselves immensely, and really believing that they have; or it may happen that some remark will suddenly be made, and instantly back through the windows the souls will come, eagerly catching up their bodies again, and a babel will arise, deafening, baffling, stupefying. Or it may happen that a Russian will speak with sudden authority, almost like a prophet, and will continue for half an hour and more, pouring out his soul, and no one will dream of ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... husband was likely to have any knowledge of his wife's secret. If he had, he might, in his delirium, babble something which would provide a clue to trace the murderer. It was a poor chance, but the poorest chance was worth trying in such a baffling case. ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... ground who opened his mouth in parables on the subject of the fee for playing there. He seemed to have been wound up to make only one remark, 'It's sixpence.' Under these circumstances the attempt to discover whether the sixpence covered a day's tennis or a week or fifty years was rather baffling. At last I put down the sixpence. This seemed to galvanise him into life. He looked at the clock, which was indicating five past eleven and said, 'It's sixpence an hour—so you'll be all right till two.' ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... book is based on lectures, often of an informal nature, in the Appreciation Course at Harvard University and lays no claim to original research. The difficulty in establishing points of approach makes it far more baffling to speak or write about music than about the other arts. Music is sufficient unto itself. Endowed with the insight of a Ruskin or a Pater, one may say something worth while about painting. But in music the line between mere statistical analysis and sentimental rhapsody must be drawn with ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... western flank. The difficulties encountered by Tuli on this march, when he had to make his own roads, were such that he entered the Kin territories with a much reduced and exhausted army. The Kin forces gained some advantage over it, but by either a feigned or a forced retreat, Tuli succeeded in baffling their pursuit, and in effecting a junction with his brother Ogotai, who had met with better fortune. Tuli destroyed everything along his line of march, and his massacres and sacks revived the worst traditions of Mongol ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... all were very hungry, on Jackson's suggestion they tried out one of the "records" that was brought from that baffling anteroom. Smith was very much interested in that unopened door, and Van Emmon was in the midst of it when ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... the first class pinned to his breast, and underneath the rare "Pour le Merite Order, with Swords." His bill amounts to about 7 francs, for he consumed the regular 4-franc table d'hote, plus a full bottle of red Burgundy. He tenders a blue 100-mark bill in payment and gets in return a baffling heap of change, including 1 and 2 franc Belgium paper notes, 5 and 10 mark German bills, Belgian and German silver, and Belgian nickel coins with holes punched in the centres. The General takes out his pencil and begins elaborate calculations on the menu—then sends for ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... mother said, "my son." The former bowed with formal civility, but gave a baffling effect of mockery which, Howat discovered, enveloped practically every movement and speech. He was, he said, enchanted to meet Mr. Penny; and that extravagant expression, delivered in a slightly harsh, negligent voice, heightened the impression of a personality ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... and silent on the way home. The world sometimes seemed desperately sordid, and human nature a baffling proposition. ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... has he got to do with it?" He turned to MacNair as if expecting an answer. But MacNair remained silent. "Why don't you charge Lapierre with the crimes you told me he was guilty of?" taunted the girl. Again she saw that baffling twinkle in the grey eyes of the ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... high, barren hills whose blue masses were darkly silhouetted against the western sky. Upon every side of them extended the treeless wilderness, the desolate loneliness of bare, brown prairie, undulating just enough to be baffling to the eyes, yet so dull, barren, grim, silent, and colorless as to drive men mad. The shimmering heat rose and fell in great pulsating waves, although no slightest breeze came to stir the stagnant air, while thick ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... capsized; while the greater number, by their prows coming down suddenly from a height, dipt low in the sea, shipped a great quantity of water, and became a scene of the utmost confusion. Tho reduced almost to despair by these baffling inventions of Archimedes, and tho he saw that all his attempts were repulsed by the garrison with mockery on their part and loss to himself, Marcellus could not yet refrain from making a joke at his own expense, saying that "Archimedes was using his ships ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... hopelessly shallow for the depth of the moment. She was thinking only of Sydney Bamborough, and of that dread secret. She fought with what arms she wielded best—the lightest, the quickest, the most baffling. ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... was brewing she was not far from the Downs, but the baffling winds retarded her progress, and it was pitch dark when she reached the neighbourhood of the Goodwin sands. Nevertheless those on board of her did not feel much uneasiness, because a good pilot had been secured in ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... by this time, and the subdued silken rustle of her skirts was a wonted sound. Ruth's face, naturally mobile, had been schooled into a certain reserve, but her deep, dark eyes were eloquent, and always would be. Hepsey wondered at the opaque whiteness of her skin and the baffling arrangement of her hair. The young women of the village had rosy cheeks, but Miss Thorne's face was colourless, except ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... the south wind that breathed a century and a half ago over the green wheat. From the perfume of the growing grasses waving over honey-laden clover and laughing veronica, hiding the greenfinches, baffling the bee. From rose-loved hedges, woodbine, and cornflower azure-blue, where yellowing wheat-stalks crowd up under the shadow of green firs. All the devious brooklet's sweetness where the iris stays the sunlight; all the wild woods hold the beauty; ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... fiery beard, the derby hat with its dents, the chaps, the bicycle, and golf bag. In this scene she seemed to demand the actor's intentions toward the daughter, and again overwhelmed him with confusion, as Parmalee had been overwhelmed when she revealed her true self under the baffling disguise. The wager of a kiss was prettily paid. This much of the drama he knew. And there was an affecting final scene on ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... could find no means of leading the inhabitants of scattered towns and villages, who forgot my words as soon as they heard them not, and veered with every baffling wind, that might arise from an apparent change ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... leave the baffling earthly prize, Which fails the earthly weak endeavor, To gaze into those holy eyes And ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... content to abide in Tinkletown were questions he always answered, but never in a satisfactory manner. Even the hardiest citizens soon came to the conclusion that there wasn't much use in asking questions that Jake could answer with a slow and baffling wink. He became a fixture in Tinkletown, doing odd jobs for nearly everybody in town, and still finding ample time to attend to his duties at the feed yard. Whenever any one had a job to be done that he particularly disliked doing ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... of things contained in it, its contradictory and fluctuating interests, the transition from one situation to another, the hours, months, years spent in one fond pursuit after another; that it is, in a word, the length of our common journey and the quantity of events crowded into it, that, baffling the grasp of our actual perception, make it slide from our memory, and dwindle into nothing in its own perspective. It is too mighty for us, and we say it is nothing! It is a speck in our fancy, and yet what canvas would be big enough to hold ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... and that determined efforts to upset them were being made, efforts which necessitated the greatest care on his part. This, of course, whetted the girl's curiosity; but to her most artful queries he opposed a baffling silence. When Philadelphia, Washington, then Baltimore, and finally Richmond were left behind, Miss Evans was, in truth, ready to explode, and her two companions were in a similar ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... weakest place and carry it deeper than Spencer did. But in fact, the exact limits he should assign to religious beliefs as an evolutionary function were still indeterminate in his system. He, like all cosmic philosophers, found this the most baffling and elusive of all his problems. Meantime, here in this little country church, he was to witness the supreme rite of the supreme religious belief. There was some compensation for his enforced attendance in that thought. He looked about him with genuine ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... silent person either, far from it. She bubbled over with precise and cheerful comment, she appeared to talk even more than was absolutely necessary and it was only upon her departure that her entertainers noticed that she had said nothing at all. A very baffling person to deal with. Coombe could not manage to "take to" her at all and great sympathy was felt for Mrs. Coombe when she was reported to have said to Miss Milligan that going out with Miss Philps felt exactly like a jail ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... some retort, some further argument—a kind word maybe. A trace of the older, baffling love, but he had quietly turned to his desk and was thinking of ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... fowls too extravagantly, and in the fodder for the horses and cattle, which was rather wasted. She was as miserly about her master's money, as if it had been her own, and by dint of making good bargains, of getting high prices for all their produce, and by baffling the peasants' tricks when they offered anything for sale, he at last entrusted her with buying and selling everything, with the direction of all the laborers, and with the quantity of provisions necessary for the household, so that in a short time she became indispensable ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... graceful silhouette of slenderness, but as they passed through the brighter zones about the great opals swung from the lamp pillars, the dimpled little chin and small nose revealed themselves in a sort of baffling warfare of sauciness and dignity. Paul knew that there were well-held frontiers of reserve and self-containment in this woman's nature, but that back of it lay an alluring playground ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... light up till you felt warm and happy just to look at him. She wondered if the closely-set lips she was studying could curve into a welcoming smile if anybody ran to meet him with happy outstretched arms. But the picture was baffling and disappointing, because ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... felt sure that there was a notch made against him, and that somehow or other he was intended to pay. It was also clear to him that the immediate effect of his revelation had been to harden Grandcourt's previous determination. But as to the particular movements that made this process in his baffling mind, Lush could only toss up his chin in despair ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... about them,—the sad, self-conscious, philosophy of Heraclitus, like one, knowing beyond his years, in this barely adolescent world which he is so eager to instruct, makes no pretence to be able to restrain that. Was not the very essence of thought itself also such perpetual motion? a baffling transition from the dead past, alive one moment since, to a present, itself deceased in turn ere we can say, It is here? A keen analyst of the facts of nature and mind, a master presumably of all the knowledge that then there was, ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... as are billows of the South II 1 Blowing unweariedly, or Northern gale, One going and another coming on Incessantly, baffling the gazer's eye, Such Cretan ocean of unending toil Cradles our Cadmus-born, and swells his fame. But still some power doth his foot recall From stumbling down to ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... her twinkling eyes and saw a gentleman promenading on the quarter-deck before her, whom she must have thought she had somewhere seen before, but that his gigantic black mustache was a puzzle, and the little imperial on his chin was a baffling difficulty. Mr. Lovibond puffed the smoke from a colossal cigar, and wondered if the world held two pair of eyes like those big black ones which glanced up at him sometimes from a deck stool, a puffy pile of wool, two long crochet needles, and a couple of white hands, from ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... The baffling smile of the debonair club man returned to Shirley's face, as he twitted back: "Purely an altruistic inquiry, Dick. I feared that you might be risking your own heart and the modicum of freedom which you still possess. But I'll wager a supper-party for four ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... Billo, drew a little away from her father. In earlier times when moods of abstraction fell upon him, she had sought to rouse him; but latterly she had learned the wisdom and kindness of silence. She knew that this annual autumnal gypsying held for him the keenest delight and, in another and baffling phase, a poignancy on which, as she had grown to womanhood, it had seemed impious to allow her imagination to play. She watched him now with the pity that was woven into her love for him: his tall figure and the slightly stooped shoulders; ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... was not always to be had. It was needful to have always handy on the table of the Inquisition a good fool's guide, to reveal to simple and inexperienced judges the tricks of the Old Enemy, the best way of baffling him, the clever and deep-laid tactics employed with such happy effect by the great Sprenger in his campaigns on the Rhine. To that end the Malleus, which a man was required to carry in his pocket, was ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... this trial is over than will suit his book." It did not occur to Augustus Burlingame that in Crozier, who knew why he had fled the house of the showy but virtuous Mrs. Tynan, he might find a witness of a mental and moral calibre with baffling qualities and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... more satisfactory watching the little mother about her daily cares than trying to keep track of her mate. He was one of the most baffling birds I ever tried to spy upon. Often I heard his delightful song so near that I was sure in a moment I should see him. Then I peered through the low bushes, without moving so much as an eyelash, ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... greatest poverty, her father had never allowed her to part with. What strange hours it had often measured for her. Age-long hours of grief, weary days of illness and pain, times of eager expectation, times of sickening anxiety, times of mental conflict, of baffling questions and perplexities. How the hands seemed to creep on this afternoon, at times almost to ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... had one mysterious event been straightened out from the tangled skein, when another, even more baffling, crowded on ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... to his feet, and with one terrible cry "I hunger," rushed upon the scornful gods And strove to seize and hold them with his hands, And still the laughter deepened as they rolled Their clouds around them, baffling him. But once, Once with a shout, in his gigantic arms He crushed a slippery splendour on his breast And felt on his harsh skin the cool smooth peaks Of Aphrodite's bosom. One black hand Slid down the naked snow of her long side And bruised it where he held her. Then, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... religion's sake," said Cavendish. "They were ringing bells and giving thanks, for the discovery and baffling thereof, when we came down ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... course, very highly developed and extremely intelligent; but it should not be surprising that intelligence should manifest itself in ways quite baffling to us human beings, whose minds work so differently. They ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... subject. This is the nascent stage of periodicity to the slow normalization of which, during these few critical years, everything that interferes should yield. Some kind of tacit recognition of this is indispensable, but in mixed classes every form of such concession is baffling ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... denied, but after enjoying for a moment the baffling of the old man's intentions, ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... be affectionate to this sister, who was good, and who, in her way, he knew, loved him. But, somehow, she grew less herself as the years went by, and more and more baffling. It was the hard work, the many children, and the nagging of her husband, he decided, that had changed her. It came to him, in a flash of fancy, that her nature seemed taking on the attributes of stale vegetables, smelly soapsuds, and ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... eager, and his instructor touched him twice over his guard. Then, rendered cautious, he fought more carefully, although with no less quickness than before; and for some minutes there was no advantage on either side, the master's longer reach and calm steady play baffling every effort ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... delivery visits were not made unless the family became alarmed and requested them. When thus asked to come back the physician sometimes found that an infection had developed; occasionally the breasts were giving trouble, or some other difficulty in the care of the mother or of the infant was baffling the nurse. It is now recognized that the medical attendant should not wait for the appearance of untoward symptoms. Although the strict observance of the various precautions which I have already emphasized should lead and usually do lead to an uneventful convalescence, it is none the ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... so thick and high, being made of dead trees piled upon each other, that the animal could find no point to push through or scale, especially while kept in "running order" by his pursuers. Although thus imprisoned, he was baffling their efforts, refusing to be captured, when Tom ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... corner-stone "rested upon a book." It has been calculated that there was one Cambridge graduate for every two- hundred and fifty inhabitants, and within six years from the landing of John Winthrop and his party, Harvard College had begun its work of baffling "that old deluder, Sathan," whose business in part it was "to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures." To secular learning they were indifferent, but every man must be able to give reason for the faith that ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... laid the book absent-mindedly in her lap to listen with an ear turned toward the bed, and often, too, she looked out into the spreading softness of golden-green laced through by dove-gray and sepia-brown branches on which played baffling reflexes ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... doubtless have been effectively hindered, if not, indeed, altogether prevented. To the grand triumph the varied talents of Franklin, Adams, and Jay alike contributed. To the latter is due the credit of detecting and baffling the sinister designs of France; but without the tact of Franklin this probably could not have been accomplished without offending France in such wise as to spoil everything. It is, however, to the rare discernment ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... pangs Till they seemed years, torture and solitude, Scorn and despair,—these are mine empire. More glorious far than that which thou surveyest From thine unenvied throne, O, Mighty God! Almighty, had I deigned to share the shame Of thine ill tyranny, and hung not here Nailed to this wall of eagle-baffling mountain, Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured; without herb, Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of life. Ah me! alas, pain, ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... either with simplicity or with a baffling irony. "Why not open my mind's eye for me? My friend Harold March here will tell you I sometimes see things, ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... discern the true coloring of this most original character, under the smoke and tarnish of antiquity. It is no less to the honor of the great triumvir, that a strength of coloring should survive in his character, capable of baffling the wrongs and ravages of time. Neither is it to be thought strange that a character should have been misunderstood and falsely appreciated for nearly two thousand years. It happens not uncommonly, especially amongst an unimaginative ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... in the Oxford high school, has set her heart on winning the coveted position of "Head Cheer Leader." Although this seems a simple enough desire, Anne finds herself involved in a series of baffling adventures in trying to attain it—including the machinations of a gang of professional gamblers, and the mysterious kidnapping of the football team's star fullback. It is a quick-moving, vital story that will appeal ...
— The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm
... kinds of poetry, but they based their demand for this quality on its extrinsic suitability much more than on its presence in the work to be translated. In Turbervile's elaborate comment on the style which he has used in his translation of the Eclogues of Mantuan, there is the same baffling vagueness in his references to the quality of the original that is felt in the prefaces of Lydgate and Caxton. "Though I have altered the tongue," he says, "I trust I have not changed the author's meaning or sense in anything, but played the part of a true interpreter, ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... yearnings burn the human breast; What wild desires like prisoned birds Impel the heart from east to west; What urgings baffling words Beat up from nature unexpressed Till soul distinct stands manifest, On guard for heaven, or, wanton, hurled Toward judgment ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... few hours later, the cavalry of Tavannes arrived in pursuit, they were unable to effect a passage. The party had many other dangers and difficulties to encounter but, by extreme caution and rapidity of movement, they succeeded in baffling their foes, and in making their ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... baffling than this simple, ever-recurring one: What am I? If I should decide what I am to-day, I discover that yesterday I was quite a different person. To-day I may be six feet in height, and climb the Alps; yesterday ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... Macduff with midnight murder; her own noble mind rejected the idea as a thing utterly and wholly impossible, the more so perhaps, as she knew her father had been latterly subject to an insidious disease, baffling all the leech's art, and which he himself had often warned her would terminate suddenly; yet still an inward shuddering would cross her heart at times, when in his presence; she could not define the cause, or why she felt it sometimes and not always, and so she sought to subdue ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... reduces all men to a common level, that touches everybody with its potent magic and brings to the surface the deeply underlying nobody. The effect for some temperaments, for consciousness, for egotism, is admirable; for curiosity, for hero worship, it is rather baffling. It is the spirit of the street transferred to the drawing-room; indiscriminating, levelling, but doubtless finally wholesome, and witnessing the immensity of the place, if not consenting to the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... circumstances too, and hold myself solely to blame for their baffling opposition. I will submit without demur to whatever length of imprisonment may please, and, if possible, soften the Archbishop of Mayence. After my release I shall ask your consent that I may forthwith join the ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... entertain high expectations of what ambitions they may yet realize, but we perceive a limitation in the fact, that all discoveries of the past have been made by the invention of wonderful instruments applied in a most ingenious manner to solve seemingly insoluble and baffling problems. The strength of science lies vested in its instruments, for the scientist may say to anyone: Go, procure a number of glasses ground in a certain manner, insert them in a tube, direct that tube toward a certain point in the sky where now nothing appears to ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... than it would otherwise have been by the fact of our having spoken the German steamer 'Sakhara,' in the Magellan Straits, Oct. 13, four days after we were supposed to have gone to the bottom.) The weather continues fine, and we have the same light baffling winds. We hoped, when we started, to average at least 200 miles a day, but now we have been a week at sea, and have only made good a little more than 700 miles altogether, though we have sailed over 800 miles through ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... eulogistically of him as a man who might have his weaknesses, but who had done the right thing by her, not-withstanding his numerous poor relations; to have sums of interest coming in more frequently, and secrete it in various corners, baffling to the most ingenious of thieves (for, to Mrs. Glegg's mind, banks and strong-boxes would have nullified the pleasure of property; she might as well have taken her food in capsules); finally, to be looked up to by her own family and the neighborhood, so as no woman can ever hope to ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... further information out of him, they left their bovine acquaintance with a fresh supply of beer, and returning to the station, took the first train back to Hull. As they sat smoking that evening after dinner they once more attacked the problem which was baffling them. ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... the worm-eaten traveler, and she raised her timid eyes to her face, wondering at her silence. There was something in those prophetic orbs, which she could not read. There seemed to be a film over them, baffling her penetration, and she looked down with a long, ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... R. Livingston of New York represented American interests in Paris; but at the very close of the negotiation he was succeeded by Monroe, whom Jefferson sent over as a special envoy. The course of the negotiations was at first most baffling to the Americans. [Footnote: In Henry Adams' "History of the United States," the account of the diplomatic negotiations at this period, between France, Spain, and the United States, is the most brilliant piece of diplomatic history, so far as the doings of the diplomats ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Nor had Quarrington himself evinced any particular emotion, either of dissatisfaction or otherwise, when she had confided to him the fact that she was expecting her god-daughter. And although the extreme composure exhibited by both Michael and Magda was a trifle baffling, Lady Arabella was fain to comfort herself with her confirmed belief in propinquity as the resolution of most lovers' ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... more. I am afraid that the borrowed handkerchief to which you applied the match really did get burnt, and you will probably have to offer the owner one of your own instead. That is the only weak spot in one of the most baffling tricks ever practised by the amateur prestidigitator (to use the word for the last time). It will make a fitting climax to your evening's entertainment—an entertainment which will ensure you another warm invitation next year when the ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... Nakacho[u]—is it Yoshiwara, or Fukagawa, or Naito[u] Shinjuku to which the Danna goes? 'Tis but the lady at the pole who has a clear head and forces us to go this way.... Danna, never mind the fare money. Condescend to alight. It is a hard night; too hard for such a baffling task.... Here is ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... justice to Shelley's life or poetry. The materials for the former are almost overwhelmingly copious and strangely discordant. Those who ought to meet in love over his grave, have spent their time in quarrelling about him, and baffling the most eager seeker for the truth. (See Lady Shelley v. Hogg; Trelawny v. the Shelley family; Peacock v. Lady Shelley; Garnett v. Peacock; Garnett v. Trelawny; McCarthy v. Hogg, etc., etc.) Through the turbid atmosphere of their recriminations it is impossible to discern the whole personality ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... object. This, it appears to us, is the sole mystery, without which neither sound, nor color, nor form, nor magnitude, is a true correlative to the unseen cause. And here, as with Beauty, though the test of that be within us, is the modus operandi equally baffling to the scrutiny of the understanding. We feel ourselves, as it were, lifted from the earth, and look upon the outward objects that have so affected us, yet learn not how; and the mystery deepens as we compare them with other objects from which have followed the same ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... regular soldiers. But when Pompey also passed over the Pyrenees, and Sertorius pitched his camp near him, and offered and himself accepted every occasion by which military skill could be put to the proof, and in this contest of dexterity was found to have the better, both in baffling his enemy's designs and in counter-scheming himself, the fame of him now spread even to Rome itself, as the most expert commander of his time. For the renown of Pompey was not small, who had already won much honor by his achievements in ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... phenomena here are comparatively simple, and easily traced. The moment we extend our observations beyond our cattle and fowls, and enter upon a wider field of investigation, we are met by the most startling facts. Not the least baffling of these are the disproportionate numbers of males and females in certain kinds of animals, their unequal development, as well as the extraordinary difference between the sexes among certain species, so that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... acquiescence, suffering the very sight of which in all its manifold dreariness would have driven you homeward shuddering from this beautiful place. Till this good man—I will say this great man—carried his baffling compound of sacred zeal and keen sense into that weary country, those toiling sailors were hopeless, loveless, comfortless, joyless, and—I say it with awe—heavenless; for scarcely a man of them had knowledge or expectation of a life wherein the miseries of ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... experience of His people is often still the same. What are many of God's dispensations?—a baffling enigma—all strangeness—all mystery to the eye of sense. Useless lives prolonged, useful ones taken! The honoured minister of God struck down, the unfaithful watchman spared! The philanthropic and benevolent have an arrest put on their manifold deeds ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... made no mistake. He beckoned to Big Bob Jeffries to try for goal. It was an oblique slant, and only a clever kicker could succeed, with that baffling wind against him. Big Bob looked once in the direction of the grandstand as if to draw inspiration. Most people believed he must know some girl, whose encouragement he sought; but Mollie and Lucy and Adelaide did not venture to take such honor to themselves. A little modest woman ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... last regarded him at least as one who neglected his opportunities, but his great laugh at their callow jests and their advice to him was so frank and indifferent a thing that they found it singularly baffling. 'Twas indeed as if a man of ripe years and wisdom had laughed at them with good-nature, because he knew they could not understand the thing experience had ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... how treacherous was the navigation of this strait, whose weather is never to be trusted, and whose winds, tides, and currents are baffling and perilous. Embarking with his followers, he looked for an easy and rapid progress; but a terrible storm arose, tossing the boats so frightfully that death seemed ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... ledge beyond this upthrust a huge dome of dull gold, Cyclopean, striking eyes and mind with something unhumanly alien, baffling; sending the mind groping, as though across the deserts of space, from some far-flung star, should fall upon us linked sounds, coherent certainly, meaningful surely, vaguely familiar—yet never to be translated into any symbol or thought of our own ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... the charm of her person, been much courted. Sam, who had talked briefly with her a half dozen times, had long had a haunting curiosity to know more of her personality. As she stood there before him looking so wonderfully well-kept and confident he thought her baffling and puzzling. ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... was taking place around them, the two chums devoted their attention to the task of baffling the designs of their two foes. Wonderfully well did Tom manage his aerial steed. They swung this way and that, dipped, rose, and cut corners in a dizzying fashion in the endeavor to confuse the aim of ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... launched out into the amazing chaos of the region where Surprise Lake lay. And all of the spring and half of the summer had been consumed in futile wanderings, when, on the verge of turning back, they caught their first glimpse of the baffling, gold-bottomed sheet of water which had lured and fooled a generation of miners. Making their camp in the old cabin which Smoke had discovered on his previous visit, they had learned three things: first, heavy nugget gold was carpeted thickly on the lake bottom; next, the gold could be ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... can only conjecture. Our process must be in rem, not in personam. 'It'—for thus perforce we must speak of our Unknown—weareth an iron mask of inscrutable mystery, as complete as that of the all-baffling Junius. The field, however, of speculation is open to our wandering reflection. Herein we guide ourselves by natural signs, the configurations of the stars and the marks of the soil. We judge from the mould in which the favorite male characters ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Another week of light baffling winds, and then the breeze died away altogether and there was a dead calm. The sun poured down with great force, but the sky was less blue and clear than usual. At night it was stiflingly hot, and the next ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... permission thus to violate the rules of professional courtesy. This sketching from a finished picture she found vastly easier than drawing from the object itself, a task which always proves elusive and baffling to the beginner. Manasseh took his stand behind her as she worked, but his eyes were not wholly occupied in following ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... inspired and ideal kind, and seems to have been conceived and executed in a similar state of feeling to that which produced among the ancients those perfect specimens of poetry and sculpture which are the baffling models of succeeding generations. There is a unity and a perfection in it of an incommunicable kind. The central figure, St. Cecilia, seems rapt in such inspiration as produced her image in the painter's mind; her deep, dark, eloquent eyes lifted up; her chestnut ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... his previous course, and lay still in the black shadow of a spruce. It was evident that somebody was following his trail, and the pursuer, passing his hiding-place, followed it straight on. Geoffrey's was a curious character, and the very original cure for a disappointment in love, that of baffling a game watcher while his faithless mistress escaped, brought him relief; it left no ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... it would be better to come straight to you." For the first time she glanced at him; a baffling glance, a glance that somehow had the effect of transferring some of the apprehension in her own breast ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... completest indifference. She had always this feeling that she was caught, that she could only escape by a desperate violent effort that would hurt others and perhaps be, for herself, a lasting reproach. She wanted so simple a thing ... to be always with Martin, working, with all this confusing, baffling, mysterious religion behind her; this simple thing seemed ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... current which sets continually towards the east. The 7th July we fell in with the island of San Thome [280], where we wished to come to anchor; but the wind coming about we again made sail. From that time till the 13th we were tossed about by baffling winds, and that day fell in again ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... our yearly trip. Between Hong Kong and Amoy we encountered a series of baffling fogs, compelling us to anchor for days at a stretch. One clear day the "Lapwing" passed, bound for Hong Kong. She had recently been in collision with a Chinese merchant steamer, and inflicted such telling damage on the latter that now her bones lie rotting at the bottom of ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... nature and prerogative of free states to concentrate the popular will into something of the unity of despotism, by producing, one after another, a series of representatives of the wants and exigences of the hour— each leading his generation, but only while he sympathizes with its will; and either baffling or succeeded by his rivals, not in proportion as he excels or he is outshone in genius, but as he gives or ceases to give to the widest range of the legislative power the most concentrated force of the executive; thus uniting ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... am still in the domain of practice and administration—I should put his singular, perhaps an unrivalled, tact in the management of men, and a judgment of intuitive shrewdness as to the best outlet from perplexed and often baffling situations. He had, in its highest and best development, the genius of common sense. These rare gifts of practical efficiency were, during the whole of his Kingship, yoked to the service of a great ideal. He was animated every day of his Sovereignty ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... of smoke hung about as he puffed at his favorite pipe, selected from a row of about ten that were hanging on a nearby home-made pipe holder. This might be said to be an eventful day for Dave Morgan. Only the day before, he and his partner, Detective Sergeant Tierney, had completed the solving of a baffling case and placed the criminal behind the bars. Now he had a well-earned and long-awaited "day off," and he was going to devote it to the restful pursuit ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne
... so that they glowed, and remained in the memory with a rainbow light upon them. He was never hurried or flurried, any more than sun and sky and trees and tides are; and he was just as vital, and quite as baffling. ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... by a card table and, baffling all attempts to engage him in conversation, reviewed his troubles in a mumbled soliloquy, the liquor gradually making him careless. But of all the jumbled words his companions' diligent ears heard they recognized and retained only the bare ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... craniologically, by an extraordinary development of the passion for delitescency! I the rather suspect some natural disposition of this kind; for, from the instant I perceived the extreme curiosity manifested on the subject, I felt a secret satisfaction in baffling it, for which, when its unimportance is considered, I do not well ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... to use the bourgeois state with its fraudulent democracy, its illusory theory of 'unity of all the classes,' its standing army, police and bureaucracy oppressing and baffling the masses; the revolutionary Socialist maintains that the bourgeois state must be completely destroyed, and proposes the organization of a new state—the state of the organized producers—of the Federated Soviets—on the basis of which alone can ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... take a single instance: we speak of a man in English social relations 'breaking the ice.' If this were expanded into a sonnet, we should have before us a dark and sublime picture of an ocean of everlasting ice, the sombre and baffling mirror of the Northern nature, over which men walked and danced and skated easily, but under which the living waters roared and toiled fathoms below. The world of slang is a kind of topsy-turveydom of poetry, full of blue moons and white elephants, ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... was not enjoying himself with these baffling personalities. He turned upon the leader, the one who had given the warning and who looked the admixture of all that was Mediterranean ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... now before you. This marvel of human ingenuity, this baffling example of mechanical intricacy is now within your reach. It can do anything. It is yours. It is yours at prices that would make a miner turn from picking up gold nuggets. It is yours for one dollar and twenty-five cents—twenty-five cents is our profit, gentlemen, ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... to be philosophical and cheerful, the memory of Lyman's threat returned to her at times in a baffling way. What could he mean? How could he harm her? His father was a director of the Crow Hill school, but pshaw! One director couldn't put her out of her place ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... on down the coulee pausing and staring at the sign for a full minute at a time, again almost running with his eyes fixed on the ground until brought up again, frowning and muttering by some new baffling combination of tracks. After what seemed an interminable length of time they reached the mouth of the coulee where Endicott sank wearily onto the end of the water-logged boat and watched the half-breed work back and forth, ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... Towards midnight, the breeze almost failed and became baffling, and when the day dawned the officer of the watch reported that it was ahead. The pursuing ship, though still in sight, was luckily so far astern and to leeward as to prevent any danger from a visit by boats, and there was leisure to make the preparations that might become necessary ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... she felt assured would be spoken. The artist looked over her sketches slowly, carefully, and his eye went back to her brilliant countenance as if to read there answers to ciphers which perplexed him. But yet more baffling cryptography met him in the deep, flashing, appealing eyes, on the crimson, quivering lips, on the low, full brow, with its widely separated black arches. Evidently the face possessed far more attraction than the drawings, and he made her sit down ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... the missionary's own language. The baffling I had been treated to by Scipio melted to nothing in this. Did living men petrify, I should have changed to mineral between the sheets. The Doctor got out of bed, lighted his lamp, and found a book; and the two retired into the Virginian's room, where I could hear ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various |
