"Decipher" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one of the brethren, searching the cave wherein the holy woman dwelt, found nothing there, saving one bracelet of gold, of large size and strange workmanship, engraven with foreign characters, which no one could decipher. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Captain Dave came in again. Cyril had just finished the work; some of the accounts were long ones, and the writing was so crabbed that it took him some time to decipher it. ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... 'Mr. Frederick Douglass is a very noble, talented man, and I know of no one who writes a more beautiful letter.' I am sending you a long letter, Lizzie, but I rely a great deal on your indulgence. My fear is that you will not be able to decipher ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... At the end of the month a dinner was given in his honour by the president of the Societe D'Emulation, to which a large number of English men and women were invited. When Flinders arrived in Ile-de-France, more than six years before, he could speak no French and could only decipher a letter in that language with the aid of a dictionary; but now, when he found himself again in the company of his own countrymen, he experienced a difficulty ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... accustomed to his face through seeing him often or talking to him. Accordingly it is, strictly speaking, the first glance that gives one a purely objective impression of a face, and makes it possible for one to decipher it. A smell only affects us when we first perceive it, and it is the first glass of wine which gives us its real taste; in the same way, it is only when we see a face for the first time that it makes ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... perspective of unfamiliar styles of painting, he is, nine times out of ten, merely expressing his inability to identify two-dimensional shapes as "representing" three-dimensional things; so far proving that we do not decipher the cubic relations of a picture until we have guessed what that picture is supposed to stand for. And this is my reason for saying that visible shapes, though they may be aspects of cubic objects, have no body; and that the thought of their volume, their weight and their texture, is due ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... contrast of female loveliness clothed and sumptuously adorned, has conquered. He has presented the Romanised legend of the fair Colchian sorceress in such a delightfully misleading fashion that it has taken all these centuries to decipher its true import. What Giorgione and Titian in these exquisite idylls—for so we may still dare to call them—have consciously or unconsciously achieved, is the indissoluble union of humanity outwardly quiescent, yet pulsating with an inner life and passion, to the environing ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... half buried—all showed what the place had been: a water garden of ancient Egypt—probably royal—because, although I am not able to decipher hieroglyphics, I have heard somewhere that these picture inscriptions, when inclosed in a ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... ever-shifting social organism of humanity. The student must, therefore, know something of the habits, the natural and social surroundings, and the modes of the thought of the people whose stories he examines. But this known, it is not difficult to decipher the documents. ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... thrusting his hand, a small roll of music, and pursing up his lips, he silently laid it on the piano. It was a romance, which he had composed on the preceding day to old-fashioned German words, in which the stars were alluded to. Liza immediately seated herself at the piano and began to decipher the romance.... Alas, the music turned out to be complicated, and disagreeably strained; it was obvious that the composer had attempted to express some passionate, profound sentiment, but nothing had come of it: so the ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... very deep yearning sadness. According to his usual habit, he ought to go and work a few hours in the office; but he could not do it; he went out to the Carlsberg[5] instead. There he stood and gazed out over the heaving sea, striving to decipher in the waves and in the grey misty clouds which had gathered in wonderful shapes over Hela,[6] as in a magic mirror, his own destiny in days ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... me to...[editor's note: impossible to decipher this word in Liszt's original letter] anything for you, tell me, and give me your ideas as ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... sex, you get a place behind the screen, where you cannot see, but, what is much better, can sit. The atmosphere of the candle-lighted, crammed chapel is overpowering, and occupation you have none, except trying in the dim light to decipher the frescoes on the roof, with your head turned backwards. For three long hours you have a succession of dreary monotonous strains, forming portions of a chant, to you unintelligible, broken at intervals by a passage ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... at once ... this has nothing to do with the bank robbery, but would look black ... added evidence...." He read on, his mind seeming to absorb the contents of the letter faster than his eyes could decipher the words. "English Dick ... confession forged ... organisation widespread ... enormously powerful ... leadership a mystery ... rendezvous that English Dick visits is at Marlopp's ... Reddy Mull's room ... rear room ... leaves ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... particular facts which we have observed or inferred, but also instructions for making inferences in unforeseen cases. Thus the inference is completed in the major premiss; and the rest of the syllogism serves only to decipher, as it were, ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... formidable undertaking. The bill is of prodigious dimensions, about the size of a sheet of foolscap paper, lined and cross-lined for a multitude of entries. When the account finally reaches you, it closely resembles a design for a cobweb factory. Any attempt to decipher the various hieroglyphics is useless—it can't be done. The only thing that can be done is to read the total at the foot of the page and ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... bells delighted him beyond all expression. He liked Paris better than any other place, because his secretary was there, and he lived under less restraint than at Versailles. He wrote so badly that he was often puzzled to read his own letters, and would bring them to me to decipher them. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... those who have rivalled her greatness shall have shared her fate; when civilization and knowledge shall have fixed their abode in distant continents; when the sceptre shall have passed away from England; when, perhaps, travellers from distant regions shall in vain labour to decipher on some mouldering pedestal the name of our proudest chief, shall hear savage hymns chaunted to some misshapen idol over the ruined dome of our proudest temple, and shall see a single naked fisherman wash his nets in the river of the ten thousand masts,—her influence and her glory will ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... married a Captain Shrimpton, who thus became possessed of a large collection of manuscripts. These were sold to a bookseller. They were so full of erasures and interlineations that no printer could decipher them. It was necessary to call in the aid of a professed critic; and Theobald, the editor of Shakspeare, and the hero of the first Dunciad, was employed to ascertain the true reading. In this way ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the Athenians raise to Aesop; and a poor pariah slave they planted upon an everlasting pedestal. I have not scrupled to introduce the word pariah, because in that way only could I decipher to the reader by what particular avenue it was that the sublimity which I fancy in the passage reached my heart. This sublimity originated in the awful chasm, in the abyss that no eye could bridge, between the pollution of slavery,—the being ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... to decipher illegible inscriptions, to contemplate a throttled centaur on a dilapidated frieze, or a carved acanthus on a fallen capital, grope over the Acropolis and invoke Athenian Pallas," said Mike; "but for me these painted seraglios and terraced, ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... slip of parchment into the hand of the host, who turning it once or twice round in the vain attempt to decipher its intention, passed it ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... just now, and I hope you will be able to decipher so much; for it contains matter. Really, the whole of yesterday's work would do in a novel without one little bit of embellishment; and, indeed, few novels are so amusing. Bough, Miss Amy, Mrs. Ross, Blackie, M—— the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tried the Baron His friend's writing to decipher. Spent a good half-hour upon it Ere he came to its conclusion. Smiling said he then: "A Suabian Is a devil of a fellow. One and all they are unpolished. And coarse-grained is their whole nature; But within their square-built noddles ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... impossible to decipher a certain word of the manuscript. She scrutinized it earnestly, and then, her mind entirely occupied by her desire properly to read the matter, she rose, and came close to the grating, holding the page so that ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... a Genoese bookshop. We know he must have turned this last opportunity to good account. Printing was still a very young art, but a few books had already found their way to Genoa, and the young clerk must have pored over them eagerly and tried to decipher the Latin ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... that we had several thousand men. Now came an aide from General Gillmore, at Port Royal, with your cipher-dispatch from Midway, so I steamed down to Port Royal to see him. Next day was spent in vain efforts to decipher-finally it was accomplished. You thought that the state of the roads might force you to turn upon Charleston; so I went there on the 15th, but there was no sign yet of flinching. Then I went to Bull's Bay next day (16th), and found that the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... in the casements of the palaces; the jackal roams among the ruins in vain; there is not a bone left for him to gnaw of the multitudes which have passed away. There is their handwriting upon the temple wall, upon the granite slab which has mocked at Time; but there is no man to decipher it. There are the gigantic idols before whom millions have bowed; there is the same vacant stare upon their features of rock which gazed upon the multitudes of yore; but they no longer stare upon the pomp of the glorious city, but upon ruin, and rank weeds, and utter desolation. ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... of Peter, contain so many. These pencil-marks are sometimes very emphatic, underscoring or inclosing now a single word, now a phrase, anon a whole sentence or paragraph; and it requires but little skill to decipher, in these rude hieroglyphics, the secret history of her soul for a third of a century— one side, at least, of this history. What she sought with the greatest eagerness, what she most loved and most hated, her spiritual aims, struggles, trials, joys and hopes, may here be read between the lines. ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... was glad to enter into conversation with Edie Ochiltree, who witnessed the finding of the treasure with a keen eye to future operations. Edie had surreptitiously obtained possession of the treasure box-lid, and on it he and the conjurer were able to decipher, "Search number one." The old beggar, who knew many of the traditions of the country, told Dousterswivel that the remains of Malcolm the Misticot were, along with a large amount of gold and silver, buried somewhere at St. Ruth. Moreover, ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... Instigated as above mentioned, Havill got out of bed and stood beside the sleeper. After a moment's pause he gently pulled back the unfastened collar of Dare's nightshirt and saw a word tattooed in distinct characters on his breast. Before there was time for Havill to decipher it Dare moved slightly, as if conscious of disturbance, and Havill hastened back to bed. Dare bestirred himself yet more, whereupon Havill breathed heavily, though keeping an intent glance on the lad through ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... the man entered, and, in the deep shade of the old trees, screened from the road by their mossy trunks, found a seat. Here and there, among the old graves under the trees, a few people moved slowly; pausing often to decipher the inscriptions upon the leaning and fallen tombstones. So old was that ancient burying place that there was left among the living no one to keep the flowers upon the graves and visitors came only ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... even possess the rudiments of an education. Many of them can neither read nor write and are forced to keep their accounts in their memory, or by means of ingenious hieroglyphics, intelligible only to their inventors. Others can decipher the calendar and the lives of the saints, and can sign their name with tolerable facility. They can make the simpler arithmetical calculations with the help of a little calculating ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... more probable that the figures refer to the date of the death, 1318 perhaps; and so far as I can decipher black-letter, which is more in my father's line than mine, I think it is AL, not EL, and that it seems as if there had been a letter between L and the second E, which is now effaced. The tomb itself ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with his answers. But the landlady, who had looked sharply at him on his arrival, whispered a little boy, who ran away, and quickly returned with the mayor of the town. LOUVET soon discovered that there was no danger in the mayor, who could not decipher his forged passport, and who, being well plied with wine, wanted to hear no more of the matter. The landlady, perceiving this, slipped out and brought a couple of aldermen, who asked to see the passport. 'O, yes; but drink first.' ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... possible. He stopped me as I passed, and not only made me dine with him that day, but in a manner live with him. He is not at all blind, as you imagined; so much otherwise, that I saw him read, without spectacles, a difficult hand I could not easily decipher.... Stayed but a day at Berlin;" am rushing after ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... fresh beds in uninterrupted succession, the accumulation of materials went on as before, a new set of animals and plants were introduced, and a time of building up and renewing followed the time of destruction. These periods of revolution are naturally more difficult to decipher than the periods of rest; for they have so torn and shattered the beds they uplifted, disturbing them from their natural relations to each other, that it is not easy to reconstruct the parts and give them coherence and completeness again. But within the last half-century ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... laughing at?" goody Liu inquired. "I can decipher the characters on this honorary gateway. Over at our place temples of this kind are exceedingly plentiful; and they've all got archways like this! These characters give the name of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... acquainted with one of the dearest and most honoured of the friends of my life, James Payn. I had been for some years an occasional contributor to Chambers's Journal, and had received more than one encouraging note written in a hand that it was difficult to decipher, and simply signed, "Editor, C.J." At last it occurred to me that a series of descriptive articles relating to the places and scenes with which I had become familiar as a Parliamentary reporter might be accepted by the editor. With much trepidation—for ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... other letters. A young girl, in a charming Pompeian wall-painting, has in her hand a double tablet, while with her other hand she holds a pencil to her chin, as if pondering over a letter. Her nurse looking over her shoulder tries to decipher the contents of the love-letter. Besides these tablets, Herodotus mentions the use of paper made of the bark of the Egyptian papyrus-plant. The stalk (three or four feet in length) was cut longitudinally, after which the outer bark was first taken off; the remaining layers of ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... last year, but imagine my surprise when he gave me a note from the Commander and said that Benoit and Augustus, two of the men, had just joined them. The note was so confused by the pencil marks being partly rubbed out that I could not decipher it clearly, but it informed me that he had attempted to come with the two men but, finding his strength inadequate to the task, he relinquished his design and returned to Fort Enterprise to await relief with the others. There was another note for the gentleman in charge of Fort Providence desiring ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... suggest that Dormer, written Domr in the MS.—a common abbreviation—may be the name of the Oxford bookseller, and Henno Rusticus may be Homo rusticus, "the country gentleman." The hand-writing of this MS. is so small and illegible in some places, that it requires an Oedipus to decipher it; and the public will have much reason to thank those lynx-eyed antiquaries who have taken great pains to render it intelligible. "The Sige of the End," is of course properly explained to be "the ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.01 • Various
... detective stories, Hawkshaw can take the ashes right out of the grate and piece them together and pour chemicals on them and decipher the mystery of the lost rubies, and all that. But this isn't a story, you see; and what's more, Hawkshaw doesn't have to work with ashes nearly a thousand years old. Ten centuries of dry-rot—that's ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... folio, and the other a quarto volume. The records are written on vellum, in a close, abridged, and, to ordinary readers, a perfectly unintelligible character. The language is Latin; but a modern Latin scholar, without any means other than an inspection of the work, would be utterly unable to decipher it. In fact, though the character is highly wrought, and in some respects elegant, the whole style and arrangement of the work is pretty nearly on a par, in respect to scientific skill, with Queen Emma's designs upon the ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... what is happening to your handwriting? It is so shaky nowadays that I can scarcely decipher some of ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... of its bearing upon art, the study of monograms has a certain amount of interest. There is a class of adventurers at the present day who make a livelihood from the curiosity or credulity of the public, by professing to decipher the peculiarities of an individual's character, and to read his probable destiny, in any specimen of his handwriting which may be submitted for their inspection. Without carrying the theory to these absurd lengths, it is impossible not ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... you, my friend. To forget and to learn, that is your device. You turn the leaves of dead books; you are too young for antiquities. Look about you, the pale throng of men surrounds you. The eyes of life's sphynx glitter in the midst of divine hieroglyphics; decipher the book of life! Courage, scholar, launch out on the Styx, the deathless flood, and let the waves of sorrow waft you to ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Master of Life had made it, in all its original beauty and splendour. Nor was this all. It led me to observe and ponder over the daily pages of the most profound and yet the most fascinating book that man has ever tried to read; and though, it seemed to me, my feeble attempts to decipher its text were always futile, it has, nevertheless, not only taught me to love Nature with an ever-increasing passion, but it has inspired in me an infinite homage toward the Almighty; for, as Emerson ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... to the open door that he might read it. His brow puckered itself as he strove to decipher the flourished Norman writing. "I have no leisure now for this screed, mother; read it to ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... influence of George Meredith, who accepted the convention of wit as the informing spirit of comedy dialogue, and whose abnormally rapid faculty of association led him to delight in a sort of intellectual shorthand which the normal mind finds very difficult to decipher. Meredith was a man of brilliant genius, which lent a fascination to his very mannerisms; but when these mannerisms are transferred by lesser men to a medium much less suited to them—that of the stage—the result ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... masculine pyjamas of violet silk. The pantaloons had the edges turned up over a pair of white Turkish slippers into which were tucked her bare feet. Over her heart there was embroidered a design whose letters Ulysses was not able to decipher. Above this device the point of her handkerchief was sticking out of the pocket. Her opulent hair, twisted on top of her head and the voluptuous curves that the silk was taking in certain parts of her masculine attire were the only things that ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... with an account of their chief acts and with numerous religious invocations. [PLATE XXXIX., Fig. 1.] These cylinders vary from a foot and a half to three feet in height, and are covered closely with a small writing, which it often requires a good magnifying glass to decipher. A cylinder of Tiglath-Pileser I. (about B.C. 1180) contains thirty lines in a space of six inches, or five lines to an inch, which is nearly as close as the type of the present volume. This degree of closeness is exceeded on a cylinder of Asshur-bani-pal's ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... rear, some musicians, costumed as Brahmins, with spectacles on their noses, the better to decipher their score, fingered their brass instruments with a weary air, rocking them like infants in swaddling clothes. Actors in the garb of Indians, with painted cheeks, and legs encased in chocolate-colored bandages, were yawning, weary and flabby, and stretching ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... demands made upon her, this faculty in meeting them, could have been developed by the same Isabel Bretherton whose earlier image was so distinctly graven on his memory. And yet his trained eye learned after a while to decipher in a hundred indications the past history of the change. He saw how she had worked, and where; the influences which had been brought to bear upon her were all familiar to him; they had been part of his own training, and they ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... again, sat down on the bed and opened the other letter. His hand shook as he unfolded it. He was so scared and excited that he could scarcely decipher the angular, ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... wife and children, creating in him a repulsion that was even a physical discomfort. But Lapidoth did not let himself be discouraged, asked leave to stay and hear the reading of papers from the old chest, and actually made himself useful in helping to decipher some difficult German manuscript. This led him to suggest that it might be desirable to make a transcription of the manuscript, and he offered his services for this purpose, and also to make copies of any papers in Roman characters. Though Ezra's young eyes he observed were getting ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... friends. When some twenty years afterwards she first resolved to publish it, she brought me a clear, complete copy in ink. It had cost much trouble, she said, for much of the pencil writing had been made under such disadvantages and was so faint that at times she could decipher it only under direct sunlight. She had succeeded, however, in making a copy, verbatim except for occasional improvement in the grammatical form of a sentence, or now and then the omission, for brevity's sake, of something unessential. The narrative has since been severely ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... or it may have been devised by the historian to glorify the sage, but we may not, on account of it, discredit the finding of the ancient copies of the Books. We have K'ung An-kwo's own account of their being committed to him, and of the ways which he took to decipher them. The work upon the Analects, mentioned above, has not indeed come down to us, but his labors on the Shu-ching still remain. 5. It has been already stated, that the Lun Yu of Ch'i contained two Books more ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... and easy day that thus opened. The answers to his telegrams did not begin to arrive till noon, and then they were only formulae acknowledging receipt, which he did not need his code-book to decipher. With his black umbrella opened against the drive of the sun, he carried them at his leisure to the Baron, where he sat alone in his cool upper chamber working deliberately among his papers, received the customary ghost of a smile and the murmur, "Der gute ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... not difficult, for she had already been obliged to read it aloud three times to Adrian, who could no longer decipher written characters. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... which they are members; as well as by the feelings, habits, and modes of thought which characterize the particular class in that community to which they themselves belong. And no one will understand or be able to decipher their system of conduct, who does not take all these things into account. They are also much influenced by the maxims and traditions which have descended to them from other rulers, their predecessors; which maxims and traditions have been known to retain an ascendancy during long periods, ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... There are a great many brief notices in this diary relative to Jane Dee, most of which are expressed in astrological symbols; and as they are exceedingly difficult to decipher satisfactorily, and are certainly of very little, if any importance, I have thought it expedient to omit them. The entry of "Vnar unq gurz" is also of frequent occurrence, though what "gurz" can refer to I have not ...
— The Private Diary of Dr. John Dee - And the Catalog of His Library of Manuscripts • John Dee
... of these lines is a chronogram, that is, it contains a date. To decipher it you take the numeral letters of the line and add them together; the total gives ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... twice two legs, two hanging ears; His name is Harlequin, I wot, And that's a name in every plot: Resolved to save the British nation, Though French by birth and education; His correspondence plainly dated, Was all decipher'd and translated: His answers were exceeding pretty, Before the secret wise committee; Confest as plain as he could bark: Then with his fore-foot set his mark. TORY. Then all this while have I been ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... wherein "loveliness" was made to rhyme with a desire to look upon "her empty dress." He picked up a fold of the gay, soft blanket, spread it over one hand, caressed it with infinite tenderness, thought, muttered, traced some snatches which I could not decipher, shut his eyes drowsily, shook his head, and dropped the stuff. Here I found myself at fault, for I could not then see (as I do now) in what manner a red, black, and yellow Austrian ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... things. In every vain and proud designer who has since lived, that dark carnality of Michael Angelo's has fostered insolent science, and fleshly imagination. Daubers and blockheads think themselves painters, and are received by the public as such, if they know how to foreshorten bones and decipher entrails; and men with capacity of art either shrink away (the best of them always do) into petty felicities and innocencies of genre painting—landscapes, cattle, family breakfasts, village schoolings, and the like; or else, if they have the ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... examined them all, passing slowly around the library and whistling to keep up my spirits. I was turning to go into the dining-room when my eye fell upon a book bound in serpent skin, standing in a corner of the top shelf of the last bookcase. I did not remember it, and from the floor could not decipher the pale lettering on the back, so I went to the smoking-room and called Tessie. She came in from the studio and climbed up to reach ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... us. I landed about noon, accompanied by Nofuhl, Lev-el-Hedyd, Bhoz-ja-khaz, Ad-el-pate, Kuzundam the first mate, Tik'l-palyt the cook, Fattan-laiz-eh, and two sailors. Our march had scarce begun when a startling discovery caused great commotion in our minds. We had halted at Nofuhl's request, to decipher the inscription upon a stone, when Lev-el-Hedyd, who had started on, stopped short with a sudden exclamation. We hastened to him, and there, in the soft earth, was ...
— The Last American - A Fragment from The Journal of KHAN-LI, Prince of - Dimph-Yoo-Chur and Admiral in the Persian Navy • J. A. Mitchell
... recline, and converse. I list to St. Paul who argues the doubts of Montaigne; Julian the Apostate cross-questions Augustine; and Thomas-a-Kempis unrolls his old black letters for all to decipher. Zeno murmurs maxims beneath the hoarse shout of Democritus; and though Democritus laugh loud and long, and the sneer of Pyrrho be seen; yet, divine Plato, and Proclus, and, Verulam are of my counsel; and Zoroaster whispered me before I was born. I ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... Jope. He took the paper and unfolded it, but either the light was dim within the store, or the handwriting hard to decipher. "Would your Reverence ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of reward so, as "uninformed and irrational faith" ([Greek: pistis idiotike] and [Greek: alogos]), it only leads to a "somatic Christianity" ([Greek: Christianismos somatikos]). It is the task of theology, however, to decipher "spiritual Christianity" ([Greek: Christianismos pneumatikos]) from the Holy Scriptures, and to elevate faith to knowledge and clear vision. This is effected by the method of Scripture exegesis which ascertains the highest revelations of God.[713] The Scripture ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... chronicle of the monk Benedict, of the convent of St. Andrea on Mount Soracte, written in such barbarous Latin, and with such strange grammatical forms, that it requires a profoundly skilled linguist to decipher it.* (* See G. Pertz, "Monumenta ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... coastwise commerce developed so much that, in A.D. 553, it was found expedient to appoint an official for the purpose of numbering and registering the vessels thus employed. The Chinese settler, Wang Sin-i, who has already been spoken of as the only person able to decipher a Korean memorial, was given the office of fune no osa (chief of the shipping bureau) and granted the title of fune no fubito (registrar of vessels). Subsequently, during the reign of Jomei (629-641), an akinai-osa (chief of trade) was appointed in the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... could mean I could not surmise, and in the hope of finding a clew to the mystery I groped about in the darkness for the card which the hurried individual had cast at me with his words of encouragement. Ultimately I found it, but was unable to decipher its inscription, if perchance it had one. Nevertheless, I managed to keep my spirits up. This, I think, was a Herculean task, considering the darkness and my extreme lonesomeness. I can be happy under ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... pushed toward me a parchment yellow with age, but very clearly written, so it was easy to decipher. The paper, a translation in Spanish from some ancient tongue, read ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... you can't read them,' remarked a solicitor to the chairman at the Devon Appeal Tribunal (Exeter Panel), as he sought to decipher the hand- [Inverted: writing on one of those documents. Previously in the day a certificate had been handed to Lieutenant Stirling with the remark, 'You won't be able to read it.' The] resourceful military representative, however, thought he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 • Various
... to read. The dramatis personae include a full cast from the Arcadia; and somewhat more stress appears to be laid on the pastoral elements than is the case in either of the printed plays. From what I have thought it necessary to decipher, however, I see no reason to differ from Mr. Bullen, who dismisses it as 'a dull play.'[299] The prologue may serve as a specimen of ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... tastes gave him certain interests apart from his wife. He was, however, very much in love with her, and showed it chiefly by writing her nearly every day long, elaborate, and conspicuously illegible love-letters. She was not an expert in handwriting, nor had she time or patience to decipher them. So she merely treasured them (unread) in a green and white striped silk box. For under all her outward sentimentality, Felicity was full of tenderness, especially for her husband. This was not surprising, for he was ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... various authorities on which this assertion was based were then produced in due order; along with some curious particles of evidence culled from old manuscripts, which it must have cost much trouble to collect and decipher. ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... not pretend to present here anything but facts, resulting from my study of the ancient monuments of Yucatan, and a comparative study of the Maya language, in which the ancient inscriptions, I have been able to decipher, are written. Let us see if those facts are sustained by others of a ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... packet of letters his dying mother had given him. She had not opened the packet, for she felt that the letters were for the actress's child's eye alone. He, when he looked at it, did so with a feeling of mixed reverence and fascination which was deepened by his inability to decipher the secrets bound together by the bit of blue ribbon tied around it. How the sight of the packet recalled to him that sad, that solemn hour in which it had been given into his hands! When getting him ready for boarding-school, Mrs. Allan had ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... prestige—a very vital part of her—she kept before their eyes on the exterior of this ancient church in the market-place where her merchant-princes daily met, her admonition to uphold them in righteous dealing. One might decipher it wrought into the wall of the apse under the stones of the frieze, in quaint lettering that tempted to the perusal and endowed the mastered motto with the impressiveness of a rite—for the legend assumed a quality of mystery, being much defaced ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... whitewash, discovered the frescoes and charcoal drawings, as well as the brass plaque of which I sent you a tracing; and I think not above a fortnight later that, on your suggestion, I set to work to decipher and copy out the old churchwardens' accounts. On the Monday after Easter, at about nine o'clock P.M., I was seated in the Vicarage parlour, busily transcribing, with a couple of candles before me, when my housekeeper Frances came in with a visiting-card, and ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... methods first, to find that the body of the letter, after all, was simple enough. By reading every tenth word, he got a consistent message, save that certain supplies, over which the concierge had railed, were special code words for certain regiments. These he could not decipher. ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... sketches had been drawn on the front page, the sheet was put aside, and when used again was turned over, so that what ordinarily would have been page 4 became page 1 for the second object. No "Daniel" in Strood or Rochester had ever been able to decipher the mysterious hieroglyphics, or make known the interpretation thereof, during twenty years, or give any explanation of the sketches. But everybody thought that in some way or other they related to The Mystery of Edwin Drood—and possibly ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... of agony, perhaps, or guilt's desperate defiance to the world, or merely a record of a date by which the writer strove to keep up with the march of life. There is not a living eye that could now decipher these memorials. ...
— The New Adam and Eve (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... back, after what I suppose was the longest speech I ever made in my life, and studied my lord and master's face. It was not an easy map to decipher, for man, after all, is a pretty complex animal and even in his more elemental moments is played upon by pretty complex forces. And if there was humility on that lean and rock-ribbed countenance of my soul-mate there was also antagonism, ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... the secrets of life are written in script so cryptic and obscure that none but the wise and greatly skilled may decipher it, and they only, when aided by the special equipment which science supplies. In this case the firm but facile miracle is recorded in words that he that runs may read. Independent of microscope the unskilled observer may trace continuity in the ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... notion that his investigation hereabouts might, if properly directed, lead him nearer to the heart of the mystery. This pretty, faded woman who lived in such style, and whose husband was so seldom visible, might give him a key. Somewhere it was in existence, that key, by which he could decipher the jumbled code of the Daffodil Murder, and it might as well be at Hertford as ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... Pamphos, Rhianus, Phemius, Homer, Bion Proconnesius, Onomacritus, and others. Many of the sacred terms could not be understood, nor interpreted; they were however [548]retained with great reverence: and many which they did attempt to decipher, were misconstrued and misapplied. Upon this basis was the theology of Greece founded: from hence were the names of Gods taken: and various departments attributed to the several Deities. Every poet had something different in his theogony: and every ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... Louisa. Let me read you some lines that I have written about her myself. However slight their literary merit may be, they express what I feel better than any casual words can. [He produces a packet of hotel bills scrawled with manuscript, and kneels at the fire to decipher them, poking it with a stick to ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... he must put words in letters, and phrases in words, and let the scribes make it out afterwards." Napoleon indeed left a great deal for the copyists to do; he was their torment; his handwriting actually resembled hieroglyphics—he often could not decipher it himself. Las Cases' son was one day reading to him a chapter of The Campaign of Italy; on a sudden he stopped short, unable to make out the writing. "The little blockhead," said Napoleon, "cannot read his own handwriting."—"It is not mine, Sire."—"And whose, then?"—"Your ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... the same music, they would soon harmonise their fancies, and decipher the hieroglyphic; and this was a thing clearly demonstrated to the Queen Isabella, that Savoisy's horses were oftener stabled at the house of her cousin of Armagnac than in the Hotel St. Pol, where the chamberlain lived, since the destruction of his residence, ordered ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... provided me straightway with Berber vocabularies by Venture, by Delaporte, by Brosselard; with the Grammatical Sketch of the Temahaq by Stanley Fleeman, and the Essai de Grammaire de la langue Temachek by Major Hanoteau. At the end of three months I was able to decipher any inscriptions in Tifinar. You know that Tifinar is the national writing of the Tuareg, the expression of this Temachek language which seems to us the most curious protest of the Targui race against ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... really a great comfort. I am writing with my new one, so this letter won't, I hope, be such a puzzle to decipher as my pencil scrawl. ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... apart from all others, and apparently commenced reading. She was not so far away but that Van Berg could decipher the title, "Misjudged," and having made out the significant word, its letters grew luminous like the ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... the rudiments of this story are so very hard to decipher—though in truth they are hard enough—but rather that the men who made the attempt had all along viewed the subject through an atmosphere of preconception, which gave a distorted image. Before this image could be ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... him; we have given him the key to some of its wondrous hieroglyphics; let him study the remaining letters of this mystical alphabet for himself! These inscriptions are indeed trilingual, phonetic, and sacred, yet the simple and loving soul may decipher them without the genius of Champollion; their meaning is written within it. It will readily learn to connect the sign with the thing signified, and under the fleeting forms of rhythmed time and measured space, learn to detect ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Josie O'Gorman is staying with the Hathaway family. She's been probing your secret life and business enterprises and has unearthed an important clew in which the department is bound to be interested. So she sent a code telegram to O'Gorman, who left it on his desk long enough for me to decipher and read it. I don't know what the assistant chief will do about it, for I left Washington an hour later and came straight to you. What I do know is that I'm in time to spike Miss Josie's guns, which ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... page; and her stealthy glances towards it told, something else than the book was occupying her attention. A piece of detached paper that gleamed whiter between the leaves, was evidently the object of her solicitude. It was the writing upon that she was trying to decipher. I watched with eager glance. I noted every movement of the fair reader. Marian had joined ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... one corner of the pocket, I drew forth a number of closely written pages, evidently the Governor's instruction. They were traced in so fine a hand that I was obliged to return beside the fire to decipher their contents. They were written in detail, largely concerned with matters of routine, especially referring to relations with the garrison of the fort, and Cassion's authority over De Baugis, but the ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... whom he found at the spot where he had wintered last year; but imagine my surprise when he gave me a note from the Commander, and said that Benoit and Augustus, two of the men, had just joined them. The note was so confused, by the pencil marks being partly rubbed out, that I could not decipher it clearly; but it informed me, that he had attempted to come with the two men, but finding his strength inadequate to the task, he relinquished his design, and returned to Fort Enterprise, to await relief with the others. There was another note for the gentleman in charge of Fort Providence, desiring ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... day, for half an hour, to study Chinese, with a very exacting teacher, always more or less impatient and dissatisfied with her progress; and yet the irksomeness and difficulty for the mother, in learning to decipher Chinese, would be as nothing compared with that of the child in learning to read. The only thing that could make the work even tolerable to the mother would be a pretty near, distinct, and certain prospect of going to China under circumstances that would make the knowledge ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... decay of sight and memory.... He told me that he had great materials towards the life of the old Lord Burleigh and Mr. Foxe the martyrologist, which he wished he could have finished, but most of his papers are in "characters"; his grandson is learning to decipher them.' Under the dates of September 1st and 7th Oldys records that 'the Yelverton library is in the possession of the Earl of Sussex, wherein are many volumes of Sir Francis Walsingham's papers'; and a few days later, 'Dr. Pepusch offered me any intelligence or assistance from his ancient ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... he performed prodigies of valor, and covered up his disasters by lying bulletins. Here he first appeared as the arch-liar, which he was to the close of his career. In this expedition he rendered no services to his country or to civilization, except in the employment of scientific men to decipher the history of Egypt,—which showed that he ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... much by racking your memory to decipher the details of the past," returned Wagner. "I dare not stay another minute with you now: therefore listen attentively to what more I have to say. Yield yourself not up to despondency—on the contrary, cherish every hope that is dear to you. Within a few days Flora ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... amiable temper, his children are not the most docile, his business brings him into contact with men of various dispositions; but he conquers all with the same weapons. What a contrast have we often thought he presents to some whose physiognomy looks like a piece of harsh handwriting, in which we can decipher nothing but self, self, self; who seem, both at home and abroad, to be always on the watch against any infringement of their dignity. Poor men! their dignity can be of little value if it requires so much care in order to be maintained. True manliness need take but little pains to procure ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... on at a canter, riding bravely, glancing right and left—a score of them headed by a scarlet-blanketed man upon a spotted horse. So transparent was the air, washed by the fog and vivified by the sun, that I could decipher the color pattern of his shield emblazonry: a ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... somewhat difficult to decipher the charms and four words towards the end are quite illegible, and consequently they are omitted. The following translation will show the ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... which it was begun. Pepys was not such an ass, but he must have perceived, as he went on, the extraordinary nature of the work he was producing. He was a great reader, and he knew what other books were like. It must, at least, have crossed his mind that some one might ultimately decipher the manuscript, and he himself, with all his pains and pleasures, be resuscitated in some later day; and the thought, although discouraged, must have warmed his heart. He was not such an ass, besides, but he must ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... will be able to decipher this, written at steam speed with a breaking pen, the hotfast postman at my heels. No excuse, says you. None, sir, says I, and touches my 'at most civil (extraordinary evolution of pen, now quite doomed - to resume - ) I have not put pen to the Bloody Murder yet. But it ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... now he—Michelangelo—sees no other way of obtaining his own but by application to the Capitano for justice.[24] This is the gist of the letter; we have to use our own knowledge of the character of the two men to decipher the mystery, since no other document confirms or denies the accusation. The reasonable explanation seems to be that some delay, probably on the road, in the transmission of the money, irritated the notoriously impatient ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... appeared one day, and a friend of mine, who had a genius for that sort of thing, sat himself down early one Saturday morning to decipher it. ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... a number of articles, of no particular value were lying near, but within the fragment of the pot, and protected by a shale of rock, was the enclosed scrap, which I thought might interest you, as you have a leaning in the direction of finding out hidden and abstruse things. Probably, you can decipher what it says. All the men are well, and are feeling jolly. We may be ready to return in a week. I hope the old ship is coming along ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... over the table, and asked Royson to go through the papyri with him, comparing the Greek, word for word, with the translation. He himself was able to decipher the hieroglyphs, but the details and measurements they gave might be dismissed as unreliable. Depending, however, on the context, and having ascertained from Abdur Kad'r that the seven small lava hills at Moses's Well stood in an irregular circle near the oasis, it was a reasonable ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... it; but seeing at a glance that it was unusually long, she decided that she would not try to decipher Percy's irregular, illegible handwriting at that time, but would wait till Maggie and Bessie should have left her and would make the most of ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... a night of so much horror, I sat down and drew from my breast the little folded paper which represented my poor Ada's will. Opening it with all the reverent love which I felt for her memory, I set myself to decipher the few trembling lines which she had written, in the hope they would steady my thoughts and suggest, if not reveal, the way I should take in the more than difficult path I saw ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... THE BENU RASOOL DYNASTY OF SULTANS.—Out of the fourteen sovereigns who composed the Benu Rasool dynasty, we are in possession of the coins of only eight, and these the first eight; their inscriptions are in Arabic, and it is by no means easy to decipher all of them. The mints of these are: Aden, Zebd, El-Mahdjm, Thabat, Sana and Taiz, and each is characterized by a particular figure, a fish for Aden, a bird for Zebd, a lion for El-Mahdjm, and other symbols. There are also noticed several ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... a paper-lantern, that turns with the smoke of a candle. He wears his clothes as the ancient laws of the land have provided, according to his quality, that he may be known what he is by them; and it is as easy to decipher him by his habit as a pudding. He is rigged with ribbon, and his garniture is his tackle; all the rest of him is hull. He is sure to be the earliest in the fashion, and lays out for it like the first peas and cherries. He is as proud of leading a fashion as others are of a ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... synagogue, to witness so joyous a dispensation in behalf of the people of these islands! I had not hoped for the honor of an interview to-night, Signore, and I had prayed, before laying my head upon the pillow, when one charged by the council brought to me a jewel, with an order to decipher the arms and other symbols of its owner. 'Tis a ring, with the usual marks which ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... once during the short voyage our eyes met and we laughed. When we landed we watched the discharging of the graceful threemaster which we had observed from the other quay. Some bystander said that she was a Norwegian vessel. I went to the stern and tried to decipher the legend upon it but, failing to do so, I came back and examined the foreign sailors to see had any of them green eyes for I had some confused notion.... The sailors' eyes were blue and grey and even black. The only sailor whose eyes could have been called green ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... the decaying beauty of Roman art, lies buried the monumental boldness of the Phoenicians, or of a race of giants whose extinction even Homer deplores, and whose name even the Phoenicians could not decipher. For might they not, too, have stood here wondering, guessing, even as we moderns guess and wonder? Might not the Phoenicians have asked the same questions that we ask to-day: Who were the builders? and with what tools? In one of the walls of the Acropolis are stones which a hundred bricklayers can ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... dispersion is considerable. A considerable amount of light is absorbed in this way, however, so that unless our primary source of light is very strong, the final spectrum will be very feeble and hard to decipher. ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... Leonore, clapping her hands in delight. "It's a cipher. How tremendously interesting! We'll go at it right after lunch and decipher ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... confederacy, only three were Hellenic, and the rest Pelasgic. But with the increasing influence of the Dorian oracle of Delphi, with which it was connected, it became gradually considered a Hellenic institution. It is not possible to decipher the first intention of this league. The meeting was held at two places, near Anthela, in the pass of Thermopylae, and Delphi; at the latter place in the spring, at the former in the autumn. If tradition imputed to Amphictyon the origin of the council, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Annas, "now gladly will I go down to my fathers since I have lived to have the joy of seeing this wretch on the cross." And as he gazed long as if exultingly drinking in the pleasure of satisfied vengeance, he saw for the first time the writing on the cross, but his old eyes could not decipher the words. Turning to Caiaphas he said, "The superscription seems to be very short." Then the Jews drew nearer to see what was written. The hangmen seated themselves on the ground at the foot of the cross ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead
... on the tomb by a long Latin inscription, which has been so mutilated by some modern Goth, or Goths, that it is impossible to decipher it intelligibly. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... comes to us from the north country. A short-sighted clergyman of what is known as the "old school" was preaching one winter afternoon to a slumberous congregation. Dusk was falling, the church was badly lighted, and his manuscript difficult to decipher. He managed to stumble along until he reached a passage which he rendered as follows: "Enthusiasm, my brethren, enthusiasm in a good cause is an excellent—excellent quality, but unless it is tempered with judgment, it is apt to lead us—apt to lead us—Here, Thomas," handing the ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... on his life was written on his dress for any one who can decipher a dress! Above all, what trousers! made, by long wear, as black and shiny as the camlet of which lawyers' gowns are made! A waistcoat, bought in an old clothes shop in the Temple, with a deep embroidered collar! A rusty black coat!—and everything well ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... shall never forget"—had been carefully scribbled out, but Edgar had set himself to work, with the care and earnest application of an engineer and a lover, to decipher ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... full knowledge, and I was unexpectedly called upon to begin it before a class of some seventy-five teachers. It was necessary to commence speaking without having definitely determined my first point. I had, however, a few notes which I was attempting to decipher and arrange, while talking as best I could, when I became conscious of a slight clatter from all parts of the room. On looking up I found that the noise came from the pencils of my audience, and they were writing down my first pointless remarks. Evidently discrimination in values was not in their ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... himself," he cried, "could not decipher the mystery which to-night baffles the police ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... Monday Port; but now for a long time it had scarcely provided a livelihood for old Mrs. Frost, widow of the famous Peter who for so many years had been its popular host. No one knew when the house had been built; though there was an old corner stone on which local antiquarians professed to decipher the figures "1693," and that year was assigned by tradition as the ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... kind of a man?" I said, staring on these lamps as though I could decipher in them the secret of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... page The fingers of the blind Decipher truths of every age, As mind communes with mind, So, one by one, these letters spell A name the ancient world ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... officers, and I have as yet had but little personal intercourse with the men. They concern me chiefly in bulk, as so many consumers of rations, wearers of uniforms, bearers of muskets. But as the machine comes into shape, I am beginning to decipher the individual parts. At first, of course, they all looked just alike; the variety comes afterwards, and they are just as distinguishable, the officers say, as so many whites. Most of them are wholly raw, but there are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... guess that the studying out of that picture would take so long. The contents of the ball turned out to be a small magnifying-glass, and the picture a maze of written words. I did not decipher it all; I did not decipher the half. I did not need to. A spirit of divination was given me in that awful hour which enabled me to grasp its full meaning from the few sentences I did pick out. And that meaning! It ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... He tip-toed in, his hat in his hand, and licking his lips as he thought of the law-cases that lay enshrined between those covers, he perused a couple of entries with a kind of professional enthusiasm. He was beginning a third, which, being by a different hand, was a little hard to decipher, when a black gown that hung on a hook over against him swung noiselessly outward from the wall, and a little old man emerged from ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... and monstrous it all seemed! Could it be that written on his hand, in characters that he could not read himself, but that another could decipher, was some fearful secret of sin, some blood- red sign of crime? Was there no escape possible? Were we no better than chessmen, moved by an unseen power, vessels the potter fashions at his fancy, for honour or for shame? His ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... see coming the man who has been directed in a letter from his wife to get a certain book, about which he knows nothing, and the title of which he can not decipher. Here is a person asking for "comfort books" for the sick. Here is Mrs. So-and-So, who tells us her husband is very ill, unconscious; she has to sit up by him all night, and must have something "very amusing" to divert her mind. Here is the angry man to whom by mistake ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... leaving you and wandered about the churchyard. Close beside the corner of the north transept was the empty grave, as you know, and beside it a quaint old headstone with an interesting coat-of-arms upon it. I knelt down and tried to decipher the blazon in ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... blame the poor light—Doctor Pratt's miserable scrawl; but these were but cowardly subterfuges. John knew that he had been able to decipher Doctor Pratt's handwriting well enough, but that he had been thinking of something else while putting up the powders, and so had put too much opium ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... remembered the tombstone, the inscription of which she had not yet seen: for it was half-hidden by an overhanging cornice, and by the tall grass that grew close by. Olive had to kneel down in order to decipher it. She did ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... Who will decipher the I.H.S.—M.I.A. the letters at the top of the plate? Is there no defendant of the haughty Seignior of Beauport, Rob. Gifart, to give us his biography, and tell us of his sporting days; of the black ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... manuscript out of my pocket to try and decipher it, held it close up to my eyes, and ran through it, one line after the other. At last I got tired, and put the papers back in my pocket. Everything was still. The sea stretched away in pearly blueness, and little birds flitted noiselessly by me ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... and mustiest volume of the Havenpool marriage registers (said the thin-faced gentleman) this entry may still be read by any one curious enough to decipher the crabbed handwriting of the date. I took a copy of it when I was last there; and it runs thus (he had opened his pocket-book, and now read aloud the extract; afterwards handing round the book to us, wherein ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... they have two others more effectual, which the learned among them call acrostics and anagrams. First, they can decipher all initial letters into political meanings. Thus N, shall signify a plot; B, a regiment of horse; L, a fleet at sea; or, secondly, by transposing the letters of the alphabet in any suspected paper, they can lay open the deepest designs of a discontented ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... letter is in cipher: but the notes annexed to it, have enabled the Editor to decipher ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... good-natured authority of some village mayor to have gratified the sorrowful longing of his friend. Law, constitutional and administrative, begets nothing; it is a barren monster for peoples, for kings, and for private interests. But the peoples decipher no principles but those that are writ in blood, and the evils of legality will always be pacific; it flattens a nation down, that is all. Jacquet, a man of modern liberty, returned home reflecting on ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... hidden as the approach to a wild animal's lair. Everything was eloquent of a keen secretiveness. No betraying litter met his eye. Each move had been calmly and cautiously made. Each step of a complicated campaign had been quietly engineered. Trotter could even decipher a series of electric wires festooned from the little tunnel's top. He could see where the passage had gone around obstacles, where it had curled about a dishearteningly heavy buttress base, where it had dipped lower to underrun a cement vault ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... thou Richard to suppresse thy voice: For had the passions of thy heart burst out, I feare we should haue seene decipher'd there More rancorous spight, more furious raging broyles, Then yet can be imagin'd or suppos'd: But howsoere, no simple man that sees This iarring discord of Nobilitie, This shouldering of each other in the Court, This factious ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... in the tavern alone. He sat by the table, and, bending over it, made drawings of patterns on the tray, dipping his trembling finger in the spilt kvass, and his sharp-pointed head was sinking lower and lower over the table, as though he did not decipher, and could not make out what his bony finger was drawing on ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... of Psychology know how much is to be inferred from this; and that no man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad. How much lies in Laughter: the cipher-key, wherewith we decipher the whole man! Some men wear an everlasting barren simper; in the smile of others lies a cold glitter as of ice: the fewest are able to laugh, what can be called laughing, but only sniff and titter and snigger from the throat outwards; or at best, produce some ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... first time remembered that the surname she had given him was the same as that of the prisoner whom he had so severely sentenced. He could now decipher the suggestion in the eyes, which ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... perplexing twilight, albeit the rivulet of sky above was now bright with day. He noted many strange features, understanding none at the time; he even spelt out many of the inscriptions in Phonetic lettering. But what profit is it to decipher a confusion of odd-looking letters resolving itself, after painful strain of eye and mind, into "Here is Eadhamite," or, "Labour Bureau—Little Side"? Grotesque thought, that all these ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... you tell me what I do know, if I do not read every turn and trick of their tortuous nature? They are occasionally hard to decipher when they're displeased. It's very big print indeed when ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... under my feet; gold on my left hand; gold on my right; gold overhead; gold everywhere! I knew from certain inscriptions that I could partly decipher that this hidden treasure was a part of the Incas wealth in the ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... decipher these somewhat mystic lines, her uncle was carrying on a colloquy in Gaelic with their hostess. The consequendes of the consultation were not of the choicest description, consisting of braxy [1] mutton, raw potatoes, wet bannocks, hard cheese, and whisky. Very differently would the ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... threw herself face down on the bed sobbing great, heart rending sobs, but whether she was crying for Dick or Alan or herself or all three Jean was unable to decipher. Perhaps Tony ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... also seems very interesting as a study of savage life, and the others may be the same; but my eyes are troubling me so much that I have not been able to decipher them. I hope, however, that I may be spared long enough to ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard |
