"Baffling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the streets, he seized upon and how he made this his own. I tried to determine what were the relationships he used to order his experiences. Fortunately for the purposes of writing stories I did not have to get behind the baffling eyes and the inscrutable sounds of a small baby. Yet I learned much for understanding the twos by watching even through the first months. What "the great, big, blooming, buzzing confusion" (as James describes it) ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... misunderstanding; the man hit was to have thought that his opponent would fire only one shot, the man who escaped would express deepest regret, but maintain that the arrangement had been for two successive shots. I had very little doubt that these arrangements for baffling inconvenient inquiry would prove thoroughly adequate. For the rest, I made up a packet for Varvilliers containing a present for Coralie. To make any other preparations would not have been fair to Wetter; for my death, if it happened, must ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... hair that was a libel on her fifty-five years and girlish step. Nobody in Lindsay ever felt very well acquainted with Mrs. Falconer, in spite of the fact that she had lived among them forty years. She kept between her and her world a fine, baffling reserve which no one had ever been able to penetrate. It was known that she had had a bitter sorrow in her life, but she never made any reference to it, and most people in Lindsay had forgotten it. Some foolish ones even supposed that Mrs. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the members of the class and shall be published in the autumn following each reunion. lf these records are accurately kept, and if copies are placed on file in the College Library, accessible to investigators, the next historian of Wellesley will be spared the baffling paucity of information concerning the alumnae which has ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... domain. It seems natural to see the French women, and even the Italian women at work. Man is more or less the leisure class on the continent. But London is a man's town if on earth there is one, and to see women everywhere in London is a curious and baffling sight. ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... station near the Oratory of S. Giovanni Battista, before we can 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 air between the terraces and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Hume means mystery and excitement, and his detective stories show that he is a past-master in the art of creating thrills and unusual situations, of baffling and elusive intricacy. Lovers of mystery stories welcome each announcement of a new book by this author, who is widely known on both ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... almost distressing to witness. Even her very utterance and enunciation often suffered in point of clearness and steadiness, from the agitation of her excessive organic sensibility. At times the self-counteraction and self-baffling of her feelings caused her even to stammer. But the greatest deductions from Miss Wordsworth's attractions, and from the exceeding interest which surrounded her, in right of her character, of her history, ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... 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
... measurable mask but the ambiguous meaning. He had taken things for granted which literally were not there, and he found things there—except that he couldn't catch them—which he had not hitherto counted in or presumed to handle. This baffling effect, eminently in the line of the mystifying, so familiar to Nash, might have been the result of his whimsical volition, had it not appeared to our artist, after a few hours of the job, that his sitter was not the ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... brig from Rio, bound to Norfolk. Weather hazy, with a light baffling wind from the eastward. To-day Hartman Rogers died, having been attacked on the eighth with spasms after drinking a glass of grog. This man was of the cook's party, and one upon whom Peters placed his ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... proud of himself when he went to bed. He had succeeded in baffling the charge made against him, without saying anything as to which his conscience need condemn him. So, at least, he then told himself. The impression left by what he had said would be that there had been some question of an engagement between him and Lilian Dale, but that nothing ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... wildernesses of forest, rocks, and precipices by which they were encircled, and which was, moreover, full of inextricable passes, morasses, and natural strengths, unknown to any but the inhabitants themselves, where a few men acquainted with the ground were capable, with ordinary address, of baffling the pursuit of numbers. ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... front to show the way, he led the stranger through the narrow winding labyrinth of baffling lanes and alleys which lead to the Hebdomon Palace, formerly the splendid residence of the Greek Emperors, but now the quarter where the poorest and most sordid classes of the populace herd together. The streets here are so ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... not reach the island for six days—through baffling winds, and not because they did not steer a right course. As Thalassa had said, there was no difficulty in finding it, for they had only been one day at sea when the smouldering smoke of the distant volcanic cone came into vision, making an unholy mark against ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... all original action exerts is explained when we inquire the reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded? What is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear? The inquiry leads us to that source, at once ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... master of Aragon and the east of Spain, nor was he dislodged from it until the end of the war; Andalusia was nearly conquered; Cadiz was only saved by the self-reliant courage of the Duc d'Albuquerque, baffling the intrigues and treachery of the supreme junta there assembled; and Napoleon was preparing a fresh army to overrun Portugal, under the command of Massena. The Perceval ministry, in which Liverpool had taken Castlereagh's post of secretary for war and the colonies, adopting an ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... specific affliction—had a free and personal way of judging men, and the diviner's knack of reaching their hidden springs. During the days that followed, the young doctor gave Bernald farther details about John Winterman: details not of fact—for in that respect his visitor's reticence was baffling—but of impression. It appeared that Winterman, while lying insensible in the Park, had been robbed of the few dollars he possessed; and on leaving the hospital, still weak and half-blind, he had quite simply and unprotestingly accepted the Wades' offer to give ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... the face) we interpret symbols of ineffable sorrow and of ineffable peace. These, too, are Memnonian,—as is also that infinite distance which seems to interpose between its subtile meanings and the very possibility of interpretation. This air of remoteness, baffling the impertinent crowd not less effectually than the dust which has gathered for centuries about the heads of Sphinxes, is due partly to the deeply sunken eyes beneath the wrinkled, overarching forehead; partly it arises from that childlike simplicity ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... weren't quarrelling," said Mrs. Williams, reassured by this reply, which, though somewhat baffling, was thoroughly familiar to her ear. "Now, if you'll come downstairs, I'll give you each one cookie and no more, so your appetites won't be spoiled ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... 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 ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... able to understand, he has a very important case on hand—a sort of romance in high life; and I think he wants your assistance to unravel it; it seems to be baffling him." ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... quick, but apparently those of Catherine suggested no better expedient than fairly to betake herself to speed of foot, in hopes of baffling the page's vivacity, by getting safely lodged before he could discover where. But a youth of eighteen, in pursuit of a mistress, is not so easily outstripped. Catherine fled across a paved court, decorated with large formal ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... he spoke the truth, yet her heart misgave her. There was something baffling, something almost sinister to her, in the very carelessness of his attitude. She turned her horse's head and ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... 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 stars with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... adventure occurred, and not of a kind pleasant to recall, even on this short voyage. The passage to Dublin from the Head is about sixty miles, I believe; yet, from baffling winds, it cost us upwards of thirty hours. On the second day, going upon deck, we found that our only fellow-passenger of note was a woman of rank, celebrated for her beauty; and not undeservedly, for a lovely creature she was. The body of her travelling coach had been, as usual, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... about her brought up once more the idea of keeping a school. If, by this means, they three could live together, and maintain themselves, all might go well. They would have some time of their own, in which to try again and yet again at that literary career, which, in spite of all baffling difficulties, was never quite set aside as an ultimate object; but far the strongest motive with Charlotte was the conviction that Anne's health was so delicate that it required a degree of tending which none but her ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... found, from the general bearings of the land, that we had been set to the southward during the night: at noon it was clearer, and the Cape bore north 14 deg. 00' east ten or eleven miles distant. We had very light and baffling airs during the night of the 21st, which made me apprehensive, from what Captain Carteret has said of strong westerly currents here, that as we had now opened St. George's Channel, we might be set past both Gower and ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... I have been engag'd, and finely treated. The Syren with her false deluding Arts, her Force of Words and seeming to comply, has drawn me to declare my Passion for her; now rallies and despises all I said, and hugs her self in baffling my Design. ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... the crown and walls of the old tunnel—every stone of which it was necessary to remove in the progress of the work—and the great head of water in the lake from unusually wet seasons, the technical difficulties to be surmounted were most baffling and discouraging in character, and of such extreme gravity that it may well be doubted whether the art of engineering has anywhere triumphed over more serious obstacles. This great "victory of peace"—probably ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... bedroom in order for occupancy; but the furniture in the upper and lower halls was draped, and a faint odor of camphor hung upon the air. It had occurred to Harwood that he might be stumbling upon material for a good "story," though just what it might prove to be was still a baffling question. His guide had not spoken or looked at him since beginning the ascent, and Harwood grasped his stick more firmly when they gained the third floor. If violence was in the programme he meant to meet it gallantly. His conductor passed through ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... sat in the witness chair and coolly swore his life away, baffling with keenest wit at every turn the shrewd lawyer who baited, harassed and cross-questioned ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... the French and give them check at Ulm, That fortress-frontier-town, entrenched and walled, A place long chosen as a vantage-point Whereon to encounter them as they outwind From the blind shades and baffling green defiles Of the Black Forest, worn with wayfaring. Here Mack will intercept his agile foe Hasting to meet the Russians in Bohemia, And cripple ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... orders, for though greatly recovered he was still in want of quiet. We laid her head for the nearest port in Spanish America, for we could not risk the voyage home without fresh hands; and as it was, what with baffling winds and a couple of fresh gales, we were all worn ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... figure. "Then came sudden alarms, hurrying to and fro; trepidations of innumerable fugitives; darkness and light; tempest and human faces." Many of De Quincey's papers were autobiographical, but there is always something baffling in these reminiscences. In the interminable wanderings of his pen—for which, perhaps, opium was responsible—he appears to lose all trace of facts or of any continuous story. Every actual experience of his life seems to have ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... Accordingly, Pitt, who opened his career with a bold attack upon the prerogatives of George III, ended it as his champion, even consenting to surrender a cherished conviction in order that the Monarch's peace of mind might not be troubled. Was ever a Minister beset by more baffling problems, by more hampering restrictions? Peace might have solved and shattered them. But peace he could not secure in the years 1796, 1797; and when finally it came it proved to be no peace, merely a pause before a ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... baffling but wonderful domain I am inspired by the ambitious hope that some, at any rate, of the many unsolved problems of the Science of Life may yet give up their secrets to the demand of my persistency, exerted in the interest of the ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... It was baffling, puzzling, unbelievable, bordering, indeed, on the miraculous—herself, everything about her, her acts, her methods, her cleverness, intangible in one sense, were terrifically real in another. Jimmie Dale shook his head. The miraculous and this ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... That storms and sins are more than suns that set; That evil everlasting, girt for strife Eternal, wars with hope as death with life. The dark sharp shifting wind that bade the waves Falter, lose heart, bow down like foes made slaves, And waxed within more bitter as they bowed, Baffling the sea, swallowing the sun with cloud, Devouring fast as fire on earth devours And hungering hard as frost that feeds on flowers, Clothed round with fog that reeked as fume from hell, And darkening with its miscreative ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... full of enthusiasm, and the task allotted to him was a congenial one: the baffling and discomfiture of those who had insulted him. If—as he believed—Crystal would be accompanying her aunt on the journey toward Paris, then indeed would his own longing for some sort of revenge for the humiliation which he had endured on that memorable Sunday ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... escape, in spite of the remonstrances of the executioner, threw open the wicket. Blueskin therefore had nothing to stop him. Dashing through the open door, he crossed the Old Bailey, plunged into a narrow court on the opposite side of the way, and was out of sight in a minute, baffling all pursuit. ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... after this night. His vanity was not touched; it was something far more elusive. It was perhaps a recurrence of that inexplicable desire to hurt. Somehow he sensed the flexible steel behind which lay the soul of this baffling girl. He would presently find a chink in the armour ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... her speak on: and she not being forward, weightily pondering what she might say. "Should he dismiss his attendants and let her speak with him in the presence of fewer listeners?" the Grand Turk asked her kindly.' Again came an uncourtly monosyllabic 'No,' followed by another baffling silence. ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... Meeting-house" there; in regard to three English Tea Ships that are lying embargoed in Griffin's Wharf for above a fortnight past. The case is well known, and still memorable to mankind. British Parliament, after nine years of the saddest haggling and baffling to and fro, under Constitutional stress of weather, and such east-winds and west-winds of Parliamentary eloquence as seldom were, has made up its mind, That America shall pay duty on these Teas ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... lad had said, turning to his old friend with a smile which seemed affectionate, yet was baffling, and went not deep enough for love. "I would not ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... 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 by the ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... the period of January calms—that lull between the tempest ravings of the equinoxes, and the Ethel and May made slow time of it on her return to the main. In Mayo's mood of anxious impatience, hope in his affairs was as baffling as the winds in ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... Addison," he replied, "that it is these outstanding features of a case, these pieces which don't seem to fit, that are the most valuable clews. It's the apparently simple cases in which there is no outstanding point that are the most baffling." ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... came to cast his fly Beneath a baffling tree. I smiled, when I had caught his eye, And he ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... passages there are shall be left intact. There shall be no trickery. There shall be no running breathless, flushed, eager-eyed, to the very gateway of Love's garden, only to bump one's nose against that baffling, impregnable, stone-wall phrase of "let us draw a veil, dear reader." This is the story of the love of a man for a woman, a mother for her son, and a boy for a girl. And there shall ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... 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
... they were frightened at the bellowing of the cattle which Thorfin had brought with him in the ships. But what in the world could a Greek slave know of that affair? I wandered up and down among the streets trying to unravel the mystery, and the more I considered it, the more baffling it grew. One thing only seemed certain and that certainty took away my breath for the moment. If I came to full knowledge of anything at all, it would not be one life of the soul in Charlie Mears's body, but half a dozen—half a dozen several and separate existences spent on blue water ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... effort to adapt the framework of the administrative system to the fast changing conditions of a rapidly growing population Parliament piled act upon act, the result being a sheer jungle of interlacing jurisdictions alike baffling to the student and subversive of orderly and economical administration. It is computed that in 1883 there were in England and Wales no fewer than 27,069 independent local authorities,[257] and that the rate-payer was taxed by eighteen ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... has been in the habit of hunting deer in the Adirondack Mountains, is of opinion that the deer is often more than a match for the dog in sagacity. The deer seems to be well aware that the dog is guided by his faculty of scent in tracking him; and all the deer's efforts are directed to baffling and thwarting this keen and wonderful sense with ...
— The Nursery, April 1878, Vol. XXIII. No. 4 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... you that the early chapters of The Moulding Loft (METHUEN) are liable to plunge you into some mental agitation, due to the author's deliberately baffling method of starting her plot. The hero, for example, is introduced to us abed, and semi-delirious, waited upon by a pale and sinister young female whom he detests. He appears to be in a house strange to him, which contains also an unpleasant ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 25, 1917 • Various
... a specialty, also. The pattern is often exceedingly light and dainty, and airy and graceful—with a large cipher or monogram in the center, a delicate cobweb of baffling, intricate forms, wrought in steel. The ancient railings are hand-made, and are now comparatively rare and proportionately valuable. They are ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... arrived in New York city, is drawn into a mystery, partly through financial need and partly through his interest in a beautiful woman, who seems at times the simplest child and again a perfect mistress of intrigue. A baffling ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... been thinking over 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 Sisterhood at Nonnenwerth. I wish to divide my wealth equally between ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... at the heart of the mystery which he found so baffling—"you seem so well satisfied with the bona ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... on, life comes to be represented by its failures rather than its successes, by its regrets rather than its hopes; enthusiasms die out, illusions vanish, belief in the perfectibility of ourselves and of others fades, as we learn to realize the shortness of life, the waywardness of human nature, the baffling power of circumstances, too easily allowed; but in their place, a humble faith in a more perfect and satisfying hereafter, which shall be the complement of our existence here, the fulfilment of our unfinished efforts, ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... down From the high mountains to the dark-blue sea, With groans and tumult urge their headlong course, Wasting the works of man; so urg'd their flight, So, as they fled, the Trojan horses groan'd. The foremost ranks cut off, back tow'rd the ships Patroclus drove them, baffling their attempts To gain the city; and in middle space Between the ships, the stream, and lofty wall, Dealt slaughter round him, and of many a chief The bitter penalty of death requir'd. Then Pronous with his glitt'ring spear he struck, ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... with thine helpers to the search for the prisoner; contrive shortly to give them the slip, and thou art saved. I will do what I can in baffling pursuit of thee. For this our king is, as thou knowest, a tyrant who, though he greatly feareth death for himself, doth not hesitate to measure it out to us his subjects. Therefore are we bound to help each other. When thou canst protect another, do so; and so ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... commodore to lead his other subdivision. These two commodores also led the fleet on either tack. So far all is plain, but when we endeavour to understand by the appended instruction what battle formation Gambier intended by his elaborate organisation it is very baffling. Possibly we have not got the instruction exactly as Gambier wrote it; but as it stands it is confused past all understanding, and no conceivable battle formation can be constructed from it. All we can say for certain is that he evidently believed he was adopting ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... men more or less hung together, for the sake of human society, but Nightspore paced up and down, like a man weary and impatient, while Maskull attempted to interrogate the youth. The apparition watched him with a baffling expression, but did not answer. Backhouse was sitting apart, his ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... unturned until I have probed to the bottom of this mystery. I have seldom had a case that hung on more slender threads, yet if I can weave other threads to support it I feel that we shall soon find that the mystery is not so baffling as the Missing Persons Squad has ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... and knees, With doleful sniffs between recurrent howls; Till Gaea's lap receiving them, they stretched, And both upon her bosom shaken to speech, Burst the hot story out of throats of both, Like rocky head-founts, baffling in their glut The hurried spout. And as when drifting storm Disburdened loses clasp of here and yon A peak, a forest mound, a valley's gleam Of grass and the river's crooks and snaky coils, Signification marvellous she caught, Through gurglings of triumphant jollity, Which ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... stumbled bravely up and down by the buildings for his two hours. Even if he often missed his footing, it was better than standing still. For then one heard all kinds of strange noises, the cause of which could not be perceived in the baffling darkness. The forest was never quite silent; there were always cracklings and rustlings from its boughs and bushes. But in going the rounds these things went unheard in the noise of one's own footsteps; and one passed the quarters in which comrades were sleeping, ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... him: the child that was not his child produced for him when he fell upon that squalid nest of peasants in the Genoese country; and then the confessions, retractations, contradictions, lies, terrors, threats, and general bottomless, baffling baseness of every one in the place. The child was gone; that had been the only definite thing. The woman who had taken it to nurse had a dozen different stories,—her husband had as many,—and every one in the village had a hundred more. ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James
... were pretentiously genteel, a good many were young men of gentle birth from the public schools and universities. Paul's infallible instinct drew him into timid companionship with the last. He knew little of the things they talked about, golf and cricket prospects, and the then brain-baffling Ibsen, but he listened modestly, hoping to learn. He reaped the advantage of having played "the sedulous ape" to his patrons of the studios. His tricks were somewhat exaggerated; his sweep of the hat when ladies passed him ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... grammatical, dignified, and workman-like body of literature. This was good training, persistent training; and in all arts it is training that brings the art to perfection. We are now confronted with one of the most teasing and baffling riddles of Mrs. Eddy's history—a riddle which ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... their intimacy shouldn't have given him more of 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 this ...
— The Beast in the Jungle • Henry James
... Divide. The mountains rose precipitously on each side; but when the trail began dropping down westward, the weather moderated, though the snow grew deeper; and in the third week of January Thompson came on the baffling current of the Columbia. He camped there for the remainder of the winter, near the entrance of the Canoe River. Why he went up the Columbia in the spring, tracing it back to its source, and thence south again into Idaho, instead of rounding the bend ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... speaking with unusual animation, with a degree of excitement, she continued, 'I must tell what I feel. This fortune is yours. I am happy in the inheritance, if you generously receive it from me, because Providence has made me the means of baffling your enemies. I never thought to be so happy as I shall be if you will generously accept this fortune, always intended for you. I have lived then for a purpose; I have not lived in vain; I have returned to you some service, however humble, for all your ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... two points to leeward, and was a long way astern. Next came the Shannon; the Guerriere and Aeolus were hull down, and the Africa barely visible. The wind now kept light, shifting occasionally in a very baffling manner, but the Constitution gained steadily, wetting her sails from the sky-sails to the courses. At 6 A. M., on the morning of the 20th the pursuers were almost out of sight; and at 8.15 A. M. they abandoned the chase. Hull at once stopped to investigate the character ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... pranks of Gangogo, the professional jester of the tourney, must, if I am to take the author's word for it, have made the glaciers ring. There is a great deal in the way of philosophy and psychology that is very baffling in this book, but of one thing I feel certain, and that is that the Elemental Spirits of the Heights, to whom frequent allusion is made, must find the winter sports of a later age a sorry substitute for the rare old ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... himself, and putting himself on a level with private citizens, was not so much the conduct to be expected from one hastening to go out of office, as of one seeking the means of continuing that office." Not daring openly to oppose his wishes, they set about baffling his ardour by humouring it. They by common consent confer on him, as being the youngest, the office of presiding at the elections. This was an artifice, that he might not appoint himself; which no one ever did, except the tribunes of the people, and that too with the very worst precedent. He, however, ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... baffling problems which the young man faces, and for that matter, any man, is marriage. More thought, more energy and more time is taken up over this one decisive step than over any other. The reasons are obvious. It involves for life the happiness of the contracting parties—not only in a ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... lost its usual roughness. His mind had leapt back over many years to a time when he had been concerned for that name in a way that had stirred him to great warmth. He smiled. It was a baffling, somewhat ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... 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 incredibly ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... that we have pulled the wires so as to keep the thing out of the papers as much as possible. We don't want to frighten the quarry till the net is spread. The point is, though, to find out who is the quarry. It's most baffling." ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... blank lack of character, individuality? How different was this trait from that which was exhibited by the energetic prosecution of her talents where her personality, shining forth so steadily, held his admiration almost undimmed! This was a baffling interrogation that furnished another evidence to Kirtley of a gaping chasm separating the Teutons from other peoples. The highest ideal of German character is expressed by works. The highest ideal of "Christian" character is expressed ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... Austrians don't come out. And, for three weeks in this fierce necessity of being speedy, he cannot get one right stroke at the Austrians; who sit inexpugnable upon their Eckart's Hill, bristling with cannon; and can in no way be manoeuvred down, or forced or enticed into Battle. A baffling, bitterly impatient three weeks;—two of them the worst two, he spends at Weissenberg itself, chasing Pandours, and scuffling on the surface, till Keith and the Magazine-train come up;—even writing Verses now and then, when ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... writing the answers when they got inspiration. Irene scribbled away delightedly, but Lorna, who had almost forgotten the nursery rhymes of her childhood, was in much mystification, and only filled in a few of the vacant spaces. Numbers 6, 7, 13 and 14 proved the most baffling and no one was able to ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... leave the baffling earthly prize, Which fails the earthly weak endeavor, To gaze into those holy eyes ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... mastered, young, graceful, comely, and a lady of station. Once in his good keeping, her lord would answer for her. And this was a manfully generous view of the situation. It belongs to the robustness of the conqueror's mood. But how of his opinion of her character in the fret of a baffling, a repulse, a defeat? Supposing the circumstances not to have helped her to shine as a heroine, while he was reduced to appear no hero to himself! Wise are the mothers who keep vigilant personal watch over their girls, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... vote and the cumulative vote have been almost universally rejected as schemes for baffling the majority. But the principle of dividing the representatives equally between population and property has never had fair play. It was introduced by Thouret into the constitution of 1791. The Revolution made it inoperative; ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... mail, rushed with uplifted weapons towards Pratarddana, covering him with showers of arrows. Encompassing him with innumerable cars, O Yudhisthira, the Vitahavyas poured upon Pratarddana showers of weapons of various kinds like clouds pouring torrents of rain on the breast of Himavat. Baffling their weapons with his own, prince Pratarddana endued with mighty energy slew them all with his shafts that resembled the lighting fire of Indra. Their heads struck off, O king, with hundreds and thousands ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... baffling smile, and turned the subject. "Wouldn't you like something to drink before we ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... using some of 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 exhortations ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... the experience finds it ever the same, and as if it could not possibly be otherwise. The subject resumes his normal consciousness only to partially and fitfully remember its occurrence, and to try to formulate its baffling import—with only this consolatory afterthought: that he has known the oldest truth, and that he has done with human theories as to the origin, meaning, or destiny of the race. He is ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... slipping through the water three feet to their one, under the influence of the light baffling breeze which came down to us from over the lofty cliffs astern, and we were ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... to be lost to the eye in a fold of the carpet or in a changed background. There had been something workmanlike and bold about their rigid, matter-of-fact progress, reflective of man-power in battle as seen very distinctly for a space in that field of baffling and shimmering haze. I thought that I had glimpses of some of them just before they entered the woods and that they were mixing with figures coming out of the woods. At any rate, what was undoubtedly ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... down the hopes of men are tossed as they cleave the waves of baffling falsity: and a sure token of what shall come to pass hath never any man on the earth received from God: the divinations of things to come ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... 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 letter. It had stood as a barrier between them, her buckler, ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... and goaded by the governor-general and commander-in-chief, whose own service was the Army, Downie, a comparative junior in the Navy, put forth his utmost efforts, against his better judgment, to sail that very midnight. A baffling head-wind, however, kept him from working out. He immediately reported to Prevost, giving quite satisfactory reasons. But Prevost wrote back impatiently: 'The troops have been held in readiness, since six o'clock this morning [the 10th], to storm the enemy's ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... held the lantern so that I could see her face. Her hand trembled, and the unsteady light threw baffling shadows, but even so I could see she ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... it was a perfect harbour, but there is no doubt that getting in or out requires plenty of nerve as well as seamanship. There was so little room, and the eddying flows of wind under the high land were so baffling, that at various times during our passage in it appeared as if nothing could prevent us from getting stuck upon some of the adjacent hungry-looking coral reefs. Nothing of the kind happened, however, and we came comfortably to an anchor ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... 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 sing ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... Bascomb rushed in, but Merriwell was light as a feather on his feet, and he danced nimbly about, tapping the other fellow now here, now there, smiling sweetly all the while, and showing a skill that was very baffling to Bascomb. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... those who are like them shall be admitted to the Heavenly banquet."[6] Fortunately—"there are many mansions in my Father's House":[7] if there were only those—to me—incomprehensible mansions with their baffling roads, I should certainly never enter there . ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... 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
... Fisher, 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 ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... And not only so, but I question whether this probability has been even seriously impaired by such advance, seeing that although this advance has revealed a speculative raison d'etre of the mechanical precision of nature, it has at the same time shown the baffling complexity of nature; and therefore, in view of what has just been said, leaves the balance of probability concerning the existence of a God very much where it always was. For stay awhile to contemplate this astounding ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... above definitions, the more baffling they become. Try as I may, I have not been able to fit them, not only to the facts of my own experience, which may not be strange, but I cannot reconcile them even to each other. There seem to me inherent ambiguities and self-contradictions lurking beneath their scientific ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... baffling any attempt at explanation, for there were no ships in the roadstead, and hence it was impossible for the pair to have taken French leave. While a search party was being organized there came word that the missing ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... sailed by Salisbury spire, calculating that a few minutes' run, at two or three miles a minute, would bring them to their destination on the outskirts of Portsmouth. But a few miles south the baffling mist had made its appearance, and Smith found himself bereft of landmarks, and compelled to tack to and fro in utter uncertainty of his course. He was as much at a loss as if he were navigating a vessel in a sea-fog. ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... ace's antecedents. It had lain in that drawer five-and-twenty years at least, with another card half-covering it. In the noiseless air-tight darkness where it lay, saying perhaps to itself:—"Shall I ever take a trick again?" there was still dust, dust of thought-baffling fineness! And it had fallen, fallen steadily, with immeasurable slowness and absolute impartiality, on all the card above had left unsheltered. There was the top-card's silhouette, quite recognisable as soon as the shadow ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... the impostor, she was again welcomed at Orleans six weeks after he supped with her. These facts must not be overlooked, and they have never been explained. So there we leave the most surprising and baffling of historical mysteries. It is, of course, an obvious conjecture that, in 1436, Jehan and Pierre du Lys may have pretended to recognise the impostor, in hopes of honour and rewards such as they had already received through their connection with ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... the smallest provocation, idealist to the extent of preferring a simple country life to all the glamour of London, a man seemingly endowed with all the ambitions of the most sober and unimaginative middle class—truly he presents strange and baffling contrasts. ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... assurance with which 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 ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... dead to the softer senses, she abandoned to him readily the larger share of their plunder. Under a variety of names and disguises, through a succession of frauds, some vast and some mean, but chiefly on the Continent, they had pursued their course, eluding all danger and baffling all law. ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... all enchanted things of earth and air, this preciousness has been drawn. From the south wind that breathed a century and a half over the green wheat; from the perfume of the growing grasses waving over heavy-laden clover and laughing veronica, hiding the green finches, baffling the bee; from rose-lined hedge, woodbine, and cornflower, azure blue, where yellowing wheat stalks crowd up under the shadow of green firs. All the devious brooklets' sweetness where the iris stays the sunlight; all the wild woods hold of beauty; all the ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... America the war came to its crisis. In the earlier part of the year the British at New York and the French at Newport continued to watch one another. In April the British admiral Arbuthnot did indeed succeed in baffling an attempt of the French to carry reinforcements to the American cause in Virginia. The action he fought off the capes of Virginia on the 16th of April was ill conducted, but his main purpose was achieved. Washington, who was wisely anxious to concentrate attack on one or other ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... be no doubt that Emily Bronte found her shelter behind Charlotte's fame; but she was protected most of all by the unapproachable, the unique and baffling quality of her temperament and of her genius. Her own people seem to have felt it; Charlotte herself in that preface to Wuthering Heights, which stands as her last vindication and eulogy of her dead sister, even Charlotte betrays a curious reservation and reluctance. ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... silence that followed, a blue-bottle fly buzzed rowdily against an adjacent window-pane, with occasional loud bumps against the glass tokening that he too had his tragedy, a prisoner pent by baffling transparency from the bright world ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... they stuck 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 ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... although through the medium of many languages it has had as thorough an evolution as in its physical life. We must also admit our ignorance in regard to toad, backward search revealing only tade, tode, ted, toode, and tadie, the root baffling all study. Polliwog and tadpole are delightfully easy. Old forms of polliwog are pollywig, polewiggle, and pollwiggle. This last gives us the clew to our spelling—pollwiggle, which, reversed ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... mean is that it's infernal to think that some one may be shedding precious tears on your grave and you not there to see. I've often wondered if one could get a ticket of leave for such an occasion." He smiled down at her with baffling directness. "I should value those tears ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... he went over the abbreviations, but the more closely he studied them, the more baffling he found them. The real meaning appeared to hinge on the "A." and the "T." Eventually he was driven to the conclusion that those two letters could not be understood by anyone who was not already ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... The baffling part of the new schoolmate was that her powers of acting were so highly developed that it was impossible to tell whether she was serious or playing a part. She "took in" her teasers times out of number, and in fairness they deserved ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... south-east trade winds until she was well south of the parallel of Rio de Janeiro; and then she ran into the Doldrums; these being belts of calm, broken into at intervals by light baffling airs from various directions, with occasional violent squalls, or terrific thunderstorms, just to vary the monotony. These belts of exasperating weather are to be met with to the north of the north-east and the south ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... alarms, with the exception of baffling winds, which impeded the progress of the ship, and lengthened the duration of our confinement ten days or a fortnight, our voyage was prosperous, little occurring to break the monotony of confinement on ship-board that is experienced in sea-passages in general; the only excitement ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... she was thinking it over in her room that evening vague and baffling doubts came drifting across this conviction. She doubted how she stood toward him and what the restrained gleam of his face might signify. She felt that perhaps, in her desire to play an adequate part in the conversation, she had talked rather more ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... thine aid in baffling the malignant, Who, with unholy art, conspire to see Our ease dis-eased, our dignity indignant, We do Thee homage on the bended knee. And I would add a word of common gratitude To those thy coadjutors, ao and lao,[3] Who take, with Thee, th' uncompromising attitude ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... it was the bouquet of an "odourless disinfectant" that seemed to have its headquarters near by. In one place some bales of dried and withered roots were being loaded on a truck: they gave off a faint savour, which was familiar but baffling. On inquiry, these were sarsaparilla. Endymion was pleased with a sign on a doorway: "Crude drugs and spices and essential oils." This, he said, was a perfect ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... evening time. In this country it is customary for the wind to blow from the land from 8 P.M. until 8 A.M., from the south-west to the east. Then comes a lull, either an utter dead hot brooding calm, or light baffling winds and draughts that breathe a few panting hot breaths into your sails and die. Then comes the sea breeze up from the south-south- west or north-west, some days early in the forenoon, some days not till two or three o'clock. This breeze ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... without their being able to rouse in me any special interest. My mind was fixed on the under-currents. I couldn't explain them to father because I didn't understand them myself, only felt them. I felt as if I and all the rest had been handled, were being handled now, by a baffling and subtle power which one could not lay hands upon, because it seemed, as if by magic, to be able to erase ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... real purpose of his voyage. His object was to strike the mainland far to the westward of the Gulf of Paria, and so by following it back eastward to find the passage which he believed to exist. But the winds and currents were very baffling; he was four days out of sight of land after touching at an island north of Jamaica; and finally, in some bewilderment, he altered his course more and more northerly until he found his whereabouts by coming in sight of the archipelago off the south-western end of Cuba which ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... 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 "festive ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... point where I stood, a straggling shrub, the only one for rods, hung over the brink. I silently sank to a seat behind it, lest I disturb the singer, and remained without movement. The baffling carol went on for some seconds, and for the only time in my life I wished I could put a spell upon brook-babble, that I ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... in it. This enthusiasm begat great expectations of the trip. I should surely surprise Nature and win some new secrets from her. I should glide down noiselessly upon her and see what all those willow screens and baffling curves concealed. As a fisherman and pedestrian I had been able to come at the stream only at certain points: now the most private and secluded retreats of the nymph would be opened to me; every bend and eddy, every cove hedged in by swamps ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... her pretty lips, but before the words came she evidently obeyed another differing impulse, for she underwent a subtle change, an imperceptible hardening that was so delicately veiled by her still gracious manner that Patricia had only a baffling sense of being gently shut out ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... part, enjoyed the business as an agreeable excitement and a welcome relief from the monotony of his official life. He never hurried Morrison's visits, but amused himself by treating him with the most flattering distinction, and baffling his arrogance by immediate concession. But this morning, when Morrison came back with a front of uncommon fierceness, he merely looked up from his newspapers, to which he had recurred, and said coolly. "Oh, ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... the home of these young people; normally it is still the most vital educational influence for them. Yet there is no problem more baffling than that of family ministry for, and leadership of, the higher ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... It was suspected that he was waiting to join the successful side. With him was his son, afterwards called 'the Great,' who now showed of what stuff he was made by putting down a mutiny against his father and baffling a plot for his own assassination. [Sidenote: Marius sacks Ostia, and he, Sertorius, and Cinna hem Rome in.] Marius, with a band of Moors, and the slaves whom he had collected from the Etrurian field-gangs, was admitted by treachery ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... "It's a most baffling one," continued the financier. "I suppose, Mr. Carson," he added, "that if we do put it in and pass around a subscription paper, we can count on you for—say two ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... 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
... it takes no rise From outward things, whate'er you may believe. There is an inmost centre in us all, Where truth abides in fulness; and around Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in, This perfect, clear perception—which is truth. A baffling and perverting carnal mesh Binds it, and makes all error: and, to know Rather consists in opening out a way Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape, Than in effecting entry for a light Supposed ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... signs of dissipation appear on that fine face. He asked Will French to make friends with him and find out if he could where he spent his evenings. Will readily agreed, and at once entered on his mission with a zeal which was beyond all baffling. ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... would mean that memory would fail to link the present to the past. Often we are puzzled to know whether we have before met a certain person, or on a former occasion told a certain story, or previously experienced a certain present state of mind which seems half familiar. Such baffling mental states are usually but instances of partial and incomplete recognition. Recognition no longer applies to much of our knowledge; for example, we say we remember that four times six is twenty-four, ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... as the days went on. She was as lovely in the spirit as in the flesh. Her moods were many and always striking. She was never violent when angry: she became as calm and baffling as the sea in doldrums. She never grew angry for anything her husband did: such anger as came to her was directed against the lazy, incompetent servant who was always snooping about in ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... I won't distress you too much," the detective apologized grimly, "if I ask you a few questions. Fact is, I must. I'm investigating the circumstances surrounding what may turn out to be a baffling crime, and, irrespective of your personal wishes, Mr. Sloane, I can't let go of it. This is a ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... Thoris, and with her were Phaidor, daughter of Matai Shang, and Thuvia of Ptarth. But how to reach them, now that I had found the only vulnerable spot in their mighty prison, was still a baffling riddle. ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... "Can all the Martian women be like this? She is beautiful of body and strangely warm and winning to the touch, but as cold of heart as the drifting snow that suffocates a poor lost lamb. She has had a strange influence over me; a puzzling, baffling attraction. A suggestion of something delicate and subtlely charming, which, when one seeks to seize and to define, retires icily behind the drawn curtain ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... found and named King George's Sound. He landed and examined the country, but saw nothing of any consequence, and, after a short stay, sailed away to the eastward, intending to follow the coast line, but was prevented by baffling winds. ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... a baffling question; for diplomatic destinies were at stake. But missionaries are usually honest, so she said, "Yes, if ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... lowest; and this, coupled with his peculiar sensibility, put a severe strain upon him. Some people thought that he was a man of genius, morbidly sensitive shrinking from public life and the Press, cursed with insufficient ambition, sudden, baffling, complex and charming. Others thought that he was a man irresistible to his friends and terrible to his enemies, dreaming of Empire, besought by kings and armies to put countries and continents straight, ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... wood And disappear! And lost all heart when on the crest we stood And saw it spent in mist below! Yet ever surer was its flow, And, ever gathering to its own New springs of which we had not known, To fairer meadows Swept exultant from the woodland shadows; And when at last upon the baffling plain We thought it scattered like a ravelled skein,— Lo, tranquil, free, Its longed-for home, the ...
— Songs of Two • Arthur Sherburne Hardy
... dreaded, with good reason, in Rosnacree Bay. It descends from the mountains in vicious squalls. It catches rushing tides at baffling angles and lashes them into white-lipped fury. Sturdy island boats of the larger size, boats with bluff bows and bulging sides, brave it under their smallest lugs. But lesser boats, and especially ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... known as those of Champlain were; it having been the scene of frequent British operations in previous wars. Owing to this, "the Maria, because of her distant situation (from which the Inflexible and Carleton had chased by signal) when the rebels were first discovered, and baffling winds, could not get into close action."[13] For the same reason the Inflexible could not support the Carleton. The Americans, in the aggregate distinctly inferior, were thus permitted a concentration ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... round him with a feeling of keen interest and curiosity. After the weary, baffling hours of fruitless effort in which he had spent the last three days, it was more than pleasant to find himself at the fountainhead ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... offing."—"Sail! and how? What! could you make her out? It cannot be; I've seen no rag of canvass on the sea." "Belike," said Ben, "you might not from the bay, But from the bluff-head, where I watched to-day, I saw her in the doldrums; for the wind Was light and baffling."—"When the Sun declined Where lay she? had she anchored?"—"No, but still 510 She bore down on us, till the wind grew still." "Her flag?"—"I had no glass: but fore and aft, Egad! she seemed a wicked-looking craft." "Armed?"—"I expect so;—sent ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron |
