"Cipher" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to learn something, though little it be, Each day of her life,—something useful, you see: And in two or three years you will find she can spell, Read, cipher, and write, and do ...
— The Nursery, March 1878, Vol. XXIII. No. 3 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... one more pretty thought in my head for having a gay ribbon on my hair. Use it, aunty, please, to buy me some new books, so I can enter the highest class in school when George Wild does. Mr. Grey says I can read and cipher as well as he, though I am not so ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... watery star hath been The shepherd's note since we have left our throne Without a burden: time as long again Would be fill'd up, my brother, with our thanks; And yet we should, for perpetuity, Go hence in debt: and therefore, like a cipher, Yet standing in rich place, I multiply With one we-thank-you many thousands more ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... did not take Bismarck long to find that at Frankfort the King of Prussia was but a cipher. Furthermore, what raised Bismarck's ire was the impotence of the Parliament. Frankfort had been unable to put down the blood-letting of '48, and Bismarck detested weakness of any kind, ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... his childhood. He learned to read, write, and cipher at a small school kept by Hobby, the sexton of the parish church. Among his playmates was Richard Henry Lee, who was afterward a famous Virginian. When the boys grew up, they wrote to each other of grave matters of war and state, but here is the beginning ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... evident," he said, "that a resume of certain of these papers should go to Berlin and Russia in cipher, but this may wait. The originals must as soon as possible reach ...
— A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell
... say, came tolerably on. My youngster was very smart, and seemed to be so active in his duty of usher, if I may so speak, that he even overdid his part therein, and I began to feel myself a cipher in my own school. ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... legal proceedings a committee had obtained from the Western Union Telegraph Company over thirty thousand of the telegrams sent by both parties during the campaign. The Republicans declared that the "cipher despatches" among these messages showed that the Democrats had offered a substantial bribe for the vote of an Oregon Republican elector. Before the dispatches were returned to the telegraph company, somebody took the precaution to destroy those that concerned Republican ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... and set him at work surveying and locating the line at once. It's now three o'clock. You must go and pack your trunk, Duncan. I'll telegraph you in New York, telling you everything you need to know. Take your copy of our private cipher code with you, in case we should have confidential communications to make. Go, now. I'll smooth your way by telegraphing our correspondents in New York, and the officers of the Fourth National, asking them to help you. Stafford, you'd better go home, now. You're getting ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... air-gun, and gazed upon it as if it had been a telegram in cipher from a detective. Then he tried to conceal it under his coat, but it ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... sound of our locomotives. The telegraph is finished to Mining's Station, and the field-wire has just reached my bivouac, and will be ready to convey this message as soon as it is written and translated into cipher. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... first time, envisaged the cosmic, had seen something less passionate, but more vital, than history. Most of us are more fortunate than she: we take it for granted that no loom can rival the petal of a flower. But to some creatures the primitive is a cipher, hard to learn; and blood is spent in the struggle. You have perhaps seen (and not simply in the old legend) passion come to a statue. Rare, oh, rare is the necessity for such a miracle. But Kathleen Somers was in need of one; and I believe it came ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... tailor from the rear of the store to make an adjustment in the trousers. Meanwhile he deftly removed the tags which told him in cipher that the suit had cost him just eleven ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... the scene. In 1831, being then eighteen years of age, he came up to London from a country village in Hertfordshire to seek his fortune, not knowing one person in the metropolis. He was, as he has since said, "a mere cipher in that vast sea of human enterprise." He was a natural inventor, of studious and observant habits. As soon as he had obtained a footing in London he began to invent. He first devised a process for copying bas-reliefs on cardboard, by which he ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... and engrossing occupation than the woman of fashion, in a country where the distinctions of rank are so purely factitious as in ours. Miss Sandford's time was now her own; she was accountable to no supervisor. Her brother was a cipher. He did not venture to intrude upon her, except at seasons when she was at leisure, and in a humor to be bored by him. Perhaps she looked back regretfully, but, as far as could be told by her manner, she carried herself proudly, with the air of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... matter short," said Mr. Gummage, "the best thing for the china is a flower-piece—a basket, or a wreath—or something of that sort. You can have a good cipher in the center, and the colors may be as bright as you please. India ware is generally painted with one color only; but the Chinese are submissive animals, and will do just as they are bid. It may cost something more to have ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... acknowledge no such tiger for a friend of mine. Nevermore was the bridge across the Irwell a bridge of sighs for me. And the meanest of the factory population—thanks be to their discrimination—despised my pretensions too entirely to waste a thought or a menace upon a cipher so abject. ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... A few miles beyond Bayonne they met a messenger from the Earl of Bristol, ambassador at Madrid, bearing despatches to England. They stopped him, opened his papers, and sought to read them, but found the bulk of them written in a cipher beyond their powers to solve. Baffled in this, they bade Gresley, the messenger, to return with them as far as Irun, as they wished him to bear to the king a ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the Department. Her duties in the office of the Chief Clerk required her to be familiar with the work of the bureaus of the Department and the many intricate questions constantly presented to the Chief Clerk's office. She was required to have expert knowledge of the cipher used in the Department, and a considerable part of her time was employed in enciphering and deciphering telegrams sent from and received ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... the one vast personal ascendency that had so long kept all in obedience, jealousies and selfish interests had sprung up, and were wrangling round his successor. From certain mysterious letters in cipher from Falconbridge to Henry Cromwell it appears that the wrangle had begun even round Cromwell's death-bed, "Z. [Cromwell] is now beyond all possibility of recovery" Falconbridge had written on Tuesday, Aug. 31: "I long to hear from A. [Henry Cromwell] what his intentions ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... a-whettin' my scythe, and soon must be mowin': Wouldn't it be worth while, if politely you'd offer to help me?" So the angel he talked, and this way I answered the angel: "Hark ye, this it is, just: and I'll go wi' the greatest o' pleasure. Folks from the town know nothin' about it: we write and we cipher, Reckon up money,—that we can do!—and measure and weigh out, Unload, and on-load, and eat and drink without any trouble. All that we want for the belly, in kitchen, pantry, and cellar, Comes in lots through every gate, in baskets and boxes, Runs in every street, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... departure, my friends had all retired, and I was alone for the first moment since the news had come from the City Bank. I had not then stopped to analyze its character, for there had been only time to announce it. Now, however, I sat down at my desk and with a pencil and a piece of paper began to cipher out what the "412 millions" meant. As I figured, cold sweat began to gather on my forehead, and the further I figured the colder the sweat, until at last in an agony of perplexity I again called up Mr. Rogers. My agitation must have betrayed itself in my voice, though I tried to assume a tone ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... amount of torture could make her betray her friends. They spoke of Antonoff, who was subjected to the thumbscrew, had red-hot wires thrust under his nails, and when his torturers gave him a little respite he would scratch on his plate cipher signals to ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... importance to Mrs. Gallup and the believers in the cipher wherein Bacon maintains that he is the legal son of a wedding between Dudley and the Queen. Was there such a marriage or even betrothal? Froude cautiously says that this was averted 'SEEMINGLY on Lord Robert's authority;' the Baron says that ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... him by devious methods, he has once or twice given me advance information which has been of value—that highest value which anticipates and prevents rather than avenges crime. I cannot doubt that, if we had the cipher, we should find that this communication is of ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... just in good time for dinner; and devoted the evening to the concoction of a letter to Senor Montijo, at Lucerne, reporting all that he had thus far done, also referring to Don Hermoso the important question of the yacht's armament, and somewhat laboriously transcribing the said letter into cipher. ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... contained upwards of ten thousand names, including those of almost every prominent man, and of not a few remarkable women in the principal centres of the country. The details given were invariably brief and to the point, written down in a simple but safe form of cipher which was perfectly familiar to every one of the three. This vast mass of information was simply the outcome of the personal experience of the leaders, and of their trusted friends, but no detail which could by any possibility be of use escaped being committed ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... Lord Dunstable was just a cipher? Not at all. He's the real authority here, and when he puts his foot down Rachel always gives in. But of course she's stood in the way ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... thought in my head. For a long while I have been ignorant of what is going on in the world—here or in Russia. I have been to Dresden, yet am completely in the dark as to what Dresden is like. You know the cause of my obsession. I have no hope now, and am a mere cipher in your eyes; wherefore, I tell you outright that wherever I go I see only you—all the rest is a matter ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... soon as the messenger had moved off, I tore open the envelope and read the message. Fortunately, it was not in cipher, the rules against any such use of the wires, except by the Government, being ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... professions "rolled into one." In the provinces he is a star of the first magnitude, known by the name of Moses Scoffer; in the city a myth known to his pals as Swear 'Em Charley; and in our neighborhood he is a cipher—incog., but perfectly understood. He contrives to eke out a tolerable livelihood: I should say that his provincial blasphemies and his city practise bring him a clear five hundred pounds a year at the least. But is it not the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... to read and write and cipher, and to tell mushrooms from toadstools, to eschew poisonous berries, and to know the weather signs. For her part, she taught me so much more that it seems effrontery to call her my pupil. It was from her gentle, softening companionship that I learned in turn to be merciful to helpless ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... when his work was done, he would bend his huge six-foot-four frame close down by the firelight to write and cipher ON THE BACK OF A ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... nothing as favor, but as right; she wants to be acknowledged a moral, responsible being. She is seeking not to be governed by laws in the making of which she has no voice. She is deprived of almost every right in civil society, and is a cipher in the nation, except in the right of presenting a petition. In religious society her disabilities have greatly retarded her progress. Her exclusion from the pulpit or ministry, her duties marked out for her by her equal brother ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... a woman wants to do well by her darling, she puzzles her brain to cipher out some scheme for getting it into my hands. Why, sir, a woman came here once with a child of a curious lifeless sort of complexion (and so had the woman), and swore that the child was mine and she my wife—that I had married her at such-and-such a time in such-and-such ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... (No. 14. p. 215.).—Zero Ital.; Fr. un chiffre, un rien, a cipher in arithmetic, a nought; whence the proverb avere nel zero, mepriser souverainement, to value at nothing, to have a sovereign contempt for. I do not know what the etymology of the word may be; but the ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.02.23 • Various
... I am the guilty cause. I did the deed, Thy murderer. Yea, I guilty plead. My henchmen, lead me hence, away, away, A cipher, less than nothing; ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... her goodness the regent gave the documents into her hands, and she forwarded them to me next day, enclosed in a note written in cipher, which, according to the laws of historical writing, I reproduce in its entirety, vouching for its authenticity; for the princess always employed a cipher when she used the language of gallantry, and this note told me what treaty ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... his apartments read the letter. The moon was at its full, and what with the clear, frosty air, and the snow stretched over the world like a white counterpane, he was able to read the letter by the window without the light of a candle. It was written in the Chevalier's own cipher and hand; it asked anxiously for news and gave some. Wogan had had occasion before to learn that cipher by heart. He stood by the window and spelled the meaning. Then he turned to go down; but at the door his foot slipped upon the polished ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... The five other cipher experts of the P. I. Service were huddled over their tables, pencil in hand, absorbed in their several ungodly complications and laborious calculations. But they possessed no Rosetta Stone to aid them in deciphering hieroglyphics; toad-like, they carried ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... make cromlechs of large, flat unhewn stones, some six to seven feet high, and the Angami-Nagas of the extreme north of British India set up extensive alignments of menhirs, similar to those of France. Inscriptions in the old Irish cipher writing, known as ogham, prove that megalithic monuments were erected in Ireland after the time of St. Patrick; and, as we have already remarked, some of the Breton menhirs are surrounded by crosses. In India, too, we find the symbol ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... origin signifying a cipher, and employed to denote a neutral point in scale between an ascending and descending series, or between ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... put on each tag in Barbara's private cipher, understood only by Aunt Miriam. The highest was the one hoped for, the next the probable one, and the lowest one was to be taken only at ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... reached instinctively for his telegraphic cipher code. But he reflected that this was not code-phrasing. He read the paragraph again and was obliged to remind himself that his only daughter was already the wife of a man he knew to be in excellent health. Also he was acquainted with ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... inborn instinct, had chosen the foremost and most unsuspicious looking one, which stood half built with a sloping plank-roof over it. There he lay wedged into the farthest corner, close wrapped in the happy Nirvana of self-forgetfulness—school zero, and Mrs. Holman a cipher—his body bent down over his knees, his coat pulled up about his neck to keep out the drips, and his boots down ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... oxy-acetylene apparatus. All that ingenuity and experience can suggest for the confusion of the criminal is taught him. He is shown where an expert must be called in, and where his own common-sense must aid him. He is taught something of locks, something of finger-prints, something of cipher-reading. He learns the significance of trivialities, and the ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... pocket a small medallion containing her cipher, and said to Croustillac, "See what I returned to the house to seek this evening. I desired to offer you this token of our friendship; it was in bringing it to you that I overheard your conversation with Colonel Rutler. Accept it, it ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... Trees.—The keepers of some of the communal forests in Switzerland are provided with small axes, having the back of the axe-head worked into a large and sharp die, the impression of the die being some letter or cipher indicating the commune. When these foresters wish to mark a tree, they give it first a slice with the edge of the axe, and then (turning the axe) they deal it a heavy blow with the back of the axe-head. By the first operation they prepare a clean surface for their mark; and, by the second, they ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... the fault, and not the actor of it? Why, every fault's condemn'd ere it be done: Mine were the very cipher of a function, To fine the faults whose fine stands in record, 40 And let go by ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... approach came to Anfossi. It gave him time to replace the dust-board over the fireplace in which the wireless was concealed and to escape into his own bedroom. The arrangement was ideal. And already information picked up in the halls below by Marie had been conveyed to Anfossi to relay in a French cipher to the ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... Christendom, with his hostile eye and mordant criticism, who is helping to undermine that system of ethics which permitted the sale of the daughter to shame, the introduction of the concubine into the family and the reduction of woman, even though wife and mother, to nearly a cipher. It is not only the foreigner who assaults that philosophy which glorified the vendetta, kept alive private war, made revenge in murder the sweetest joy of the Samurai and suicide the gate to honor and fame, subordinated the family ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... there are not many of these symbols which appear once and for all with a firmly established significance like the signs in stenography; and one is tempted to compile a new dream-book according to the cipher method. In this connection it may be remarked that this symbolism does not belong peculiarly to the dream, but rather to unconscious thinking, particularly that of the masses, and it is to be found in greater perfection in the ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... on his bed with his pillows propping him up, and a drawer open on the bed, and bundles of old letters and bills spread out before him. Old love letters; old business letters; his mother's letters to him when he was a boy at Edinburgh College; letters in cipher that no human eye can read but those old, bleared, weeping eyes that fill that too late drawer with their tears. The old voyager is looking over his papers before he takes ship. And he comes on things he had totally forgotten: debts he had thought paid; petitions he had thought ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... in separate columns on a piece of paper the individual repetitions of letters on the page of "January 7, 1915." He arrived at the conclusion, then, that "R" was used for "E," that "S" took the place of "A" and that "Y" alternated in this cipher for "T" which was second on his ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... Prefect of Police, another to the Minister of the Interior, and the third to the Minister of Finance, giving detailed statistics concerning the age, occupation, and progress of her proteges. "How many know how to read? How many to read and write? How many to read, write, and cipher? What progress has been made since the last report?" These are some of the questions she has to answer; and, meanwhile, if a crowd of little children come in, she turns from her writing and calculations and plays with them as if she ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... Hofrath: upon which the Brandenburg Ambassador wrote that it was all labor lost; and even hurried off homewards in despair, leaving a Secretary in his place. The Brandenburg Court, nothing despairing, orders in the mean while, Try another with it,—some other Hofrath, whose name they wrote in cipher, which the blundering Secretary took to mean no Hofrath, but the Kaiser's Confessor and Chief Jesuit, Pater Wolf. To him accordingly he hastened with the cash, to him with the respectful Electoral request; who received both, it is said, especially ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... the truth, he readily received them; attended their worship, acquired the accomplishment of public prayer, and made himself a student at their feet. It is thus—it is by the cultivation of similar passing chances—that he has learned to read, to write, to cipher, and to speak his queer, personal English, so different from ordinary 'Beach de Mar,' so much more obscure, expressive, and condensed. His education attended to, he found time to become critical ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Elliott, or else change your profession. A man who cannot hold his temper in leash, and who flies emotional signals from every feature in his face, has slender chance of success in an avocation which demands that body and soul, heart and mind, abjure even secret signal service, and deal only in cipher. The youthful naivete with which you permit your countenance to reflect your sentiments, renders it quite easy for me to comprehend the nature of your feeling for my ward. For some weeks your interest has been very apparent, and while I am laying no embargo on your ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Hongkong junta voted that Aguinaldo ought to go to the Philippines, and go he did. It would seem that he at first gave up the idea of joining Dewey, for on May 11 he wrote a cipher letter, giving minute directions for the preparation of signals to assist his ship in making land, by day or by night, at Dingalan Bay on the east coast of Luzon; directing the capture of the town of ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... grimly and silently to the end that he might cast out of his heart, for all time, the love for a woman which had crept in. Sleep had dared not come within range of that titanic struggle. Worn with the battle which had witnessed his defeat, he had just completed his cipher message, when, following a modest knock at the door, Josef entered complacently with the pent-browed ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... started up, afraid to sleep. He saw lying on the table the unopened telegrams, and tore them open. Some referred to sales of oil, and other business transactions; one was to inform Brassfield that a man named Alvord would not meet him in New York as promised, and one was in cipher, and ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... into business, spent many hours each day with the ministers and dependants of the court, corresponded with foreign lands, with her brother the Emperor Leopold, and her sister, Queen Caroline of Naples, wrote to them in a cipher intelligible only to them, and sent the letters through the hands of secret agents, imploring of them assistance and help ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... thing was to get off this message, so he sat down to work out the cipher known only to himself and "Specs." He said ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... not drinking wine at his betrothal feast, but sending this cipher letter by a swift and ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... period lasted longer than with the majority of men, and during it he was carried from one extreme to another; had rather eccentric and absurd manners, and touched moat of the perilous rocks on the voyage of life. He had an early love for an older girl whose name he wrote in cipher on his books, although he felt it a little artificial, but believed it might have developed into a great and true hereditary friendship, continuing that which their ancestors had felt for many generations. The birth of ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... the Pilgrim Merchant Adventurers, until their interests were transferred to the colonists by the "Composition" of 1626, and three years later (1629) sent by the MAY-FLOWER, on her second New England voyage, although under a Puritan charter, another company from the Leyden congregation. The (cipher) letter of the "Governor and deputies of the New-England Company for a plantation in Massachusetts Bay" to Captain John Endicott, written at Gravesend, England, the 17th of April, 1629, says: "If you want any Swyne wee have agreed with those of Ne[w] Plimouth ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... known to all the vagrant train," then the little stone church, and beyond I came to the blossoming furze, unprofitably gay, where the village master taught his little school. A bright young woman teaches there now, and it is certain that she can write and cipher too, for I saw "sums" on the blackboard, and I also saw where she had written some very pretty mottoes on the wall with colored chalk, a thing I am sure that Paddy Byrne never thought ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... grateful to you," she said. "I do not even dare dream zat I could go to my father," sighed Inez, "but perhaps you will be of so great kindness as to take him a message from me. I cannot mail it—he is not allowed to receive letters zat are not read, and we have no secret cipher ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... of February, 1796, Tone, who had sailed from Belfast the previous June, arrived at Havre from New York, possessed of a hundred guineas and some useful letters of introduction. One of these letters, written in cipher, was from the French Minister at Philadelphia to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Charles Lacroix; another was to the American Minister in France, Mr. Monroe, afterwards President of the United States, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... about their persons somewhat ostentatiously. Pedro had even caused Manuela to stick a brace of small pistols and a large knife in her belt; and, as Indian women are sometimes known to be capable of defending themselves as vigorously as men, she was by no means a cipher in the effective strength ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... of infinitives relate to the same object, the word to should be used before the first verb and omitted before the others; as, "He taught me to read, write, and cipher." "The most accomplished way of using books at present is to serve them as some do lords— learn their titles and then ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... the Primer year wore away; and one day, toward its close, in the presence of Miss Clara, two solemn-looking gentlemen requested certain little boys to cipher and several little girls to spell, and sent others to the blackboard or the chart, while to Emmy Lou was handed a Primer, open at Page 17, which she was told to read. Knowing Page 17 by heart, and identifying it by its picture, ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... situation of the said minister and his master, the Nabob, declaring, "that the minister did hold without control the unparticipated and entire administration, with all the powers annexed to that government,—the Nabob being, as he ever must be in the hands of some person, a mere cipher in his" (the minister's). And having thus stated the subordination of the minister to the Resident, and the subordination of the Nabob to the minister, he did naturally declare, "that the first share of the responsibility would rest upon the said Resident" And he did further ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... "Pandolphe" wears a flowing wig under his cocked hat, and sits on a throne in rococo style. A copy of the book was purchased for the royal library, and is still to be seen at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, with the crown and cipher of his Most Christian ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... assertion proved nothing but extreme self-satisfaction. Accordingly, as she could not afford to send her daughters to school as well as the boys, she decided to educate them herself. Everybody who could read, write, and cipher was supposed to be able to teach in those days, and Mrs. Caldwell undertook the task without a doubt of her own capacity. But Aunt Victoria was ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... her hastily, before misgivings had time to assail him, and when they did, he hoped for the best. For a painter's portfolio is, after all, hardly less confidential than a diary, and may be on occasion almost as compromising, in spite of the fact that the records it contains are written in cipher. ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... besides, she had a sort of an instinctive knowledge that it would create a sensation and make her of consequence—in short, she was to act in a sort of triple capacity, as parent, lover, and bride. Here, on the contrary, she was aware that her consent would stand as a mere cipher, and, once given, would never be more heard of. Liberty of opinion is an attitude many people quite lose themselves in. When once they attempt to think, it makes confusion worse confounded; so it is much better to take that labour off their hands, and settle the matter for them. It would ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... looking over part of your stock. You seem to have undervalued these cups and saucers. They are very rare, and if you had a full set of them they would be almost priceless. This is old Spode," he continued, pointing to the cipher on the ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... you know, Arthur, even if they didn't expect anyone like us to get hold of these maps and sketches, that doesn't mean that they would make everything on them so plain that you could guess it at first sight. That sort of mark is awfully easy to understand when you have the key, but it's as bad as a cipher if ...
— The Belgians to the Front • Colonel James Fiske
... children; a concubine had provided the heir to the throne, and had in consequence been raised to the rank of Western Empress, subordinate only to the childless Eastern Empress. Of the latter, there is nothing to be said, except that she remained a cipher to the end of her life; of the concubine, a great deal has been said, much of which is untrue. Taken from an ordinary Manchu family into the palace, she soon gained an extraordinary influence over Hsien Feng, and began to make her ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... telegraph like a living thing was unfolding the secrets of events at that moment transpiring at the furthest extremity of the Kingdom! Eagerly seizing the slip of paper which was gliding through the machine, he glanced over the cabalistic cipher there traced. "Lyons—Marseilles—Rome—Algeria," he murmured. "All goes well." And while the wonderful register, like a thing of life, still whizzed, clicked and delivered its magic scroll, covered with characters unintelligible to all but him for whose eye they ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... that he still has to live; and observing that Aramis has dropped a handkerchief, and placed his foot upon it, he hastens to drag it from under his boot, and present it to him with a most gracious bow and smile. A coronet and cipher on the embroidered cambric attract notice, and draw down a shower of raillery upon the head of the mousquetaire, who, in order to shield the honour of a lady, is compelled to deny that the handkerchief is his. His companions walk away, and Aramis reproaches D'Artagnan ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... made all pleadings vain. In fact, as I ascertained by the following cablegram which came into my hands, Napoleon's instructions for the French evacuation were in Mexico at the very time of this pathetic scene between him and Carlotta. The despatch was in cipher when I received it, but was translated by the telegraph operator at my headquarters, who long before had mastered the key ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 5 • P. H. Sheridan
... sudden chuckle of comprehension. "And not a very obscure cipher, Watson," said he. "Why, of course, it is Italian! The A means that it is addressed to a woman. 'Beware! Beware! Beware!' ...
— The Adventure of the Red Circle • Arthur Conan Doyle
... later period his promotion to the rank of sub-director. His routine habits then became great experience; his manners and his silence concealed his lack of education, and his absolute nullity was a recommendation, for a cipher was needed. The government was afraid of displeasing both parties in the Chamber by selecting a man from either side; it therefore got out of the difficulty by resorting to the rule of seniority. That is how Thuillier became sub-director. Mademoiselle Thuillier, knowing that her brother abhorred ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... she read could be always construed in two or three senses. But only her father knew the actual meaning which the writer intended to convey. For hours she would often be engaged in reading them. Sometimes, too, telegrams in cipher arrived, and she would then obtain the little, dark-blue covered book from the safe, and by its aid decipher the messages from the ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... the house he began to write and cipher on the walls, the blinds, the table, everything, in the most abstracted manner. He frequently composed on slips of paper, which he afterward misplaced, so that he had great difficulty in finding them. At one time, indeed, he forgot his own name ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... that, he was inferior to his wife in point of social evolution, for she had learned, from certain episodes which still filled her with mortification, that fibbing was bad form. To Mrs. Lloyd Avalons, her husband was a mere cipher. Placed before her, he added nothing to her value; placed after and in the background, he multiplied her importance tenfold. There were certain privileges accruing to a woman with a husband, certain immunities that followed in the train of matrimony. Mrs. Lloyd Avalons was ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... Office. The author of Eminent Victorians is pleased to describe "poor Mr. Russell" as little better than a fly buzzing in Manning's "spider's web of delicate and clinging diplomacy." It is not in the memory of those who were behind the scenes that Odo Russell was such a cipher. Though suave in address, he was by no means deficient in decision or force of character, as was evidenced when, some months later, he explained to Mr. Gladstone his reasons for stating to Bismarck, without instructions from the ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... me in 1829, pulling fodder. I say Abe was awful lazy, he would laugh and talk, and crack jokes all the time, didn't love work, but did dearly love his pay." He liked to lie under a shade tree, or up in the loft of the cabin and read, cipher, or scribble. At night he ciphered by the light of the fire on the wooden fire shovel. He practised stump oratory by repeating the sermons, and sometimes by preaching himself to his brothers and sister. His gifts ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... these ranks to watch and try young girls for crimes often committed against them when the male criminal goes free. Think of a single one of these votes on election day outweighing all the women in the country. Is it not humiliating for me to sit, a political cipher, and see the colored man in my employ, to whom I have taught the alphabet, go out on election day and say by his vote what shall be done with my tax money. How ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... artist ventured to go into a painstaking and elaborate description of one of these grisly things—the critics would skin him alive. Well, let it go, it cannot be helped; Art retains her privileges, Literature has lost hers. Somebody else may cipher out the whys and the wherefores and the consistencies of it—I haven't ...
— Quotations from the Works of Mark Twain • David Widger
... especially of arithmetic and grammar, by the glib repetition of rules was a system that he held in contempt. With the public, ability to recite the rules of such subjects as those went farther than any actual demonstration of the power to cipher correctly or write grammatically. ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... looked at the girl. She had shrunk into herself until she was almost as dim and unimpressive, as cipher-like as when Norman first beheld her. Also she seemed at least five years less than her twenty. "Dorothy," said Norman, "you will let me ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... the commission of crimes under the direction of officers attached to the Embassy of which I was in charge, or of other German Secret Service agents. The evidence for this consists of certain cipher telegrams from the military authorities in Germany, addressed to the Embassy in Washington; these were decoded in England and said to contain instructions for outrages to be committed in Canadian ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... sources for information. I am here because he sent me to 'Go, look, see,' and report. I have been wiring him ever since you started from the coast, and since you became president. Your censor has very kindly allowed me to use our cipher." ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... which attributed the massacre to a Huguenot conspiracy should obtain no credence at Rome. If the Cardinal's enemies were overthrown without his participation, it would confirm the report that he had become a cipher in the State. He desired to vindicate for himself and his family the authorship of the catastrophe. Catherine could not tolerate their claim to a merit which she had made her own; and there was competition between them ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... rebuke, but chiefly her self-control. The bully in him wanted to see tears, to see her overawed and humble; she had too much assurance for a social cipher. If she did not realize that fact yet, it was for him to let ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... letter. This last was much soiled and crumpled. It was torn nearly in two, across the middle, as if a design, in the first instance, to tear it entirely up as worthless, had been altered, or stayed, in the second. It had a large black seal, bearing the D—— cipher very conspicuously, and was addressed, in a diminutive female hand, to D——" the Minister, himself. It was thrust carelessly, and even, as it seemed, contemptuously, into one of the uppermost divisions ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... Queen and the foreign powers was carried on in cipher. That to which she gave the preference can never be detected; but the greatest patience is requisite for its use. Each correspondent must have a copy of the same edition of some work. She selected "Paul and Virginia." The page and line in which the letters required, and ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... chapter and verse, with big headings; then I'll get the thing printed, and carry it about with me, and study it nights and mornings. But Mabel might find it in my clothes: she is welcome to my secrets, but this is not mine. I might have it printed in cipher; but then I should be sure to lose the key. O, confound it all, I'll have to chance it: I'll be sure to slip up somewhere, and then there'll be a row. Well, why borrow trouble? Let's gather the flowers while we may: only there are none just here, and it is too ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... 20th of April I proceeded to Dresden, with the embassy secretaries and attaches, for this purpose. About midnight between the 20th and 21st there came a loud and persistent knocking at my door in the hotel, and there soon entered a telegraph messenger with an enormously long despatch in cipher. Hardly had I set the secretaries at work upon it than other telegrams began to come, and a large part of the night was given to deciphering them. They announced the declaration of war and instructed me to convey to the various parties interested ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... pocket and Gimblet heard a crackling of paper. "I am thinking out a hiding-place for some valuable documents that are in my possession, and when I have decided on it I will write to you and explain where I have put them, using a cipher of which the key is enclosed in an envelope I have here in my pocket, and which I will leave with you when I go. Take charge of it for me, and in the course of the next week or so I will send you a cipher letter describing where the papers are ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... Hill in the year of 1896, and there remained for eight years receiving instruction at the hand of a loyal band of self-sacrificing teachers, who not only taught me how to read, write and to cipher, but in addition they taught me lessons of thrift and industry which have proven to be the main saving point ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards |
