"Clew" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mentioned the fact that the majority of men felt it necessary to talk down to women, instead of sharing with them their best thoughts and most vital interests, Flora looked reflective, as if in that direction might lie the clew to the insufferable stupidity which she often found in the young ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... however, I shall not commence, till I have again seen some of old Louis's old-fashioned Galanteries at Versailles. Rosamond's bower, you, and I, and Tom Hearne know, was a labyrinth: but as my territory will admit of a very short clew, I lay aside all thoughts of a mazy habitation: though a bower is very different from an arbour, and must have more chambers than one. In short, I both know, and don't know what it should be. I am almost afraid I must go and read Spenser, and wade through ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... insufficient where the specific properties and heterogeneous nature of matter come into play; it is to be feared that, by persisting in the pursuit of laws, we may find our course suddenly arrested by an impassible chasm. The principle of unity is lost sight of, and the guiding clew is rent asunder whenever any specific and peculiar kind of action manifests itself amid the active forces of nature. The law of equivalents and the numerical proportions of composition, so happily recognized by modern chemists, and proclaimed under the ancient form of atomic symbols, still ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... heel, he left the apartment. By some means he obtained a clew to the retreat of Louise. Mounting his horse, accompanied by a single page, he galloped to the convent of Chaillot. As there had been no warning of his approach, the grating still remained closed. He arrived just after the poor girl ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... at all introspective she might have found a clew as to her feeling for Hugh in the unusual care with which she arranged her hair, and her decision at the last moment to discard the pale-green gown lying in state on the bed for a white satin one embroidered at long ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... moment,—it blew rather too fresh for the mizen,—and then their bosoms were distended, and their bow-lines hauled. How the fore and main-tacks got aboard I could not tell, though it was done while my eyes were on the upper sails. I caught a glimpse of the fore-sheet, however, as the clew was first flapping violently, and then was brought under the restraint of its own proper, powerful purchase. The spanker had been hauled out previously, to help the ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... was a clean job. They had got away with the plates. We didn't have a clew. We thought, naturally, that they'd make for Mexico or some South American country to start their printing press. And we had the ports and border netted up. Nothing could have gone out across the border or, through any port. All the customs officers ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... brush. It soon brightened sufficiently to reveal the unmistakable gleam of gold, and was a foreign coin of some sort, possibly of Austrian coinage; but the letters which it had borne, and the figures, had been worn much away; and one side was worn quite smooth, so as to give no clew to what had been ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... and we never got a clew. It couldn't have been burglars, for the safe had been opened by the combination in the proper way. People must have begun to talk, for one afternoon in comes Alice—that's my wife—and the boy and girl, and Alice stamps her foot, and her eyes flash, and she cries out, 'The lying wretches—Tom, ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... wealthy Burlington real estate broker, had mysteriously disappeared some months before, and it was supposed that he had met with foul play. Despite the efforts of Dyke Darrel and other detectives, no clew had yet been found of the missing man. The detective had met Sibyl at her father's house, and had regarded her as one both beautiful and accomplished. To meet her as now was ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... plunged into the next sea. And, strangely enough, within the hour they fell in with and passed a small gun-boat, undoubtedly British. She was rigged as a barquentine. Her three topmasts were housed, and she was hove-to under the lee clew of her close-reefed topsail and a small storm-trysail. She was being flung about in a manner that was absolutely appalling to look at, at one moment standing almost upright, and anon thrown down on her beam-ends at such an extreme angle that, to the onlookers, her decks seemed ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... that Barras himself did not believe in his death, and gave to Josephine all her energy and presence of mind. She busied herself in endeavoring to find a clew to this horrible rumor; and she found that Bonaparte's enemies had spread it, and that only those to whom his death would be welcome, and his return be objectionable, had circulated ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... ... passing sad," murmured Master Skyffington, shaking his head, "but methinks I recollect ... hem ... some six years ago ... a quest which led to a clew ... er ... that is ... two ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... and, in an incredibly short time, the whole shore of the lake was twinkling with lights borne high in the hands of men who were searching. Two boats were rowing back and forth on the lake, with bright lights at stern and prow; and loud shouts filled the air. No answer; no clew: at last, from the island, came a pistol shot,—the signal agreed on. Every man stood still and listened. Slowly the boats came back to shore, drawing behind them Hetty's boat; bringing one of the oars, and also Hetty's shawl, which ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... crude theological idea of my own, instead of simply presenting the God of the Bible! I can never thank you enough, Miss Marsden, for your strong good sense that has dissipated my fog-bank of words. I think I see the way into light. You have placed a clew in my hands which I trust will lead, not only me, but others into peace. I fear I did present to you a calm, unimpassioned, inflexible Being this morning,—a God of purposes and decrees and remorseless will; and I have felt before that this was the God of theology and religious philosophy, ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... simpler to detect and punish offenders than in the case of mere individuals unincorporated, for the very fact that a corporation keeps books and acts under an elaborate set of by-laws and regulations gives a clew to its proceedings, and indicates a source of information as to all its acts. One clerk may therefore reveal, and properly reveal, books and letters which shall incriminate "those above"; one employee may show ten thousand persons ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... sight of the other ships of the squadron, which had hitherto kept us company, notwithstanding the violence of the preceding storms. Neither was this our sole misfortune, for next morning, while endeavouring to hand the top-sails, the clew-lines and bunt-lines broke, and the sheets being half flown, every seam in the top-sails was soon split from top to bottom. The main top-sail shook so violently in the wind, that it carried away the top lanthorn, and even endangered ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... if you had a clew," said Martinus. He was as white as death, though naturally rubicund, and without another word he walked on. Robert looked after him and saw the square shoulders drooping a little. He had not the slightest doubt of the man's guilt, ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... from the British army. He was arrested on his return, and compelled to serve out the remainder of his term of service. The death of an uncle in India recruited his finances, and he returned to New York. It afterwards appeared that he had some clew to Peter Belgrave's missing million, and he was therefore anxious to recover the possession of the wife who ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... escort to the next encampments. They had set out southwest to the Mascoutins, Mandans, and perhaps, also, the Omahas. They were now circling back northeastward toward the Sault between Lake Michigan and Lake Superior. How far westward had they gone? Only two facts gave any clew. Radisson reports that mountains lay far inland; and the Jesuits record that the explorers were among tribes that used coal. This must have been a country far west of the Mandans and Mascoutins and within sight of at least the Bad Lands, or that stretch of ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... usual necessitous state. Balboa then consented to their extending their incursions to more distant lands, as they had already wasted and ruined the immediate environs of Antigua, and he sent Valdivia to Spain to apprise the admiral of the clew he had gained to the South Sea, and the reported wealth of those regions. Valdivia took with him fifteen thousand pieces of gold, which belonged to the King as his fifth, and a charge to petition for the thousand ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... of the skipper were obeyed. The Languedocian made a third sailor. All bore a hand. Not satisfied with brailing up, they furled the sails, lashed the earrings, secured the clew-lines, bunt-lines, and leech-lines, and clapped preventer-shrouds on the block straps, which thus might serve as back-stays. They fished the mast. They battened down the ports and bulls'-eyes, which is a method of walling up a ship. These evolutions, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... declared Viola firmly. "And while I feel, as you do, about Jean, still it is a clew that must not be ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... of her jewelry, except what she was wearing, had been stolen. As no arrest had yet been made the references to the affair were naturally guarded. The paragraph even concluded without the usual formula as to the police having a clew. On the whole, I put the paper down with a slight feeling of relief. I felt that it might have ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Sir Bromley followed the clew thus given him, and behind the wall, in a secret chamber, came upon Garnet and his companion, Oldcorne, who, since the coming of the authorities, had been fed through the reed with broths and ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... clew to give me?" he cried out in agony—"some way by which I can trace her and learn ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... sea-weed, whirl'd in dazzling rings; Subtle and variable as flickering flames, Sight could not trace their evanescent changes, Nor comprehend their motions, till minute And curious observation caught the clew To this live labyrinth,—where every one, By instinct taught, perform'd its little task; —To build its dwelling and its sepulchre, From its own essence exquisitely modell'd; There breed, and die, and leave a progeny, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various
... Though of like colour, there was no bird of such form as that. There was neither beast nor fish belonging to the sea that could show such a shape above its surface. That sable globe, rounded like a sea-hedgehog, or a Turk's-head clew, and black as a tarred tackle-block, could be nothing else than the woolly pate of Snowball, ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... want it to be done, don't you? Well, it depends only on you. There must be some one among you who knows something about this matter. Let him come forward and tell us what he has seen or heard. Remember that the smallest trifle may be a clew to the crime. You would be as bad as the incendiary himself, if you concealed him. Just think it ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... Geoffrey Annersley, but no address. The baggage train had been destroyed by fire at the time of the accident, so there were no trunks to give evidence. The small traveling bag she had carried with her bore neither initial nor geographical designation, and contained nothing which gave any clew as to its owner's identity save that she was presumably a person of wealth, for her possessions were exquisite and obviously costly. A small jewel box contained various valuable rings, one or two pendants and a ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... on trial has remained unknown. Any one who has engaged in the fascinating pursuit of elusive historical truth will understand, therefore, my warm delight, and my warm gratitude to Mr. Marsden, when this clew to hitherto unpublished facts concerning Hudson was ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier
... not lime-juicers beating their way aft with a belaying pin. They could sail a ship with two-thirds the crew of a Britisher with her clumsy yellow hemp sails and belly you could lose a dinghy in. Mind, I don't say the English aren't handy in a ship and that they wouldn't clew up a topsail clean at the edge of hell. What we are on the seas came over from them. But we bettered it, William, and they knew it; and, naturally enough, laid out to sail around us. I don't blame England, but ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the influence of the relative scarcity or plenty of the various groups or agents of production, as unqualified as that just made must be incorrect. It gives no clew to the importance of interacting factors. Here, as elsewhere in economics, many separate causes meet to produce a result. The disentanglement of their effects is frequently so difficult as to make more ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... brave boys, comes the best of the fun, It's hands about ship and reef topsails in one; So it's lay aloft, topman, as the hellum goes down, And clew down your topsails as the mainyard goes round. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... clue. Probably the rascals took to their heels during the hours of darkness, making for some small railroad station. Now, I propose to go straightway, mount my horse, and scour the country in search of information. If I find a clew I shall follow it up; and so, if you don't see me by to-morrow morning, Constance, you may know that I ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... awaiting her moment of entrance, her ear caught the dialogue going on upon the stage between two of the gypsies, "conveying the impression that Meg was no longer to be feared or respected—that she was no longer in her right mind." This furnished her with a clew to the character, and led her to present it upon the stage as the weird and startling figure which afterward became so famous. Of course, the first performance was but a sketch of her later portrayals of Meg Merrilies, yet she made a profound impression. "I had not thought that I had done anything ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... reinstating these same heirs in their rights, I've regained my lost money, and received a handsome reward in addition; but in this case all is darkness; there isn't a single gleam of light—not the slightest clew. If I could only find them! But how can I search for people whose names I don't even know—for people who have escaped all the inquiries of the police? And where shall I look for them—in Europe, in America? It would be sheer madness! To whom, ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... sleep. He kept assuring himself there was nothing to fear, yet he did fear. Dark possibilities rose on his imagination—in his excitement at finding the treasure he might have left something, some betraying mark or object. Was there any way in which the bandits could have obtained a clew to his identity; could they have guessed, or discovered by some underground channel of espionage, that he was the man who had robbed them? Over and over he told himself it was impossible, but he could not lift from his spirit a dread that made him toss in restless torment. ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... from the astonishment produced by this discovery I inquired whether other shamans had such books. "Yes," said Swimmer, "we all have them." Here then was a clew to follow up. A bargain was made by which he was to have another blank book into which to copy the formulas, after which the original was bought. It is now deposited in the library of the Bureau of Ethnology. The remainder of the time until the return was occupied in getting an understanding ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... household have failed to find him. Our messengers have been sent in every direction without discovering the slightest clew to ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... threshold; picking his way daintily over heaps of litter on the floor. Yes, the room was full of the scent. But, whence the scent emanated, Lad could not, for the life of him, tell. The room gave him no clew. And, after a few minutes of futile ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... opposite the canoe, peered a swarthy, sinister countenance and I recognized the features of Cuthbert Mackenzie. I took aim at him, but before I could fire he was gone. My brain seemed in a whirl. I had found the clew—the fiendish clew—to the attack that threatened to cost us our lives. Bent on revenge, Mackenzie had traveled up country to intercept us on the way to the fort—to kill me, and to capture Flora. He had bribed the savages to help him, and he and his ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... young officer was about to retrace his way, when an exclamation from Heiss recalled him. The backwoodsman had found a clew to the labyrinth. An opening led into the thicket. This had been concealed by a perfect curtain of closely woven vines, covered with thick foliage and flowers. It appeared at first to be a natural door to the avenue which led from this spot, but a slight ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... may train his eye, and be able to observe things that otherwise would pass unnoticed. In this way he may be able to save animals from pain, as a horse from an ill-fitting harness. He may also be able to see little things which may give him the clew to great things and so be able ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... how in ancient days three warriors came from Green Ierne, to dwell in the wild glens of Cowal and Lochow,—how one of them, the swart Breachdan, all for the love of blue-eyed Eila, swam the Gulf, once with a clew of thread, then with a hempen rope, last with an iron chain, but this time, alas! the returning tide sucks down the over-tasked hero into its swirling vortex,—how Diarmid O' Duin, i.e. son of "the Brown," slew with his own hand the mighty boar, whose head still scowls over the escutcheon of the ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... often wondered how his neighbours could be so fond of it; but a humble sort of acquiescence in what was held to be good, had become a strong habit of that new self which had been developed in him since he had found Eppie on his hearth: it had been the only clew his bewildered mind could hold by in cherishing this young life that had been sent to him out of the darkness into which his gold had departed. By seeking what was needful for Eppie, by sharing the effect that everything produced on her, he had himself come to appropriate the forms ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... Then following the clew that, in the hands of the Abbe Faria, had been so skilfully used to guide him through the Daedalian labyrinth of probabilities, he thought that the Cardinal Spada, anxious not to be watched, had entered the creek, concealed his little barque, followed the line marked by the notches in the rock, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... unoccupied, and who had doubtless made their escape as soon as the affray was over; but the examination of their effects, which will be made by the police in the morning, will doubtless furnish a clew by which they will be ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... misgivings and fears in which Ferris had lived was suddenly without a clew; he could not look upon the pallid visage of the priest lest he should now at last find there that subtle expression of deceit; the whirl of his thoughts kept him silent; Don Ippolito ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... physiology. He turned his attention to the newly-discovered power by which he tested the activity of organic substances; and it is plain, from his manner of treating the subject, that he leaned to the idea that the chemical process going on in the living body of animals furnished a clew to the phenomena of life, if it was not life itself. This may be inferred from the title of the book published in 1797—"Ueber die gereizte Muskel und Nervenfaser, mit Vermuthungen ueber den chemischen Process des Lebens, in Thieren ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... She had caught the contagion of his enthusiasm, though she had no clew as to how this great time-saving ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... resurrection until the age of Shakspeare. So that, notwithstanding a gulf of nineteen centuries and upwards separates Shakspeare from Euripides, the last of the surviving Greek tragedians, the one is still the nearest successor of the other, just as Connaught and the islands in Clew Bay are next neighbors to America, although three thousand watery columns, each of a cubic mile in dimensions, ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... Clem. For she had quite set her heart on the romance that had commenced in dots and dashes culminating in orange blossoms—a Wired Love. But now, to her vexation, she saw her anticipations liable to be set at naught, and herself unable to obtain even a clew to the trouble. Like the "line man," who goes up and down to find why the wires will not work, she could not find the "break" anywhere, and decided that romances, whether "wired" or taken in the ordinary way, were certainly very unwieldy ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... and the king are named together. When Babylon became supreme it was usual to swear by Marduk and the local gods as well. The significance of these oaths for historical purposes is great, both as indicating political relationships, and as often affording by the name of the king the only clew to the date of the document. Mr. King, in his edition of the Chronicle,(141) and Dr. Lindl,(142) have made skilful use of these oaths in ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... came to me and entreated me to leave the city the next morning. She said her house was watched, and it was possible that some clew to me might be obtained. I refused to take her advice. She pleaded with an earnest tenderness, that ought to have moved me; but I was in a bitter, disheartened mood. I was weary of flying from pillar to post. I had been chased ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... got a clew. When Davies was here, he said he'd like to go fishing and some of the boys ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... the three banking houses at which his money was deposited. The check for seven thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine pounds fourteen shillings was drawn upon the London and Western Counties Bank, and that would have afforded the manager some clew even if he had not been well ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... order was given, it was the duty of the cook to execute it; and, ordinarily, this is about the only seaman's duty which the "doctor" is called upon to perform. Harvey promptly cast off the sheet, and the hands at the clew-garnets hauled up the foresail. The flying-gib and top-gallant sails had already been furled, and the canvas on the brig was soon reduced to the fore-topsail, fore-topmast staysail, and spanker; and these sails hung like wet rags, the vessel drifting with ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... said Piero haughtily. "But the times are perilous; and later, if thou would'st seek me, thou hast the clew. But of the mission, to which I am sworn in secrecy, let it not be known that I have so much as named it—it would argue ill for me and thee. And the clew is for thy using only. Meanwhile, forget that I have spoken. The Ave Maria ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... with an ingenuity and boldness which left no doubt that it had been effected by clever and practiced hands. The detective officers first employed having failed to discover the offenders, the threads of the imperfect and broken clew were placed in my hands, to see if my somewhat renowned dexterity, or luck, as many of my brother officers preferred calling it, would enable me to piece them out to a satisfactory conclusion. By the description obtained of a man who had been seen ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... Perhaps the two obviously corrupt words in italics may contain a clew to the right reading, ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... then?" exclaimed the general, triumphant in his clew. "No, he didn't tell. He never will tell now. I have learned from a picket boat that was captured last night by our patrols, that nothing was seen of the ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... exclamation of assurance that he was awake to the suppositious landlord who had called, for the sense of some sound but stilled on the second of his waking was strong within him. He fastened upon the vague starlit space of the little window to give him a clew to his situation. Then he remembered Doom, and, with the window for his key, built up the puzzle of his room, wondering at ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... when May with heavy clouds and slant rains was making the city as miserable as possible, Ethel had a caller. His card bore a name quite unknown, and his appearance gave no clew to ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... this fellow—he's a spy. Apparently, he won't have anything incriminating about him. My impression is that he's in the army and hopes to get himself captured by his friends. Yet he may desert and take a chance of getting into Germany through Holland. About the only clew there is, is the intimation that he's related to the prisoner. He may look like him. We've been trying to get in communication with Dieppe, where this transport is expected to dock to-morrow, but the wires seem to be shot ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... There's your clew," said Stella, turning to Ted. "The fellow who posted this notice was disguised in a wolfskin so that he could sneak up to the house unnoticed by the Chinaman, or, if seen, he would make ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... notice that Bertram was looking at her in all astonishment, and in vain seeking a clew to her conduct. "This is too much!" cried she, half soliloquizing. "Love cannot stand this! Love! away with the word—I would despise myself if I could find a spark of this love in my heart!" She pressed her hands to her breast, as if she wished thereby to extinguish the flames ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... himself, resigned the work he valued, put the seas between himself and Deena, only to be baffled at every turn. For two months he had used his utmost acumen in prosecuting the search without even finding a clew, and when finally he made his great discovery, it was by yielding to the impulse of the moment rather than ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... the men of the detail—every one of them as anxious as myself—on a long and fruitless search beside the river, without coming upon a clew. Returning to Mr. Gray's, and dismissing the men, I sat upon the veranda alone, sadly reflecting upon the absence of my young ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... her elbows on her knees, and her chin on her hands. She wished she had not seen Rawson-Clew that day; she wished she was not here, she wished there was no such thing as a blue daffodil; she was vaguely angry and dissatisfied, but not willing to face things. It was unlikely that the man ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... Note: Variant spellings, particularly bowlder (boulder), clew (clue) and vail (veil), have been retained. Also, the Table of Contents was missing ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... child had a soothing effect upon Mr. Linwood, and he now recovered rapidly from the sad and almost hopeless condition in which she had found him. When able to converse, without danger of a relapse, he told Clotelle of his fruitless efforts to obtain a clew to her whereabouts after old Mrs. Miller had sold her to the slave-trader. In answer to his daughter's inquiries about his family affairs up to the time that he ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... outward-bound, and Mr. Dodge had come abroad quite as green as he was now going home ripe, this traveller of six months' finish did not escape diver commentaries that literally cut him up "from clew to ear-ring," and which flew about in the rigging much as active birds flutter from branch to branch in a tree. The subject of all this wit, however, remained profoundly, not to say happily, ignorant of the sensation he had produced, being ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... troubled Dave in those days was the question of his identity, and when one of his school rivals spoke of him as a "poor-house nobody" it disturbed him greatly. Receiving something of a clew, he went on a long voyage, as related in "Dave Porter in the South Seas," and located his uncle, Dunston Porter, and learned for the first time that his father, David Breslow Porter, was also living, ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer
... cottage several times. High words had generally attended his visits. I had once asked my uncle who he was, and the fact that an answer was refused, was enough to assure me that a better knowledge of him would assist me in finding a clew to my own history. ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... as I knew it, in my vague exploration of that scene of beauty, of those scarcely stirring, stilly burning trees, of that shimmering-fronded fern, of that misty splendour, I was hunting for the soul of it all, for the informing spirit of it all. Harkness's erotics gave ardour to my search, but no clew. I lost him, left him behind, and never found him again. He fell into the Garden of Priapus, I doubt. As for me, I believed that I was now looking upon a Dryad. I was looking certainly at a spirit informed. A being, irradiate and quivering with life and ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... already gathered round his name during his lifetime. He has been so written about, so talked about, so riddled with praise or blame, that, to those who have never seen him in the flesh, he has become almost a tradition, a myth—and one runs the risk of losing all clew to ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... remained clear and distinct. And the question that it had brought to me, the chain of thoughts that had linked themselves to it, lingered through the morning, and made me feel sure that there was an untold secret in Falconer's life and that the clew to it must be sought in the history of ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... said Holmes. "As to the letters," he continued, glancing over them, "they are very commonplace. Absolutely no clew in them to Mr. Angel, save that he quotes Balzac once. There is one remarkable point, however, which will no doubt ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... through me, that left me numbed and helpless. For an instant, I stumbled on, half-dazed; then, gradually, my self-control came back, and with it a certain fierce joy, a hot exultation. Here, at last, was something definite, tangible, a clew ready to my hand, if only I were clever enough to follow it up; a ray of light in the darkness! I could feel my cheeks burning, and my heart leaping at ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... whom slavery had scattered. Like the ancient prophets also, his heart was ever burdened by the waywardness of the people whom he exhorted and warned. In young Waldo appeared a joyousness which nothing could quench. From the moment she obtained a clew to his unexpected behavior, everything in his manner accorded with the surgeon's explanation. In his boyish face and expression there was not a trace of the fanatical or abnormal. He seemed to think of Heaven as he did of his own home, and the thought of going to the one inspired much ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... was of the greatest assistance to me during that most anxious day. But we found no clew, nor discovered any reason for the Vicomte's disappearance. I went back in the evening to the Hotel Clericy, and there found Madame de Clericy and Lucille awaiting me, with that calmness which is admirable when there is nothing else ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... before, when he had engaged the taxicab and had started in pursuit of the limousine Kate Gilbert had entered. Prale wondered what Farland had been doing, whether he had discovered anything concerning Kate Gilbert, whether he had found a clew that would lead to an unraveling of ...
— The Brand of Silence - A Detective Story • Harrington Strong
... manufacture of this garniture the spangles are strung on a thread which, if once broken, allows them to drop away one by one, till you can almost follow a woman so arrayed by the sequins that fall from her. Perhaps it was the delicate nature of the clew thus offered that pleased him, perhaps it was a recognition of the irony of fate in thus making a trap for unwary mortals out of their vanities. Whatever it was, the smile with which he turned his eye upon the table toward which he had thus been led was very eloquent. But ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... a deity named Pasht, who sits in the hall, very big, very grave, carved of black stone, and very ludicrous, wearing a dog's head. I will just mention the Rosetta Stone, with a Greek inscription, and another in Egyptian characters which gave the clew to a whole field of history; and shall pretermit all further handling ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... there ain't nothin' new—no clew—nothin' you can work on?" The speaker felt assured there was not, but it might be an encouragement to suggest ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the subject, the earnest contents, convinced me that I now held the clew of that mystery which had baffled me so long, and that the missing letter said to have been lost at Le Noir's Landing was at last in my possession. It needed not this additional proof of treachery to convince me that my suspicions had been correct, and that, next to the arch-fiend Bainrothe, ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... having done so once, the mistake might have occurred again. Taking out his partner's bunch of keys, he soon found one that fitted and opened the drawers. He had half completed his task, without finding any clew to the missing securities, when he was interrupted by the sound of the opening of the front door, and had but time to slam the drawers shut and pocket the keys when the night clerk of the hotel stepped inside the apartment and, closely followed by a sandy-haired man, walked ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... now found what appeared to her a clew to his whole plan. He was, or pretended to be, her guardian; he had been appointed, or pretended to have been appointed, by her father. It might have been so. Edith could well imagine how in previous years he had made this false friend his executor and the guardian of his child; ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... that as he was the first discoverer of those Indies, so he was really of all the mainland; and to him the credit is due. For it was he that put the thread into the hands of the rest by which they found the clew to more distant parts. It was not necessary for this that he should personally visit every part, any more than it is necessary to do so in taking possession of an estate; as the jurists hold." This generous protest by Las Casas should receive the assent of all geographers. ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... his son to sea,—he suddenly experienced religion. "I got it in New Orleans in '59," said Mr. Thompson, with the general suggestion of referring to an epidemic. "Enter ye the narrer gate. Parse me the beans." Perhaps this practical quality upheld him in his apparently hopeless search. He had no clew to the whereabouts of his runaway son; indeed, scarcely a proof of his present existence. From his indifferent recollection of the boy of twelve, he now expected to identify ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Thaddeus in the "noble pastime of snooping," as he called it. The house was searched by him in a casual sort of way from top to bottom for a clew to the mystery, but without avail. Several times he went below to the cellar, ostensibly to inspect his coal supply, really to observe the demeanor of Margaret, the cook. Barring an unusual pallor upon her cheek, she appeared to be as she always had been; but with the waitress it was different. ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... the mother's answers. She had been out at work all day; when she returned, Jenny was gone. Some one had seen her going up the road to the Munroes' that morning about ten o'clock. That was her only clew. ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... action. She had already so conquered herself as to be able to leave her own quiet room, and descend to that of her parents. There she would sit calmly for hours, listening attentively to the conversation, hoping to catch some word that might give her a clew. ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... the hearts of thousands of women all through the country, and particularly to the women "out West," as they have already to my own. This problem has been revolved in my mind again and again, but no clew has appeared by which to solve it; and I have laid it down hopelessly, feeling that there is no alternative but to submit and carry the burden as long as strength endures, and seeing no outlook for the future but in a brief period of ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... upon me," said Lawrence Croft to himself, "for when I wish to discover that, I shall simply ask her. What I wish now to know is whether, or not, she considers me at all as a lover. There surely must be something I can say which will give me a clew." "The Virginians, as a rule," he replied, "are certainly a very well-grown and ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... visualize a chemical combination because we have no experience upon which to found it. It is so fundamentally unlike a mechanical mixture that even our imagination can give us no clew to it. It is thinkable that the particles of two or more substances however fine, mechanically mixed, could be seen and recognized if sufficiently magnified; but in a chemical combination, say like iron sulphide, no amount of magnification could reveal the two elements of iron ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... who shall lift that wand of magic power, And the lost clew regain? The unfinished window in Aladdin's ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... no further clew to guide his search. It was destined that the last he was to know of her should be that she was thrown on the tender mercies of the world—her last friend gone, her last penny expended. She was buried out of his sight, not in the peaceful grave, with its tender associations, but buried alive in ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... of the merry-hearted kanaka crew ranged the cable, and others ran aloft to clew-up the sails, Packenham steered the brig between a narrow reef-bound passage till she brought up abreast a sweeping curve of sandy beach, shining white under the wooded spurs of a mountain peak two thousand feet above. Back from the beach ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... traveling two or three hours, and still Mercer and Anina gave us no clew to what we were about to see. It began to snow. Huge, soft flakes soon lay thick on ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... misunderstood. We know of countless criminal cases which we face powerless because we do indeed know the criminal but are unable to explain the causal connection between him and the crime, or because, again, we do not know the criminal, and judge from the facts that we might have gotten a clew if we had understood the psychological development of the crime. If we seek for "grounds,'' we may possibly think of so many of them as never to approach the right one; if we seek motives, we may be far misled because ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... with delight. And he himself harnessed the ancient horse to the creaking carriage. In the meantime Porthos was curious to behold. He imagined he had discovered a clew to the secret, and he felt pleased, because a visit to Athos, in the first place, promised him much satisfaction, and, in the next, gave him the hope of finding at the same time a good bed and good supper. The master, having got the carriage ready, ordered ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... sooner had this inner self refused to accept Mrs. Marteen's story than his mind began supplying reasons for her departure—and the very first held him spellbound. Was it another move in her perpetual game? Was she on the track of someone's secret? Was her scheming mind now following some new clew that must lead to the discovery of a hidden or forgotten crime—the burial place of some well entombed family ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... arrested. In another paper Kirk found something that relieved his mind a bit: evidently Williams had not died prior to the time of going to press, although he was reported in a critical condition. Kirk was interested to read that the police had a clew to the identity of the criminals and were confident of soon rounding them up. What mystified him most was the lack of detail. Evidently much had been printed previously, but he had no means of ascertaining what ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... of a professor may appear obscure and exaggerated to one who has not studied at a German university. But it gives the clew to the entire German system of university education, and accounts in great part for the high standard of scholarship. Only in part, for the innate proneness of the German mind to research must be credited with some share in the result. It is safe to say that Germany, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... and, hurrying upon deck, we found a large black cloud rolling on toward us from the southwest, and darkening the whole heavens. "Here comes Cape Horn!'' said the chief mate; and we had hardly time to haul down and clew up before it was upon us. In a few minutes a heavier sea was raised than I had ever seen, and as it was directly ahead, the little brig, which was no better than a bathing-machine, plunged into it, and all ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... development. St. John, the disciple of love, teaches very plainly that he who says he loves God must prove it by also loving man. If the whole of our training here is to be in loving and in living out our love, we certainly have the clew to the heavenly life. We shall continue in the doing of the things we have here learned to do. Life in glory will be earth's Christian life intensified and perfected. Heaven will not be a place of idle repose. Inaction can never be a condition ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... vouchsafed one clew. Her last victim, Jack Coughran, having fruitlessly laid at her feet both his heart and a five- hundred-foot creek claim on Bonanza, celebrated the misfortune by walking all of a night with the gods. In the midwatch of this night ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... just before she got aboard the ship that Rachel sent me a letter containing another to you, to be sent when all was right—I've carried it ever since—somehow or other I was afraid it would drop a clew to send it at first, and after it got a year old, I didn't ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... the matter. Parker had disappeared; he had gone to New York and there drawn heavily on his father. The journey which Colonel Hitchcock had made with his daughter had been largely for the purpose of finding Parker, and had failed. The boy was ashamed to come back. Now there was a clew, but it seemed unwise for the father to follow ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... night, Smoke continued to win. His method of play varied. Expert after expert, in the jam about the table, scribbled down his bets and numbers in vain attempts to work out his system. They complained of their inability to get a clew to start with, and swore that it was pure luck, though the most colossal streak of it they had ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... higher order holds the thread which guides it surely through life's labyrinths; but all the more on this account its attention is called to the erratic movement of other travellers around it. The genius who has the clew begins, therefore, to study these errors and to describe them for our behoof. It is a great mistake to suppose that the abnormal or preposterous phases which he describes are the fruit of self-study,—personal ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... next morning at daybreak. It was a little cloudy. The three days had been unusually fine. Savignon had been tracing this and that clew, and presently came upon a piece of wampum, with a curious Huron design at one end. And a little further on he found a trail where things had been roughly dragged. But he came ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... borrowed name and in the romance of early youth you knew and loved Alice (though in innocence and honour)? Your tender age, the difference of rank, forbade your union. Her father, discovering your clandestine correspondence, suddenly removed her from the country, and destroyed all clew for your inquiries. You lost sight of each other,—each was taught to believe the other dead. Alice was compelled by her father to marry Mr. Cameron; and after his death, her poverty and her love for her only child induced her to accept ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book IX • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... with the hours, And the moon has divers phases; And shall the mind Be racked to find A clew to Fortune's mazes? ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... are also met with in the manic-depressive group proper. So often a stupor begins with the same indefinite kind of upset as does another psychosis that the development may furnish no clew. Any condition where there is inactivity, scanty verbal productivity and poor intellectual performance resembles stupor. This triad of symptoms occurs in retarded depressions, in absorbed manic states and in perplexities. Negativism and catalepsy are never well developed ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... but passes along, to all appearance, much like other men. Insane, in the popular acceptation, he certainly is not; but it is equally certain that his mind is not in a healthy condition. Lord Byron was one of this class, and the fact gives us a clew to the anomalies of his character. His mother was subject to violent outbreaks of passion, not unlike those often witnessed in the insane. On the paternal side his case was scarcely better. The loose principles, the wild and reckless conduct of his father procured for him ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... foretopsail was next sheeted home and hoisted, and the head yards braced forward to help her round more quickly. In the meantime the anchor was catted and fished ready for sea, and as the wind came abaft the beam, the head yards were squared, and the fore-clew-garnets being let run, the ponderous folds of the foresail were allowed to fall towards the deck, just as the wind was brought right aft. Both sheets were then hauled aft, and the increasing breeze no longer finding escape beneath it, blew it out in a graceful swell which made it appear ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... Philadelphia friend, saying that he was seen on Friday last at the house of Mrs. K, a well-known Union lady in Hagerstown. Now this could not be true, for he did not leave Keedysville until Saturday; but the name of the lady furnished a clew by which we could probably track him. A telegram was at once sent to Mrs. K, asking information. It was transmitted immediately, but when the answer would be received was uncertain, as the Government almost ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... why the youth of Grande Anse should be any finer than the youth of other places; and it seemed to me that the baker's own statement of his never having been there might possibly furnish a clew.... Out of the thirty-five thousand inhabitants of St. Pierre and its suburbs, there are at least twenty thousand who never have been there, and most probably never will be. Few dwellers of the west coast visit the east coast: in fact, except among ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... fainting-fit Judith had watched him with tender anxiety, and it seemed to her that there was something strange in his manner that morning. She did not know what it was, but had she held any clew to his thoughts she would have perceived that Bertie was astonished and bewildered. He looked as if a dream had suddenly become a reality, as if a jest had turned into marvellous earnest. He smoked ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... reveal the secret of the affair. Mr. Critchet may live, and be able to give us a clew to his assailants; and until he recovers or dies, I think that I shall be justified in committing your ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... groans of those who fell a sacrifice to your accursed ambition? But, if the laboring earth does not expand her jaws; if the air you breathe is not commissioned to be the minister of death; yet hear it, and tremble! the eye of Heaven penetrates the darkest chambers of the soul; traces the leading clew through all the labyrinths which your industrious folly has devised; and you, however you may have screened yourselves from human eyes, must be arraigned, must lift your hands, red with the blood of those whose deaths you have procured, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... have been in regard to limited circles of friends. If the fulfilment of these claims were all that a righteous life required, the hunger and thirst would be stilled for many good men and women, and the clew of right living would lie ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... while they crowded for a closer peep at the mysterious dancers in a hand-organ. From that day to this the whereabouts of the dollships has remained a solemn secret from the knowledge of all but the Midgetts. And it was to them Bunch had gone for a clew ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various |
