"Decipher" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... frankly, girls, on your word of honor, was there ever more than one man in ten went through your hands who didn't turn out soft somewhere before you were through with him? Mawking about your 'sweet eyes' while you're wrecking your optic nerves trying to decipher the dose on a poison bottle! Mooning over your wonderful likeness to the lovely young sister they—never had! Trying to kiss your finger tips when you're struggling to brush their teeth! Teasin' ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... the jackal roams among the ruins in vain; there is not a bone left for him to gnaw of the multitudes which have passed away. There is their handwriting upon the temple wall, upon the granite slab which has mocked at Time; but there is no man to decipher it. There are the gigantic idols before whom millions have bowed; there is the same vacant stare upon their features of rock which gazed upon the multitudes of yore; but they no longer stare upon the pomp of the ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... like a paper-lantern, that turns with the smoke of a candle. He wears his clothes as the ancient laws of the land have provided, according to his quality, that he may be known what he is by them; and it is as easy to decipher him by his habit as a pudding. He is rigged with ribbon, and his garniture is his tackle; all the rest of him is hull. He is sure to be the earliest in the fashion, and lays out for it like the first peas and cherries. He is as proud of ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... "yet if it will serve to divert your mind from your own misfortune, I shall be honoured to confide it to you. Stay, the tenth invitation, which an accident prevented my dispatching, would explain the circumstances tersely: but I much fear that the room is too dark for you to decipher all the subtleties. Have I your permission to turn up ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... it became a matter of doubt; at last everywhere they replied by a discouraging no. At one point of our journey we passed a dilapidated sign-post with a rude, black figure of the Virgin hanging below it. I could just decipher upon one finger of the post, in half-obliterated letters, "Ville-en-bois." It recurred to me that this was the place where fever was ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... shall have shared her fate; when civilization and knowledge shall have fixed their abode in distant continents; when the sceptre shall have passed away from England; when, perhaps, travellers from distant regions shall in vain labour to decipher on some mouldering pedestal the name of our proudest chief, shall hear savage hymns chaunted to some misshapen idol over the ruined dome of our proudest temple, and shall see a single naked fisherman wash his nets in the river of the ten thousand masts,—her influence and ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... printed Gospel had been so interlined and scribbled upon by the author in a hand so obscure and irregular, that, accustomed as I was to the perusal of the written Mandchou, it was not without the greatest difficulty that I could decipher the new matter myself. Moreover, the corrections had been so carelessly made that they themselves required far more correction than the original matter. I was therefore obliged to be continually in the printing-office, and to do three parts of the work myself. For ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... of antiquity possess for him, as they did for the learned men of the Renaissance, or for Petrarch, who cherished a manuscript of Homer without being able to decipher it, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... twenty years ago, in Madrid. The Bishop gave what he called "an A, B, C," of the language, but which, when applied to the extant manuscripts and the mural inscriptions, proved entirely insufficient to decipher them. ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various
... a complete theory of religion. Our valiant knight has examined but one side of the shield,—the bright side, turned toward us, whose marvellous inscriptions the human reason can by dint of unwearied effort decipher. But the dark side, looking out upon infinity, and covered with hieroglyphics the meaning of which we can never know, he has quite forgotten to consider. Yet it is this side which genuine religious feeling ever seeks to contemplate. ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... a great house, scored all over with hieroglyphics by perished hands. When we decipher one of these hieroglyphics, we find in it the statement of a mistaken opinion; but knowledge has crept onward since the hand dropped from the wall; we no longer entertain the opinion, and we can trace the origin of the mistake. ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... our comfort that this must be the very city mentioned by Theodolite. As the seeress had declared, a deep and noisome night always prevailed, only broken here and there as a wanderer scratched one of Bryant & May's matches and painfully endeavoured to decipher the number on the door of his house. The streets, moreover, were strewn and interwoven with long strings of iron fallen from ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... his life was written on his dress for any one who can decipher a dress! Above all, what trousers! made, by long wear, as black and shiny as the camlet of which lawyers' gowns are made! A waistcoat, bought in an old clothes shop in the Temple, with a deep embroidered ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... the mainspring of her wealth and prestige—a very vital part of her—she kept before their eyes on the exterior of this ancient church in the market-place where her merchant-princes daily met, her admonition to uphold them in righteous dealing. One might decipher it wrought into the wall of the apse under the stones of the frieze, in quaint lettering that tempted to the perusal and endowed the mastered motto with the impressiveness of a rite—for the legend assumed a quality of mystery, being ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... couched in the choicest vocabulary of the ringside, and more than once Young Denny, whose literature had been confined chiefly to harvesters and sulky plows, had to stop and decipher phrases which he only half understood at first reading. But that last paragraph he did ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... Akaitcho whom he found at the spot where he had wintered last year, but imagine my surprise when he gave me a note from the Commander and said that Benoit and Augustus, two of the men, had just joined them. The note was so confused by the pencil marks being partly rubbed out that I could not decipher it clearly, but it informed me that he had attempted to come with the two men but, finding his strength inadequate to the task, he relinquished his design and returned to Fort Enterprise to await relief with the others. There ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... coast is clear: come, follow, Fraud, and fear not, for who can decipher us in this disguise? Thus may we shuffle into the show with the rest, and see and not be seen, doing as they do, that are attired ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... speech could be heard distinctly, coming up through the hole. Frank could not distinguish the words, but with his limited knowledge of Spanish he was able to decipher ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... to their nature, but the striped box stood in a good light where I could thoroughly examine it. On the lid, which was clamped and cornered with metal-work, there was engraved a complex coat of arms, and beneath it was a line of Spanish which I was able to decipher as meaning, "The treasure-chest of Don Ramirez di Leyra, Knight of the Order of Saint James, Governor and Captain-General of Terra Firma and of the Province of Veraquas." In one corner was the date, 1606, ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... people in so forgotten a community, with its unpaved street, its straggling wooden houses, its background of unbroken bush. There was no water power, no big timber, and, from the look of the country, no mineral. He put the thought out of his mind with luxurious deliberation and tried to decipher why a man like the bishop should waste his time here when, without doubt, he could be a shining light in a great city. After a little the reason became clear, and, smiling to himself, he reached up ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... was not such an ass, but he must have perceived, as he went on, the extraordinary nature of the work he was producing. He was a great reader, and he knew what other books were like. It must, at least, have crossed his mind that someone might ultimately decipher the manuscript, and he himself, with all his pains and pleasures, be resuscitated in some later day; and the thought, although discouraged, must have warmed his heart. He was not such an ass, besides, but he must have ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to decipher illegible inscriptions, to contemplate a throttled centaur on a dilapidated frieze, or a carved acanthus on a fallen capital, grope over the Acropolis and invoke Athenian Pallas," said Mike; "but for me these painted seraglios and terraced, bower-canopied gardens, vocal with nightingales ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... TIMOTHY BARRADELL has appeared in the vestibule, trying, in the dim light there, to decipher the name on the outer door. Hearing the sound of voices, he turns and ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... we dare not forget. Our adventure may satisfy /us:/ does it satisfy Nature? She is letting us camp for awhile here among the wrecked graveyards of mightier dynasties, not one of which met her tests. Their bones are the message the epochs she murdered have left us: we have learned to decipher their sickening warning ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... only see his first letter from Eton to me?' said Venetia. 'I have always treasured it. It certainly was not very diverting; and, if by easy you mean easy to decipher,' she added laughing, 'his handwriting must have improved very much lately. Dear Plantagenet, I am always afraid I never pay him sufficient respect; that I do not feel sufficient awe in his presence; but I cannot disconnect him from the playfellow of my infancy; ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... the subjective ideas which dwell in the human reason, as the offspring of God, are "copies" of the ideas of the Infinite Reason—if the universe be "the autobiography of the Infinite Spirit which has also repeated itself in miniature within our finite spirit," then may we decipher its symbols, and read its lessons straight off. Then every approach towards a scientific comprehension and generalization of the facts of the universe must carry us upward towards the higher realities of reason. The ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... Teresa went on with her reading. Bending her great fat form more and more closely over the letter, she became more serious as she neared the bottom of the fourth page where the writing became so close and so fine that it was hardly possible to decipher it. When, at last, she lifted her head, her eyes were full of tears. "Poor, poor ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte
... give them pause, on topics which they knew only as occasioning cascades of words. To them one word was the same, very nearly the same, as another of similar length; words had features, but no souls; did they fail to decipher the features of one of them, another of the same dimensions would do. And what commas they wielded, what colons, what semis, what stops! But efficient they were, all the same, for they were usually approximately right, and always incredibly quick. Henry knew that those ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... Lord knows. After the dressmaker, and the milliner, and the jeweler, and the hair-adjuster, and the dancing-master, and the cosmetic art have completed their work, how is an unsophisticated man to decipher the physiological hieroglyphics, and make accurate judgment of who it is to whom he offers hand and heart? This is what makes so many recreant husbands. They make an honorable marriage contract, but the goods delivered are so different from ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... that it is a gravestone," observed the eldest of the children; "we can still decipher on it an hour-glass and a piece of an angel; but the inscription which stood below it is quite effaced, except that you may read the name of Preben, and a great S close behind it, and a little farther down the name of Martha. But nothing ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... accumulation of materials went on as before, a new set of animals and plants were introduced, and a time of building up and renewing followed the time of destruction. These periods of revolution are naturally more difficult to decipher than the periods of rest; for they have so torn and shattered the beds they uplifted, disturbing them from their natural relations to each other, that it is not easy to reconstruct the parts and give them coherence and completeness again. But within the last half-century this work has been ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... lines that I have written about her myself. However slight their literary merit may be, they express what I feel better than any casual words can. [He produces a packet of hotel bills scrawled with manuscript, and kneels at the fire to decipher them, poking it with a stick ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... contained but one word, Diane took a long time to decipher it. For minutes she stared at it, as though the power of comprehension had forsaken her. Again and again she lifted her eyes to his, in sheer bewilderment, only to drop them then once more on the all but blank sheet in her hand. At last it seemed as if her fingers had no ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... proceeding known to us is the Legis Actio Sacramenti of the Romans, out of which all the later Roman Law of Actions may be proved to have grown. Gaius carefully describes its ceremonial. Unmeaning and grotesque as it appears at first sight, a little attention enables us to decipher and interpret it. ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... Chariclea, and love at first sight, mutual and instantaneous, is the result. The aid of Calasiris is again invoked by both the lovers; and the good old gentleman, whose knowledge of the Ethiopian hieroglyphics, by enabling him to decipher the mysterious inscription on the fillet, has put him in possession of the true parentage of Chariclea, (which he does not, however, communicate to Charicles,) at once resolves to contrive their elopement, being further stimulated thereto by Apollo in a dream—the agency of dreams, it should ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... while, on the other hand, the aristocrats in all the various ministries looked upon him as a dangerous Mephistopheles, courted him, and gave him back with usury the flatteries he bestowed in the higher sphere. As difficult to decipher as a hieroglyphic inscription to the clerks, the vocation of the secretary and his usefulness were as plain as the rule of three to the self-interested. This lesser Prince de Wagram of the administration, ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... manner and her conduct which implied mystery; but Roland Graeme was not of an age or temper to waste much time in endeavoring to decipher her meaning. All that was obvious to his perception in the present journey, promised pleasure and novelty. He rejoiced that he was travelling towards Edinburgh, in order to assume the character ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... together that which becomes, in consequence of its association, perfectly unintelligible? Yet, strange as it may appear, when he no longer understands himself—when his mind, lost in its own fictions, becomes inadequate to decipher the characters he has thus promiscuously assembled—when he has huddled together a heap of incomprehensible, abstract qualities, which he is obliged to acknowledge are the mere creatures of imagination, not within the reach of human ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... derivative religion, and not originally moulded by impulses breathing from the native disposition. So that, upon the whole, such as were the gods of a nation, such was the nation: given the particular idolatry, it became possible to decipher the character of the idolaters. Where Moloch was worshipped, the people would naturally be found cruel; where the Paphian Venus, it could not be expected that they should escape the taint of a ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... the message is of course convenient, nevertheless the operators prefer to "read" the signals by the ear, rather than the eye, and, to the annoyance of Morse, would listen to the click of the marking disc rather than decipher the marks on the paper. Consequently Alfred Vail, the collaborator of Morse, who really invented the Morse code, produced a modification of the recording instrument working solely for the ear. The "sounder," as it ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... the interplay of instincts and influences which determine the existence of a community is shown in the general expression on the faces of the people. This is an index which cannot lie and cannot be gainsaid. It is fairly easy, and extremely interesting, to decipher. It is so open, shameless, and universal, that not to look at it is impossible. Yet the majority of persons fail to see it. We hear of inquirers standing on London Bridge and counting the number of motor-buses, ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... Quite a number of articles, of no particular value were lying near, but within the fragment of the pot, and protected by a shale of rock, was the enclosed scrap, which I thought might interest you, as you have a leaning in the direction of finding out hidden and abstruse things. Probably, you can decipher what it says. All the men are well, and are feeling jolly. We may be ready to return in a week. I hope the old ship ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... "Quicquid, and so forth," I have but space to advise If you'd decipher it go forth, Look in the Dic and be wise. Make it a point, in your reading, Always to look up what's new. That is a simple proceeding: Why not adopt it? ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... be wandering solitary on the hill at that hour. Presently she stood still, while he continued to move forward. It was as if she drew him; and soon, in the pale moonlight and the wavering light of the furnaces, he could decipher all the details of her face, and he saw that she was smiling fondly, invitingly, admiringly, lustrously, with the old undiminished worship and affection. And he perceived a dark discoloration on her right cheek, as though she had suffered a blow, but this mark did not long occupy his mind. ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... preserve the house, or it may have been devised by the historian to glorify the sage, but we may not, on account of it, discredit the finding of the ancient copies of the Books. We have K'ung An-kwo's own account of their being committed to him, and of the ways which he took to decipher them. The work upon the Analects, mentioned above, has not indeed come down to us, but his labors on the Shu-ching still remain. 5. It has been already stated, that the Lun Yu of Ch'i contained two ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... This abortion of letters is such a very moon-calf, begotten by malice on idiocy, that no human creature above the intellectual level of its author will ever dream of attempting to decipher the insignificant significance which may possibly—though improbably—lie latent under the opaque veil ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... poorer people, in which he was taught to read and write. By the former of these elementary branches—supplemented by a smattering of Spanish, picked up in South American ports—he is enabled to decipher the writing upon the card—for it is in writing—and so gets the correct address, both ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... eldest has vipers in his hand, and in the distant landscape appears in a maze, with these words, Fata viam invenient. The other has a woman behind him, sitting near the sea, with strange monsters surrounding her. I don't pretend to decipher this, nor to describe half the entertaining morsels I found here; but I can't omit, as you know I am Grammont-mad, that I found "le vieux Roussel, qui 'etoit le plus fier danseur d'Angleterre." The portrait is young, but has all the promise of his latter ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... nothing to communicate. Then why in the world did he write? Why has he covered four pages with specimens of poor chirography, which it cost him an hour to put upon paper, and us almost as much time to decipher? He sends me news which was in the papers a week ago; or speculations upon it, which professional journalists have already surfeited me with; or short treatises, after the fashion of Cicero's epistolary productions. He talks about the weather, past, present, and to come. He serves ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... that you are becoming gradually aware of what may be called an immense picture gallery, spreading out in all directions, and apparently bearing a direct relation to every point of space on the surface of the earth. At first, you find it difficult to decipher the meaning of this great array of pictures. The trouble arises from the fact that they are arranged not one after the other in sequence on a flat plane; but rather in sequence, one after another, in a peculiar order ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... dimly, veiled by a perplexing twilight, albeit the rivulet of sky above was now bright with day. He noted many strange features, understanding none at the time; he even spelt out many of the inscriptions in Phonetic lettering. But what profits it to decipher a confusion of odd-looking letters resolving itself, after painful strain of eye and mind, into "Here is Eadhamite," or, "Labour Bureau—Little Side?" Grotesque thought, that in all probability some or all of these ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... the Spanish under Cortes. The first Archbishop of Mexico founded a professorship in 1553 for expounding the hieroglyphs of the Aztecs, but in the following century the study was abandoned. Even the native-born scholars confessed that they were unable to decipher the ancient writing. One of the most ancient books (assigned to Tula, the "Toltec" capital, A. D. 660, and written by Huetmatzin, an astrologer), describes the heavens and the earth, the stars in their constellations, ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... me in Espita, a pretty little town in the eastern part of Yucatan, where I received from a very old Indian not only the intelligence that forty years ago men still existed who could read the ancient Maya writing, but also a clue to decipher the ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... stood beside the sleeper. After a moment's pause he gently pulled back the unfastened collar of Dare's nightshirt and saw a word tattooed in distinct characters on his breast. Before there was time for Havill to decipher it Dare moved slightly, as if conscious of disturbance, and Havill hastened back to bed. Dare bestirred himself yet more, whereupon Havill breathed heavily, though keeping an intent glance on the lad through his half-closed eyes to learn if ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... impossible to decipher a certain word of the manuscript. She scrutinized it earnestly, and then, her mind entirely occupied by her desire properly to read the matter, she rose, and came close to the grating, holding the page so that I ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... repulsion that was even a physical discomfort. But Lapidoth did not let himself be discouraged, asked leave to stay and hear the reading of papers from the old chest, and actually made himself useful in helping to decipher some difficult German manuscript. This led him to suggest that it might be desirable to make a transcription of the manuscript, and he offered his services for this purpose, and also to make copies of any papers ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... his eyes traveling like a shuttle across the page; down, down—flip a leaf quickly and let the shuttle-glance go on. Billy Louise let her slate, with the goat problem unsolved, lie in her lap while she watched him. When she finally became curious enough to decipher the name of the book—she had three or four in that dull, brown binding—and saw that he was reading The Ring and the Book, she felt stunned. She read Browning just as she drank sage tea; it was supposed to be good for her. Her ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... tell you my story,' said Captain Arcoll. 'It is a long story, and I must begin far back. It has taken me years to decipher it, and, remember, I've been all my life at this native business. I can talk every dialect, and I have the customs of every tribe by heart. I've travelled over every mile of South Africa, and Central ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... things. In every vain and proud designer who has since lived, that dark carnality of Michael Angelo's has fostered insolent science, and fleshly imagination. Daubers and blockheads think themselves painters, and are received by the public as such, if they know how to foreshorten bones and decipher entrails; and men with capacity of art either shrink away (the best of them always do) into petty felicities and innocencies of genre painting—landscapes, cattle, family breakfasts, village schoolings, and the like; or else, if they have ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... money, Luca declared it to have been already repaid, so that now he—Michelangelo—sees no other way of obtaining his own but by application to the Capitano for justice.[24] This is the gist of the letter; we have to use our own knowledge of the character of the two men to decipher the mystery, since no other document confirms or denies the accusation. The reasonable explanation seems to be that some delay, probably on the road, in the transmission of the money, irritated the notoriously impatient temper of Michelangelo. Signorelli's character, from all we know of it, seems ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... scientific gazer first caught the colours of the new morning in advance. But the whole vast range alike of sweeping glooms overhead dwelt upon all meditative minds, even upon those that could not distinguish the tendencies nor decipher the forms. It was, therefore, not her own age alone as affected by its immediate calamities that lay with such weight upon Joanna's mind, but her own age as one section in a vast mysterious drama, unweaving through a century back, and drawing nearer continually to some dreadful ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... bender," said he. "These are, doubtless, your family arms? Except the knowledge of blazons, that enables me to decipher them, I am very ignorant of heraldry—I, a count of a fresh creation, fabricated in Tuscany by the aid of a commandery of St. Stephen, and who would not have taken the trouble had I not been told that when ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of letters his dying mother had given him. She had not opened the packet, for she felt that the letters were for the actress's child's eye alone. He, when he looked at it, did so with a feeling of mixed reverence and fascination which was deepened by his inability to decipher the secrets bound together by the bit of blue ribbon tied around it. How the sight of the packet recalled to him that sad, that solemn hour in which it had been given into his hands! When getting him ready for boarding-school, Mrs. Allan had packed the letters with his other belongings, ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... the Professor, "that if you are trusting to my being unable to decipher the inscription, you are deceiving yourself. You represent that this bottle belongs to the period of Solomon—that is, about a thousand years B.C. Probably you are not aware that the earliest specimens of Oriental metal-work ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... the chief means of identification might be in the music, I persuaded my friend Blake, who is a fairly competent musician, to sit with me and decipher the score which 'E. A.' persisted in setting down. I was now eager to secure a complete phrase of the music. I saw myself establishing, at the least, the most beautiful case of mind-tapping on record. 'If we can secure the score of an unpublished manuscript of Alexander's composition we shall ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... invaders was the Hittites. Of these Hittites I can tell you even less than of the Sumerians. The Bible mentions them. Ruins of their civilization have been found far and wide. They used a strange sort of hieroglyphics but no one has as yet been able to decipher these and read their meaning. They were not greatly gifted as administrators. They ruled only a few years and then their domains fell ...
— Ancient Man - The Beginning of Civilizations • Hendrik Willem Van Loon
... striding across the stream of centuries, to connect the past with the present. And yet, after all, what a mere matter of yesterday its extreme antiquity is! My explorations this morning bore reference to but the later eras of the geologist; the portion of the geologic volume which I was attempting to decipher and translate formed the few terminal paragraphs of its concluding chapter. And yet the finis had been added to them for thousands of years ere this latter antiquity began. The boulder-clay had been formed and deposited; the land, in rising ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... the place the man entered, and, in the deep shade of the old trees, screened from the road by their mossy trunks, found a seat. Here and there, among the old graves under the trees, a few people moved slowly; pausing often to decipher the inscriptions upon the leaning and fallen tombstones. So old was that ancient burying place that there was left among the living no one to keep the flowers upon the graves and visitors came only from ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... process one deals chiefly with the officers, and I have as yet had but little personal intercourse with the men. They concern me chiefly in bulk, as so many consumers of rations, wearers of uniforms, bearers of muskets. But as the machine comes into shape, I am beginning to decipher the individual parts. At first, of course, they all looked just alike; the variety comes afterwards, and they are just as distinguishable, the officers say, as so many whites. Most of them are wholly raw, but there are many who have already been for months in camp in the abortive "Hunter ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... letter in her hand and began, as best she could, for the twentieth time to endeavour to decipher the address. It was very much blotted and besmeared, and presented a very remarkable specimen of caligraphy. The most legible word on ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... and left me to decipher, if I could, the problem of M. l'Abbe du Boise. Presently I discovered the cue. The Abbe was George Hamilton, and for the moment my heart almost stopped beating. If he should come to England on the French king's business, which could be nothing more nor less than the Dunkirk affair, ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... Mr. Fleck, lowering his voice impressively, "here is the fact. Some one somewhere on Riverside Drive is keeping close and constant tab on the warships and transports there in the river. We have managed recently to intercept and decipher some code messages. These messages told not only when the transports sailed but how many troops were on each and how strong their convoy was. Where these messages originate we have not yet learned. We are practically certain that some one in our own navy, some ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... however, was extremely mysterious. Upon the marble top of the washhand-stand in the bedroom the police found some scrawled words in a character they could not decipher. Experts were brought in, when it was found that the writing was in Russian character, and the words ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... history is the development, not of a single human race nor of the movements of a century, but the development of animal life through ages. And even if our attempts to decipher a few pages here and there in the volumes of this vast biological history are not as successful as we could hope, we must not allow ourselves to be discouraged from future efforts. Even if our translation is here and there at fault, we must never forget the existence of the history. ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... scarcely a motor had we seen since leaving Biarritz, except in Madrid; but now, when I tried to decipher the road hieroglyphics, the dust showed more than one track of pneus. Cars had come to Seville from Madrid for Semana Santa, and had evidently run out this way for a spin more than once. As I had not Ropes' ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... then, at which I shall take up for you, as well as I can decipher it, the traditions of the gods of Greece, shall be near the beginning of its central and formed faith,—about 500 B.C.,—a faith of which the character is perfectly represented by Pindar and AEschylus, who are both of them outspokenly religious, and entirely sincere men; while we may always ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... yourself too much by racking your memory to decipher the details of the past," returned Wagner. "I dare not stay another minute with you now: therefore listen attentively to what more I have to say. Yield yourself not up to despondency—on the contrary, cherish every hope that is dear to you. Within a few days Flora ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... region; and it is not till the Cretaceous and earlier Tertiary periods that we find again a regular succession of deposits around the shores of the continent, marking its present outlines. It is, then, in Europe, where the sequence of their beds is most complete, that we must seek to decipher the history of the middle geological ages; and therefore, when I meet my readers again, it will be in the Old World of civilization, though more recent in its physical features ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... is really a great comfort. I am writing with my new one, so this letter won't, I hope, be such a puzzle to decipher as my ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... key to some of its wondrous hieroglyphics; let him study the remaining letters of this mystical alphabet for himself! These inscriptions are indeed trilingual, phonetic, and sacred, yet the simple and loving soul may decipher them without the genius of Champollion; their meaning is written within it. It will readily learn to connect the sign with the thing signified, and under the fleeting forms of rhythmed time and measured space, learn to detect the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... he gives the princes a wide berth, bows hastily and glances furtively at them, and runs by skittishly, then you may know that he is some half-pay colonel or insignificant civil servant. Something, too, may be inferred from the length of time the lord chamberlain takes to decipher the name of the comer on the slip of paper which is handed him. If he scans it long and hard, and holds it a good way from him and says "Major Te—e—e—bosh—bow," then in a loud voice, "Major Tebow," you will be safe in thinking that Major Tebow is not one of the greatest ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... supposed that books, monuments, inscriptions, and languages are sufficient to give complete knowledge of the history of antiquity. They present many details which we could well afford to lose, but often what we care most to know escapes us. Scholars continue to dig and to decipher; each year new discoveries of inscriptions and monuments are made; but there remain still many gaps in our knowledge and probably some ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... decaying beauty of Roman art, lies buried the monumental boldness of the Phoenicians, or of a race of giants whose extinction even Homer deplores, and whose name even the Phoenicians could not decipher. For might they not, too, have stood here wondering, guessing, even as we moderns guess and wonder? Might not the Phoenicians have asked the same questions that we ask to-day: Who were the builders? ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... I was unexpectedly called upon to begin it before a class of some seventy-five teachers. It was necessary to commence speaking without having definitely determined my first point. I had, however, a few notes which I was attempting to decipher and arrange, while talking as best I could, when I became conscious of a slight clatter from all parts of the room. On looking up I found that the noise came from the pencils of my audience, and they were writing down my ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... you get a place behind the screen, where you cannot see, but, what is much better, can sit. The atmosphere of the candle-lighted, crammed chapel is overpowering, and occupation you have none, except trying in the dim light to decipher the frescoes on the roof, with your head turned backwards. For three long hours you have a succession of dreary monotonous strains, forming portions of a chant, to you unintelligible, broken at intervals by a passage of intonation. There is no organ or instrumental music, and the absence ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... more probable that the figures refer to the date of the death, 1318 perhaps; and so far as I can decipher black-letter, which is more in my father's line than mine, I think it is AL, not EL, and that it seems as if there had been a letter between L and the second E, which is now effaced. The tomb itself is not likely to belong to any powerful family then resident at the place. Their monuments, ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... those whom he had satirised, was made intelligible and diverting. The critics had now declared their approbation of the plan, and the common reader began to like it without fear. Those who were strangers to petty literature, and therefore unable to decipher initials and blanks, had now names and persons brought within their view, and delighted in the visible effects of those shafts of malice which they had hitherto contemplated as ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... must be forever lacking in the case of the fossil sequence of species. If paragraphs and pages are missing from the brief embryonic recapitulation, whole chapters and volumes of the fossil series have been lost for all time. The investigators whose task it has been to decipher the story of the earth's evolution have had to meet numerous and exasperating difficulties which do not confront the embryologist and anatomist who study living materials. Nevertheless the library of palaeontological documents is one which has been founded for over a century, and it has ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... race in the battle of the sexes, but of which Englishwomen seem to be almost deprived. 'I am Eve!' say the mocking, melting eyes of the Southern woman, and so said Camilla's eyes. No man could rest calm under that glance; no man could forbear the attempt to decipher the hidden secrecies of its message, and no man could succeed ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... because he was displeased, but because the writing was cramped and difficult to read. However, the merchant was accustomed to receive such letters from seafaring men on many subjects of interest; he therefore broke the seal and set himself patiently to decipher it. Immediately his countenance became ghastly pale, then it flushed up and became pale again, while he coughed and gasped once or twice, and started up and sat down abruptly. In fact Mr Webster exhibited all the signs ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... modern historian proceeds to reflect that "this—as an evidence of the condition of the Franks, and of the ties by which they were united, gives but the idea of a band of Robbers and their chief." Which is, indeed, so far as I can myself look into and decipher the nature of things, the Primary idea to be entertained respecting most of the kingly and military organizations in this world, down to our own day; and, (unless perchance it be the Afghans and Zulus who are stealing our lands in England—instead of we theirs, in ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... really give it to me to keep. He wanted me to try and decipher the code and tell him ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay
... man ever learn woman and know how to decipher this wondrous strain of music, by remaining through life like a seminarian in his cell? Is it possible that a man who makes it his business to think for others, to judge others, to rule others, to steal money from others, to feed, to heal, to wound others—that, in fact, any of our predestined, ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... the first signature in the will has now faded almost beyond decipherment, but that it was 'Shakspere' may be inferred from the facsimile made by Steevens in 1776. The second and third signatures to the will, which are also somewhat difficult to decipher, have been read both as Shakspere and Shakspeare; but a close examination suggests that whatever the second signature may be, the third is 'Shakespeare.' Shakspere is the spelling of the alleged autograph in the ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... the same music, they would soon harmonise their fancies, and decipher the hieroglyphic; and this was a thing clearly demonstrated to the Queen Isabella, that Savoisy's horses were oftener stabled at the house of her cousin of Armagnac than in the Hotel St. Pol, where the chamberlain lived, since the destruction ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... have two others more effectual, which the learned among them call acrostics and anagrams. First, they can decipher all initial letters into political meanings. Thus N, shall signify a plot; B, a regiment of horse; L, a fleet at sea; or, secondly, by transposing the letters of the alphabet in any suspected paper, they can lay open the deepest ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... sermons and pamphlets, followed as a rule by a series of recantations, kept men's minds in a ferment. The good that Laud did by his gifts—and he was a munificent patron of learning—he destroyed by his dogmatism. Scholars could not decipher Greek texts while they were torturing biblical ones into arguments for and against the opinions of the Chancellor. What is the true story about the gorgeous vestments which were found in a box in the house of the President of St. John's, and which are now ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... Ratna Ram, whose seat was under the kadamba tree by the temple of Maha Dev. Ratna Ram was learned in the signs of different languages and could write them with a reed, so that those who had knowledge could decipher his writing, even after many days and at a great distance: Ratna Ram, to whom the gods had given that greatest of all kinds of wisdom, whereby he could hold secretly any knowledge and not speak of it till the thing should be accomplished. (The pandit was well known to Skag ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... could not read them, purchased writing and box, and discharged the merchant. The Caliph, however, thought he would like to know what the writing contained, and asked the Vizier if he knew any one who could decipher it. ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... pyjamas of violet silk. The pantaloons had the edges turned up over a pair of white Turkish slippers into which were tucked her bare feet. Over her heart there was embroidered a design whose letters Ulysses was not able to decipher. Above this device the point of her handkerchief was sticking out of the pocket. Her opulent hair, twisted on top of her head and the voluptuous curves that the silk was taking in certain parts of her masculine attire were the only things ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... signals could be made by very short currents or jets of electricity, according to a settled code. Thus a certain number of jets could represent a corresponding numeral, and the numeral would, in its turn, represent a word in the language. To decipher the message, a special code-book or dictionary would be required. In order to transmit the currents through the line, he devised a mechanical sender, in which the circuit would be interrupted by a series of ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... I could make nothing of it. — But," she added, as if struck by a sudden thought, "as Lady Emily seems interested in it — suppose we send for Mr. Sutherland. I have no doubt he will be able to decipher it." ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... usually surface affection. He had coaxing, coquettish ways, playful ways that cost him nothing when in good spirits. So he was "more loved than loving." This is another trait of the man, which, allied with his fastidiousness and spiritual brusquerie, made him difficult to decipher. The loss of Sand completed his misery and we find him in poor health when he arrived in London, for the second and ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... chemistry were concerned. What there were turned out to be elementary texts rather than advanced studies—which was fortunate, because it had been through these that the cultural xenologists had been able to decipher the language of the aliens, a language that was no more alien to the modern mind than, say, ancient Egyptian ...
— Dead Giveaway • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Dalrymple, and Melville Island. Seldom can the logbooks of a single ship show such a record. Their publication seemed very necessary, for the handwriting on the pages of some of them is so faded that it is already difficult to decipher, and apparently only the story of Grant's voyages and the extracts from Murray's log published by Labilliere in the Early History of Victoria have ever before been published. In transcription I have somewhat ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... times, showing that there had been several sheets of the letter. Muller held it up to the looking-glass, but the repeated blotting had blurred the writing to such an extent that it was impossible to decipher any but a few disconnected words, which gave no clue. On a page further along on the blotter, however, he saw what appeared to be the impression of an address. He held it up to the glass and gave a whistle of delight. The words could be ...
— The Case of the Registered Letter • Augusta Groner
... the poor light—Doctor Pratt's miserable scrawl; but these were but cowardly subterfuges. John knew that he had been able to decipher Doctor Pratt's handwriting well enough, but that he had been thinking of something else while putting up the powders, and so had put too much ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... names, and in the notes the characters, of those whom he had satirized, was made intelligible and diverting. The criticks had now declared their approbation of the plan, and the common reader began to like it without fear; those who were strangers to petty literature, and, therefore, unable to decipher initials and blanks, had now names and persons brought within their view; and delighted in the visible effect of those shafts of malice, which they had hitherto contemplated, as shot ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... places where there were no Bankers,—for Diamonds are convertible into Cash from one end of the World to the other, except among the Cannibals,—in this Belt was a little Scrap of Parchment secured between two squares of Glass, and bearing an Inscription in minute characters, which I was unable to decipher. I have the Scrap of Parchment by me yet, and have shown it to Doctor Dubiety, who is a very learned man; but even he is puzzled with it; and beyond opining that the characters are either Arabic or Sanscrit, cannot give me any information regarding ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... a Captain Shrimpton, who thus became possessed of a large collection of manuscripts. These were sold to a bookseller. They were so full of erasures and interlineations that no printer could decipher them. It was necessary to call in the aid of a professed critic; and Theobald, the editor of Shakspeare, and the hero of the first Dunciad, was employed to ascertain the true reading. In this way a volume of miscellanies in verse and prose was ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Tutt, 'that Doc Peets or Enright was along. They'd shore dig somethin' outen this citizen.' "'Mebby he's got papers in his wamus,' says Boggs, 'which onfolds concernin' him. Go through him, Texas, anyhow: "All Texas can find on the dumb man is one letter; the postmark: when we comes to decipher the same, shows he only gets it that mornin'. Besides this yere single missif that a-way, thar ain't a scrap of nothin' else to ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... outer margin, (fol. III,) Knox had written some words which have been scored through, and are partly cut away by the binder. As well as I can decipher the words, the sentence may be thus read:—"Luik quhether it be best to tak in heir the Beggars Warning, or in the place befoir appoynted." See note 2, page 290; also pages ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... had no written records, but their memories were aided in council or otherwise by reeds or sticks and rude pictures; strings of wampum—cleverly manufactured from shells—served as annals, which the skilled men of a tribe could decipher and explain. The wampum belts performed an important part in the declaration of war or peace, and the pipe was equally effective in the deliberations of council and in the profession of amity. Murder might be expiated ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... A.M. The mosquitoes were singing their nightly chorus, and the situation reports were coming in from the battalions in the line. With his hair sizzling in the flame of the candle, the Brigade Orderly Officer who was on duty for the night tried to decipher the feathery scrawl on the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 28, 1917 • Various
... day, and a friend of mine, who had a genius for that sort of thing, sat himself down early one Saturday morning to decipher it. ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... said, "When we teach a child to read, our primary aim is not to enable it to decipher a way-bill or a receipt, but to kindle its imagination, enlarge its vision and open for it the avenues of knowledge." Knowledge gives power, which may be exerted for good or for evil. Character gives ...
— A History of the McGuffey Readers • Henry H. Vail
... read and re-read this curious letter, and hummed a tune to himself. He gave a professional twitch to each of the hundred-pound notes, and held them up one after the other to the light. Then he examined the post-mark on the envelope, and failed to decipher the name ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... tremendous rate, and quite forget that I have traveled upward of forty miles to-day, and that I promised my mother, whenever I could, to go to bed early. Good-by, my dear Mrs. Jameson. I hope you will be able to make out this scrawl, and to decipher that ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... him know't who will— There was my bed—full hard it was and small; My table there—and I decipher still Half a lame couplet charcoaled on the wall. Ye joys, that Time hath swept with him away, Come to mine eyes, ye dreams of love and fun; For you I pawned my watch how many a day, In the brave days ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... have such writing as that of fac-simile No. 4, "strangers where they come change the speech there used." On folios 93 to 95 we find characters like those given in fac-simile No. 5, which it requires more experience than ours in record-reading entirely to decipher. On the reverse of folio 95 the annotator, apparently weary of his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... letters which were signed J. Evelyn, and which I perceived were from my grandfather, and probably taken by Jackson after my mother's death. I say letters, because they were such, as I afterwards found out, but I had not then ever seen a letter, and my first attempt to decipher written hand was useless, although I did manage to make out the signature. There was in the tobacco-box a plain gold wedding-ring, probably my mother's; and there was also a lock of long dark hair, which I presumed was hers also. There ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... dealing out praise and blame in very small retail parcels, according to my custom, for there was no use in blaming severely, and high encomiums were rarely merited. I said nothing of Mdlle. Henri's exercise, and, spectacles on nose, I endeavoured to decipher in her countenance her sentiments at the omission. I wanted to find out whether in her existed a consciousness of her own talents. "If she thinks she did a clever thing in composing that devoir, she will now look mortified," thought I. Grave as usual, almost ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... softly, is not this the very point at which we are striving? With all our twistings and turnings, our patchings and piecings, have we aught else in view than to decipher just what Shakespeare wrote? Where are Shakespeare's exact words to be found? Not in the so-called Quartos; for they are said by Shakespeare's intimate and dear friends to have been "maimed and deformed by the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... feet; gold on my left hand; gold on my right; gold overhead; gold everywhere! I knew from certain inscriptions that I could partly decipher that this hidden treasure was a part of the Incas wealth ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... and splendour. Nor was this all. It led me to observe and ponder over the daily pages of the most profound and yet the most fascinating book that man has ever tried to read; and though, it seemed to me, my feeble attempts to decipher its text were always futile, it has, nevertheless, not only taught me to love Nature with an ever-increasing passion, but it has inspired in me an infinite homage toward the Almighty; for, as Emerson says: "In the woods we return to reason and faith. ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... I am to be the one to find them, to decipher them, and to give the great knowledge ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... we look upon any relic of early human history! The monument that tells of a civilization whose hieroglyphic records we cannot even decipher, the slightest trace of a nation that vanished and left no sign of its life except the rough tools and utensils buried in the old site of its towns or villages, arouses our imagination and excites our ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... in the lamentably incorrect epistle—which she could only decipher with difficulty—which her darling had written to her, the paler grew her face, which she several times covered with her trembling hands, from which the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... is curious: concise, square, not flowing,—very legible, however, exactly suited to its purpose. People who profess to read character in chirography would decipher but little from these cramped, quiet lines. Only this, probably: that the woman, whoever she was, had not the usual fancy of her sex for dramatizing her soul in her writing, her dress, her face,—kept it locked up instead, intact; that her words ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... reputation of an unfeeling disciplinarian among the pupils, but Lydia did not know this. She only knew that by some miracle of kindness she came to understand the classroom system of recitations, that she was introduced to different teachers, that she learned how to decipher the hours of her recitations from the complicated chart on the Assembly room blackboard, and that at noon she started for home with a list of textbooks to be purchased, and a perfectly clear idea of what to do when she returned on ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... instead of taking offense, accepted the frank letter in the same spirit in which it was written. A day or two after he sent me a characteristic note, whose peculiar hieroglyphics, after much labor, I was able to decipher; for it has been often said that the only reason why he was never made a bishop was that no clergyman in his diocese would ever have been able to read ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... deplorable. Undotted "i's" travelled incognito through the scrawl, and uncrossed "t's" passed themselves off unblushingly as "l's." After half an hour's steady work, his imagination excited by one or two words which he had managed to decipher, he abandoned the task in despair, and stood moodily looking out of the window. His gaze fell upon Mr. William Russell, standing on the curb nearly opposite, with his hands thrust deep in his trouser-pockets, ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... anticipated; and at length endeavoured to amuse himself by learning to write Arabic. The people, who came to see him, soon made him acquainted with the characters. When he observed any one person, whose countenance he thought malignant, Mr. Park almost always asked him to write on the sand, or to decipher what he had written, and the pride of showing superior attainment generally induced him to comply with ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... nice inspector of associations can almost uniformly trace his predilections to some definite cause. This, doubtless, was the case with Chatterton. He found old parchments early in life. In the first instance, it became an object of ambition to decipher the obscure. One difficulty surmounted, strengthened the capacity for conquering others; perseverance gave facility, till at length his vigorous attention was effectually directed to what he called "antique lore:" and this confirmed bias of his mind, connected as ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... Mr. Lossing exchanged glances. There is an Arabian legend of an angel whose trade it is to decipher the language of faces. This angel must have perceived that Alma's eyes said, with the courage of a second in a duel, "Go on, now is the time!" and that Harry's answered, with masculine pusillanimity, "I ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... Molyneux had said, I saw and comprehended as well what she meant. Benevolence is but faintly inscribed, on the faces of most men, even of the better sort. "I will love you, my neighbour," we thereon decipher, "when I have attended to my own business, in the first place; if you are lovable, or at least likeable, in the second." But in the transparent gaze that Cecilia de Noel turned upon her fellows beamed love poured forth without ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... records are written on vellum, in a close, abridged, and, to ordinary readers, a perfectly unintelligible character. The language is Latin; but a modern Latin scholar, without any means other than an inspection of the work, would be utterly unable to decipher it. In fact, though the character is highly wrought, and in some respects elegant, the whole style and arrangement of the work is pretty nearly on a par, in respect to scientific skill, with Queen Emma's designs upon the Bayeux tapestry. About half a century ago, copies of these works were printed, ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... thing," said Mr. Brandon, shaking his head. "If it is a criminal code, and I am about assured that it is, then it is a remarkably clever one and one that it is almost impossible to decipher without a key. I've ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... you laughing at?" goody Liu inquired. "I can decipher the characters on this honorary gateway. Over at our place temples of this kind are exceedingly plentiful; and they've all got archways like this! These characters give the name of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... real cur, A dog of spirit for his years; Has twice two legs, two hanging ears; His name is Harlequin, I wot, And that's a name in every plot: Resolved to save the British nation, Though French by birth and education; His correspondence plainly dated, Was all decipher'd and translated: His answers were exceeding pretty, Before the secret wise committee; Confest as plain as he could bark: Then with his fore-foot set his mark. TORY. Then all this while have I been bubbled, I thought it was a dog in doublet: The matter now no longer sticks: For statesmen ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... and the ink faded and this much Carson was able to decipher: "Jean Maldonado visited a far distant country north of Santa Fe—a wide valley through which flowed a stream, along the banks were bushes that bore fruit like unto those of Spain—in the valley were herds of oxen ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... conceived a profound dislike for her, shifted a foot; then straightened and banished her peremptorily from his environment. His principal interest lay now in casual glimpses of windows and speculation as to what was behind them. He varied this employment in a passing endeavor to decipher sundry signs that obtruded incidentally within range ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... was unable to decipher the original of the bracketed words. Navarrete, who prints these instructions to Magalhaes and Falero, (Col. de Viages, tomo iv, pp. 116-121) reads this passage thus "quien se pase" and continues "e se ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... my surprise when he gave me a note from the Commander, and said that Benoit and Augustus, two of the men, had just joined them. The note was so confused, by the pencil marks being partly rubbed out, that I could not decipher it clearly; but it informed me, that he had attempted to come with the two men, but finding his strength inadequate to the task, he relinquished his design, and returned to Fort Enterprise, to await relief with the others. There was another note for the gentleman in charge of Fort Providence, ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... gone. The company that had been chatting at the front door, and which in warmer weather would have tarried until bedtime, had wandered off; however, by stepping toward the light the young merchant could decipher the letters on the purse. Citizen Fusilier drew out a pair of spectacles, looked over his junior's shoulder, read aloud, "Aurore De G. Nanca—," and uttered ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... lamplight, the addresses of a bundle of letters taken from a shelf. The process was excruciating, anxious as we were for news from home. She could make nothing of my friend's truly Saxon name;—what foreign official can ever decipher English names? Mine was more pronounceable, and as I kept repeating both, she caught that, and, incapable as I should have thought her of making a pun, she exclaimed at last, in despair, “Forestier, ecco! sono tutti forestière,” tossing me the whole bundle to ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... been altogether unable to decipher the Duke's purpose in the question he had asked. About an hour afterwards they walked down to the Houses together, Mr. Monk having been kept at his office. "I hope I was not a little short with you just now," said ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... point of solemnity, but once during the short voyage our eyes met and we laughed. When we landed we watched the discharging of the graceful threemaster which we had observed from the other quay. Some bystander said that she was a Norwegian vessel. I went to the stern and tried to decipher the legend upon it but, failing to do so, I came back and examined the foreign sailors to see had any of them green eyes for I had some confused notion.... The sailors' eyes were blue and grey and even black. The only sailor whose eyes could have been called green ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... and receive your tailor's bill! How provokingly slow are most domestic chieftains in this anxious operation! They turn the letters over and over, and upside and down; arrange, confuse, mistake, assort; pretend, like Champollion, to decipher illegible franks, and deliver with a slight remark, which is intended as a friendly admonition, the documents of the unlucky wight who ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... it to be considerably pocket- worn. The obliterations referred to represented huge blots of black ink covering a lot of scratches and making it impossible to decipher the under writing. Defendant's Counsel immediately requested that the document be turned over to an expert, to see what could be done with it. The judge granted the motion and adjourned the case for several days ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... him. When, according to his account, he had been but a very short time in her presence, she wheeled her chair round and reached her hand to one of her bookshelves and took down an Arabic grammar, and put it into his hand, asking for explanation of some difficult point, which he tried to decipher; but meanwhile she talked to him continuously; when, said he, 'I could not study the Arabic grammar and listen to her at the same time, so I threw down the book and ran out of the room.' He seems not to have ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... satisfied with his answers. But the landlady, who had looked sharply at him on his arrival, whispered a little boy, who ran away, and quickly returned with the mayor of the town. LOUVET soon discovered that there was no danger in the mayor, who could not decipher his forged passport, and who, being well plied with wine, wanted to hear no more of the matter. The landlady, perceiving this, slipped out and brought a couple of aldermen, who asked to see the passport. 'O, yes; but drink first.' Then there was ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... requires that God would make it utterly unintelligible. We can gather clear and definite ideas from the significant hieroglyphics of symbolical language, but the literalities of history written in advance would be worse to decipher than the arrow-headed inscriptions of Nineveh. Just imagine to yourself Alexander the Great reading Guizot, instead of Daniel; or Hildreth, as being less mysterious than Ezekiel; and meeting, for instance, such a record as this: "In the year of Christ, 1847, the United ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... awkward for a few days at counting money. England has the oddest and most irregular money table that I found from there to Egypt, except those of Holland and Germany. Many of the coins are old and purseworn, so that it is impossible to decipher either the image or the superscription (Matt. XXII. 20), consequently the value must he guessed ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... paper, and walking to the window of a shop in which there was a light, contrived to decipher as follows:— ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... to the burial of our last year's sins," said Irais, as we started; and there certainly was a funereal sort of feeling in the air. Up in our gallery pew we tried to decipher our chorales by the light of the spluttering tallow candles stuck in holes in the woodwork, the flames wildly blown about by the draughts. The wind banged against the windows in great gusts, screaming louder than the organ, and threatening ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... the faithful follower of our Prophet—me it should have undeceived. Lie there, mysterious scroll," he added, thrusting it under the pile of cushions; "strange are thy bodements and fatal, since, even when true in themselves, they work upon those who attempt to decipher their meaning all the effects of falsehood.—How ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... have some papers writ in Spanish that I'd give much to decipher. Confidence for confidence, let me tell thee that I am no scholar, ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... their birth, that for them there shall never be time to play or to laugh, she instantly makes her way to the cells that are closed, and proceeds to beat her wings and to dance in cadence, so that she in her turn may quicken her buried sisters; nor does she for one instant pause to decipher the astounding enigma of her destiny, or ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... lettering was small and not very distinct, it required a close observation to decipher it; but the plan was a successful one, nevertheless, and for four long years the blue umbrella had done good service to its mistress, shielding her alike from sunshine and from storm, and now in the crowded city it performed a double part, preventing those standing near from seeing, while ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... see his school books. The pages look like well-used drum parchments, and I am certain Jack must often find it hard to decipher the words upon them. His exercises look as if they had been left out in an ink shower, and the very pen he uses is generally wet with ink up to the very tip of the handle, which, by the way, he usually nibbles when he's nothing better to do. Who ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... clear; here and there, again, there was only one decipherable letter amongst a few broken hieroglyphics. Mr. Sheldon was accustomed to the examination of very illegible documents, and he was able to master the substance of that random impression. If he could not decipher the whole, he made out sufficient for his purpose. Money was to be offered to a man called Goodge for certain letters. He knew his brother's affairs well enough to know that these letters for which money was to be offered must needs be letters of importance in some ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... unexplored and difficult district at home, and, by the labour of many years, examined its rock-formations, classed them in natural groups, assigned to each its characteristic assemblage of fossils, and was the first to decipher two great chapters in the world's geological history, which must always henceforth carry his name on their title-page. Not only so, but he applied the knowledge thus acquired to the dissection of large districts, both at home and abroad, so as to become the geological discoverer ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... the table of contents of a volume whose thrilling text and stupendous illustration are engraved immortally in the rocks; a volume whose ultimate secrets the scholarship of all time perhaps will never fully decipher, but whose dramatic outlines and many of whose most thrilling incidents are open to all at the expense of a little study at home and a little thoughtful seeing in the places where the facts are pictured in lines so big and graphic that none ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... accelerate sale an investigation of title deeds, documents which a great English lawyer—Lord Westbury—once described as "difficult to decipher, disgusting to touch, and impossible to understand," is not necessary prior to sale; for an enjoyment for six years of the rents of an estate brings with it the right to sell, and proof of title is needed only after purchase has been completed in order that the vendor may establish ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... sunshine of his dreams. His head was back to the door so that the light of the candle burning on the shelf might fall on a slate which rested on his breast. Though he occupied a punishment cell he was writing, and Hugh Ritson's quick eyes could decipher the words: "Oh, that it would please God to destroy me; that He would but loose His hand and cut me off! Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" He paused in his writing and pecked like a bird ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine |
