"Cipher" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... such I leave it; though born noble, my ambition Is limited: I'd rather be an unit Of an united and Imperial "Ten," Than shine a lonely, though a gilded cipher.— Whom have we here? the wife ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... for the white box upon a broad old bureau-top in her room. She put its cover on again over the message in green cipher; she would only care to look at it on purpose, and once in a while; she would not keep it out to the fading light and soiling touch of every day. She spread across the cover itself and its written sentence her last ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... he said, "and tell him to wire any instructions he may have for the sender in cipher if he wants to, but to give any instructions he may have for us about the delivery of the message ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... said he; "how much will that be apiece. Thirteen into fifty; can any of you fellers cipher ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... in the conservatory, listlessly watching the people in the square. And these poor fools envied her! To envy her, who was a prisoner, a chattel to be exchanged for war's immunity, who was a princess in name but a cipher in fact! All was wrong with the world. She had stolen out of the ball-room; the craving to be alone had been too strong. Little she cared whether they missed her or not. She left the window and sat on one of the divans, idly opening and shutting her fan. ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... had in my hands a letter written in cipher, and I concluded that the paper contained some ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... complacently maintained, without the slightest suspicion that the assertion proved nothing but extreme self-satisfaction. Accordingly, as she could not afford to send her daughters to school as well as the boys, she decided to educate them herself. Everybody who could read, write, and cipher was supposed to be able to teach in those days, and Mrs. Caldwell undertook the task without a doubt of her own capacity. But Aunt ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... am the guilty cause. I did the deed, Thy murderer. Yea, I guilty plead. My henchmen, lead me hence, away, away, A cipher, less than nothing; ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... view-point. But I can't quite succeed. There has always been a touch of the satyric in Dinky-Dunk's attitude toward Peter's weekly letter to my boy. He has even intimated that they were written in a new kind of Morse, the inference being that they were intended to carry messages in cipher to eyes other than Dinkie's. But Peter is much too honest a man for any such resort to subterfuge. And Dinky-Dunk has always viewed with a hostile eye the magazines and books and toys which big-hearted Peter has showered out on us. Peter always was ridiculously open-handed. ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... out to dinner, on account of his brass-buttons with the Queen's cipher, and to have the air of being well with the Foreign Office. "Where I dine," he says solemnly, "I think it is my duty to go to evening-parties." That is why he is here. He never dances, never sups, ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... small curtains on the window of the place where I told you to bury the nail...." We can imagine Licquet with his head in his hands trying to solve this enigma. The muslin fichu, the little curtains, the nail—was this a cipher decided on in advance between the prisoners? And all these precautions seemed to be taken for the mysterious d'Ache whose safety seemed to be their sole desire. A word from Mme. de Combray to Bonnoeil leaves no doubt as to the conspirator's ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... are employed in surveying the mountain passes and approaches. Maps are made and grades established. For many miles on both sides of the range the country is explored, and numberless cipher annotations are placed on the charts. Much care is taken in survey of streams and the location ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... young Mr. Cipher walked into the dentist's office instead of the doctor's. "Doctor," he groaned, "I'm in bad shape. My head aches all the time, and I can't do anything with it." "Yes, yes," said Doctor Toothaker, cheerfully. "I see; big cavity ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... Dr. O'Brien, then operating below Petersburg, who caught the telegraphic cipher of the rebels and by tapping their wires caught many messages which were of material assistance to General Grant in the closing movements of the war. It was he also who in like manner caught the movements of Jeff Davis and ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... didn't puzzle over that long, however; planning to get the picture out of Italy occupied his attention. An excellent idea presented itself: some furniture ordered by his firm should carry it in a sofa, and his partner should be advised by cipher letter to remove the picture. J. B. Randolph would buy it, without doubt—no need to tell him how it came into Shayne & Co.'s hands. They could swear they bought it in London. Plausible stories of masterpieces discovered ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... cents; suppose in adding up the latter, you find they amount to 27621, you have only to cut off the two right hand figures, and their value stands thus; 276 dollars, 21 cents. To reduce eagles to dollars, add a cipher, and vice versa. To reduce half, and quarter eagles to dollars, you have only to divide by 2 or 4 previous to ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... attach the highest importance, you would see the deep disdain with which the door of the boudoir and the house would be incontinently shut upon you. The tender Antoinette would dismiss everything from her memory; you would be less than a cipher for her. She would wipe away your kisses, my dear friend, as indifferently as she would perform her ablutions. She would sponge love from her cheeks as she washes off rouge. We know women of that sort—the ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... satirical smile overspread his face, and gave such meaning to his words that the other heirs began to feel that Massin had let Bongrand deceive him. The tax-collector, a fat little man, as insignificant as a tax-collector should be, and as much of a cipher as a clever woman could wish, hereupon annihilated his co-heir, Massin, with the words:—"Didn't I ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... down—it was a pocket-handkerchief. For a moment I had an idea that when I stumbled against your majesty I must have been the cause of the handkerchief falling from your pocket; but as I felt it all over very respectfully, I perceived a cipher at one of the corners, and, on looking at it closely, I found it was Mademoiselle de la Valliere's cipher. I presumed that on her way to Madame's apartment in the earlier part of the evening she had let her handkerchief fall, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... while he refrained from committing himself to an acceptance of Presbytery for his English realm, he does not appear to have objected to the impression that on this second matter he might yield to time and reason. And so, while writing in cipher to Queen Henrietta Maria, complaining of the "juggling" of the Scots, because they would not break with the English Parliament in his behalf, and while urging the Queen in the same letters to press upon Cardinal Mazarin, and through him on the Pope, the scheme ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... woman-like, trying to smuggle it through the custom-house. It broke the heart of pretty nearly every inspector in the service. She'd been watched very carefully by the detective bureau in Paris, and when she purchased the rope there, the news of it was cabled over in cipher, so that they'd all be on the lookout for it when she came in. The whole force on the pier was on the qui vive, and one of the most expert women searchers on the pay-roll was detailed to give her special attention the minute she set foot on shore; but instead of doing as they all ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... information as to the place where William had secreted the money which had been taken from the murdered man, Sommers at once telegraphed, in cipher, the fact to my New York agency and requested instructions how to proceed. A trusted operative was at once sent to act with him, and to accompany him upon his visit to the barn in search of the treasure, ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... to a little country school, where he learned to read, write, and cipher. By the time he was twelve, he could write a clear, bold hand. In one of his writing-books he copied many good rules or ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery
... who ought to be my protector, as he has brought upon me all my distresses, adds to my apprehensions; when I have not even a servant on whose fidelity I can rely, or to whom I can break my griefs as they arise; and when his bountiful temper and gay heart attach every one to him; and I am but a cipher, to give him significance, and myself pain!—These griefs, therefore, do what I can, will sometimes burst into tears; and these mingling with my ink, will blot my paper. And I know you will not grudge me ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... him. With glowing zeal she plunged into business, spent many hours each day with the ministers and dependants of the court, corresponded with foreign lands, with her brother the Emperor Leopold, and her sister, Queen Caroline of Naples, wrote to them in a cipher intelligible only to them, and sent the letters through the hands of secret agents, imploring of them assistance ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... supposed to understand Latin, happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education. Of course when I came of age I did not know much. Still, somehow, I could read, write, and cipher, to the rule of three; but that was all. I have not been to school since. The little advance I now have upon this store of education I have picked up from time to time under the ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... childhood. He learned to read, write, and cipher at a small school kept by Hobby, the sexton of the parish church. Among his playmates was Richard Henry Lee, who was afterward a famous Virginian. When the boys grew up, they wrote to each other of grave matters of war and state, but here is the beginning of their ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... supplies of much-needed medicines, surgical instruments and necessaries for the sick. They brought northern newspapers—and often despatches and cipher letters of immense value; and they ever had tidings from home that made the heart of exiled Marylander, or border statesman sing for joy, even amid the night-watches of ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... river she thought she heard, and he pretended he heard it too, and persuaded her that if she lay very still it would run past. Nothing she said or did puzzled him. He read the raving of her mind, they declared admiringly, as if he held the cipher to it. ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... several notes between the United States and the belligerent Governments follow. The stars in the German note mean that as it came to the State Department in cipher certain words were omitted, probably through telegraphic error. In the official text of the note the State Department calls attention to the stars by an asterisk and a footnote saying "apparent omission." In the French note the same thing occurs, and is indicated by the footnote ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... notes to his account of it as will enable me to find out what sort of an accident it was and to whom it happened. I had rather all his friends should die than that I should be driven to the verge of lunacy again in trying to cipher out the meaning of another ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... after crossing the remains of the plank bridge with some difficulty, he stood before the hideous wreck of his friend's late home, where he had spent so many glad hours listening to marvellous adventures from Paul Bevan, or learning how to read and cipher, as well as drinking in wisdom generally, ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... intoxicating liquors. You are not permitted to have any women associates. You will be known to us by a number. You will sign all your reports by that number. Always avoid telephoning, telegraphing and cabling as much as possible. In urgent cases do so, but use the cipher that ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... drove the tarantass during the first stage was, like his horses, a Siberian, and no less shaggy than they; long hair, cut square on the forehead, hat with a turned-up brim, red belt, coat with crossed facings and buttons stamped with the imperial cipher. The iemschik, on coming up with his team, threw an inquisitive glance at the passengers of the tarantass. No luggage!—and had there been, where in the world could he have stowed it? Rather shabby in appearance too. He ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... become absorbed little by little in the variety of love's issues. But love, as it is, and should be understood—not the faint ghost that arrays itself in stolen robes, and says, "I am love," but love the strong and the immortal, the passkey to the happy skies, the angel cipher we read, but cannot understand—such love as this, and there is none other true, can find no full solace here, not even ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... eyes, no longer screened by spectacles. The survey seemed to satisfy him. He murmured, "It suffices, the time has come," closed the book, returned it to his bureau, which he locked up, and then wrote in cipher the ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... professed to reveal the system of the universe. As the traditions of Pagan mythology were variously related, the sacred interpreters were at liberty to select the most convenient circumstances; and as they translated an arbitrary cipher, they could extract from any fable any sense which was adapted to their favorite system of religion and philosophy. The lascivious form of a naked Venus was tortured into the discovery of some moral precept, or some physical truth; and the castration of Atys explained ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... handed her out, accompanying her up-stairs. She turned into the drawing-room, lest he should follow her farther and give her no place to retreat to; then she sat down with a weary air, taking off her gloves, rubbing her hand over her forehead, and making his presence as much of a cipher as possible. But he sat, too, and not far from her—just in front, where to avoid looking at him must have the emphasis ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... hill's foot. It had come and gone in an instant. The haze once more screened the moonlight. The shade again engulfed the vision. What was it he had seen? He did not know. So brief had been that movement, the drowsy brain had not been quick enough to interpret the cipher message of the eye. Now it was gone. But something had been there. He had seen it. Was it the lifting of a strand of hair, the wave of a white hand, the flutter of a garment's edge? He could not tell, but it did not belong to any of those sights which he had seen so often in that place. It was neither ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... Wouldn't it be worth while, if politely you'd offer to help me?" So the angel he talked, and this way I answered the angel: "Hark ye, this it is, just: and I'll go wi' the greatest o' pleasure. Folks from the town know nothin' about it: we write and we cipher, Reckon up money,—that we can do!—and measure and weigh out, Unload, and on-load, and eat and drink without any trouble. All that we want for the belly, in kitchen, pantry, and cellar, Comes in lots through ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... dubious favour which at once revealed its fears and its weakness, but which at least postponed a peril it dared not yet face. The admiral saw plainly that he was suspected in Spain, and that in France he would be a cipher; nevertheless, he pretended to take his departure thither; but halted when half-way, and went to join the Portuguese troops banded with those of the allies. The cabinet of Madrid had from that time forward acquired the right of punishing him. The Count de Melgar ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... to convey such pepper-corn informations! Did it need such noble races of creatures, this profusion of forms, this host of orbs in heaven, to furnish man with the dictionary and grammar of his municipal speech? Whilst we use this grand cipher to expedite the affairs of our pot and kettle, we feel that we have not yet put it to its use, neither are able. We are like travellers using the cinders of a volcano to roast their eggs. Whilst we see that it always stands ready ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... man who cannot hold his temper in leash, and who flies emotional signals from every feature in his face, has slender chance of success in an avocation which demands that body and soul, heart and mind, abjure even secret signal service, and deal only in cipher. The youthful naivete with which you permit your countenance to reflect your sentiments, renders it quite easy for me to comprehend the nature of your feeling for my ward. For some weeks your interest has been very apparent, and while I am laying no ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... set him at work surveying and locating the line at once. It's now three o'clock. You must go and pack your trunk, Duncan. I'll telegraph you in New York, telling you everything you need to know. Take your copy of our private cipher code with you, in case we should have confidential communications to make. Go, now. I'll smooth your way by telegraphing our correspondents in New York, and the officers of the Fourth National, asking them to help you. ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... sheets of paper torn from a blank-book and looked at them under an electric light. "This Syro-Phoenician writing needs what it can't get out here," he said, after a half-minute's pause. "A cipher requires a code, and a code means sitting down. Aren't you cold? You are. Come over here and we'll have some tea and work it out together." And before protest could be made they were in a hotel across the street and at a table on which a shaded light permitted a closer examination ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... acts, and no longer a ward of yours. I can do as I like, and neither Dr. Wade nor anybody else can prevent me. He may ADVICE me not to go: he has no power to ORDER me. I'm my father's heiress, and a person of independent means. I've been a cipher too long. From to-day I take my affairs wholly into my own hands. I 'll go round at once and see your lawyer, your banker, your agent, your tradesmen, and tell them that henceforth I draw my own rents, I receive my own dividends, I pay my own bills, I keep my own banking account. And to-morrow or ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... the journey back, on a small piece of paper that had remained in my pocket when I had been searched by the Tibetans. As I did when on the rack, I used to draw my right hand out of its cuff, and, with a small piece of bone I had picked up as pen, and my blood as ink, I drew brief cipher notes, and a map of ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... unsuspicious looking one, which stood half built with a sloping plank-roof over it. There he lay wedged into the farthest corner, close wrapped in the happy Nirvana of self-forgetfulness—school zero, and Mrs. Holman a cipher—his body bent down over his knees, his coat pulled up about his neck to keep out the drips, and his boots down in ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... Atkinson—is better remembered by Punch readers, perhaps, by his pencil-name than by his common cipher. In 1864 he was in the General Manager's office at Derby, pleasingly varying his clerical duties by drawing caricatures for the amusement of his fellow-clerks, and designing cartoons for the local satirical journal, the "Derby Ram," which appeared spasmodically and ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... see so considerable a cipher suddenly spunged out of his visionary ledger—rather than so much money should vanish clean out of the family, Captain Higginbotham had taken what he conceived, if a desperate, at least a certain, step ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... me last week brought me much that I found pleasant and encouraging in the numbers of the Neue Zeitschrift. I could verily not have imagined that so mild and kindly a ray of light could have been shed over my compositions discussed there, as is given under cipher 8. Let me know who writes under cipher 8—I promise not to divulge the secret—and meanwhile present my as yet unknown reviewer with my sincerest thanks for his appreciation of my nature, which he manifests in so kind and sympathetic a manner in his commentary ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... convicts, kept by the Ignorantin friars, where the most necessary branches were taught to those of the unfortunate men who had a mind for them. He was of the number who had a mind. He went to school at the age of forty, and learned to read, to write, to cipher. He felt that to fortify his intelligence was to fortify his hate. In certain cases, education and enlightenment can ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... and confidence, was the man who stole it. For it he was offered a sum of money which would make him independent for life, and under the temptation he weakened and he stole it. But first he stole the key to the cipher, which would make it possible for anyone having both the key and the message to decode the message. Once this is done the damage is done, for the signature is ample proof of the validity of the document. ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... therefore, makes us see old Carlton on his bed with his pillows propping him up, and a drawer open on the bed, and bundles of old letters and bills spread out before him. Old love letters; old business letters; his mother's letters to him when he was a boy at Edinburgh College; letters in cipher that no human eye can read but those old, bleared, weeping eyes that fill that too late drawer with their tears. The old voyager is looking over his papers before he takes ship. And he comes on things he had totally forgotten: debts he had thought paid; petitions ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... hour, the barge of Master George Heriot arrived, handsomely manned and appointed, having a tilt, with his own cipher, and the arms of ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... of Gellius (xvii. 9) there was extant a collection of Caesar's letters to C. Oppius and Cornelius Balbus, written in a kind of cipher. (See Suetonius, Caesar, 56.) Two letters of Caesar to Oppius and Balbus are extant in the collection of Cicero's letters (Ad Atticum, ix. 8, 16), both expressed with admirable brevity and clearness. One of them also shows his ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... last was much soiled and crumpled. It was torn nearly in two, across the middle—as if a design, in the first instance, to tear it entirely up as worthless, had been altered, or stayed, in the second. It had a large black seal, bearing the D— cipher very conspicuously, and was addressed, in a diminutive female hand, to D—, the minister, himself. It was thrust carelessly, and even, as it seemed, contemptuously, into one of the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... III. 390. Almost the only notices of Dryden that make him alive to me I have found in the delicious book of this Polonius-Montaigne, the only man who ever had the courage to keep a sincere journal, even under the shelter of cipher. ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... troubles which monastic life had brought him, the circumstances which had induced him to lay his monk's dress aside. It is a passionate apology, pathetic and ornate. The letter, as we know it, does not contain a direct request. In an appendix at the end, written in cipher, of which he sent the key in sympathetic ink in another letter, the chancery was requested to obviate the impediments which Erasmus's illegitimate birth placed in the way of his promotion. The addressee, Lambertus Grunnius, apostolic secretary, was most probably an imaginary ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... should be adopted, which is the most consistent with present and reputable usage in the style employed: thus, to say familiarly, "The clock hath stricken;"—"Thou laughedst and talkedst, when thou oughtest to have been silent;"—"He readeth and writeth, but he doth not cipher," would be no better, than to use don't, won't, can't, shan't, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... brief existence, not alone Do our lives gather what our hands have sown, But we reap, too, what others long ago Sowed, careless of the harvests that might grow. Thus hour by hour the humblest human souls Inscribe in cipher on unending scrolls, The history of nations yet to be; Incite fierce bloody wars, to rage from sea ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Richard and Susan Talbot to allow their Cicely to assume the part of Queen Elizabeth. They had been dismayed at her doing so in child's play, and since she could read fluently, write pretty well, and cipher a little, the good mother had decided to put a stop to this free association with the boys at the castle, and to keep her at home to study needlework and housewifery. As to her acting with boys before the assembled households, the proposal ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... policy Sir R. Buller sent Sir G. White, next morning, a cipher message, which, with the reply, will be recorded in another chapter.[246] He also directed the Natal line of communication staff to select, on the route Eshowe-Greytown-Estcourt, positions for camps, which the Natal army could occupy "until the weather is cooler." ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... letters, but the business of the letter-writer proper is at an end. The writing of notes has, however, correspondingly increased; and the last ten years have seen a profuse introduction of emblazoned crest and cipher, pictorial design, and elaborate monogram in the corners of ordinary note-paper. The old illuminated missal of the monks, the fancy of the Japanese, the ever-ready taste of the French, all have been exhausted to satisfy ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... known what she was doing in school. She had always thought she was there to pass from one grade to another, and she was ever so startled to get a little glimpse of the fact that she was there to learn how to read and write and cipher and generally use her mind, so she could take care of herself when she came to be grown up. Of course, she didn't really know that till she did come to be grown up, but she had her first dim notion of it in that moment, and it made her feel the way you do when you're learning to skate ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... asserts that the present rights of man cannot be decided by reason alone, since they are founded on laws and customs long established. But Mary asks, How far back are we to go to discover their first foundation? Is it in England to the reign of Richard II., whose incapacity rendered him a mere cipher in the hands of the Barons; or to that of Edward III., whose need for money forced him to concede certain privileges to the commons? Is social slavery to be encouraged because it was established in semi-barbarous days? Does Burke, ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... substance of it," replied Captain Passford, as he restored the key of the cipher to his pocket-book, and rose from his seat. "Now you know all that can be known on this side of the Atlantic in regard to the two steamers. The important information is that they are armed, and even with small crews ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... read de Bible. Dey wuz a free nigger boy in de settlement w'at wuz monst'us smart, en could write en cipher, en wuz alluz readin' books er papers. En Dave had hi'ed dis free boy fer ter l'arn 'im how ter read. Hit wuz 'g'in' de law, but co'se none er de niggers did n' say nuffin ter de w'ite folks 'bout it. Howsomedever, one day Mars Walker—he ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... sake And cipher of suffering Christ. Mark, the mark is of man's make And the word of it Sacrificed. But he scores it in scarlet himself on his own bespoken, Before-time-taken, dearest prized and priced— Stigma, signal, ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... to good discourse. Nevertheless apart from his natural eloquence, the worthy friar was really a mere washer of souls, a confessor who listens and absolves without even remembering the impurities which he removes in the waters of penitence. And Pierre, finding him really so poor and such a cipher, did not insist on an intervention which ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... frank with you. I suspect you of an intention of going to America for the purpose of carrying on an intrigue with the late King, one of whose cipher letters to you has chanced to come into my possession. To have you arrested would be very disagreeable to me, and I trust you will not force me ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... self-taught genius. I kept in mind the counsel given to me by Mr. Y——, to endeavour to make myself useful to my employer; but it was no easy matter to do this at first, because he had such a dread of my awkwardness that he would never let me touch any of his apparatus. I was always left to stand like a cipher beside him whilst he lectured; and I had regularly the mortification of hearing him conclude his lecture with, 'Now, gentlemen and ladies, I will not detain you any longer from what, I am sensible, is much better worth your attention than any thing ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... evening came a telegram in cipher from our chief engineer on the territory of the option: "Young Granton has somehow given us the slip and gone home. We suspect he knows all. But we have not divulged the secret ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... smiled, but evidently his appetite was flagging also, and he soon went out to send and receive some cipher despatches. ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... to be able to dictate letters from on horseback, and to give directions to two who took notes at the same time, or, as Oppius says, to more. And it is thought that he was the first who contrived means for communicating with friends by cipher, when either press of business, or the large extent of the city, left him no time for a personal conference about matters that required dispatch. How little nice he was in his diet, may be seen in the following instance. When at the table of Valerius Leo, who entertained him ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... to my father," sighed Inez, "but perhaps you will be of so great kindness as to take him a message from me. I cannot mail it—he is not allowed to receive letters zat are not read, and we have no secret cipher we ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... no signature. Her orders or suggestions were written in the same cipher, and required much more time and thought than had been given to the buying and freeing of Pluto's pickaninny, after which she destroyed all unnecessary writings, and retired with the satisfied feeling of good work done and better in prospect, ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... answer for them. No answer in words can reply to a question of things. It is not in an arbitrary "decree of God," but in the nature of man, that a veil shuts down on the facts of to-morrow; for the soul will not have us read any other cipher than that of cause and effect. By this veil which curtains events it instructs the children of men to live in to-day. The only mode of obtaining an answer to these questions of the senses is to forego all low curiosity, and, accepting the tide of being which ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... governments; hence we are to understand that this rider was to employ also the arm of civil power to aid him in the deadly work. How strikingly this represents the historical facts of the case! In all truly Roman Catholic countries the civil governments were only a cipher or tool in the hands of the church, and the ecclesiastics were the real rulers of the kingdom. But whenever any dark work of persecution was to be performed, the wild beast was let loose to accomplish the result. When charged, however, with the bloody ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... of crucial importance to Mrs. Gallup and the believers in the cipher wherein Bacon maintains that he is the legal son of a wedding between Dudley and the Queen. Was there such a marriage or even betrothal? Froude cautiously says that this was averted 'SEEMINGLY on Lord Robert's authority;' ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... much as mentioned in a letter that they had had a woman staying with them—or, if she so much as mentioned a woman's name in a letter to me—off would go a desperate cable in cipher to that poor wretch at Branshaw, commanding him on pain of an instant and horrible disclosure to come over and assure her of his fidelity. I daresay he would have faced it out; I daresay he would have thrown over Florence and taken the risk of exposure. But there he had Leonora to deal with. ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... them. This last disaster was caused by Croats and Bulgarians, who spoke Italian perfectly, having lived among us and taken degrees at our Universities, getting through our lines in the first confusion, dressed in Italian uniform, and sending false telephone messages and signals in our own cipher, ordering a general retreat.[1] It was men from ——,[2] who first ran away at Rombon and Tolmino. It has been often proved in the history of our country that those men have no courage. Italians ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... telling the truth. In that, he was inferior to his wife in point of social evolution, for she had learned, from certain episodes which still filled her with mortification, that fibbing was bad form. To Mrs. Lloyd Avalons, her husband was a mere cipher. Placed before her, he added nothing to her value; placed after and in the background, he multiplied her importance tenfold. There were certain privileges accruing to a woman with a husband, certain immunities that followed ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... has you all to know, you all to know, Dare's light on de shore, Says little Bill to big Bill, There's a li'l nigger to write and cipher.' ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... scribe was of no value in itself, and did not designate, as one might naturally think, a savant educated in a school of high culture, or a man of the world, versed in the sciences and the literature of his time; El-kab was a scribe who knew how to read, write, and cipher, was fairly proficient in wording the administrative formulas, and could easily apply the elementary rules of book-keeping. There was no public school in which the scribe could be prepared for his future career; but as soon as a child had acquired the first rudiments of letters with some old pedagogue, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... three volumes, (published in 1727, but afterwards increased by a fourth in 1732,) though in itself a trifling work, had one vast consequence. It drew after it swarms of libels and lampoons, levelled almost exclusively at Pope, although the cipher of the joint authors stood entwined upon the title-page. These libels in their turn produced a second reaction; and, by stimulating Pope to effectual anger, eventually drew forth, for the everlasting admiration of posterity, the very greatest of Pope's ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... Stella." The value of these journals for their elucidation of Swift's character cannot be overestimated, and Mr. Forster is quite right in insisting upon the importance of the "little language," though we are by no means sure that he is always so in his interpretation of the cipher. It is quite impossible, for instance, that ME can stand for Madam Elderly, and so for Dingley. It is certainly addressed, like the other endearing epithets, to Esther Johnson, and may mean My Esther or even Marry Esther, for anything we know to ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... nonentity. You will never grasp the splendid opportunities within your reach! You have no ambition but to strum that banjo, roar ridiculous songs, fuss up like a tailor's dummy, and pester your comrades, or drag them down to Jerry's for the eats! You won't be earnest, you Human Cipher, Before you entered Bannister, you formed your ideas and ideals of campus life from colored posters, moving-pictures, magazine stories, and stage dramas like 'Brown of Harvard"; you have surely lived up, or down, to ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... will give how many molecules there are in the solar system. If one should feel that the number thus obtained was not very accurate, he might reflect that if there were ten times as many it would add but another cipher to a long line of similar ones and would not materially modify it. The point is that there is a definite, computable number. If one will then add to these the number of molecules in the more distant stars and nebulae, of which there are visible about 100,000,000, ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear
... hospitality in Brazil, has sent me a cable on behalf of your brother—Mr. Nicholas Delora. It seems that you have not kept him acquainted with your doings here, and that you have failed to make use of a certain cipher that was agreed upon. He is, therefore, exceedingly anxious to know of your doings, and has begged me to see you at once and report. Will you, for that purpose, be good enough to grant me a five ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... surrounding home and child life, has since completely altered the face of the earlier educational problem. What was simple once has since become complex, and the complexity has increased with time. Once the ability to read and write and cipher distinguished the educated man from the uneducated; to-day the man or woman who knows only these simple arts is an uneducated person, hardly fit to cope with the struggle for existence in a modern world, and certainly ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... of the letter, instead of a signature, was a cipher, which the sister compared with that on a letter which she had brought from Clisson. ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... nonsense; the cosmopolite is a cipher, worse than a cipher; outside of nationality there is neither art, nor truth, nor life; there is ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... the Bourbons were to be on their guard; in short, I know not what." He remained silent, and then began again. "I only know one way to provide for it: the confidence which I place in you ought to be unbounded. I will give you the key to a cipher which was composed for my use, in order that I might employ it in corresponding with my family under the most important circumstances. I need not tell you that you must keep it with care: always carry it about you, lest it should be lost: and if the smallest ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... get mad at him. He worked for me in 1829, pulling fodder. I say Abe was awful lazy, he would laugh and talk, and crack jokes all the time, didn't love work, but did dearly love his pay." He liked to lie under a shade tree, or up in the loft of the cabin and read, cipher, or scribble. At night he ciphered by the light of the fire on the wooden fire shovel. He practised stump oratory by repeating the sermons, and sometimes by preaching himself to his brothers and sister. His gifts in ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... old Darby, as he had begun to be called—cut off Little Darby from his "schoolin'", in the middle of his third year, and before he had learned more than to read and cipher a little and to write in a scrawly fashion; for he had been rather irregular in his attendance at all times. He now stopped altogether, giving the teacher as his reason, with characteristic brevity: "Got ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... which I have myself so plentifully received at the hand of thy gracious Providence! Then shall I not be useless in my generation!—Then shall I not stand a single mark of thy goodness to a poor worthless creature, that in herself is of so small account in the scale of beings, a mere cipher on the wrong side of a figure; but shall be placed on the right side; and, though nothing worth in myself, shall give signification by my place, and multiply the blessings I owe to thy goodness, which has distinguished me ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... breakfast, being in a more cheery and expansive mood, and found something very fascinating not merely in the fact of the majority, but even in the form of it. There was something symbolic about the three exact figures; one felt it might be a sort of motto or cipher. In the great book of seals and cloudy symbols there is just such a thundering repetition. Six hundred and sixty-six was the Mark of the Beast. Five hundred and fifty-five is the Mark of the Man; the triumphant tribune and citizen. A number so ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... best kind of cipher ever invented (I have taken interest in these things and studied them). It is very difficult to learn, but I learnt it as a child—and it was of immense use to me at lectures we used to attend at the Sorbonne and College ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... a pause, then click! click! the instrument gave the code signal that the matter was ended, and I repeated the signal, opened my code-book, and began to translate the instructions into cipher ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... on each tag in Barbara's private cipher, understood only by Aunt Miriam. The highest was the one hoped for, the next the probable one, and the lowest one was to be taken only at ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... machinery, the intricate mechanism of the underworld is at work to assist us! I tell you as little as possible, but I neglect nothing. All communications in cipher, and you can see that the telegraph clerks think we are persons of ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... you posted," cried my father, with unusual animation; "I did not know it was allowed. I'll wire you in the office cipher, and we'll make it a kind of partnership business, Loudon:—Dodd and Son, eh?" and he patted my shoulder and repeated, "Dodd and Son, Dodd and Son," ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and the legal profession can offer of their best. I, who am only a northern barbarian,—though our country, too, can boast of its celebrities,—Linnaeus, Berzelius, Thorwaldsen, Tegner, Franzen, Geier, and the charming novelist Frederika Bremer,—I find myself a cipher in such company." ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... of the counting-house bends o'er his book, Bright pictures of profit delighting to draw, O'er his shoulders with large cipher eyeballs I look, And down drops the pen from his paralyzed paw! When the Premier lies dreaming of dear Waterloo, And expects thro' another to caper and prank it, You'd laugh did you see, when I bellow out "Boo!" How ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... cotton-land? Let the soldier examine coolly, if he can, the next bullet-wound in his leg. He will perceive a puncture which will probably, when traced around the edge and carefully copied, present that circular form generally assigned to a—cipher. This represents, we believe, with tolerable accuracy, what the anti-actionists and reactionists propose to give the soldier as a recompense for that leg. For so truly as we live, so true is it that there is not one ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... as the existence of slave labour. How else can we account for the absence of any machinery for multiplying copies of documents, an inconvenience which, in the case of the acta diurna, as well as of important letters, must have been keenly felt? Even shorthand and cipher, though known, were rarely practised. Caesar, [81] however, used them; but in many points he was beyond his age. In America, where labour is refractory, mechanical substitutes for it are daily being invented. A calculating machine, ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... must be allowed there is no cipher, because they have two figures to support them; but take these two figures away, and the whole wit of mankind may be defied to patch up or recruit the number without having recourse ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... these procuresses will write to men of means of their acquaintance, informing them in some cipher or slang phrase that they have a new importation in their house awaiting eligible disposition. Large sums are often paid under such circumstances, and the fresh importation is usually sold in this way five or six times. In other words, she is represented as a maid ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... Readers who have any tincture of Psychology know how much is to be inferred from this; and that no man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad. How much lies in Laughter: the cipher-key, wherewith we decipher the whole man! Some men wear an everlasting barren simper; in the smile of others lies a cold glitter as of ice: the fewest are able to laugh, what can be called laughing, but only sniff and titter and snigger from the throat outwards; or at best, produce some whiffling ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... his stock of accomplishments. "I can write, sir, and cipher. And I've learned geography and history, and Master Swift gave I lessons in mechanics, and I be very fond of poetry and painting, ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... at night and see the far-sprinkled systems, And all I see, multiplied as high as I can cipher, edge but the rim of the farther systems: Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding, Outward, outward, and forever outward: My sun has his sun, and around him obediently wheels; He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit, And greater sets follow, making specks ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... wanted a lot of Europeans who hold berths to be dismissed, and the government to be entirely in the hands of natives. It is a sort of national movement, with the army at the head of it; and the viceroy, although still nominally the ruler of Egypt, is in fact little more than a cipher in the hands of Arabi and the colonels. They say the French are at the bottom of it, and it is likely enough. They have always been jealous of our influence in Egypt. However, I do not suppose we shall interfere in the matter, unless they break ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... of endeavoring to disprove and discredit these stories that the emperor caused a telegram, to be sent to the czar from Hubertusstock, not written, as usual, in cipher, but in ordinary language. There is an old French proverb according to which "he who seeks to prove too much, proves nothing," and thus it happened that this open telegram which reached the czar at Chalons, and which was published in the German ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... which must have been manufactured for the express purpose of composing the American flag. The stars were embroidered in silver on a dark blue satin sky. On the reverse, a rich white satin lining bore Julian's cipher, surrounded with silver embroidery. . . . The children amused themselves with their presents all day. But first I took my new Milton and read aloud to them the Hymn of the Nativity, which I do every Christmas." "How easy it is," my mother writes of a Christmas-tree ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... The Shakespearite conducts his assuming upon a definite principle, an unchanging and immutable law—which is: 2 and 8 and 7 and 14, added together, make 165. I believe this to be an error. No matter, you cannot get a habit-sodden Shakespearite to cipher-up his materials upon any other basis. With the Baconian it is different. If you place before him the above figures and set him to adding them up, he will never in any case get more than 45 out of them, and in nine cases out of ten he ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... spirit of piety. The pride of the tyrant whose legend—'Sigismundus Pandulphus Malatesta Pan. F. Fecit Anno Gratiae MCCCCL'—occupies every arch and stringcourse of the architecture, and whose coat-of-arms and portrait in medallion, with his cipher and his emblems of an elephant and a rose, are wrought in every piece of sculptured work throughout the building, seems so to fill this house of prayer that there is no room left for God. Yet the Cathedral of Rimini remains a monument of first-rate ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... to study the mystery, Orme copied the inscription on a sheet of note-paper, which he found in the table drawer. From the first he decided that there was no cipher. The letters undoubtedly were abbreviations. "Evans" must be, as he had already determined, a man's name. "Chi" might be, probably was, "Chicago." "100 N. 210 E." looked like "100 (feet? paces?) north, ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... his secret representations, sent in cipher for the information of the Government, were given to the Press with a perverted meaning and hostile criticism, he hastened to Cairo. He requested an immediate interview with Tewfik, who excused himself for what had been done by his Ministers on the ground of his youth; but General Gordon ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... bottom of every case—a woman. In this particular instance the prestige was heightened by the fact that she was also a queen. Marie Antoinette was then at the zenith of her beauty and power. The timid, shrinking dauphiness, forced to the arms of an unwilling husband, himself a mere cipher, had expanded into a fascinating woman, reigning triumphantly over the court and the affections of her vacillating spouse. The birth, after years of wedlock, of several children completed her conquest and gave her the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... darkened mind, that you have some plan for Hilda fully matured and arranged in that scheming little head of yours; so what is your object in keeping me longer in suspense? Out with it, now! What are you—for of course I am in reality only a cipher (a tolerably large cipher) in the sum—what are you, the commander-in-chief, going to do with Hilda, the lieutenant-general? If you will kindly inform the orderly-sergeant, he will act accordingly, and ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... bulwark of civilization, and submission to the authority of man socially and ecclesiastically the measure of her religious excellence, at least of the excellence of the wifely portion of womanhood, woman has been a cipher at the left-hand side of the unit man in both civil ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... where one Grand is corresponding with another; and where a Brother is about to travel, it is the duty of the Grand Master presiding, in the district where he resides, to give him a plain letter of recommendation, with the private qualities in cipher, in a definite manner, that the Grand Master who receives the same may not be deceived; and ofttimes has the poor ninny carried in his supposed letter his death warrant. As the secret of the cipher is not known to any ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... Constitution took place on the last day of September. During the rest of the year, the royal family, and the most confidential of their servants, were much employed in secret correspondence with the absent princes and nobility, and with the foreign Courts. Some of these letters were in cipher, and were copied by persons who knew nothing whatever of the meaning of what they were writing. The queen wrote almost all day long, and spent a part of the nights in reading. Poor lady! She ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... attributed the massacre to a Huguenot conspiracy should obtain no credence at Rome. If the Cardinal's enemies were overthrown without his participation, it would confirm the report that he had become a cipher in the State. He desired to vindicate for himself and his family the authorship of the catastrophe. Catherine could not tolerate their claim to a merit which she had made her own; and there was competition between them for the first and largest share in the gratitude of the ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... him kindness, goodness, pity, and beneficence, all the gentle and attractive passions which are naturally pleasing to man; those passions prevent the growth of envy, covetousness, hatred, all the repulsive and cruel passions which make our sensibility not merely a cipher but a minus quantity, passions which are the curse of ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... stronger point is the power of portraiture. Seraphael having been identified, people turned their attention to the other cipher. Disregarding the orchestral similitude of sound in his name, which, by the way, nobody pronounces as Aronach instructed, they chose to infer that Charles Auchester himself was the Herr Joachim, that Starwood Burney stood ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... would not weep for SYPHER if he were rejected. But he would sigh for SYPHER, if he could cipher ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... gentry likes him vastly, for he understands the measurement of land and timber, knows how to make dials and such things; and for ciphering few can outdo 'en." "Ay!" says the gentleman, "he does look like a cipher indeed, for he did not speak three words all last night." The ostler now produced the boots, which the gentleman taking in his hand, and having placed himself in the chair, addressed in the following speech: "My good friends, Mr Boots, I tell ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... and west, the table around the well, and at a level with the compass, was marked out into alternate spaces of red and black, bearing—one on each space—the figures from 1 to 36, and ending in 0, so that in all there were thirty-seven spaces, the one bearing the cipher being opposite to the strange woman who presided. As the game began again the players staked their money on one or another of these spaces. I also gathered that they could stake on either black or red, or again on one of the three dozens— 1 to 12, 13 to 24, 25 to 36. When ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... "A cipher!" said Heideck. "But we shall soon get to the bottom of it. You have some capable interpreters at your disposal, and it might be a good thing if they set ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... amateurs and professionals; the serious business is, that in this country no child, how poor soever it may be, shall have the slightest let or hindrance in the equal chance with every other child to learn to read, and write, and cipher, and do raffia-work. ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood |
