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More "Clew" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had a clew to her interest, and followed it deftly. In a few minutes he had come about into her seat. He talked of sales of clothing, his travels, Chicago, and the amusements of ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... me of my cock and has fled. Oh, Nymphs of the mountains! oh! Mania! seize her! How unhappy I am! I was full busy with my work, I was sp-sp-sp-sp-spinning the flax that was on my spindle, I was rounding off the clew that I was to go and sell in the market at dawn; and he flew off, flew off, cleaving the air with his swift wings; he left to me nothing but pain, pain! What tears, tears, poured, poured from my unfortunate eyes! Oh! Cretans, children of Ida, take your bows; help me, haste hither, ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... in connection with my son-in-law's extravagant expenditure—whether the clew to the mystery might not haply be the forging of bank-notes on the other side of the baize door. My mind was prepared for anything by this time. We descended again into the dining-room. Felicia saw how my spirits were dashed, and came and perched upon my knee. "Enough of my troubles ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... rumpled wristbands, a sure indication of extraordinary preoccupation; and the concierge, on taking up the provisions, had found the poor mother half mad, running from one room to another, looking for a note from the child, for any clew, however unimportant, that would enable her at least ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... isolated and unrelated facts. History is a great web, and in the events she sees the pattern that minds have worked. She is more concerned now with the reactions of her pupils to this pattern than she is with mere names and dates, for these reactions give her a clew to tendencies on the part of her pupils that may lead to results of ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... the starboard tack, a manoeuvre which was followed in succession by the other vessels of the squadron, which had been previously directed to keep, though still within signal, at long distances from each other during the day, closing up at night, in order to spread a broad clew and give greater chance of ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... it in New Orleans in '59," said Mr. Thompson, with the general suggestion of referring to an epidemic. "Enter ye the narrer gate. Parse me the beans." Perhaps this practical quality upheld him in his apparently hopeless search. He had no clew to the whereabouts of his runaway son; indeed, scarcely a proof of his present existence. From his indifferent recollection of the boy of twelve, he now expected to identify the ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... which, however, I shall not commence, till I have again seen some of old Louis's old-fashioned Galanteries at Versailles. Rosamond's bower, you, and I, and Tom Hearne know, was a labyrinth: but as my territory will admit of a very short clew, I lay aside all thoughts of a mazy habitation: though a bower is very different from an arbour, and must have more chambers than one. In short, I both know, and don't know what it should be. I am almost afraid I must go and read ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... shall lift that wand of magic power, And the lost clew regain? The unfinished window in Aladdin's tower Unfinished must remain! Hawthorne, ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... lyrics and romances dramatic. He became consciously sensitive later to slight variations effected by his manipulation in shape and shade which it yet takes a little thought to discern, even after his own redivision of his work has given the clew to his self-judgments. ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... coincidence which I have mentioned was really one of those singular chances, which sometimes happen against all ordinary calculations; or whether Mannering, bewildered amid the arithmetical labyrinth and technical jargon of astrology, had insensibly twice followed the same clew to guide him out of the maze; or whether his imagination, seduced by some point of apparent resemblance, lent its aid to make the similitude between the two operations more exactly accurate than it might otherwise have been, it is impossible to guess; but ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... Captain Jenkinson," said Captain Bird, "and you, Captain Burress, clew him up for'ard. You can stay in the bow, Captain Sanderson, and take the sheet-lines. I'll ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... scant receptivity for any such poetical analogies. The cloths, as seen through the lattice-work, had a somewhat sensational aspect; they spoke of battle and murder and sudden death, and sometimes the policeman passing by, if he was a new one, thought for a second that he had stumbled on a "clew." ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... while the little fellow spoke. That utterance came with difficulty to his lips was obvious. He must always have been a silent, backward little fellow, and sad, as children rarely become at an age so tender. Of who or what he was he gave no clew. He seemed to have no real name, to remember no parents, to feel no confidence in anything ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... rushing noise round my head, and raising it above the hammock I caught sight of numberless dark creatures with huge wings which kept sweeping round and round here and there through the verandah. Presently one of them pitched on the clew of my hammock. There was sufficient light from the bright stars to see its shape, and I beheld a creature with large ears standing out from the sides and top of its head, a spear-shaped appendage on the tip of its nose, while a pair of glittering black eyes ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the poet of the Sonnets and of the greater plays as unknown, I can but believe that the Sonnets, when carefully studied in connection with contemporaneous history and chronicles, will yet afford an adequate clew to his identification. It occurs to me that a promising line of inquiry might be made on this assumption,—that the poet was born about twenty years before Shakespeare and died soon after the production of the plays ceased, or when about sixty-five or seventy ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... before from the coast of Candia, and were then steering southeast. This intelligence was corroborated by a vessel spoken the same day. Southeast, being nearly dead before the prevailing wind, was an almost certain clew to the destination of an unwieldy body which could never regain ground lost to leeward; so, although Nelson now learned that some of his missing frigates had also been seen recently off Candia, he would waste no time looking for them. It may be mentioned that these frigates had ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... something had gone wrong—something demanding instant attention or Todd wouldn't be scared out of his wits. Those nearest him, who had overheard Todd's whispered words, halted in their talk in the hope of getting some clew to the situation; others, further away, kept on, unconscious that anything ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... rolling and pitching as though she would shake the long sticks out of her, and the sails were gaping open and splitting in every direction. The mizzen-topsail, which was a comparatively new sail and close reefed, split from head to foot in the bunt; the foretopsail went in one rent from clew to caring, and was blowing to tatters; one of the chain bobstays parted; the spritsailyard sprung in the slings, the martingale had slued away off to leeward; and owing to the long dry weather the lee rigging hung in large bights at every lurch. One of the main-topgallant shrouds had parted; and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... flat land, on which grew innumerable coconut and other trees; and the higher grounds beautifully interspersed with lawns. The wind being light and unfavourable we endeavoured all day but without success to get near the land. In the night we had a heavy squall which obliged us to clew up all our sails and soon after it ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... used to say that these were the work of giants who lived before the sun shone in the heavens. It is well known that the Incas had no writing characters or hieroglyphics. The monuments raised by their hands do not afford any clew to their history. Dumb walls merely, their mutism leaves large scope to imagination, and one may conjecture any but the right thing. Of the historical records of that powerful but short-lived dynasty we have nothing left but the few imperfect and rotten quippus which ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... this purpose, Schiller hastily amplified it to a sufficient size and wrote for it a noble prologue, which ranks among the best of his poems. When played at Weimar, in October, 1798, the 'Camp' was well received as a picturesque novelty, but that was all. It gave no clew to what was coming, and there was nothing in it to stir the depths ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... made for the grand fleet to anchor, All in the Downs that night for to meet; So cast off your shank-painter, let go your cat's-topper, Hawl up your clew-garnets, let fly tack ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... need only a few minutes to reach the place where Mary was stalled by the accident to her machine. Soon he was hovering over a level field, one of several that lined the country highways in that section. A small crowd on the turnpike gathered about an evidently disabled automobile gave Tom the clew he needed, and presently he made a landing. Instantly the throng of country people who had gathered to look at the automobile crash deserted that for a view ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... clew to so sudden a freak on the part of a young and beautiful woman, who, I have taken pains to learn, has not only a clean record but a reputation for good sense. The Fultons cannot supply it. She has lived a seemingly open and happy life in their house, and the mystery is as ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... of education and social customs, it is important to refer in considerable detail to a few physiological matters. Physiology serves to disclose the cause, and explain the modus operandi, of these ills, and offers the only rational clew to their prevention and relief. The order in which the physiological data are presented that bear upon this discussion is not essential; their relation to the subject matter of it will be ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... of her arrival her husband, after meeting her with reproaches, had fled from the house, leaving no clew to his destination, and giving no reason for his ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... fainting-fit Judith had watched him with tender anxiety, and it seemed to her that there was something strange in his manner that morning. She did not know what it was, but had she held any clew to his thoughts she would have perceived that Bertie was astonished and bewildered. He looked as if a dream had suddenly become a reality, as if a jest had turned into marvellous earnest. He smoked his pipe, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... the sail billowed out, full of wind, pulling hard at the clew-line, which was made fast to the gunwhale beside Hrolfur. The fore-sail resembled a beautifully curved sheet of steel, stiff and unyielding. Both sails were snow-white, semi-transparent and supple in movement, like the ivory sails on the model ships in Rosenborg Palace. The mast seemed to ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... to the ground to see if I could get a clew to the mystery, and found that the dust all about the large spider was alive with little ones that she had just shaken off. What a load! And how did they ever get up on her back? Did they run up her slender legs, ...
— The Nursery, October 1877, Vol. XXII. No. 4 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... my boyish delight at the prospect of visiting a place, the infallible clew to all whose intricacies I held ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... a stranger thing to me," replied Uncle William. "I am dreadfully puzzled over the whole matter. We have now four detectives at work, but up to the present they have not got the slightest clew to ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... pardon me, then, if I remind you that time is pressing? Even a half-hour gained to-night by the authorities may be invaluable. If you are able to supply any clew, the least hint of motive, the most shadowy of guesses at a personality behind this beastly crime, you will be ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... ancient days three warriors came from Green Ierne, to dwell in the wild glens of Cowal and Lochow,—how one of them, the swart Breachdan, all for the love of blue-eyed Eila, swam the Gulf, once with a clew of thread, then with a hempen rope, last with an iron chain, but this time, alas! the returning tide sucks down the over-tasked hero into its swirling vortex,—how Diarmid O' Duin, i.e. son of "the Brown," slew with ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... a flood of information about his estate: The architectural features of his house—the cost; the loveliness of his trees—the cost; the coloring of his flowers—the cost; the magnificence of his view, And all the while he studied his caller's face with sharp, furtive glances, trying to find some clew to the purpose ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... the whole shore of the lake was twinkling with lights borne high in the hands of men who were searching. Two boats were rowing back and forth on the lake, with bright lights at stern and prow; and loud shouts filled the air. No answer; no clew: at last, from the island, came a pistol shot,—the signal agreed on. Every man stood still and listened. Slowly the boats came back to shore, drawing behind them Hetty's boat; bringing one of the oars, and also Hetty's shawl, which they had found, just ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... boys, comes the best of the fun, It's hands about ship and reef topsails in one; So it's lay aloft, topman, as the hellum goes down, And clew down your topsails as the mainyard goes round. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... discovered to be in flames, which were extinguished by Harry and his companions at the risk of their lives, by employing engines filled with water and carbonic acid, always kept ready in case of necessity. The lamp used by the incendiary was found; but no clew whatever as to ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... copy was made, which is still preserved. In June, 1825, the Honorable James Prescott was in the possession of the original, which Caleb Butler, Esq., at that time transcribed into one of the town record-books, and thereby saved it for historical purposes. Even with this clew a special search has been made for the missing document, but without success. If it is ever found it will be by chance, where it is the least looked for. There is no reason to doubt the accuracy of the outlines or the faithfulness of the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... from the astonishment produced by this discovery I inquired whether other shamans had such books. "Yes," said Swimmer, "we all have them." Here then was a clew to follow up. A bargain was made by which he was to have another blank book into which to copy the formulas, after which the original was bought. It is now deposited in the library of the Bureau of Ethnology. The remainder of the time until the return was ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... two or three hours, and still Mercer and Anina gave us no clew to what we were about to see. It began to snow. Huge, soft flakes soon lay thick ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... stage, however, they were destined to disappointment; Wilson nosed in every corner like a terrier and examined the roof almost in the posture of a fly, but half an hour afterward they had to confess that they were still without a clew. Sir Walter's private secretary seemed more and more threatened with inappropriate slumber, and, having been the last to climb up the ladder, seemed now to lack the energy even to climb ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... while we are pursuing a fancied clew, and seeking to provide first a name, and then a fortune for this young lawyer,—what steps have you really taken to meet the danger that menaces me,—to secure, if our inquiries fail, an independence for yourself? Months have elapsed, and you have still shrunk ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... which afforded Dory a clew to the strange event in the woods. He fancied it had some connection with the money the farmer had received for his farm. The hungry boy was called into another room by Mrs. Brookbine to eat his supper. He found a plentiful meal on the table, and he did ample justice to ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... are mostly night-walkers also, and the record they leave upon the snow is the main clew one has to their life and doings. The hare is nocturnal in its habits, and though a very lively creature at night, with regular courses and run-ways through the wood, is entirely quiet by day. Timid as he is, he makes little effort to conceal himself, usually ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... romance that had commenced in dots and dashes culminating in orange blossoms—a Wired Love. But now, to her vexation, she saw her anticipations liable to be set at naught, and herself unable to obtain even a clew to the trouble. Like the "line man," who goes up and down to find why the wires will not work, she could not find the "break" anywhere, and decided that romances, whether "wired" or taken in the ordinary way, were certainly very ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... notice; but a steam ascended from his left leg, as he sat immersed in his red volume. Into the study I never went again; but Raffles did, to restore to its proper shelf this and every other book he had taken out and so destroy that clew to the manner of man who had made himself at home in the house. On his last visit I heard him whisk off the dust-sheet; then he waited a minute; and when he came out it was to lead the way into the open air as though the accursed ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... struck Roland. He had heard it before. It had a happy memory, an air of prosperity about it. Lanhearne! It was a Cornish name! That circumstance gave him the clew. When he was a boy at Eton, he remembered a Mr. Lanhearne who stayed with his father. "By Jove!" he cried, starting to his feet, "he was an American. What a piece of luck it would be if it should be the same man!" He fixed the address in his mind ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... regions where I have found my felicity are accessible to all, and that many, better trained and better gifted, will explore them to far better purpose than I, and to the greater glory and benefit of mankind, when once I have given them the clew. Before I can do this, and in order to show how I came by this clew myself, I must tell, as well as I may, the tale of my checkered career—in telling which, moreover, I am obeying the last behest of one whose lightest wish ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... me to see the six brave men again?" she asked, smiling, but really she was prying at his mind to get a clew of the truth. ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... to find some clew to Ben Haley. He had now a personal interest in bringing to justice the man who had made him so much trouble. He had scarcely got on shore than the boy who had sold Ben Haley the ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... homeward-bound crew was the same as the outward-bound, and Mr. Dodge had come abroad quite as green as he was now going home ripe, this traveller of six months' finish did not escape diver commentaries that literally cut him up "from clew to ear-ring," and which flew about in the rigging much as active birds flutter from branch to branch in a tree. The subject of all this wit, however, remained profoundly, not to say happily, ignorant of the sensation he had produced, being occupied in disposing of the Dresden pipe, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... prevented his carrying off, and which still remains, snug and safe, in some dusty repository, ready to reward "a fortunate speculator." I only wish,' continued he merrily, 'I could light upon the hoard! Give me a clew, dear Newburgh, and I'll buy you ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... why the youth of Grande Anse should be any finer than the youth of other places; and it seemed to me that the baker's own statement of his never having been there might possibly furnish a clew.... Out of the thirty-five thousand inhabitants of St. Pierre and its suburbs, there are at least twenty thousand who never have been there, and most probably never will be. Few dwellers of the west coast visit the east coast: in fact, except among ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... sprang from an ancient noble family, as he says on several occasions, it is possible that some particulars relating to the Schweidlers might be discovered in the family records of the seventeenth century which would give a clew to his native country; but I have sought for that name in all the sources of information accessible to me, in vain, and am led to suspect that our author, like many of his contemporaries, laid aside his nobility and changed his name when he took ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... neighbours could be so fond of it; but a humble sort of acquiescence in what was held to be good, had become a strong habit of that new self which had been developed in him since he had found Eppie on his hearth: it had been the only clew his bewildered mind could hold by in cherishing this young life that had been sent to him out of the darkness into which his gold had departed. By seeking what was needful for Eppie, by sharing the effect that everything produced on her, he had himself ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... to us than a voice. There was not a word from anybody. The others might have been asleep, but I was awake. I listened, I listened on the watch for the sentence, for the word, that would give me the clew to the faint uneasiness inspired by this narrative that seemed to shape itself without human lips in the heavy night-air ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... responsibilities, leaving them on a door stone, while they crowded for a closer peep at the mysterious dancers in a hand-organ. From that day to this the whereabouts of the dollships has remained a solemn secret from the knowledge of all but the Midgetts. And it was to them Bunch had gone for a clew to ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... quick glance which Snaffle understood at once to mean that he was to second her in something she was attempting. He did not yet get his clew clearly enough to understand just how, but the look put him on the ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... consequences, is the precise point from which we should contemplate the world, if we would behold the power and goodness of God therein manifested. This is the secret of the world by which the dark enigma of evil is to be solved. This is the clew, by which we are to be conducted from the dark labyrinth of atheistical doubt and scepticism, into the clear and open light of divine providence. This is the great central light which has been wanting to the scheme of optimism, to convert it from a ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... not found—a big slouch hat being the only tangible clew unearthed to a real personality. And this Walter dug out of a hole near a rear wheel ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... Bud's absence? Larcher had knocked at that room two days after the Wednesday, and had got no answer, but this was no evidence that Davenport might not have made some use of the room in the meanwhile. If he had made use of it, he might have left some trace, some possible clew to his subsequent movements. Larcher, thinking thus on his way from Bagley's apartment-house, resolved to pay another visit to Mr. Bud's quarters before saying anything about ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... so ridiculous. I must get a cap to suit my rags; any old thing would be better than this horror. Hats like these are not worn; this one would be noticeable a verst* off; it would be remembered; people would think of it again some time after, and it might furnish a clew. I must attract as little attention as possible just now. Trifles become important, everything hinges ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... interest attaches to the McGowan story, for only a short time had elapsed after his return to America when he disappeared suddenly and mysteriously, and in spite of long-continued and strenuous efforts to obtain some light on the subject, no clew or trace of him was ever found. He was a favorite among the Edison "oldtimers," and his memory is still cherished, for when some of the "boys" happen to get together, as they occasionally do, some one is almost sure to "wonder what became of ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... from the bank, and the two young men turned into shore. "Come on," some one called. "We have a clew. Get in here. We must ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... going to Father Salvierderra. Temecula seemed the only place, now, to look for them; and yet from Temecula Felipe had heard, only a few days before leaving home, that there was not an Indian left in the valley. But he could at least learn there where the Indians had gone. Poor as the clew seemed, it was all he had. Cruelly Felipe urged his horse on his return journey. He grudged an hour's rest to himself or to the beast; and before he reached the head of the Temecula canon the creature was near spent. At the steepest part he jumped off and walked, to save her strength. As ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... be my mother. When she is dead I shall leave Eastborough never to return. My sole object in life from that day will be to find some trace of my parents or relatives. Now it may happen that through Mrs. Putnam or Miss Pettengill you may get some clew that will help me in my search. It is for this that I wish a friend, and I have a presentiment that some day you will be able to ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... Brisaeus from the earth, the power of life and action. She had already so conquered herself as to be able to leave her own quiet room, and descend to that of her parents. There she would sit calmly for hours, listening attentively to the conversation, hoping to catch some word that might give her a clew. ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... grand indeed! But supposing it true, how could we be expected to believe it like them that saw him with their own eyes? I couldn't be required to believe just as if I could have no doubt about it. It wouldn't be fair. Only—perhaps we haven't got the clew ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... That's what they all do; and HE'S got to, too. Huck, you don't ever seem to want to do anything that's regular; you want to be starting something fresh all the time. S'pose he DON'T do nothing with it? ain't it there in his bed, for a clew, after he's gone? and don't you reckon they'll want clews? Of course they will. And you wouldn't leave them any? That would be a PRETTY howdy-do, WOULDN'T it! I never heard of such ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... your Majesty's escape," said the Duke of Buckingham, "and not less in the quick wit which tracked that labyrinth of treason by so fine and almost invisible a clew." ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... Ham sent the warning to me. I called on him, learned the plans of Bill and Jed, and we sent for the detectives. The latter, we learned, were about to make an arrest anyhow, but it was of the men who really printed the bogus tickets. They hadn't a clew, as yet, to Bill and Jed, who were the real backers of the game. The detectives came on, disguised themselves with us, and we caught the scoundrels in the very act. Now they're ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... they returned to their usual necessitous state. Balboa then consented to their extending their incursions to more distant lands, as they had already wasted and ruined the immediate environs of Antigua, and he sent Valdivia to Spain to apprize the admiral of the clew he had gained to the South Sea, and the reported wealth of ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... gleam of gold, and was a foreign coin of some sort, possibly of Austrian coinage; but the letters which it had borne, and the figures, had been worn much away; and one side was worn quite smooth, so as to give no clew to ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... embroiled discoursing, "I yet keep; still more inseparably the Name, Diogenes Teufelsdrockh. From the veil can nothing be inferred: a piece of now quite faded Persian silk, like thousands of others. On the Name I have many times meditated and conjectured; but neither in this lay there any clew. That it was my unknown Father's name I must hesitate to believe. To no purpose have I searched through all the Herald's Books, in and without the German Empire, and through all manner of Subscriber-Lists (Pranumeranten), ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... shortly before his accession to the throne, and the subject of an old ballad. She is said to have been kept by her royal lover in a secret bower at Woodstock, the approaches to which formed a labyrinth so intricate that it could only be discovered by the clew of a silken thread, which the king used for that purpose. Here Queen Eleanor discovered and poisoned her, about 1173.— (Noted names of Fiction, 1175. See also ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... given him a valuable clew, for he reasoned that the barnyard home of Mr. Rooster must be near the general buildings of a farm. These buildings he decided to avoid. So, when he came to a fork in the path he chose the direction that led him further from what he ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... of the skipper were obeyed. The Languedocian made a third sailor. All bore a hand. Not satisfied with brailing up, they furled the sails, lashed the earrings, secured the clew-lines, bunt-lines, and leech-lines, and clapped preventer-shrouds on the block straps, which thus might serve as back-stays. They fished the mast. They battened down the ports and bulls'-eyes, which is a method of walling up a ship. These evolutions, though executed in a lubberly fashion, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... groupes invite, No dulcet sounds the ravish'd ear delight; 50 No tender cares:—- But in their place appear, Sullen Complaint, and cloy'd Disgust, and Fear; There, fever'd Jealousy with livid hue, And falt'ring steps unwinds Suspicion's clew; Arm'd with the blood-stain'd instruments of death, There, Rage and Hatred spread their poison'd breath; 55 While Malice, brooding over secret guile, Repays their labour with a treach'rous smile; Remorse, that never sleeps, brings up the rear, Hates his own deed, ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... had not told any one yet that she had a clew by which she hoped to win the reward Love had offered for the detection of the impostor; but after she had grappled with the wretch who was bearing off Dainty, she had found in the claw-like grasp of her fingers some bits of torn torchon lace that might have ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... to take a position in regard to theories which are not yet established. We found the most different problems—scientific, naturo-philosophical, metaphysical, religious and ethical—inextricably mixed, and were obliged, as one of our first tasks, to make an attempt at finding the clew and at examining and testing each single problem, together with attempts at its solution, separately, although keeping constantly in mind its connection with all other problems and their attempts at solution. We found ourselves ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... many of the cases of complaint made in this general way, and have felt mortified that our soldiers should do acts which are nothing more or less than stealing, but I was powerless without some clew whereby to reach the rightful party. I know that the great mass of our soldiers would scorn to steal or commit crime, and I will not therefore entertain vague and general complaints, but stand, prepared always to follow up any ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... another paper Kirk found something that relieved his mind a bit: evidently Williams had not died prior to the time of going to press, although he was reported in a critical condition. Kirk was interested to read that the police had a clew to the identity of the criminals and were confident of soon rounding them up. What mystified him most was the lack of detail. Evidently much had been printed previously, but he had no means of ascertaining ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... visited Schuyler, and at that time had met the small, grizzled individual who now stood before him. He had not, however, the slightest idea of the identity of his visitor, and waited a brief moment for a clew ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... postmaster with delight. And he himself harnessed the ancient horse to the creaking carriage. In the meantime Porthos was curious to behold. He imagined he had discovered a clew to the secret, and he felt pleased, because a visit to Athos, in the first place, promised him much satisfaction, and, in the next, gave him the hope of finding at the same time a good bed and good supper. The master, having got the carriage ready, ordered one ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... a poor clew at the best. But I put a good face on it, and promised her I would find him if he could be found. And I spared no pains. I wrote to the postmaster at Tuckahoe, and to a minister I heard of there. I inquired of the Swedish consuls in New York and Philadelphia. Indeed, in the end, ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... was searched in vain. No clew to the purloined securities could be obtained,—the copies of the "Sunday Visitor," which had been substituted for them, affording not the least; for that valuable little paper was found in almost every household, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... have been many seconds that I sat up thus in bed staring about, without being able to regain the clew to my personal identity. I was no more able to distinguish myself from pure being during those moments than we may suppose a soul in the rough to be before it has received the ear-marks, the individualizing ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... married first; whoever got the nut would marry a widow or a widower; but if the nut were an empty shell, he or she would remain unwed. Again, a girl would take a clue of worsted, go to a lime kiln in the gloaming, and throw the clew into the kiln in the devil's name, while she held fast the other end of the thread. Then she would rewind the thread and ask, "Who holds my clue?" and the name of her future husband would come up from the depth of the kiln. Another way was to take a rake, go ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... vigorous search for a clew of some kind which might lead to their discovery, but without success; and was just about to leave town when I inquired if the late jewelry firm had employed any clerks ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... maintained in the highest respectability without any trouble of her own, should be normally in a state of contradiction to the blandest propositions and even to the most accommodating concessions, was a mystery in the scheme of things to which he had often in vain sought a clew in the early chapters of Genesis. Mr. Glegg had chosen the eldest Miss Dodson as a handsome embodiment of female prudence and thrift, and being himself of a money-getting, money-keeping turn, had calculated on much conjugal harmony. But in that ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... Roy; "but suppose we examine the vicinity first. We might get a clew as to the rascals ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... be groping for some clew, some familiar sign that would resolve all the unfamiliarities to ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... had expatriated himself, resigned the work he valued, put the seas between himself and Deena, only to be baffled at every turn. For two months he had used his utmost acumen in prosecuting the search without even finding a clew, and when finally he made his great discovery, it was by yielding to the impulse of the moment rather than ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... a report to me every evening," remarked Kenneth; "and Mr. Burke says this is the most mystifying case he has ever encountered. So far there isn't a clew to follow. But you may rest assured that what any man can ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... gone to Mrs. Hadden first, who was very kind and old-fashioned, and not so overpoweringly grand. But she had her justification for her attempt from Mrs. Marchbanks's own lips, and she must take up her opportunity as it came to her, following her clew right end first. She meant simply to tell Mrs. Marchbanks how she had happened to think ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Connaught, a province to which he seems to have been drawn from the first, and there spent eight years, founding many churches and monasteries. There also he ascended Croagh Patrick, the tall sugar-loaf mountain which stands over the waters of Clew Bay, and up to the summit of which hundreds of pilgrims still annually climb ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... friend was pouring into his ear. Standing at the moment with my knee on Madame de Bruhl's stool, and remembering very well the meeting on the stairs, I conceived in a flash that the man was jealous; but whether he had yet heard my name, or had any clew to link me with the person who had rescued Mademoiselle de la Vire from his clutches, I could not tell. Nevertheless his presence led my thoughts into a new channel. The determination to punish him began to take form in my mind, ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... particularly to see its writer. On inquiring, to their mutual surprise they were told, that the gentleman had left there early in the morning, having discharged his lodgings, and that they were unable to say whither he had gone. To hunt for a man without a clew, in the city of London, is usually time misspent Of this Moseley was perfectly sensible, and disregarding a proposition of Peter's, he returned to his own lodgings. The proposal of the steward, if it did not do much credit to his sagacity, was much in favor of his ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... will find that difficult. He has left no clew in this city where he once lived. He sold out all his property, and ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... thing with an interest inspired by all I had been hearing of the poor priest, and turned over the little volumes of his humble library to trace, if I might, some clew to his habits in his readings. They were all, however, of one cast and character—religious tracts and offices, covered with annotations and remarks, and showing, by many signs the most careful and frequent ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... weariness—sleep, perhaps. But as the young man hesitated on the threshold the sound of a muffled sob escaped the quiet figure. He turned noiselessly and went away, sorry and ashamed, because unwittingly he had stumbled upon the clew he ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... understand why Mr. Adams is not here," went on the young man. "Perhaps he has found some important clew and is following it up," he ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... they were following was their own track, leading them back to the mouldering remains of their own fire. They had gone round in a great circle, and come back upon their own course. Rollo looked exceedingly blank and confused at this unexpected termination of the clew, which he had hoped was to have led him out of his difficulty. What he was to do ...
— Rollo's Philosophy. [Air] • Jacob Abbott
... vessel, it is true I cannot hoist the sails single-handed, but luckily we have enough of sail set already; and if it should come on to blow a squall, I could at least drop the peaks of the main and fore sails, and clew them up partially without help, and throw her head close into the wind, so as to keep her all shaking till the violence of the squall is past. And if we have continued light breezes, I'll rig up a complication of blocks and fix them to the top-sail halyards, so that I shall ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... exclaimed Mally, pointing to a white speck in a green field. "Better run up quiet or she'll dash off like a deer," and making some mysterious sign to Jack, the erstwhile pathfinders darted off themselves toward their clew. ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... been destroyed by fire at the time of the accident, so there were no trunks to give evidence. The small traveling bag she had carried with her bore neither initial nor geographical designation, and contained nothing which gave any clew as to its owner's identity save that she was presumably a person of wealth, for her possessions were exquisite and obviously costly. A small jewel box contained various valuable rings, one or two pendants ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... conflicting opinions were expressed as to whither he had gone, in testing which I had visited no less than twenty cities, making careful inquiries, especially among medical men. Occasionally I struck what seemed to be a promising clew, which only increased my confusion and left me more hopelessly in the dark. I had reported my movements to Mr. Earl as often as once a week and I received letters from him frequently, encouraging me to continue the search and enclosing money ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... all the men of the detail—every one of them as anxious as myself—on a long and fruitless search beside the river, without coming upon a clew. Returning to Mr. Gray's, and dismissing the men, I sat upon the veranda alone, sadly reflecting upon the absence of my young companions ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... the helm!" cried Morgan the instant the boat was alongside. "Swing the mainyard and get the canvas off her. Aloft, topmen, settle away the halliards! Clew down! ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... tell us a' he could hae tell'd us, if he had liked, about the application for pardon, neighbours,' said Saddletree; 'there is aye a wimple in a lawyer's clew; but it's a wee bit ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... ball of yarn refused to follow her. She jerked at it in vain. She dared not let her clew break, because if she should lose the lover supposed to be holding its other end, she would die unmarried. "Let me see you! let me see you!" she cried, eagerly, and a figure drew near her in the darkness. An arm covered with dark cloth was almost round her. She drew away with ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... her name—'Angela,' which corresponded with the name embroidered on her clothing. This is all we know about her; and I greatly fear that those to whom she belonged perished in the storm. Even the wreckage that was washed ashore furnished no clew; it was part of two different vessels. The little waif was brought to me and with me ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... in question are simple enough, and in no way transcend our powers of comprehension if only we could find the clew; but for my part I prefer not to find it, for I am of a singularly romantic disposition, deriving more gratification from mystery than from knowledge. It was commonly remarked of me when I was a child ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... Pasht, who sits in the hall, very big, very grave, carved of black stone, and very ludicrous, wearing a dog's head. I will just mention the Rosetta Stone, with a Greek inscription, and another in Egyptian characters which gave the clew to a whole field of history; and shall pretermit all further handling of this ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... he had thought that the child was only paying an impromptu visit until she mentioned her name. Erle had told him that Mrs. Trafford was Mr. Huntingdon's daughter, and that he had never seen her since her marriage. This clew guided him to the meaning of the sternness in Mr. Huntingdon's voice; but he had hardly understood in what way Erle was implicated, or why the child should receive so little notice from her brother. When Raby had finished his account, which was annotated ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... inevitably united and made ONE IDENTITY; Nativities, climates, the grass of the great pastoral Plains, Cities, labors, death, animals, products, war, good and evil—these me, These affording, in all their particulars, the old feuillage to me and to America, how can I do less than pass the clew of the union of them, to afford the like to you? Whoever you are! how can I but offer you divine leaves, that you also be eligible as I am? How can I but as here chanting, invite you for yourself to collect bouquets of the incomparable feuillage ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... suppositious landlord who had called, for the sense of some sound but stilled on the second of his waking was strong within him. He fastened upon the vague starlit space of the little window to give him a clew to his situation. Then he remembered Doom, and, with the window for his key, built up the puzzle of his room, wondering at the ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... languored lifting, fasten unto mine, Their rubric Message giving Hint and Clew How frequently a Kiss ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... doggedly to the task of finding a way back. To this end, he knelt down, and felt the smooth surface of the snow with bare fingers for some trace of his footsteps. There was none. The firm crust had carried him without strain. There was no least abrasion of the frozen surface to afford him a clew to his own trail. He strove to reason concerning the direction of his movements, but quickly abandoned the attempt as altogether baffling. In his circling about the tree from which he had garnered fuel, he had neglected to hold his bearings ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... conspiracies to perform dark deeds are hatched a clew or record is left behind. In spite of Germany's protestations of innocence, her loud cries that the war was forced upon her, there is ample evidence that for years she had been planning it; that she wanted it and only awaited the opportune time to launch it. It was a gradual ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... in mind some particular idea; some state of feeling springing out of some previous preparation of heart, which he can claim as his comfort in his affliction. The few verses preceding the text give a clew to this very state of mind and heart. Let us look over them and see what it was. In verse 44 he says: "I will keep thy law continually for ever and ever." Verse 45: "I seek thy precepts." Verse 46: "Of thy testimonies also, I will not be ashamed." ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... Valentin had evidently meant to put him in possession of a powerful instrument, though he could not be said to have placed the handle very securely within his grasp. But if he had not really told him the secret, he had at least given him the clew to it—a clew of which that queer old Mrs. Bread held the other end. Mrs. Bread had always looked to Newman as if she knew secrets; and as he apparently enjoyed her esteem, he suspected she might be induced to share her knowledge with him. So long ...
— The American • Henry James
... the other, on the opposite side of which lay the long, double-chimneyed drawing-room, less cheerful than our smaller assembly-room by half, and therefore less often used (there, you have our whole first-floor arrangement now, my reader, I believe, and I must begin over again, to catch the clew of my long sentence). We were sitting, then, around the cheerful fire in the parlor in question, when Morton, my father's "own man," announced "Mr. Bainrothe and son," and a moment afterward the two gentlemen so heralded entered the room together. With one you are already ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... boatswain, "but he couldn't leave the wheel, for 'twas pipin' up a freshish breeze on our port quarter, and we was doin' about seven, or seven and a half knots, with topmast and lower stunsails set to port, and of course we had to take 'em in, clew up the royal and to'ga'ntsail, and haul down the gaff- tops'l before we could round to; and that took us so long that at last, when we'd brought the hooker to the wind, hove her to, and had got the jolly-boat ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... no more. But he did some thinking. Experience had sharpened his wits, and by this time he knew a clew when he met it. A while later, when Bates had gone and his brother had come in with Alice, he got Oliver off in a corner and demanded, "How much are you to get out of ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... the snow itself, but simply to the expansion of the fixed air lodged between the interstices of the snow crystals by application of heat. This theory, if carefully followed out, may perchance give a clew to a simple and perfectly innocuous method of raising bread and pastry." And stop the discussion as to whether alum in baking powders is deleterious to health ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... suspicions and misgivings and fears in which Ferris had lived was suddenly without a clew; he could not look upon the pallid visage of the priest lest he should now at last find there that subtle expression of deceit; the whirl of his thoughts kept him silent; ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... of Heaven shall I do?" he cried. "One day of the fortnight has already passed, and I have not even the slightest clew to Dorothy's whereabouts." And in that hour in which he realized that she was indeed lost to him he knew how well he actually loved the girl. Iris' fickleness had killed his mad infatuation at one blow, and, man-like, his heart returned at once to ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... himself, resigned the work he valued, put the seas between himself and Deena, only to be baffled at every turn. For two months he had used his utmost acumen in prosecuting the search without even finding a clew, and when finally he made his great discovery, it was by yielding to the impulse of the moment rather than the suggestions ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... how his neighbours could be so fond of it; but a humble sort of acquiescence in what was held to be good, had become a strong habit of that new self which had been developed in him since he had found Eppie on his hearth: it had been the only clew his bewildered mind could hold by in cherishing this young life that had been sent to him out of the darkness into which his gold had departed. By seeking what was needful for Eppie, by sharing the effect that everything produced on her, he had himself come to appropriate the ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... shop closed, with others on the same block, behind a hoarding that indicated rebuilding and improvement. Further inquiry elicited the fact that the small leases had been bought up by some capitalist, and that Mr. Callender, with the others, had benefited thereby. But there was no trace nor clew to his present locality. He and his daughter seemed to have again vanished with this second change ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... into many of the cases of complaint made in this general way, and have felt mortified that our soldiers should do acts which are nothing more or less than stealing, but I was powerless without some clew whereby to reach the rightful party. I know that the great mass of our soldiers would scorn to steal or commit crime, and I will not therefore entertain vague and general complaints, but stand, prepared always to follow up any reasonable complaint when the charge is definite ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... her eyes searching the shape beside her for a clew to the answer of this lamentable mystery. In her covert scrutiny there was no morbid desire to spy upon another's hidden miseries—our Miss Smith was too well-bred for that—only was there a sudden quickened pity and with that pity a yearning to offer, if opportunity served, any small comfort ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... conclusion did these considerations and discoveries point? Had Miserrimus Dexter, in a moment of ungovernable agitation, unconsciously placed the clew in my hands? Was the pivot on which turned the whole mystery of the poisoning at ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... but very impetuous nobleman, Baron Jasto Dangloss, chief of police in Edelweiss. He could only sputter his excuses and withdraw, swearing to catch the arch-conspirator or to die in the attempt. Not a soul in the castle, not a being in all Graustark could offer the faintest clew to the identity of the man or explain his motive. No one knew a Michael, who might have been inadvertently addressed as "your" possible "Highness." The greatest wonder reigned; vexation, ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... latter case the canines have an advantage at the start; they are put upon the track or directed to hunt for it where it is known to exist; they are given a clew in some form. ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... silk, embroidered in white, a costly garment from a fashionable maker; but there was nothing to indicate the wearer. The bag was a luxurious trifle in Brazilian lizard skin, with solid-gold mountings; but again there was no clew to the owner, no name, no cards, only some samples of dress goods, a little ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... wristbands, a sure indication of extraordinary preoccupation; and the concierge, on taking up the provisions, had found the poor mother half mad, running from one room to another, looking for a note from the child, for any clew, however unimportant, that would enable her at least to ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... I am afraid, sir," continued he, "the masts will be over the side, if we do not clew up ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Captain Bird, "and you, Captain Burress, clew him up for'ard. You can stay in the bow, Captain Sanderson, and take the sheet-lines. I'll ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... After this cub came from headquarters a detective was sent down to the Bowery, and by this time it is known pretty well what we looked like. The afternoon papers say the police are following a good clew, but you know what ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... notwithstanding a gulf of nineteen centuries and upwards separates Shakspeare from Euripides, the last of the surviving Greek tragedians, the one is still the nearest successor of the other, just as Connaught and the islands in Clew Bay are next neighbors to America, although three thousand watery columns, each of a cubic mile in dimensions, divide them from ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... ground to see if I could get a clew to the mystery, and found that the dust all about the large spider was alive with little ones that she had just shaken off. What a load! And how did they ever get up on her back? Did they run up her slender legs, and crowd ...
— The Nursery, October 1877, Vol. XXII. No. 4 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... where he had seen it before. In the interval vouchsafed by her approach he recalled the incident of the divorce, that her name had been Babcock, and that she had married again, but he was still groping for the name of her husband when the necessary clew was supplied by Mrs. Earle, and he was able to make his recognition of her exhaustive. He noticed with approval her pretty face and compact figure, reflecting that the slight gain in flesh was to her advantage, ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... completed his twenty-first year when he graduated with high honor at the University of France. After passing a fatiguing examination, he had gladly consented to act upon his father's suggestion, and devote a few weeks to enjoyment in the gay metropolis. The count had no clew to the cause of his ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... quarter-deck. All this time Ithuel and his companions in the yawl were left to their own reflections, which were anything but agreeable. Matters had been conducted so quietly inboard, however, that they possessed no clew to what had actually occurred; though Ghita, in particular, was full of forebodings and apprehensions. The frigate towed them along at a rate which, as Raoul said, had brought them quite abreast of their landing ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the shore, no smoke of family fires rose heavenward; families and hearths alike were gone. The place was a desert. Little Virginia Dare and the Lost Colony of Roanoke had already passed out of history, leaving no clew to their fate except the single word "CROATAN" inscribed on the bark of a tree. It was the name of an island further down the coast; and had White gone thither, he might even yet have found the lost. But he was a man unfitted in all respects to ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... hand from the blue yonder Held out a scroll On which my life was writ, and I with wonder Beheld unroll To a long century's end its mystic clew— What ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... The suggestion that they were to confer with the friendly deputy seemed a wise one, not because they were afraid to tackle the job of removing "J. D." alone, but because they wanted to know just how things stood. Perhaps by inquiry they could gain some clew as to why the tenant refused to vacate. If he sincerely wanted an extension of his lease to legitimately conduct the business of ranching, he was going about it in a ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker
... moved heaven and earth; but without avail. In time Della took up nursing. She is doing splendid work, and has become the cheerful, efficient, sane woman that she was meant to be—though still never forgetting her lost nephew, and never leaving unfollowed any possible clew that might lead to ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... an ancient noble family, as he says on several occasions, it is possible that some particulars relating to the Schweidlers might be discovered in the family records of the seventeenth century which would give a clew to his native country; but I have sought for that name in all the sources of information accessible to me, in vain, and am led to suspect that our author, like many of his contemporaries, laid aside his nobility and changed his name when he ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... modified, and was now accurately defined and fully developed in her mind, with a result of perfect certainty. In Lord Bacon's letters, on which she laid her finger as she spoke, she had discovered the key and clew to the whole mystery. There were definite and minute instructions how to find a will and other documents relating to the conclave of Elizabethan philosophers, which were concealed (when and by whom ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... go as far as they might lead. He set off at a round pace, stopping now and then to assure himself, and presently stood perplexed near the Spouting Cave, for there they ceased. As he was looking about for some clew that might set him right once more, a faint movement behind him caused him to turn, and he saw a figure slinking along from rock to rock, bending low, as if seeking to be concealed: Oponui! Why should he be alone? Why should he hide like that? Why was he trying to escape? ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... avenged. We must find out the incendiary; we must! You want it to be done, don't you? Well, it depends only on you. There must be some one among you who knows something about this matter. Let him come forward and tell us what he has seen or heard. Remember that the smallest trifle may be a clew to the crime. You would be as bad as the incendiary himself, if you concealed him. Just think it ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... and adapted to the requirements of the life-conditions. The followers of the theory of descent believed that this conclusion was unavoidable, and were induced to deny the manifest fact that species are constant entities. The mutation theory gives a clew to the final combination of the two contending ideas. Reducing the changeability of the species to distinct and probably short periods, it at once explains how the stability of species perfectly agrees with the principle ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... absent child had a soothing effect upon Mr. Linwood, and he now recovered rapidly from the sad and almost hopeless condition in which she had found him. When able to converse, without danger of a relapse, he told Clotelle of his fruitless efforts to obtain a clew to her whereabouts after old Mrs. Miller had sold her to the slave-trader. In answer to his daughter's inquiries about his family affairs up to the time that ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... The very name, Globe, would hardly be suitable to a square building; Jonson describes the interior as a "round";[395] the ballad on the burning of the house refers to the roof as being "round as a tailor's clew"; and the New Globe, which certainly was not square, was erected on the old foundation.[396] The frame, we know, was of timber, and the roof of thatch. In front of the main door was suspended a sign of Hercules bearing the globe upon his shoulders,[397] ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... and Zillah, and tried to be as frank and unconscious in one case as the other. I even made the acquaintance of Mr. Hearn's little girl—indeed, her father formally presented her to me as his daughter Adela. I knew nothing of his domestic history, and gained no clew as to the length of the widowhood which he now proposed to end ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... was not a success. They slept with all the doors and windows open, an' one night a skunk came in an' got under the bed. Mrs. Bill discovered that they had company, an' Bill got up an' lit the lantern, an' followed the clew to its source. He threatened an' argued an' appealed to the skunk's better nature with a doughnut, but the little beast sat unmoved in his corner. The place ...
— Keeping up with Lizzie • Irving Bacheller
... with wonderful magnetism, and drew many men upon long pilgrimages to speak with him face to face. Young visionaries—to whom just so much of insight had been imparted as to make life all a labyrinth around them—came to seek the clew that should guide them out of their self-involved bewilderment. Gray-headed theorists—whose systems, at first air, had finally imprisoned them in an iron framework—travelled painfully to his door, not to ask ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... fulfilled itself. But the one indwelling life of nature lives in all the manifold forms; the same laws rule in the human body as in the universe; that which works secretly in the former lies open to the view in the latter, and the world gives the clew to the knowledge of man. Natural becoming is brought about by the chemical separation and coming together of substances; the ultimate constituents revealed by analysis are the three fundamental substances ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... spellings, particularly bowlder (boulder), clew (clue) and vail (veil), have been retained. Also, the Table of Contents was missing so it has ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... the fore scuttle and the after hatchway, and, hurrying upon deck, we found a large black cloud rolling on toward us from the southwest, and darkening the whole heavens. "Here comes Cape Horn!'' said the chief mate; and we had hardly time to haul down and clew up before it was upon us. In a few minutes a heavier sea was raised than I had ever seen, and as it was directly ahead, the little brig, which was no better than a bathing-machine, plunged into it, and all the ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... and placing my hand upon my throbbing temples, asked myself if I were really awake, or if some flight of fancy had not carried me away beyond the bounds of reason and sense. "Go on, go on!" said I, at length, in a hollow voice, anxious to gather from his words something like a clew to this ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... New York City who was kidnapped on Saturday night on his way from New York to a week-end house party at Beechwood, N. J., not yet heard from. No clew to his whereabouts. Detectives out with bloodhounds searching country. Mother in a state of collapse. It is feared the bandits have fulfilled their threats and killed him. Father frantically offering any ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... not some clew to give me?" he cried out in agony—"some way by which I can trace her ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... explanation. The question arises, Why should the attention of the accusing girls have been led to this aged and most respectable woman, living at such a distance, beyond the Merrimac? A critical scrutiny of the papers in the case affords a clew leading to the ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... which were extinguished by Harry and his companions at the risk of their lives, by employing engines filled with water and carbonic acid, always kept ready in case of necessity. The lamp used by the incendiary was found; but no clew whatever as to ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... enough," the chief replied, "but it would be a bit hard to understand the combination unless you had the clew. Then it is all as clear as day, although the machine itself is a little complicated. You noticed, of course, that the operator lays a card on this plate which is full of holes, and you probably noticed that these holes correspond with the points on the card, ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... Harlowe's Senior Year at High School" will remember the mysterious disappearance of the bazaar money and the untiring zeal with which Grace worked until she found a clew to the robbery, which led to the astonishing discovery that she made in an isolated house on the outskirts ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... but wished particularly to see its writer. On inquiring, to their mutual surprise they were told, that the gentleman had left there early in the morning, having discharged his lodgings, and that they were unable to say whither he had gone. To hunt for a man without a clew, in the city of London, is usually time misspent Of this Moseley was perfectly sensible, and disregarding a proposition of Peter's, he returned to his own lodgings. The proposal of the steward, if it did not do much credit to his sagacity, was much in favor ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... weed the morning's lusty queen, Begilding with the radiant beams she threw His helm, his harness, and the mountain green; Upon his breast and forehead gently blew The air, that balm and nardus breathed unseen, And o'er his head let down from clearest skies A cloud of pure and precious clew there flies. ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... they had heard nothing of Livingstone, nor had they any clew as to the direction in which they should go. There was no ray of light or hope to cheer them on their way, yet Stanley never for a moment thought of giving ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... all the phases the same, viz., a twill fabric, of which the warp was of linen, the weft of cotton; the wools varied somewhat in the twist, but were always worsted, the word crewel being a diminutive of clew, "a ball of thread," and probably came into vogue with the importation of wools from Germany, the corresponding word in that ...
— Jacobean Embroidery - Its Forms and Fillings Including Late Tudor • Ada Wentworth Fitzwilliam and A. F. Morris Hands
... that a Quaker cannot sell any thing which is innocent in itself, without inquiring of the buyer its application or its use? And if I should say so, might I not as well say, that no Quaker can be in trade? I fear that to say this, would be to get into a labyrinth, out of which there would be no clew to guide us. ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... Trust Hoppers, glides abaft the beam, and the blue Cock o' Arran shows up across the opening water. All is haste and bustle. Aloft, spider-like figures, black against the tracery of the rigging, cast down sheets and clew lines in the one place where they must go. Shouts and hails—"Fore cross-trees, there! Royal buntline inside th' crin'line, ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... not notice that Bertram was looking at her in all astonishment, and in vain seeking a clew to her conduct. "This is too much!" cried she, half soliloquizing. "Love cannot stand this! Love! away with the word—I would despise myself if I could find a spark of this love in my heart!" She pressed her hands ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... to put him in possession of a powerful instrument, though he could not be said to have placed the handle very securely within his grasp. But if he had not really told him the secret, he had at least given him the clew to it—a clew of which that queer old Mrs. Bread held the other end. Mrs. Bread had always looked to Newman as if she knew secrets; and as he apparently enjoyed her esteem, he suspected she might be induced to share her knowledge with him. So long as there was only ...
— The American • Henry James
... and the first lieutenant paced up and down the quarterdeck; "we must catch the two prahus if we can. At present we don't know whether they have gone up or down the river, and it would be absolutely useless for us to wait until we get some clew to their whereabouts. After we have finished with them, we will go up the other branch, and try to find the two we know to be up there. I should not like to leave our ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... Dory a clew to the strange event in the woods. He fancied it had some connection with the money the farmer had received for his farm. The hungry boy was called into another room by Mrs. Brookbine to eat his supper. He found a plentiful meal on the table, and he did ample justice ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... Apparently, he won't have anything incriminating about him. My impression is that he's in the army and hopes to get himself captured by his friends. Yet he may desert and take a chance of getting into Germany through Holland. About the only clew there is, is the intimation that he's related to the prisoner. He may look like him. We've been trying to get in communication with Dieppe, where this transport is expected to dock to-morrow, but the wires seem to be ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... statesman, is fully developed in his whole conduct; and of Alvarez, that the little he has to say and do, is so said and done, as not to disgrace his common-place character of the possessor of the secret on which the plot depends; for it may be casually observed, that the depositary of such a clew to the catastrophe, though of the last importance to the plot, is seldom himself of any interest whatever. The haughty and high-spirited Almeyda is designed by the author as the counterpart of Sebastian. She breaks out ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... afraid you will find that difficult. He has left no clew in this city where he once lived. He sold out all his property, ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... deny his identity, but the Americans had been furnished with his photograph, and a wart on his forehead proved a clew that was conclusive. At once his effects were searched, and under his pillow was found a leather bag containing fifty thousand dollars in gold and in ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... studying it out, as an interesting problem. At last, I came to the conclusion—to which I still adhere—that their so long wearing only one epaulet (for to only one does their rank entitle them) was the infallible clew to this mystery. And when any one reflects upon so well-known a fact, that many sea Lieutenants grow decrepit from age, without attaining a Captaincy and wearing two epaulets, which would strike ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... encampment; and the track which they were following was their own track, leading them back to the mouldering remains of their own fire. They had gone round in a great circle, and come back upon their own course. Rollo looked exceedingly blank and confused at this unexpected termination of the clew, which he had hoped was to have led him out of his difficulty. What he was to do now, he ...
— Rollo's Philosophy. [Air] • Jacob Abbott
... the explanation which a friend was pouring into his ear. Standing at the moment with my knee on Madame de Bruhl's stool, and remembering very well the meeting on the stairs, I conceived in a flash that the man was jealous; but whether he had yet heard my name, or had any clew to link me with the person who had rescued Mademoiselle de la Vire from his clutches, I could not tell. Nevertheless his presence led my thoughts into a new channel. The determination to punish him began to take form in my mind, ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... guide had left us. We decided in favor of the former course. After a march of three quarters of an hour the blazed trees ceased, and we concluded we were near the point at which we had parted with the guide. So we built a fire, laid down our loads, and cast about on all sides for some clew as to our exact locality. Nearly an hour was consumed in this manner and without any result. I came upon a brood of young grouse, which diverted me for a moment. The old one blustered about at a furious rate, trying to draw all attention to herself, while ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... the angles. Geometry was the bane of her existence and she was only cheered into digging away at it by the thought of the money lying in her name in the bank, which she had received for giving the clew leading to little Raymond Bartlett's discovery the summer before, and which would pay her way to college for one year ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... say to that?—why, that it's just what I should have expected—that's what I say!" replied Dr. Rollinson, who had apparently begun to divine some clew to the grand mystery. But he ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... them. The one who runs around with the handkerchief will resort to various devices for misleading the others as to where he drops it. For instance, he may sometimes quicken his pace suddenly after dropping the handkerchief, or at other times maintain a steady pace which gives no clew. ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... traveling two or three hours, and still Mercer and Anina gave us no clew to what we were about to see. It began to snow. Huge, soft flakes soon ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... closer peep at the mysterious dancers in a hand-organ. From that day to this the whereabouts of the dollships has remained a solemn secret from the knowledge of all but the Midgetts. And it was to them Bunch had gone for a clew to her treasure. ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... the geologist."[365] In fact, no truly scientific geologist pretends that it stands on the same level with any authentic history, much less with the Bible record; inasmuch as the discovery of a single new fact may overturn the whole theory. "It furnishes us with no clew by which to unravel the unapproachable mysteries of creation. These mysteries belong to the wondrous Creator, and to him only. We attempt to theorize upon them, and to reduce them to law, and all nature rises up against us in our presumptuous rebellion. ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... nothing of this in his testimony given in court. None of the field hands working in the field to which Williamson was going had seen him at all, and the most rigorous search of the entire plantation and adjoining country failed to supply a clew. The most monstrous and grotesque fictions, originating with the blacks, were current in that part of the State for many years, and probably are to this day; but what has been here related is all that is certainly known of the matter. The courts decided that Williamson was dead, and his estate was ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... treatment of every question. Indeed, his life was devoted to the dissemination of this new philosophy of human nature (new, at any rate, in the precise details which Gall, Spurzheim, and he elaborated from it), which, Combe believed, if once generally accepted, would prove the clew to every difficulty, and the panacea for every evil existing in modern civilization. Political and social, religious and civil, mental and moral government, according to him, hinged upon the study and knowledge of the different organs of ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... Stephen; for I never could get hold of the clew to their movements at all," answered Roswell, laughing. "There is a reason for it all, I dare say, if one could only find it out. Captain Daggett, it is high time to look after the safety of your schooner. She ought to be in the cove ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... and fully equal in power to any Canto in Dante's "Inferno," is the story of "Ethan Brandt," or "The Unpardonable Sin." We have a clew to its origin in the statement that it was part of an unfinished romance; presumably commenced at Concord, but afterward discarded, owing to the author's dissatisfaction with his work—an illustration of Hawthorne's ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... scientific facts. Hence the many eminent observers who have been the most illogical of reasoners. What a contrast between Hugh Miller and his friend Francia; the mind of the latter, as Miller describes it, 'a labyrinth without a clew, in whose recesses was a vast amount of book-knowledge that never could be used, and was of no use to himself or any one else;' the former wielding all his stores as he swung his sledge. What is wanted is the comprehensive hand, ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... precious. Delay would lose us. As I felt confident of my opinion, I turned abruptly from the disobedient mariners, and letting go the main brace, brought the vessel to with the topsail aback. Quickly, then, I ordered the watch as it rushed aft, to clew up the mainsail;—but alas! no one would obey; and, in the fracas, the captain, who rushed on deck ignorant of the facts or danger, ordered me back to my state-room with curses for my interference in ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... Warner's agent, from whom we received our payments. Mr. Fowler went to New York to inquire about it, but only learned that Mr. Warner, weighed down by his troubles, had committed suicide, leaving no clew to the name of the man who ...
— The Cash Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.
... lattice-work, had a somewhat sensational aspect; they spoke of battle and murder and sudden death, and sometimes the policeman passing by, if he was a new one, thought for a second that he had stumbled on a "clew." ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... search yesterday, found a key on her bunch that fitted this lock. She opened the drawer, drew out the bottom book of a pile (so that its mutilation would more likely escape discovery), saw that it might contain a clew, and tore out a handful of the leaves. She had barely replaced the book, locked the drawer, and made her escape when her husband appeared. He hardly ever allows her to be out of his sight when she is in that part of ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... who hears him play, and knows a good thing when he hears it, and who engages the old fiddler to play for an evening or two. He goes readily enough; for there is no knowing where the dark stranger may have taken the child, and where no clew is, one may follow any track that presents itself. So the old man goes, and sits patiently in the hot, noisy place. At first the merry-makers, who are not of a high degree of refinement, make fun of him, and cut many a joke at the expense of his blue coat and brass buttons, ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... amazement. That she was free temporarily at least, could not be gainsaid. Her captors had not seen fit to bind her and she now stood absolutely untouched by anyone. The shooting, the fighting, had confused her. She had only seen Marteau as an accomplice and friend of her assailants, she had no clew to his apparent change of heart. She did not know whether she had merely exchanged masters or what had happened. Smiling ironically at her bewilderment, which he somehow resented in his heart, Marteau proceeded ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... presence with a nod. Assisted by the young girl, whose energy and enthusiasm evidently delighted him, Hornsby raised the body for a more careful examination. The dead man's pockets were carefully searched. A few coins, a silver pencil, knife, and tobacco-box were all they found. It gave no clew to his identity. Suddenly the young girl, who had, with unabashed curiosity, knelt beside the exploring official hands of the Red Chief, uttered ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... of blocks and the tramp of the crew, Hisses the rain of the rushing squall: The sails are aback from clew to clew, And now is ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... where the specific properties and heterogeneous nature of matter come into play; it is to be feared that, by persisting in the pursuit of laws, we may find our course suddenly arrested by an impassible chasm. The principle of unity is lost sight of, and the guiding clew is rent asunder whenever any specific and peculiar kind of action manifests itself amid the active forces of nature. The law of equivalents and the numerical proportions of composition, so happily recognized by modern chemists, and proclaimed ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... 9. Narada, the famous hermit. One of the Devarshis, and a great prophet, who is supposed to be still wandering about the world. 'Nara' signifies a thread or clew, a precept, and 'da,' giver. Whenever he appears he is constantly employed in giving good counsel. ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... must take every precaution," he said decisively. And then, with our lanterns lowered, we made an examination of the vicinity, without, however, discovering anything else to furnish us with a clew. While I had been absent the body of the unfortunate Armida had disappeared—a fact which, knowing all that I ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... whose banks he died—the Severn, by whose banks he appears to have been buried—nay, the points of the compass—are associated with him. Sometimes the association is slighter still; and in a few pieces the allusion is so distant that it would not have been perceived without the clew. Such is the following (one of several poems) on the ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... Ellis in the "Memorial History of Boston,"[2] "who attempts to trace the springs, the occasions, and the directing forces of the revolt ... cannot find his clew a year short of the date when the former self-governed Colony of Massachusetts Bay became a Royal Province." He is right in pointing out that in 1692 the struggle took open form. Yet even then the controversy was not new. In other form it had been carried on for more than ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... or talent, his first duty is to turn that gift into personal power by securing its fullest development. The recognition of such a gift generally brings with it the knowledge of the conditions which it needs for its complete unfolding; and when that discovery is made a man holds the clew to the solution of the problem of his life. The world is full of unintelligent sacrifice,— sacrifice which is sound in motive, and therefore does not fail to secure certain results in character, but which is lacking ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... that while he might fear for his friend some chance repute of insanity, he had greater terrors than that. As to their nature I had no clew; nor was it my affair to be guessing; but whatever they were, the days of security at Les Trois Pigeons had somewhat eased Professor Keredec's mind in regard to them. At least, his anxiety was sufficiently assuaged to risk dining out of doors with only my screen of honeysuckle ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... were able to swim as soon as they could walk; rowed and sailed boats before they could guide a plow; could give the location of every bank, the sort of fish that frequented it, and the season for taking them. They could name every rope and clew, every brace and stay on a pink or Chebacco boat before they reached words of two syllables in Webster's blue-backed spelling-book; the mysteries of trawls and handlines, of baits and hooks were unraveled to them while ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... Vararuchi and Gunadhya and this runs through lib. i. Lib. ii. begins with the Story of Udayana to whom we must be truly grateful as our only guide: he and his son Naravahanadatta fill up the rest and end with lib. xviii. Thus the want of the clew or plot compels a division into books, which begin for instance with "We worship the elephantine proboscis of Ganesha" (lib. x. i.) a reverend and awful object to a Hindu but to Englishmen mainly suggesting the "Zoo." The "Bismillah" ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... crew was the same as the outward-bound, and Mr. Dodge had come abroad quite as green as he was now going home ripe, this traveller of six months' finish did not escape diver commentaries that literally cut him up "from clew to ear-ring," and which flew about in the rigging much as active birds flutter from branch to branch in a tree. The subject of all this wit, however, remained profoundly, not to say happily, ignorant of the sensation he had produced, being occupied ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... at that time very hard at work, and, as she had several clews of thread by her, she took up one, and, presenting it to Prince Ahmed, said: "First take this clew of thread. I'll tell you presently the use of it. In the second place, you must have two horses; one you must ride yourself, and the other you must lead, which must be loaded with a sheep cut into ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... learned up there. No, I guess it was some sort of queer weed or flower I smelled and which also frightened the ponies. I wish I knew more about botany. I might find out what it was," and he looked at the trampled grass over which they were now riding. But it gave no clew. ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... obtained permission to attempt the capture of the escaped prisoner, Bute; but the murderer had disappeared, leaving no clew. Brandt learned that the slums of large cities and several mining camps had been searched in vain, also that the trains running east had been carefully watched. We need not try to follow his processes of thought, nor seek to learn how he soon came to the conclusion that his man was at some distant ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... himself is addressed thus: "Go forth, go forth on the ancient paths which our fathers in old times have trodden: the two rulers in bliss, Yama and Varuna, shalt thou behold." Varuna judges all. He thrusts the wicked down into darkness; and not a hint or clew further of their doom is furnished. They were supposed either to be annihilated, as Professor Roth thinks the Vedas imply, or else to live as demons, in sin, blackness, and woe. The good go up to heaven and are glorified with a shining ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... sight of the V.A.D.'s pale face, I took to wandering about the decks and came suddenly on a man whom I had last seen at the tiller of a small boat in Clew Bay. I was beating windward across the steep waves of a tideway. His boat was running free with her mainsail boomed out; and he waved a hand to me as he passed. Once again we met at sea; but we were much ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... he called aloud, "to in-all-studding-sails! Down with them!" he added, scarcely giving his former words time to reach the ears of his subordinates. "Down with every rag of them, fore and aft the ship! Man the top-gallant clew-lines, Mr. Earing. Clew up, and clew down! In with every thing, ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... bays on the west coast of Ireland—off Erris, Mayo, Connemara, and Donegal—swarm with fish. Near Achill Bay, 2000 mackerel were lately taken at a single haul; and Clew Bay is often alive with fish. In Scull Bay and Crookhaven, near Cape Clear, they are so plentiful that the peasants often knock them on the head with oars, but will not take the trouble to ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... ascertain by careful looking how the planks had come to give way under the hoofs of his steed. But there was no clew that he could discover. The bridge was not a carefully made one, and it would have been an easy matter for any one to so loosen a couple of the planks that the least motion would send them ...
— Jack of the Pony Express • Frank V. Webster
... considerable walking, he reached the long street into which he had first chased the slaves, and, finding a line of children eagerly devouring a line of sugared cream-beans, he remembered seeing these confections dropping from the pockets of the slaves as he pursued them, and, following up the clew, soon reached the shop, and found the Princess sitting under a tree before the door. The shop-keeper, knowing her to be the Princess, had been afraid to speak to her, and was working away inside, making believe that he had not seen her, and that he knew nothing of the conflict ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... blew rather too fresh for the mizen,—and then their bosoms were distended, and their bow-lines hauled. How the fore and main-tacks got aboard I could not tell, though it was done while my eyes were on the upper sails. I caught a glimpse of the fore-sheet, however, as the clew was first flapping violently, and then was brought under the restraint of its own proper, powerful purchase. The spanker had been hauled out previously, to help ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... he spy a trace that might lead him on the right track; nowhere a clew that might conduct him through this labyrinth ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... son looked graver and sadder that day than she had ever seen him. She had not the clew to his reflections; she did not know how he was haunted by the thought of the handsome, gallant young man who must be his heir—how he regretted that no son of his would ever succeed him—how proud he would have been of a son like Lionel. He had but two children, and they must some day leave Earlescourt ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... ship's machinery, and fixing in the mind their lead and use, and a sure method of finding them in the darkest night. This last is absolutely necessary, for if a squall should strike the ship, and the order, "Royal clew-lines, flying-jib down-haul—Smith, let go that royal-sheet" were given, it would be very mortifying, as well as dangerous, if he had to answer, "I don't know ...
— Harper's Young People, November 11, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... down the fore scuttle and the after hatchway, and hurrying upon deck, we found a large black cloud rolling on toward us from the south-west, and blackening the whole heavens. "Here comes the Cape Horn!" said the chief mate; and we had hardly time to haul down and clew up, before it was upon us. In a few moments, a heavier sea was raised than I had ever seen before, and as it was directly ahead, the little brig, which was no better than a bathing machine, plunged into it, and all the forward ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... father has exhausted every known means of finding her, and I thought you might, at least, give him a clew." ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... Godsake of Salvation. The Codpiece of the Law. The Slipshoe of the Decretals. The Pomegranate of Vice. The Clew-bottom of Theology. The Duster or Foxtail-flap of Preachers, composed by Turlupin. The Churning Ballock of the Valiant. The Henbane of the Bishops. Marmotretus de baboonis et apis, cum Commento Dorbellis. Decretum Universitatis Parisiensis super ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... pardoned. And in the declaration, whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book, he discovers an intimation, that that offending people should die short of the promised land! A discovery without a clew. This sin of Israel was pardoned. Sentence of death in the wilderness was occasioned by a subsequent act of rebellion, as will be shewn in ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... who visited the beautiful novice at the grate of her convent-parlor, got a clew to the mystery. She found her in great agitation; for a time she evidently repressed her feelings, but they at length broke forth in passionate exclamations. "Heaven grant me grace," said she, "some ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... companion, pursuing the idea, "might we also believe in that wondrous and wild influence which the stars have been fabled to exercise over our fate; hence might we shape a visionary clew to their imagined power over our birth, our destinies, ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... roller; rouleau[obs3], column, rolling-pin, rundle. cone, conoid[obs3]; pear shape, egg shape, bell shape. sphere, globe, ball, boulder, bowlder[obs3]; spheroid, ellipsoid; oblong spheroid; oblate spheroid, prolate spheroid; drop, spherule, globule, vesicle, bulb, bullet, pellet, pelote[obs3], clew, pill, marble, pea, knob, pommel, horn; knot (convolution) 248. curved surface, hypersphere; hyperdimensional surface. V. render spherical &c.adj.; form into a sphere, sphere, roll into a ball; give rotundity &c. n.; round. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Horrock had both dissuaded him, he would not have been deluded into a direct interpretation of their purpose: he would have been aware that those deep hands held something else than a young fellow's interest. With regard to horses, distrust was your only clew. But scepticism, as we know, can never be thoroughly applied, else life would come to a standstill: something we must believe in and do, and whatever that something may be called, it is virtually our own judgment, even when it seems ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... required certain conditions to be observed in and around dwellings, conditions which, when neglected, had led to the outbreaks of epidemic disease from the days of Moses to the present time. But while the results had been patent, it was only in recent years that a clew had been obtained to the occult conditions in air and water to enable their comparative healthful purity ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... they "were to be" put on trial. Whether they were, or were not, put on trial has remained unknown. Any one who has engaged in the fascinating pursuit of elusive historical truth will understand, therefore, my warm delight, and my warm gratitude to Mr. Marsden, when this clew to hitherto unpublished facts concerning Hudson ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier
... deepest self. It was a something found that had long been sought for by a thousand restless yearnings and vague desires, less of the heart than mind; not as when youth discovers the one to be beloved, but rather as when the student, long wandering after the clew to some truth in science, sees it glimmer dimly before him, to beckon, to recede, to allure, and to wane again. She fell at last into unquiet slumber, vexed by deformed, fleeting, shapeless phantoms; and, waking, as the sun, through a veil of hazy cloud, glinted with a sickly ray across ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... go off?"—and cheer after cheer went up as the battery passed through. Vain efforts were made to check this vociferous clamor, which was plainly audible to the enemy, less than 1500 yards away. The bullets of the enemy began to drop lower. The cheering had furnished them the clew they needed. They had located our position, and the 71st atoned for this thoughtlessness by the loss of nearly eighty men, as it lay cowering in ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... they were destined to disappointment; Wilson nosed in every corner like a terrier and examined the roof almost in the posture of a fly, but half an hour afterward they had to confess that they were still without a clew. Sir Walter's private secretary seemed more and more threatened with inappropriate slumber, and, having been the last to climb up the ladder, seemed now to lack the energy ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... till I have again seen some of old Louis's old-fashioned Galanteries at Versailles. Rosamond's bower, you, and I, and Tom Hearne know, was a labyrinth: but as my territory will admit of a very short clew, I lay aside all thoughts of a mazy habitation: though a bower is very different from an arbour, and must have more chambers than one. In short, I both know, and don't know what it should be. I am almost afraid I must go and read Spenser, and wade through his allegories, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... chance of clearing herself. It was the throw of the dice, perhaps—but there was no other way. Danglar, and those with him, were at the bottom of the crime of which she was held guilty. She could not go on as she had been doing, merely in the hope of stumbling upon some clew that would serve to exonerate her. There was not time enough for that. Danglar's trap set for herself and the Adventurer last night in old Nicky Viner's room proved that. And the fact that the woman ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... a port!" cried our sailing-master. "Clew up the topsails! Let the flying jib run down! Back the jib over to windward and run down the foresail!" And so was our schooner Sophie Sutherland hove to off the Japan coast, near Cape Jerimo, on April ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... ridiculous. I must get a cap to suit my rags; any old thing would be better than this horror. Hats like these are not worn; this one would be noticeable a verst[2] off; it would be remembered; people would think of it again some time after, and it might furnish a clew. I must attract as little attention as possible just now. Trifles become important, everything ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... Yet he was vaguely reminded of someone he knew. Glancing up, he found instantly the clew to what had puzzled him. The young man in the picture was like Kate Cullison, like her father too for ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... rushing leap, the doubtful progeny, The lower part a beast, a man above, The monument of their polluted love. Not far from thence he grav'd the wondrous maze, A thousand doors, a thousand winding ways: Here dwells the monster, hid from human view, Not to be found, but by the faithful clew; Till the kind artist, mov'd with pious grief, Lent to the loving maid this last relief, And all those erring paths describ'd so well That Theseus conquer'd and the monster fell. Here hapless Icarus had found his part, Had not the father's grief restrain'd his art. He twice assay'd ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... behave well to them, and perhaps would do them some mischief, he took them to a lonely castle standing in the middle of a wood. There they remained hidden, for the road to it was so hard to find that the king himself could not have found it, had it not been for a clew of yarn, possessing wonderful properties, that a wise woman had given him; when he threw it down before him, it unrolled itself and showed him the way. And the king went so often to see his dear children, that the queen was displeased at his absence; ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... at all introspective she might have found a clew as to her feeling for Hugh in the unusual care with which she arranged her hair, and her decision at the last moment to discard the pale-green gown lying in state on the bed for a white satin one embroidered ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... only one found it possible to cover the distance. At last even he fell out of range. The Indian pony, apparently tireless, shot on like an arrow driven into the teeth of the wind, sending up behind a cloud of dust that stretched backward toward the baffled pursuers, a long wavering ribbon like a clew left to guide the band into the mysterious depths of the ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... seemed to be a well-lighted elevator, and was promptly lifted out of sight. All became dark again, and I was frankly puzzled. This was a situation beyond my ken. What it could mean I could not surmise, and in the hope of finding a clew to the mystery I groped about in the darkness for the card which the hurried individual had cast at me with his words of encouragement. Ultimately I found it, but was unable to decipher its inscription, if perchance it had one. Nevertheless, I managed to ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... were wholly in the dark as to what the title of that book was, and, although we ransacked the British Museum and even appealed to the learned Frognall Dibdin, we could not get a clew to the identity of the volume. To be wholly frank with you, I will say that both the Judge and I had wearied of the occupation; moreover, it involved great expense, since we were content with nothing but India proofs ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... drawn heavily on his father. The journey which Colonel Hitchcock had made with his daughter had been largely for the purpose of finding Parker, and had failed. The boy was ashamed to come back. Now there was a clew, but it seemed unwise for the father to ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... avenue to Broadway. "Who is she? where did she come from? I never saw her before. I wonder if Mrs. Russell knows her, or Clara, or anybody! I will know where she lives, or where she is going at least,—that will be some clew! There! she is stopping that stage. I'll help her in! no, I won't,—she will think I am chasing her. Nonsense! do you suppose she saw you at the window? Of course! No, she didn't; don't be a fool! There! I'll get into the next stage. Now I'll keep watch ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... was, we only managed to furl the upper sails and clew up the courses before the wind caught us, heeling the vessel over almost broadside on to the sea; and then everything had to be let go by the run, the ship scudding away right before the gale, as if towed by wild horses, with the sheets and halliards ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... soon as they could walk; rowed and sailed boats before they could guide a plow; could give the location of every bank, the sort of fish that frequented it, and the season for taking them. They could name every rope and clew, every brace and stay on a pink or Chebacco boat before they reached words of two syllables in Webster's blue-backed spelling-book; the mysteries of trawls and handlines, of baits and hooks were unraveled to ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... comprehend, that these rogues had carried their plunder to Baltimore, and thither he proceeded. For three months he prowled about that city by night and by day, his mind intent upon the one object of ascertaining some clew that should direct him to the discovery of the robber. At the end of twelve weeks he had made no progress, and returned to Philadelphia. There he continued some ten days, and became discontented and vexed at being baffled. Asserting that ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... the signal it was made for the grand fleet to anchor, All in the Downs that night for to meet; Then stand by your stoppers, See clear your shank painters, Hawl all your clew garnets, stick out tacks ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... various ropes here mentioned, bowlines and brails ran to the perpendicular sides of square sails, buntlines across their fronts; clew-garnets and clewlines were tackles for clewing up the lower and the upper square sails respectively, jeers for hoisting the lower yards; lifts ran from the masthead to the yard-arms, leech lines to the sides of ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... he was the first discoverer of those Indies, so he was really of all the mainland; and to him the credit is due. For it was he that put the thread into the hands of the rest by which they found the clew to more distant parts. It was not necessary for this that he should personally visit every part, any more than it is necessary to do so in taking possession of an estate; as the jurists hold." This generous protest by Las Casas should receive the assent of all geographers. The pupils ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... recalled having once seen Jimmie place some papers there by mistake; having done so once, the mistake might have occurred again. Taking out his partner's bunch of keys, he soon found one that fitted and opened the drawers. He had half completed his task, without finding any clew to the missing securities, when he was interrupted by the sound of the opening of the front door, and had but time to slam the drawers shut and pocket the keys when the night clerk of the hotel stepped inside the apartment and, closely followed by a sandy-haired ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... to perform dark deeds are hatched a clew or record is left behind. In spite of Germany's protestations of innocence, her loud cries that the war was forced upon her, there is ample evidence that for years she had been planning it; that she wanted it and only ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... what that household was like; and again he found himself wondering why she had not consented to his proposal. And the ever-recurring question presented itself—was he prepared to go that length? He didn't know. She was beyond him, he had no clew to her, she was to him as mysterious as a symphony. Certain strains of her moved him intensely—the rest was beyond his grasp.... At supper, while his children talked and laughed boisterously, he sat silent, restless, and in spite of their presence ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... incarnadine, And languored lifting, fasten unto mine, Their rubric Message giving Hint and Clew How frequently a ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... the threshold; picking his way daintily over heaps of litter on the floor. Yes, the room was full of the scent. But, whence the scent emanated, Lad could not, for the life of him, tell. The room gave him no clew. And, after a few minutes of futile investigation, he ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... general, triumphant in his clew. "No, he didn't tell. He never will tell now. I have learned from a picket boat that was captured last night by our patrols, that nothing was seen of ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... to the packet inclosed, D'Avencourt continued—"The accompanying letters were found in Ferrari's breast-pocket, and on opening the first one, in the expectation of finding some clew as to his last wishes, we came to the conclusion that you, as the future husband of the lady whose signature and handwriting you will here recognize, should be made aware of the contents, not only for your own sake, but in justice to the deceased. If all the letters are of the ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... assiduously and desperately hunted than he. Domiciliary visits, the intrusion of the Vigilance police into the homes of citizens, of every house and room in which it was suspected McGowan would be caught. Every friend of his was shadowed to get a clew to his place of concealment. Yet he was for weeks securely hidden within five miles of the city. Thence he made his escape to Santa Barbara, through the aid of true and sagacious friends; was sheltered and protected there by another—Jack Powers, one of the Stevenson's ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara
... established in regard to our self-development and our families, so they have been in regard to limited circles of friends. If the fulfilment of these claims were all that a righteous life required, the hunger and thirst would be stilled for many good men and women, and the clew of right living would lie easily in ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... its usual strong, kindly expression. Whatever was hidden behind that calm exterior, she had no intention of giving a chance observer any clew to it. ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... the unpainted oblong box would furnish a clew to the man's real personality, Cleggett, assisted by Lady Agatha and Dr. Farnsworth, ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... done it, but how could I? All I know is that he was a delicately brought up young Englishman, and the only clew I have is a watch with a London maker's name on it and a girl's photograph. I've a very curious notion that I shall meet that ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... Precisely the clew that he needed the sculptor had not given, but he was endeavoring to overcome his repugnance to disclosing his most secret feelings. Every word cost him an effort, but he went on with a savage sense of doing penance by ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... me," responded Roy; "but suppose we examine the vicinity first. We might get a clew as to the rascals who ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... streams, through mines, bear tincture of their ore. While empiric politicians use deceit, Hide what they give, and cure but by a cheat; You boldly show that skill which they pretend, And work by means as noble as your end: 70 Which should you veil, we might unwind the clew, As men do nature, till we came to you. And as the Indies were not found, before Those rich perfumes, which, from the happy shore, The winds upon their balmy wings convey'd, Whose guilty sweetness first ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... presented itself directly in front of them, and close to the briars. It was of a round shape, and looked like a large clew of hair or wool of a greyish colour, half-buried in the ground. Whether it had been there before, neither Basil, nor Lucien, nor Francois, could tell. It might have been without their noticing it, as their attention ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... egg shape, bell shape. sphere, globe, ball, boulder, bowlder^; spheroid, ellipsoid; oblong spheroid; oblate spheroid, prolate spheroid; drop, spherule, globule, vesicle, bulb, bullet, pellet, pelote^, clew, pill, marble, pea, knob, pommel, horn; knot (convolution) 248. curved surface, hypersphere; hyperdimensional surface. V. render spherical &c adj.; form into a sphere, sphere, roll into a ball; give rotundity &c n.; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... have read "Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School" will remember the mysterious disappearance of the bazaar money and the untiring zeal with which Grace worked until she found a clew to the robbery, which led to the astonishing discovery that she made in an isolated house on the ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... Whoever got the ring would be married first; whoever got the nut would marry a widow or a widower; but if the nut were an empty shell, he or she would remain unwed. Again, a girl would take a clue of worsted, go to a lime kiln in the gloaming, and throw the clew into the kiln in the devil's name, while she held fast the other end of the thread. Then she would rewind the thread and ask, "Who holds my clue?" and the name of her future husband would come up from the depth of the kiln. Another way was to ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... hours, with the news that the French had been seen four weeks before from the coast of Candia, and were then steering southeast. This intelligence was corroborated by a vessel spoken the same day. Southeast, being nearly dead before the prevailing wind, was an almost certain clew to the destination of an unwieldy body which could never regain ground lost to leeward; so, although Nelson now learned that some of his missing frigates had also been seen recently off Candia, he would waste no time looking for them. It may be mentioned that these frigates ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... losing, or rather coming to the end, of his clew at the Post-Office furnace, recovered it by some magical powers known best to himself and his compeers, and tracked his victim to Archangel Court, but here he lost the scent again, and seemed to ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... Werper sought for the party that had accompanied him from the camp to the barrier cliffs; but not until late in the afternoon of the second day did he find clew to its whereabouts, and then in such gruesome form that he was totally unnerved by ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... any one yet that she had a clew by which she hoped to win the reward Love had offered for the detection of the impostor; but after she had grappled with the wretch who was bearing off Dainty, she had found in the claw-like grasp of her fingers some bits of torn torchon ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... Virginia. This is the only thing by which I could identify my brother William." Nothing more was said upon the matter, and it dropped out of my mind. I did not realize how important were the words of this man. It never occurred to me that he held the clew that might bring us ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... lean upon. In that boiling, seething world of Rome, now more than ever disturbed by the inroads of strangers eagerly looking forward to the excitements of the amphitheatre, it would be in vain to make even deliberate and careful search for a lost slave, unless some clew should be left behind. Yes, she must surely have that clew; and doubtless she purposed to use it as soon as daylight came. Let her go now, therefore. It were idle to call her back only for new flight in a ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... that Roland Sefton had succeeded in getting away out of the country. The police were at fault; and as no one in his own home knew how to communicate with him, no clew had been discovered by close surveillance of their movements. Such vigilance could be kept up only for a few months at longest, and as the summer drew toward ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... of Alvarez, that the little he has to say and do, is so said and done, as not to disgrace his common-place character of the possessor of the secret on which the plot depends; for it may be casually observed, that the depositary of such a clew to the catastrophe, though of the last importance to the plot, is seldom himself of any interest whatever. The haughty and high-spirited Almeyda is designed by the author as the counterpart of ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... possible to cover the distance. At last even he fell out of range. The Indian pony, apparently tireless, shot on like an arrow driven into the teeth of the wind, sending up behind a cloud of dust that stretched backward toward the baffled pursuers, a long wavering ribbon like a clew left to guide the band into the mysterious depths of the ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... Medora Joyce on the drawing-room sofa, proud and flattered to have the undivided regards of the most charming "young matron" present. At the same time, Virgilia, in a shaded corner of the library, was sounding Elizabeth for a clew. Elizabeth had little, consciously, to tell; but, like many persons in that position, she told more than she realized. It was not enough for the purpose, but it dovetailed in with other information that came from other sources the day following. When ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... I speak of the poet of the Sonnets and of the greater plays as unknown, I can but believe that the Sonnets, when carefully studied in connection with contemporaneous history and chronicles, will yet afford an adequate clew to his identification. It occurs to me that a promising line of inquiry might be made on this assumption,—that the poet was born about twenty years before Shakespeare and died soon after the production of the plays ceased, ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... listened for it, and was rather disappointed more than once when I had held my breath in vain. But this is the unvarnished record of an odious hour, and it passed without further aggravation from without; only, as I drove to Sloane Street, the news was on all the posters, and on one I read of "a clew" which spelt for me a doom I was grimly resolved ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... discharge of his professional duties. Various and conflicting opinions were expressed as to whither he had gone, in testing which I had visited no less than twenty cities, making careful inquiries, especially among medical men. Occasionally I struck what seemed to be a promising clew, which only increased my confusion and left me more hopelessly in the dark. I had reported my movements to Mr. Earl as often as once a week and I received letters from him frequently, encouraging me to continue the search and enclosing money with which to do so. But although I had written often ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... had requested to have a waste-basket added to the furniture of his room seemed to indicate that they contained the latter. To this request Mrs. Pedagog had gladly acceded, because she had a notion that therein at some time or another would be found a clew to the new boarder's past history—or possibly some evidence of such duplicity as the good lady suspected he might be guilty of. She had read that Byron was profligate, and that Poe was addicted to drink, and she was impressed with the idea ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... other end," said Gerald, with firm triumph. "It's a clew that's what it is. What price cold mutton now? I've always felt something magic would happen some day, ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... very evening of her arrival her husband, after meeting her with reproaches, had fled from the house, leaving no clew to his destination, and giving no reason for ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... to enter the cottage, but hastened back to the hotel, in a state of agitation difficult to describe. I could not make up my mind to pass unnoticed such extraordinary coincidences; but how was any clew to be ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... army. He was arrested on his return, and compelled to serve out the remainder of his term of service. The death of an uncle in India recruited his finances, and he returned to New York. It afterwards appeared that he had some clew to Peter Belgrave's missing million, and he was therefore anxious to recover the possession of the wife ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... my mother. When she is dead I shall leave Eastborough never to return. My sole object in life from that day will be to find some trace of my parents or relatives. Now it may happen that through Mrs. Putnam or Miss Pettengill you may get some clew that will help me in my search. It is for this that I wish a friend, and I have a presentiment that some day you will ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... Judson Eells was too shocked to make any proper response. His world was tumbling about him, all his plans had come to naught—and Lynch was gone. He longed to question further, to seek out some clew, but he dared not, for his hands were not clean. He had hired this Apache whose grisly scalp-lock now lay before him, and the others who had been with Lynch; and if it ever became known——He shuddered and ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... The clew to the best available solution of the problem is supplied by a consideration of the precise manner, in which the advantages derived from the efficient exercise of liberties become inimical to a wholesome social condition. The hostility depends, not upon the existence of such advantageous discriminations ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... it is," interrupted Miss Robinson, handing the sheet to her assistant. "What a pity that it gives no clew ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... the missing letter followed; but no clew to it was obtained. The ill-visaged man, who wished to save the Buckingham Bank robbers from a long term in the state prison, thought it was very hard that his friends should suffer because somebody had stolen the letter, or the squire had lost it by his carelessness. But ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... difficult to say. But with such assistance, a studding-sail-boom becomes as easy of identification as a marling-spike lashed to a forecastle spinaker-boom, close hauled aport under trysails, blowing out like flags from the grips of clew-lines and leech-lines towards the close of a second dog-watch! Shiver LINDLEY MURRAY'S timbers! but what can be finer than a bulkhead battened down with the scandalised main-sail of a top-gallant clipper-rigged ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various
... beyond the charter received from the government; some existed only for a few years; and some were simply reorganizations. The formation of these companies marks a distinct stage of commercial development, and furnishes a valuable clew to the foundation and early government of European colonies ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... of the two springs that the rude sketch of Harris bade them search; but more definite directions than that he had not given. He had marked a tree where the north stream joined the river; and finding that as a clew, they followed the stream to its source. When they reached the larger stream, navigable for a mile, they concluded to move their tents there, for no lovelier place could ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... foolish across the register and do the wonderin' act all day, though. Besides, I wanted to follow a clew. It ain't a very likely one, but it's better'n nothing. So I slides out and boards a Columbus Avenue surface car, and inside of twenty minutes I'm at Auntie's apartments, interviewin' Helma, her original ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... person left in haste, that's clear enough," remarked Hood, balancing one of the pumps in his hand. "'Bonet, Paris,'" he read, squinting at the lining. "Most deplorable that we have both slippers; one would have been a clew, and we could have spent the rest of our lives measuring footprints. Very nice slippers, though; fastidious young person, I'll wager. The monogram on these trinkets is of no assistance—it might be R. G. T., ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... the guide had left us. We decided in favor of the former course. After a march of three quarters of an hour the blazed trees ceased, and we concluded we were near the point at which we had parted with our guide. So we built a fire, laid down our loads, and cast about on all sides for some clew as to our exact locality. Nearly an hour was consumed in this manner, and without any result. I came upon a brood of young grouse, which diverted me for a moment. The old one blustered about at a furious rate, trying to draw all attention to herself, while the young ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... rigging and the studdingsail halliards and tacks been cast off by the watch on deck and the downhauls and sheets manned, than the "first luff," pitching his voice to yet a higher key, sang out in rapid sequence, "Topmast stu'ns'l downhaul—haul taut—clew up—all down!" ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... stranger's grave had to be provided. In the meantime the friends and relatives of the missing girl had been making every effort to locate her, no idea having occurred to them that she was going South. A loving brother finally got hold of a clew, which he followed up so successfully that he at last solved the mystery. He arrived in New Orleans on November 1st, and when taken out to the grave that had been provided for the stranger who had died just outside the gates, he was astounded to find several handsome bouquets of flowers, with wreaths ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... as if to show him that even those who guarded him needed guards for themselves, when one day the prefect of police was killed on the steps of his official residence, and no clew of the assassin could be found, although lying near his body was found a paper with the simple name of Batavsky written upon ...
— The Boy Nihilist - or, Young America in Russia • Allan Arnold
... cases after them; and, in order to determine what case it is that follows them, the learner must carefully observe what preceding word denotes the same person or thing, and apply the principle of the rule accordingly. This word being often remote, and sometimes understood, the sense is the only clew to the construction. Examples: "Who then can bear the thought of being an outcast from his presence?"—Addison. Here outcast agrees with who, and not with thought. "I cannot help being so passionate an admirer as I am."—Steele. Here admirer agrees with I. "To recommend ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the skipper were obeyed. The Languedocian made a third sailor. All bore a hand. Not satisfied with brailing up, they furled the sails, lashed the earrings, secured the clew-lines, bunt-lines, and leech-lines, and clapped preventer-shrouds on the block straps, which thus might serve as back-stays. They fished the mast. They battened down the ports and bulls'-eyes, which is a method of walling up a ship. These evolutions, though executed in a lubberly ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... long as he remained in such close proximity to the bank. It was safe to assume that this was one of the things the professional "strong-arm man" would not do. But it was also evident that he must speedily lose his identity if he hoped to escape; and the lost identity must leave no clew to itself. ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... We'll go and take another look around there. Some man was evidently hurt there, and was taken away. We may get a clew. The lights on the runabout will give us a better chance to look around than we had by the little pocket lamp. We'll try there, and, if we don't find anything, then I'll call ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton
... was nothing to fear, yet he did fear. Dark possibilities rose on his imagination—in his excitement at finding the treasure he might have left something, some betraying mark or object. Was there any way in which the bandits could have obtained a clew to his identity; could they have guessed, or discovered by some underground channel of espionage, that he was the man who had robbed them? Over and over he told himself it was impossible, but he could not lift from his spirit a dread that made him toss in restless torment. ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... ragged clothes that Mr. Carson would have noticed that and spoken of it. And that reminds me. I must ask him about the clothing I wore, and about how old I was. Maybe he kept the garments, and they might form a clew. Yes, that's what I'll do. I'll ask Mr. ...
— Cowboy Dave • Frank V. Webster
... succession by the other vessels of the squadron, which had been previously directed to keep, though still within signal, at long distances from each other during the day, closing up at night, in order to spread a broad clew and give greater chance of ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... to the winnowing effect of wear and waste through time and chance, had left little doubt what works of what writers, Greek and Roman, best deserved now to be shown to the general reader. Besides this, the prevalent custom of the schools of classical learning could then wisely be taken as a clew of guidance to be implicitly followed, whatever might be the path through which it should lead. There is here no similar avoidance of responsibility possible; for the schools have not established a custom, and French literature is a living body, from which no important members have ever yet been ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... set her heart on the romance that had commenced in dots and dashes culminating in orange blossoms—a Wired Love. But now, to her vexation, she saw her anticipations liable to be set at naught, and herself unable to obtain even a clew to the trouble. Like the "line man," who goes up and down to find why the wires will not work, she could not find the "break" anywhere, and decided that romances, whether "wired" or taken in the ordinary way, were certainly very unwieldy ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... French so graphically call it, for his final diagnosis, or accept its findings until he had submitted them to the most ruthless cross-examination with the stethoscope and in the laboratory, yet it will sometimes give him a clew of almost priceless value. It is positively uncanny to see the swift, intuitive manner in which an old, experienced, and thoughtful physician will grasp the probable nature of a case in one keen look at a patient. Often he can hardly explain to you himself how he does it, what are the ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... we think, gives us the clew, by following which we may reconcile the contradiction, what Miss Rossetti calls "the astounding discrepancy," between the Lady of the Vita Nuova who made him unfaithful to Beatrice, and the same Lady in the Convito, who in attributes ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... suspicion that he's got a clew to the mystery somehow, and that he expects to find those handsome wenches," said Mr. Bruteman. "I'd give a ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... This gives the clew to the decade. Underneath the superficial calm of the "Era of Good Feeling," and in contradiction to the apparent absorption of all parties into one, there were arising new issues, new party formations, and some of the most profound ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... Quinton Edge's particular retreat. And yet it would have marked the subtlety of the man to have set his secret here, where it would have been at once so easily seen and overlooked. Every labyrinth has its clew, but the fugitive ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... their trouble. Silence fell on the house and Migwan returned to the mastering of the sum of the angles. Geometry was the bane of her existence and she was only cheered into digging away at it by the thought of the money lying in her name in the bank, which she had received for giving the clew leading to little Raymond Bartlett's discovery the summer before, and which would pay her way to college for one ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... into the eyes of his patient, the physician said: "Three years ago the body of your old enemy, Atwell Barton, was found in the woods near his house and yours. He had been stabbed to death. There have been no arrests; there was no clew. Some of us had 'theories.' I had ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... in vain. No clew to the purloined securities could be obtained,—the copies of the "Sunday Visitor," which had been substituted for them, affording not the least; for that valuable little paper was found in almost every ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... she sought a clew to the mystery and found none. What had come to Timar? His countenance betrayed something like happiness; what was he concealing under his care for Timea? In company he was bright and cheerful, unconstrained and at ease with Athalie, sometimes even taking her ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... know," she said, "the letter kills; That on our arid fields of strife And heat of clashing texts distils The clew of spirit and of life. But, searching still the written Word, I fain would find, Thus saith the Lord, A voucher for the hope I also feel That sin can give no wound ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the cliffs by your own strength. I have therefore let down a rope, by which you will be able to climb up; and as the island is so large that you might not find Hermod's dwelling-place so easily, I lay down this clew beside you. You need only hold the end of the thread, and the clew will run on before and show you the way. I also lay this belt beside you, to put on when you awaken; it will keep you ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... this erring son; and at first his search was wild, profitless, and almost hopeless. But by degrees, and with a persistency that seemed to increase with his hopelessness, he was rewarded by finding some clew to ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte
... please him we refer to him as "the authorities." If the Palace Grocery has been invaded through the back window and a box of plug tobacco stolen, Marshal Furgeson is delighted to read in the paper that "the authorities have an important clew and the arrest may be expected at any time." He is "the authorities." If "the authorities have their eyes on a certain barber-shop on South Main Street, which is supposed to be doing a back-door beer business," he again is "the authorities," and contends that the word strikes ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... glad to meet you," he said. "I am on my way to C—— in search of my mother. I want to see the person who sold her last, and, if possible, get some clew to the direction ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... a servant of the British Government, lately stationed in Burma, suddenly appears in London, in the character of a detective. I am here, Petrie—and I bear credentials from the very highest sources—because, quite by accident, I came upon a clew. Following it up, in the ordinary course of routine, I obtained evidence of the existence and malignant activity of a certain man. At the present stage of the case I should not be justified in terming him the emissary of an Eastern Power, but I may say that representations ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... Agassiz's correspondence with his European friends and colleagues during the winter and summer of 1847 give a clew to the occupations and interests of his new life, and keep up the thread ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... long, there was even in his habitual coldness an evidence of something compressed, latent, painful, lying deep within his memory. This would have interested the kindly feelings of a grateful heart; but Randal detected and watched it only as a clew to some secret it might profit him to gain. For Randal Leslie hated Egerton; and hated him the more because, with all his book-knowledge and his conceit in his own talents, he could not despise his patron; ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in which she visited among the people gives us an insight into the character of the woman, and furnishes us with a clew to her future success. She usually rode from Norwich on horseback, and, taking a little girl with her into the saddle, passed from house to house, using the child as guide, interpreter, and adviser. When ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... must have been many seconds that I sat up thus in bed staring about, without being able to regain the clew to my personal identity. I was no more able to distinguish myself from pure being during those moments than we may suppose a soul in the rough to be before it has received the ear-marks, the individualizing touches which make it a person. Strange that the sense ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... aft with a belaying pin. They could sail a ship with two-thirds the crew of a Britisher with her clumsy yellow hemp sails and belly you could lose a dinghy in. Mind, I don't say the English aren't handy in a ship and that they wouldn't clew up a topsail clean at the edge of hell. What we are on the seas came over from them. But we bettered it, William, and they knew it; and, naturally enough, laid out to sail around us. I don't blame England, but I do our ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... abstracted all day, but it was not till after dinner, when we were taking our coffee on the verandah, that she gave me any clew to her thoughts. Then she ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... Jasto Dangloss, chief of police in Edelweiss. He could only sputter his excuses and withdraw, swearing to catch the arch-conspirator or to die in the attempt. Not a soul in the castle, not a being in all Graustark could offer the faintest clew to the identity of the man or explain his motive. No one knew a Michael, who might have been inadvertently addressed as "your" possible "Highness." The greatest wonder reigned; vexation, uneasiness and perplexity ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
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