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More "Clue" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... machine, to copy sheet after sheet for him, every morning from nine till four, and again every evening from five till ten. Mine was a law tutor of a superior sort. Wherever he could, he gave me a clue to guide me through the labyrinth; and when no reason could be devised for what the law directs, he never puzzled me by attempting to explain what could not be explained; he did not insist upon the total surrender of my rational faculties, but with wonderful liberality would allow ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... truth? why all our never-ceasing efforts in its pursuit? Is it merely that we may exercise the mind, and make truth the toy of our imagination? Impossible. At any rate it would be a secret to which, as yet, God has not given us any clue. But in doing this, in constantly placing the phenomena of creation before us without their causes or without ever explaining them, and at the same time instilling into our souls an insatiable thirst for truth, the Almighty has placed within us a ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... gaily bedizened with streamers, was observed to shove off from the side of one of the French frigates, and pull directly for our gangway. In the stern sheets reclined Mowanna and his consort. As they approached, we paid them all the honours clue to royalty;—manning our yards, firing a salute, and making a ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... home. The excitement and disappointment, added to the severe cold to which I was exposed, broke me down, and I was taken suddenly ill. When I recovered, I returned to Bristed Hall only to find my priceless bird flown, and no clue to be had to ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... abominable," he declared. "Here we are supposed to have the finest police system in the world, and yet a man can disappear from his rooms in the very centre of London, and no one has even a clue as to what has ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... It is well known, however, that it is not the degree but the character of the cold which renders it obnoxious to men, and the climate of this country is quite as agreeable, if not more so, than the best part of Canada. The height of the latitude gives no clue whatever to the degree of cold or to ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... looks have made me drunken, not his wine; * His grace of gait disgraced sleep to these eyne: Dazed me no cup, but cop with curly crop; * His gifts overcame me not the gifts of vine: His winding locks my patience-clue unwound: * His robed beauties ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... hours, when, had he possessed the slightest clue to the hiding-place of Berene Dumont, he would have flown to her, even knowing that he left disgrace and death behind him. He realised that he now owed a duty to the girl he loved, higher and more imperative by far than ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... will advance further toward comprehending the spirit of his subject by patiently considering what he knows to be in part perhaps a mythus, than by starting with the foregone conclusion that the legend must of necessity be worthless, and that his cunning will suffice to supply the missing clue.[57] ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... hasn't lost his affection for you; if it were so, we shouldn't have that symptom. I will tell you, briefly, my theory of the case. But first let me say, in justice to Frye, that he was in no position to know certain facts that give the clue to George's ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... reached Hillsdale before their arrival, and the friends and acquaintances of both, comprising pretty much the whole village, hastened to present their congratulations. Many supposed now they had obtained a clue to the singularities of the Solitary, and expected that since he had recovered his son, he would resume the habits of ordinary life. But nothing seemed further from Holden's intention. In spite of the entreaties of his son, and ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... proportionately increased. How often we see one, two, or three drugs exhibited in mania without any result, while a fourth acts like a charm. Only by studying in detail the special characteristics of each case, can we hope to find a clue which will serve as a guide to the treatment of ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... whisper or the card; then I am lost, and flounder hopelessly about without bearings of any kind, asking leading-questions, cautiously feeling my way, not knowing whether I am talking to a person of great importance or the contrary. When at last my extreme wariness and diplomacy get hold of a clue, then I swim along beautifully on ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... consisting of money in his hands, belonging to private individuals. Among his victims was Colonel S. of Baltimore, who determined to make an effort to recover his money. His first step was a visit to Halifax. His endeavors there to find Keith's whereabouts were for some time fruitless. But at last a clue was found. A girl, who had accompanied Keith in his flight, had written a letter to a relative in Halifax, and Colonel S. by some means obtained a sight of the envelope. The post-mark, plainly legible, indicated that the letter had been written at an obscure ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... would have scorned it as a shameless and presumptuous bid for immortality; but the whole point of view had vanished in 1900. Not he, but Sir Henry Maine and Rudolph Sohm, were the parents or creators of Sac and Soc. Convinced that the clue of religion led to nothing, and that politics led to chaos, one had turned to the law, as one's scholars turned to the Law School, because one could see no ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... limits of the human—he never said the female—understanding to comprehend these things without the aid of men learned in the law, he humbly offered his assistance to guide her out of that labyrinth, into which, unwittingly and without any clue, she had ventured farther and farther, till she was just in the very jaws of nonsuit and ruin. She put her affairs completely into his hands, and promised that she would no farther interfere, even with her advice; for it was upon this condition that Alfred engaged to undertake the management of ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... the means by which that system is affected, we see that a variety of conditions affect it; but as to the modes in which they act upon it, we have as yet little if any clue. ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... was an article in the Saturday Review on "the knowledge necessary to make a blunder,'' and this title gives the clue to what a blunder really is. It is caused by a confusion of two or more things, and unless something is known of these things a blunder cannot be made. A perfectly ignorant man has not sufficient knowledge ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... officer too, for he hesitated. Then with visible effort he advanced toward the hunks of flesh, casting back and forth as if to find some clue to the manner of their death. He was still so engaged when a second alien burst out of the archway, a splintered length of white held out before him as if he ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... The Prussian appears to be quite intellectually incapable of this thought. He cannot, I think, conceive the idea that is the foundation of all comedy; that, in the eyes of the other man, he is only the other man. And if we carry this clue through the institutions of Prussianised Germany, we shall find how curiously his mind has been limited in the matter. The German differs from other patriots in the inability to understand patriotism. Other European peoples ...
— The Barbarism of Berlin • G. K. Chesterton
... did she ever obtain from Sir Bale, nor any clue to the cause of the agony that was so powerfully expressed in his countenance. Thus much only she learned from him, that Feltram had sought that interview for the purpose of announcing his departure, which was to take place within ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... have explained everything. Your letter gave me the suspicion. I secured a transcript of the Herr Doctor's report for myself. My suspicion became a certainty. You will find the clue in the report. Consider: The Leader had had the experience I imagined for my she-dog. He had linked his mind with a stronger one and a greater personality—if it must be said, a greater man. For a moment The Leader knew what that man knew most certainly, with most profound conviction, with most ...
— The Leader • William Fitzgerald Jenkins (AKA Murray Leinster)
... that she might ask him and allay her fears. But what right had she? Upon what grounds could she set a question upon so secret a matter? She conceived him raising his brows in that supercilious way of his, and looking her over from head to toe as though seeking a clue to the nature of this quaint thing that asked him questions. She pictured his smile and the jest with which he would set aside her inquiry. She imagined, indeed, just what she believed would happen did she ask him; which was precisely what would not have happened. Imagining ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... has obligingly informed me, that the picture of ALTHEA, as well as that of Lovelace himself, bequeathed by Cartwright the actor to Dulwich College in 1687, bears no clue to date of composition, or to the artist's name, and that it does not assist in the identification of the lady. This is the more vexatious, inasmuch as it seems probable that ALTHEA, whoever she was, ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... as of mist, and this drips during the day and so forms stalactites of ice, often a foot or more in length. "Clout" is a "dictionary word," a knock on the head, but it is pronounced differently here; they say a "clue" in the head. Stuttering and stammering each express well-known conditions of speech, but there is another not recognised in dictionary language. If a person has been made a butt of, laughed at, ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... rather a fatal thing to do?" His own bitter memories gave him the clue to her state of mind. "No good ever comes of remembering sad things. I think the perfect memory would be one which would only retain the happiness of life. You know the old motto found on many sundials: ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... are now as white as windsor soap can make them, could complain of their wrongs, what contaminations with dusty Ainsworth and Scapulas would they enumerate! if his brain were to reveal its labours, what labyrinths of prose and verse, in which it has been bewildered when it had no clue of a friendly translation, or Clavis to conduct it through the wanderings, would it disclose! what permutations and combinations of commas, what elisions and additions of letters, what copious annotations on a word, an accent, or a stop, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various
... with reserve, but with a suggestion of curious eagerness. I marked it at once. Not, however, till the usual questions as to my journeys and so on were over, did I get a clue to the cause of it. But then, when we were seated on stools by the great stone I have mentioned, big clay beakers of thin, delicious light beer beside us, he put a question. 'Why have you been so long a time ...
— The Priest's Tale - Pere Etienne - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • Robert Keable
... millionaire. There was a great deal of talk after the body had been placed in the Lambert vault, and there was more talk in the newspapers when an account was given of the funeral. But neither by word of mouth, nor in print, was any suggestion made likely to afford the slightest clue to the name or the whereabouts of the assassin. Having regard to Pine's romantic career, it was thought by some that the act was one of revenge by a gypsy jealous that the man should attain to such affluence, while others hinted that the motive for the crime was to be ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... Having discovered the modus operandi of the pair, and having read their cards, so to speak, he next set himself to discover where they banked their swag. But this was by no means easy. His utmost vigilance went unrewarded by so much as a single clue. ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... the ridge to the mail box, grimly determined to let no little clue to Johnny Jewel's insufferable behavior escape her. Johnny was up to something, and it might be that the mail box was worth inspecting that morning. So Mary V rode up ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... Willis and his officers, and some of the gentlemen passengers, were making every possible examination of the boat and the dead bodies, to endeavour to discover some clue, by which they might be able to trace to what ship they had belonged, or whence they had come. There was, unfortunately, little on their bodies to identify them. One of the men had fastened round his neck ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... from my throat ere it should undo the work of Providence. If they escape the present vengeance of Heaven, thee shalt answer for it, not I. Yet I will give thee a clue to find this woman who hath fooled thee. Seek her where there are thieves and drunkards to mock at thy simplicity, to jeer at their easy gull, for I say again thy wife never was in Barbary, but playing ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... left these behind, and for the next few years will probably settle down to the idea of being nothing in particular, or else a professional cricketer. Then he will suddenly, for good or evil, make his choice. Neither his blue eyes nor his fair hair give any clue as to what that choice will be, but I should let him keep both, as they may be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 18th, 1920 • Various
... satchels, and looked over the heads of the motley crowd into the still more motley street beyond. Two short rows of one-story buildings, distinctive by the brightness of new lumber on their sheltered side, bordered a narrow street, half clogged by the teams of visiting farmers. Not the faintest clue to a hostelry was visible, and the eyes of the man wandered back, interrupting by the way another pair of ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... together in the clear dusk, were murdered by a party of miscreants, who escaped before any suspicion of what had occurred had been aroused, even in the minds of those who had actually witnessed the struggle from a distance. For many months no clue to the perpetrators of the deed was discoverable, and it seemed to be only too likely to be added to the long list of crimes for which no retribution has ever been exacted. Happily for Irish credit this ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... significant, and it checked me. I couldn't remember what the deuce she had said that night. There recurred to me her mimicry of a woman's voice—Laura Bowman's as I believed—to determine through Chung who Thomas Gilbert's feminine visitor had been. Should that clue have been followed up before I moved on Eddie Hughes? Even as I got to this point, I heard Worth, punctuating his remarks with the whang of his rock on the bit of twig he ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... I hope not," said Lord Ashiel earnestly. "I have got her to promise to come to Scotland, and in a few days I may get some definite clue as to which of them it is. It is a very odd coincidence that both the girls bear names so much like that of my poor wife's." He paused reflectively, and then added, "In the meantime you will go on with your ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... a horrid, dirty dog! Why doesn't that man drive him out?" demanded Miss Sturgis, who had followed Tzaritza hot foot, having been in the main hall when the great hound went tearing through and up the stairs, nose and ears having given her the clue to ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... be, in what does its nature differ from love founded in long observation and slow growth? Perhaps its effects are not so permanent; but they are, while they last, as violent and intense. We walk the pathless mazes of society, vacant of joy, till we hold this clue, leading us through that labyrinth to paradise. Our nature dim, like to an unlighted torch, sleeps in formless blank till the fire attain it; this life of life, this light to moon, and glory to the sun. What does ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... first glance it would seem almost hopeless to attempt the naming of every kind and degree of color. But, if all these varieties possess the same three qualities, only in different degrees, and if each quality can be measured by a scale, then there is a clue to this labyrinth. ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... standing apart on the poop steps. But perhaps I turned on the whole with the greatest curiosity to the figure labelled "E. Goddedaal, 1st off." He whom I had never seen, he might be the identical; he might be the clue and spring of all this mystery; and I scanned his features with the eye of a detective. He was of great stature, seemingly blonde as a Viking, his hair clustering round his head in frowsy curls, and two enormous whiskers, like the tusks of some ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that awful roar. Then at last I began to feel that the rush of wind and water was passing over me, and that I was in some kind of shelter; and when I had once hit upon this, I had as it were grasped a clue. I knew that I was lying on stones, and saw that rising above me was a mass of rock, which I knew by the touch, and this stone was sheltering me from the ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... thrust in McLean unfeelingly. "Knocking a woman about the desert.... Not much chance of a clue after all these years," he concluded with a very British air ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... a clue. A wretched hobbledehoy of a fellow, something in the bookseller's shop at the corner of Kettle Street, has come with a rigmarole about a society that he and a few more belonged to, including this Francois Gaspard, who is missing. He protests that the thing was legal, and all that—only ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... the six Greek letters composing the Saviour's name, 10820070400200888. Precisely so John here tells us what is the numerical value of the letters in the name of the Beast. If we tried the Latin or the Greek names of Nero the clue would not be found; but John was writing mainly for Hebrews, and the Hebrew letters of Kesar Neron, the name by which every Jew knew this Emperor, ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... I have one clue, and only one. I know his handwriting. If he puts his new false name upon a hotel register and does not disguise it too much, it will be valuable to me if I ever run ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... red roan, the best horse in the camp, had been stolen! The burly lumbermen came hurrying from all directions. There was no doubt about it—the horse was gone, and the snow had covered every trace. There was absolutely no clue to follow. Silently and sullenly the men filed in to breakfast. In a lumberman's eyes hardly a crime could exceed that of ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... wonderingly. A captain's commission in the regular army was to be desired. She remembered how John Drayton had had to serve for years to obtain one. Such an office gave a rank that no militia could offer. Could any youth deliberately cast aside the distinction? A glance at Fairfax gave no clue to his mental attitude. It seemed a long time that he sat there meditating, but presently he looked up and met the questioning gaze of Thomas Ashley with ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... surprising that Malthus should have been needed to give him the clue, when in the Note Book of 1837 there should occur—however obscurely expressed—the following forecast{13} of the importance of the survival of the fittest. "With respect to extinction, we can easily see that a variety of ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... little north of the French settlement in Florida, then supposed to be in successful operation, but of which nothing had yet been published to give either the world at large or the Spaniards in the peninsula a premature clue to his enterprise. ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... herbs and drove home again, much puzzled by our discovery. The story of the "daguerreotype saloon" at Dresser's Lonesome soon spread abroad, but no one was able to furnish a clue to its history. Of course all manner of rumors began to circulate; some people declared that the owner of the "saloon" must be a naturalist who had journeyed up there to take pictures of wild animal life; others thought ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... friend. The general scheme he got—the list of committee names, the local agents, the foreign agents. But the complete list of the League he failed to find. He secured the list of subscribers, but learned nothing from it because the sums were identified by a numeral only, the clue to the numbers being the complete list, which I burned when I ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... did in the eternal cities, with those whose names are immortal—and there I have seen the humble pipe! the sole evidence of luxury or enjoyment; when his daily task was suspended, it can never end, for he must weave and weave the fibres of his brain into the clue that leads him to the means of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 27, 1841 • Various
... the rage and mortification of Roger Nowell and Potts, on learning that their chief prey had thus escaped them; and by their directions, for more than a week, the strictest search was made for the fugitive throughout the neighbourhood, but without effect—no clue could be discovered to her retreat. Suspicion naturally fell upon the two Asshetons, Nicholas and Richard, and Roger Nowell roundly taxed them with contriving and executing the enterprise in person; while ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... with indisputable proof of the Semitic affinity, as Professor Adolf Erman showed years ago. The anatomical examination by Professor Elliot Smith of a large number of skeletons, dated by careful excavations, has given us a further clue. There is a prehistoric race found in the earliest cemeteries—neither Negroid nor Asiatic in characteristics. In the late predynastic and the early dynastic periods, when the great development began, this primitive race had become modified by ...
— The Egyptian Conception of Immortality • George Andrew Reisner
... dozen stalwart ruffians grouped around him, most of them masked, but two or three with faces bare, their coverings having come off in the struggle. These slipped quickly out of sight, behind the others, as if not wishing to give clue for ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... fenced-in hay-stacks and the corral-gate I found a battered decoy-duck with a string tied to its neck. It was one of a set that Francois and Whinstane Sandy had whittled out over a year ago. It was at least a clue. Dinkie must have dropped ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... at the first glance as if the mind must be confused by these varieties, whose possible number fades into infinity; but the teacher does not open this labyrinth to his disciples without providing them with a clue. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... no factor, for the war against England is taking on increasingly an almost religious character; from the German point of view, it will soon be, not a war, but a crusade. I get one clue to this in the new phrase of leave-taking that has gained an astounding currency in the past few weeks. Instead of saying "Good-bye" or "Auf Wiedersehen," the German now says: "God punish England!" to which the equally fervent rejoinder is, "May He do so!" This new, polite formula ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... rays of the lifeboats were detected in landing?" asked Brandon. "That might have given them a clue." ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... her this way before, you say?" said Jamieson, quickly. "What was the matter then? What made her act so? If we know why she did it before, perhaps it will give us a clue to why she is behaving in such a queer ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the Farm - Or, Bessie King's New Chum • Jane L. Stewart
... thy intercession, he would sign thy death-warrant the day after, for serving the Commonwealth. A generation of vipers! there is nothing upright nor grateful in them: never was there a drop of even Scotch blood in their veins. Indeed, we have a clue to their bedchamber still hanging on the door, and I suspect that an Italian fiddler or French valet has more than once crossed ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... nearly all objected to the practice of their gathering together; think it gives them extravagant ideas of liberty, has a tendency to make them insubordinate, &c. Another place a colored man was killed—supposed to have been shot for a small amount of money he happened to have with him; no clue to the murderers. Another place within one-fourth of a mile of Lexington, a colored man was shot through the head on the public road, (was not yet dead,) and his pockets rifled of the few cents he had; also his knife. Over in Attala county I learned ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... had been growing in the back part of the brain of each of them began to assume shape and a definite aspect. The man had the craftier mind, but the woman had a woman's intuition, and she already had read his thoughts while yet he had no clue to hers. For the primal instinct of self-preservation, blazing up high, had burned away the bond of bogus love that held them together while they were putting her drunkard of a husband out of the way, and now there only remained ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... and leave Hippolytus? Oh, why were you too young to have embark'd On board the ship that brought thy sire to Crete? At your hands would the monster then have perish'd, Despite the windings of his vast retreat. To guide your doubtful steps within the maze My sister would have arm'd you with the clue. But no, therein would Phaedra have forestall'd her, Love would have first inspired me with the thought; And I it would have been whose timely aid Had taught you all the labyrinth's crooked ways. What anxious care a life so dear had cost me! No thread had ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... then—the assurance sped like fire through the parched minds of the other members. In their eagerness to gain the least little clue to Xingu they almost forgot the joy of assisting at ...
— Xingu - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... Palmetto, Ga., destroyed a hotel, two stores, and a storehouse, on which property there was little insurance. The next Saturday there was another fire and this destroyed a considerable part of the town. For some weeks there was no clue as to the origin of these fires; but about the middle of March something overheard by a white citizen led to the implicating of nine Negroes. These men were arrested and confined for the night of March 15 in a warehouse to await trial the next morning, a dummy guard of six men being placed before ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... solitary man, Whom thoughts abstruse or high have chanced to lure Forth from the walks of men, revolving oft, And oft again, hard matter, which eludes And baffles his pursuit—thought-sick and tired Of controversy, where no end appears, No clue to his research, the lonely man Half wishes for society again. Him, thus engaged, the sabbath bells salute Sudden! his heart awakes, his ears drink in The cheering music; his relenting soul Yearns after all the joys ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... tidy formula for the easy determination of what is a fundamental right for purposes of legal enforcement may satisfy a longing for certainty but ignores the movements of a free society. * * * The real clue to the problem confronting the judiciary in the application of the Due Process Clause is not to ask where the line is once and for all to be drawn but to recognize that it is for the Court to draw it by the gradual and empiric process ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... evident that the young man was vitally interested now. Was it the prospective vision of almighty dollars that was needed to release the hidden spring that had baffled the girl? With this clue in mind, she watched him closely and fed ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... poor child, she ought not to have cared for, viz.,—to that obsolete useless pauper birthright, a branch on the family tree of a French noble. But in pinch of circumstance, and from female curiosity, hunting among the papers her father had left for some clue to the reasons for the pension he had received, she found letters from her mother, letters from my father, which indisputably proved that she was grandchild to the fue Vicomte de Mauleon, and niece ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... attempts to arouse the sleeper, but in obedience to the order of his comrade, lifted off the hat; and, having procured one of the great candles, he and Rube started off without saying another word, of giving any clue ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... were occupied with Polly, Dick had stepped out on the gravel sweep, where he was endeavouring, by close examination, to discover some clue to the puzzle. Suddenly he ran back into ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... twenty-eighth day of March he fell in with a French squadron, commanded by the marquis du Quesne, consisting of four ships, namely, the Foudroyant, of eighty guns, the Orphee, of sixty-four, the Oriflamme, of fifty, and the Pleiade frigate, of twenty-four, in their passage from Toulon to reinforce M. de la Clue, who had for some time been blocked up by admiral Osborne in the harbour of Carthagena. The enemy no sooner perceived the English squadron than they dispersed, and steered different courses: then Mr. Osborne detached divers ships in pursuit of each, while he himself, with ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... as purposely introductory to an intimate scene, notwithstanding that it was made in a thoroughly matter-of-fact tone and without the slightest trace of coquetry. But Johnson did not make the mistake of misconstruing her words, puzzled though he was to find a clue to them. His curiosity about her was intense, and it showed plainly in the voice ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... day or two his lips are sure to be swollen pretty badly. Of course if you have no one in your mind's eye as being specially likely to make an attempt upon your life these little things will afford you no clue whatever, but if you have any sort of suspicion that one of three or four men might be likely to have a grudge against you, they may enable you to pick out the fellow who attempted my life. Of course I may be mistaken altogether and the fellow may have been only an ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... of view by winding paths. But— and as also I have heard it said, by men practised in public address, that hearers are never so much fatigued as by the endeavour to follow a speaker who gives them no clue to his purpose,—I will take the slight mask off at once, and tell you plainly that I want to speak to you about the treasures hidden in books; and about the way we find them, and the way we lose ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... be unprofitable to spend more time in disentangling, or rather in showing up the knots in, the ravelled skeins of our neighbours. Much more to the purpose is it to ask if we possess any clue of our own which may guide us among these entanglements. And by way of a beginning, let us ask ourselves—What is education? Above all things, what is our ideal of a thoroughly liberal education?—of ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... read, "The enclosed papers were found on the field by one of my orderlies. One of them being addressed to you, furnishes a clue to their owner, who must have dropped them in the hurry of the advance. Should Captain Charles Darragon be your husband, I have the pleasure to inform you that he was seen alive and well at the end of the day." The writer assured Desiree of his respectful consideration, ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... chased the quiet of Medonte's shades Through the green windings of the forest road, Past Nature's venerable rank and file Of primal woods—her Old Guard, sylvan-plumed— The far-off Huron, like a silver thread, The clue to some enchanted labyrinth, Dimly perceived beyond the stretch of woods, Th' approaches tinted by a purple haze, And softened into beauty like the dream Of some rapt seer's Apocalyptic mood; And when at Rockridge we sat looking out Upon the softened shadows of the night, ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... reasoned. "And they won't start to search for me until some time to-morrow. When I don't show up at the game they'll think it's queer, and I suppose they'll fine me. I wouldn't mind that if they only come and find me. But how can they do it? There isn't a clue they could follow, as far as I know. ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... of boilers was the clue. He had it; he was sure he was right. It was the roar of escaping steam far, far down in that fearful hole. The vapors, the hot, wet wind—dead steam, half condensed during its long rush upward. Down there in the bowels of the mountain ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... alone has found the clue to his sorrow, for she has overheard him mutter that, if the ring were given back to the Rhine-daughters, the curse spoken by Alberich would be annulled, and the gods could yet be saved ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... presently. The "Catalogues" proper were a series of genealogies which traced the Hellenic race (or its more important peoples and families) from a common ancestor. The reason why women are so prominent is obvious: since most families and tribes claimed to be descended from a god, the only safe clue to their origin was through a mortal woman beloved by that god; and it has also been pointed out that 'mutterrecht' still left its traces in northern Greece ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... the couch she had left, but not to sleep. A new pulse of life, stronger than I could bear, was throbbing within me. I dreaded a fever, lest I should talk in it, and drop the clue to my secret treasure. But the light of the morning stilled me, and a bath in ice-cold water made me strong again. Yet I felt all that day as if I were dying a delicious death, and going to a yet more exquisite life. As far ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... of these general opinions appear in my official correspondence: other parts of this system are palpable with the smallest clue, and the whole militates decisively against the opinions of the Duke of Portland and Mr. Fox, whom I particularize, as they continue to keep up a constant correspondence with the popular leaders in this kingdom. Your Majesty will, therefore, judge how perfectly impracticable it is for ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... said. "There's a clue to it, right there. I'll say that those fellows are on the edge of sapience, and it's ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... the tortures of the damned and blasphemers. For you well know, queen, only such as have blasphemed God, or have not recognized King Henry as the pope of their Church, have the honor of the rack as their clue. But hush! here we are at the door, and here is the ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... clue," an evening paper added to the criminal's identity.... The police were blamed, of course.... Such a thing must never be allowed to occur again. It was reported that the Queen had in no way suffered from the ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... even with the best intentions and the most untiring industry, a helpless prey to intrigues and cabals and all the artifices and deceptions which beset a throne? Gioja and Romagnosi are under the ban, and he has no wish to ask them for the clue to the labyrinth he is wandering in, even if he had the time. He has no time to read the newspapers. His knowledge of them is derived from abstracts prepared for him by a clerk in the Governor's ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... which you spent together, does anything stand out in your memory as throwing any possible light upon the tragedy? Think carefully, Mr. Tregennis, for any clue which can help me." ...
— The Adventure of the Devil's Foot • Arthur Conan Doyle
... may possibly differ as to just what, or what not, cathedrals of France should be included in this term. The French proverb known of all guide-book makers should give a clue as to those which at least may not ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... you, if you don't mind." She watched them retreat to the bunk-house together. Swan's big form towering above the doctor's slighter figure. Swan was talking earnestly, the mumble of his voice reaching Lorraine without the enunciation of any particular word to give a clue to what he was saying. But it struck her that his voice did not sound quite natural; not so ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... The fact was, that his own happiness became, in some degree, involved in their calamity; and, as he came in to breakfast on the fourth morning of its occurrence, he could not help observing as much to his mother. His suspicions of Flanagan, as to possessing some clue to the melancholy business, were by no means removed. On the contrary, he felt that he ought to have him brought before the bench of magistrates who were conducting the investigation from day to day, and, with this determination, he himself resolved to state fully and candidly ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... escaped from her captor or captors, had she been rescued, had she perished like her ill-fated brother, or had the abduction been successfully accomplished? None of these questions could Esperance answer. One thing, however, was plain—there was no trace of her now; no clue that he could follow; therefore, further pursuit for the present was useless. Sadly he determined to wait for day and then resolve upon some plan to put into immediate execution to retrieve, as far as possible the great wrong ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... in this well-known scrap of evidence, there is a deeper meaning than is usually attached to it. I do not know, but it may be—I have a strong suspicion that it is—a clue to the slow growth of the crime, and its gradual development in the mind. More than this; a clue to the mental connection of the deed, with the punishment to which the doer of that deed is liable, until the two, conjoined, give birth to ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... was left unsolved, except by Bruno, who fancied that he guessed its meaning; but since the clue was one which he preferred not to pursue, he discreetly left matters to shape themselves, or rather, to be shaped by Providence, ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... two more questions, really to hide my puzzlement. "What in the world is it?" I said to myself; "all so fat and puffy." I cudgelled my brain for a clue. As I examined the hand in silence to play for time and conceal my ignorance, ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... indefinite. If only he had finished his name, we'd have had some clue. But the map's no good to us, in such shape. Besides, we wouldn't think of touching money or mine, as long as there's a single chance of the rightful claimants ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... have quoted is, in fact, so preposterous, so utterly incompatible with anything but absolute ignorance of some of the best established facts, that we should have passed it over in silence had it not appeared to afford some clue to M. Flourens' unhesitating, a priori, repudiation of all forms of the doctrine of progressive modification of living beings. He whose mind remains uninfluenced by an acquaintance with the phenomena of development, must indeed lack one of the chief motives towards ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... of ceaseless watchfulness and vigilance, at last he gained a clue to their retreat, and lost no time in following it up, taking with him Kit Nubbles, the errand-boy at the Shop in old days, who, though now in the employ of kind Mr. Garland, was still loyal to the memory of his beloved Miss Nelly—and only too grateful to be allowed to go in search of ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... matters worse these vivid and unorganized experiences, simply because they lie along the shore of the infinite and have no single clue, no governing philosophy of life, are overswept by the dense and chilling fogs of unreality that roll in from the great deep. Life is swallowed up in awful mystery. External facts are less real than ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... find a peasant girl's dress. Dress yourself as quickly as you can; we shall be ready for you in attire to match. You had best do up your own things into a bundle, which I will carry. If they were left here they might, when the news of your being missing gets abroad, afford a clue to the manner of your escape. I will tell you all about the arrangements we have made as we ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... thing as subjectivity apart from objectivity. Mr Sinnett very properly tells you 'that occult science regards force and matter as identical, and that it contemplates no principle in nature as wholly immaterial. The clue to the mystery involved,' he goes on to say, 'lies in the fact, directly cognisable by occult experts, that matter exists in other states than those which are cognisable by the five senses;' but it does not become only cognisable subjectively on that account. You know very well, ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... fancied facts when there are so few to go upon. Do you suppose that the detective in Florence had any definite plan of action given to him by his employer? For just supposing that your guess is right, they may have got some clue to what happened in the letter that was sent by mistake to Lady Rose. Have you no notion at all whether they may not now have got some evidence to prove ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... find that she was some English trader to the Bosphorus, or Greek man-of-war, of perhaps little less doubtful character than the Sea Hawk herself. The inhabitants of the islands either knew nothing about her, or would give no information, nor could any clue be obtained from any craft they fell in with; so at last Captain Fleetwood resolved to return south again, keeping close along by the Greek coast, to examine the dense group of islands and islets of ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... towards the hall from which the cries came, leaving Rachel alone. But she felt no special interest in a rough encounter between two men towards whom she was utterly indifferent. Their fate could not thrill her as did the memory of Dan's burning words. What did they mean? Had she the clue to conduct on his part which had grieved her sorely. She could not help a glow of expectation, and a thrill of pleasure. It was at this moment Joyce caught the radiant look on her face, and shared to a degree in that ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... Mr. Todd has added a note, which gives a clue to the meaning of the word. He says, "Mr. Church here observes, that ruffin is reddish, from the Latin rufus." I suspect, however, that the poet did not intend to specify the colour of the dress, but rather to give a very characteristical expression even to the raiment ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... he is never in his house; and has an address where letters may be left; but only simpletons go with the hopes of seeing him.—Only a few of the faithful know where he is to be found, and have the clue to his hiding-place. So, after the disputes with his wife, and the misfortunes consequent thereon, to find Sir Francis Clavering at home was impossible. "Ever since I hast him for my book, which is fourteen pound, he don't come home till three o'clock, and purtends to be asleep ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had been in, I would not have done it. You know Aunt Jane said there was no harm in giving a clue, ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... on dromedary trots, Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots; Rhyme's sturdy cripple, fancy's maze and clue, Wit's forge and fire-blast, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... sick. My knowledge of these waters is not great, but there are signs making themselves seen in the sky, here above the peak that lies in the direction of Mont Blanc, that would trouble me, were this our own clue ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... the valley three hundred feet below while we made us a cigarette apiece. We were just a mite discouraged. Beginning that first morning at the east end of the Writing-Stone we had worked west, conning the weather-worn face of it for a mark that would give a clue to the cache. Also we had scanned carefully the sandy soil patches along the boulder-strewn base, seeking the tell-tale footprints of horse or man. And we had found nothing. Each day the conviction grew stronger upon us that finding that gold would be purely ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... moving after that; and Gilles was very ready to move. The hunger and thirst for Jehane, which had never left him for long, came aching back to such a pitch that he felt he must now find her, see her, touch her, or die. The King was her only clue; he must hunt him out wherever he might be. One of two things had occurred: either Richard had tired of her, or he had lost her by mischance of travel. There was a third possible thing, that the Queen had had her murdered. He put that from him, being sure she was not dead. 'Death,' said ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... memory of faces, that I have danced with a lady in the evening, and the next day have not known her, because she was in a bonnet and morning dress. Sometimes the shifts I am put to are quite ludicrous, asking all manner of questions, and answering those put to me at random, to find out some clue as to who my very intimate friend may be. They ought not to be angry at my forgetting their names, for sometimes, for a few minutes, I have actually forgotten my own. It does, however, only require one clue to be ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... persons, what would seem confounding good and bad, virtue and vice, etc., in Whitman the man, the citizen, but serves to illustrate the boundless compassion and saving power of Whitman as the spokesman of ideal Democracy. With this clue in mind, many difficult things are made plain and easy in the works ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... a bucketful was collected from the sloop's awnings, which were spread at the time. When the wind blew hard and I was obliged to furl awnings, her sails, unprotected on the booms, got mud-stained from clue to earing. ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... may afford some slight clue to the secret of Mr. Patrick McEachern's rise in the world. It certainly suggests singleness of purpose, which is one of ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... in the name Neville that Ann thought she detected a clue to Tony's altered demeanour. She recollected having met Lady Doreen on one occasion, about a year ago, when she herself had been paying a flying visit to the Brabazons at their house in Audley Square—a frail slip of a girl with immense grey eyes and hair like an aureole of reddish gold. She ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... think that it was the way he talked to me—the manner in which he skirted continually on the fringe of treason, yet said nothing that I could lay hold upon, and, above all, mentioned no names—that gave me the clue. I fear I fell a little silent as I perceived how point after point ratified the conclusion to which I had come; but I do not think he noticed it; and, even if he did, it would only encourage him the more. And when ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... few things on his way down! Come, now, Norah; it's no blame to you, only you must not be such a fool again! Tell us,' he continued, 'what name he gave you, Norah. I'll be bound, it was not the right one; but it will be a clue for the police.' ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... but nothing had been heard of the missing men. Forty-five days had now elapsed since they left their camp on the river, and, unless they had died or been murdered, they ought long since to have arrived. I should have sent a party in search of them, but I had not the slightest clue to the direction in which they had gone, or the intentions of the party that had carried them away; and to look for a band of Wandering Chukchis on those great steppes was as hopeless as to look for a missing vessel in the middle of the ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... in a sad state of anxiety. No tidings have reached England of the Empress, nor has anything been heard of Saint Maur. I am continuing to make all possible inquiries, and have written to agents at various seaports to ascertain from the masters of ships trading foreign to endeavour to find some clue ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... out, if possible, from some of the young man's intimates in the regiment, whether Wickham has any relations or connections who would be likely to know in what part of town he has now concealed himself. If there were anyone that one could apply to with a probability of gaining such a clue as that, it might be of essential consequence. At present we have nothing to guide us. Colonel Forster will, I dare say, do everything in his power to satisfy us on this head. But, on second thoughts, perhaps, Lizzy could tell us what relations he has now living, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... and in perfect keeping with the palace. Occupying several acres. They seemed infinitely larger than they were, since they abounded in intricate alleys, labyrinths, and mazes; so that you were easily lost within them, and sometimes wanted a clue to come forth. They contained some fine canals, fountains, and statues. In addition to the great gardens were the priory-gardens, with other inclosures for pheasants, aviaries, and menageries; for James was very fond of wild beasts, and had a collection of them worthy of a zoological garden. ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... of the Royal and the Linnean Societies, and to the British Museum, where the librarians got out your volume and made a special hunt, and could discover no trace of such a book. Will you grant me the favour of giving me any clue, where I could see the book? Have you it? if so, and the case is given briefly, would you have the great kindness to copy it? I much want to know all particulars. One case has been given me, but with hardly minute enough ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... is his 'alias'—a man who's been suspected for a long time as a receiver of stolen goods—a fence. When I got the tip that Kit and Churn were staying in the house where we were to spot Chuff, I was sure I had the clue to you. I wish to God we'd been five minutes earlier; but I thank Him we weren't five minutes too late! If the police eventually bring the crime home to Kit (that's improbable, Denham thinks) there's nothing to link up the story with the name ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... not help him on with his coat"—a cutting blow. She would not let her servant accompany him home with a lantern, but heartlessly permitted her elderly lover to stumble home alone in the dark. She spoke to him of his luckless courtship of Widow Denison (a most unpleasant topic), thus giving a clue to the whole situation, in showing that Madam Winthrop resented his desertion of her in his first widowerhood, and like Falstaff, would not "undergo a sneap without reply." He ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... up again before he slept. He could not help feeling that this was sent as a warning not from the spirit world, but from some living person. Who that person might be, he had no sort of notion. And the message gave no clue. He ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... I strolled up and down the main street. When darkness set in I went into a hotel, bought cigars, sat around and watched, without any clue. ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... the riddle deceived herself, there is excuse for a plain man like Redworth in not having the slightest clue to the daily shifting feminine maze he beheld. The strange thing was, that during her maiden time she had never been shifty or flighty, invariably ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... I was a merchant on my own account and could afford to go to India on a voyage of discovery—yes, as much a voyage of discovery as that of Vasco de Gama or of Drake—that I got from the Madras agent the clue which enabled me, at the cost of infinite patience and infinite labour, to unravel the mystery of my birth. There is no need to enter now upon the details of that story. I have overwhelming documentary evidence—a cloud of witnesses—to convince the most sceptical as to who and what I am. The documents ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the greatest and most important social function of a Mafulu community of villages. I was unable to get any information as to its real intent and origin, but a clue to this may, I think, be found in the formal cutting down of the grave platform of a chief, the dipping of chiefs' bones in the blood of the slain pigs, and the touching of other chiefs' bones with the bones so dipped, which constitute such important features of the function, and which perhaps ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... denotes no common birth," remarked the Captain, as his lady disrobed it of its rich lace dress, saturated with the salt seawater. "And the gold bands; are there no marks?—nothing, by which we may gain the least clue of its history?" ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... idea," said Geoffrey. "I will telegraph to the lawyers at once. I certainly believe that you have got the clue." ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... change alarmed as much as it astonished Vivian, and he mentioned his feelings and observations to Mrs. Felix Lorraine. That lady agreed with him that something certainly was wrong; but could not, unfortunately, afford him any clue to the mystery. She expressed the liveliest solicitude that any misunderstanding should be put an end to, and offered her services ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... idiot," thrust in McLean unfeelingly. "Knocking a woman about the desert.... Not much chance of a clue after all these years," he concluded with a very British ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... each elementary sound that enters into the composition of words is represented in our language by so many different combinations of letters, in different cases, that the child has very little clue from the sound of a syllable to guide him in the spelling of it. We ourselves, from long habit, have become so accustomed to what we call the right spelling—which, of course, means nothing more than the customary one—that we are apt to imagine, as has already been said, that there ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... regulative of conduct, and maintained that our senses were our only guides in both; in a word, they denied that God had implanted in man an absolute rational and moral principle, and maintained that he had no other clue to the goal of his being but his experience in life, while the distinction of right and wrong was only a distinction of what was found conducive to happiness and what was not; they had no faith in or fear of a divine Being above man any more than of a divine principle ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... beach in stormy sleet and darkness. At daybreak I looked eagerly in every direction to learn what kind of place we were in; but gloomy rain-clouds covered the mountains, and I could see nothing that would give me a clue, while Vancouver's chart, hitherto a faithful guide, here failed us altogether. Nevertheless, we made haste to be off; and fortunately, for just as we were leaving the shore, a faint smoke was seen across the inlet, toward which Charley, who now ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... and place, and the work is done. And then what a march of mind! Instead of one revelation, they might be multiplied as the drops of the morning! Every man might take orders as an inspired interpreter, with an infallible clue to the mind of the Spirit, if he only understood the dialect of his own neighborhood! We repeat it, the only ground of proof that these terms are to be interpreted to mean, when applied to servants in the Bible, the same that they ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... more than an English sixpence, valued as old silver. He evidently regarded me as an improper character, and refused to deal with me. I detained the first man I met, and explained my situation, but as I could give him no clue to the whereabouts of the hotel, he could furnish me no assistance. As nearly as I could conjecture, it was within half a mile of the spot where I was standing, but I could not indicate the direction, 'There are fifty hotels,' he said, 'within that distance, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... College has obligingly informed me, that the picture of ALTHEA, as well as that of Lovelace himself, bequeathed by Cartwright the actor to Dulwich College in 1687, bears no clue to date of composition, or to the artist's name, and that it does not assist in the identification of the lady. This is the more vexatious, inasmuch as it seems probable that ALTHEA, whoever she was, became the poet's wife, after LUCASTA'S marriage to another. ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... closed, but he had then made no unfavourable statements to the house. I desired, therefore, that a question might be put to him, and in such a manner, that he might know that they, who put it, had got a clue to his secrets. He became immediately embarrassed; his voice faltered; he confessed with trembling that he had lost a third of his sailors in his last voyage. Pressed hard immediately by other questions, he then acknowledged that he had lost one hundred and twenty, ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... of this lecture, it has been needful to give so many details as to individual works, that my audience may at times have failed 'to see the wood for the trees,' and may have lost the clue of the lexicographical evolution. Let me then in conclusion recapitulate the stages which have been already indicated. These are: the glossing of difficult words in Latin manuscripts by easier Latin, and at length by English words; the collection of the English glosses into Glossaries, ...
— The evolution of English lexicography • James Augustus Henry Murray
... are too bold; but I can help you, weak as I am. I will give you a sword, and with that, perhaps, you may slay the beast; and a clue of thread, and by that, perhaps, you may find your way out again. Only promise me, that if you escape safe, you will take me home with you to Greece; for my father will surely kill me, if he knows ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... unobtrusive and goes its own way so quietly and furtively that we miss much of it unless we cultivate an interest in it. A person must be interested in it, to paraphrase a line of Wordsworth's, ere to him it will seem worthy of his interest. One thing is linked to another or gives a clue to another. There is no surer way to find birds' nests than to go berrying or fishing. In the blackberry or raspberry bushes you may find the bush sparrow's nest or the indigobird's nest. Once while fishing ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... blaspheme the chosen race. Into those traps, which men call'd patriots laid, By specious arts unwarily betray'd, 220 Madly I leagued against that sacred earth, Vile parricide! which gave a parent birth: But shall I meanly error's path pursue, When heavenly truth presents her friendly clue? Once plunged in ill, shall I go farther in? To make the oath, was rash: to keep it, sin. Backward I tread the paths I trod before, And calm reflection hates what passion swore. Converted, (blessed are the souls which know Those pleasures which from true conversion flow, 230 Whether ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... creeks, dog-dirty, and loaded for bear. He looked like a man with a foot in the grave and scarcely the strength of a louse, Yet he tilted a poke of dust on the bar, and he called for drinks for the house. There was none could place the stranger's face, though we searched ourselves for a clue; But we drank his health, and the last to drink was ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... relieved. You have explained everything. Your letter gave me the suspicion. I secured a transcript of the Herr Doctor's report for myself. My suspicion became a certainty. You will find the clue in the report. Consider: The Leader had had the experience I imagined for my she-dog. He had linked his mind with a stronger one and a greater personality—if it must be said, a greater man. For a moment The Leader knew what ...
— The Leader • William Fitzgerald Jenkins (AKA Murray Leinster)
... I want to get at, Mr. Hopkins. Maybe you're right, and so, of course, I wouldn't want to bother Smith with 'em, you know, if they are only a false clue; he'd only laugh at me, you see. As you, I understand, are friendly with Tescheron and against this Hosley as much as he is, I thought I'd consult you first and find out if these letters were really written by your Hosley or another. ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... absorbed in her own affairs, Jo watched Beth, and after many conflicting conjectures, finally settled upon one which seemed to explain the change in her. A slight incident gave Jo the clue to the mystery, she thought, and lively fancy, loving heart did the rest. She was affecting to write busily one Saturday afternoon, when she and Beth were alone together. Yet as she scribbled, she kept her eye on her sister, who seemed unusually quiet. Sitting at the window, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... is there about that old tin to make you speak like that, Fred? If you'd picked up a clue to some robbery, you ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... I found a clue. A young Rajah, one of the numerous coterie of petty princes—fair play compels me to withhold his name—had got himself into some trouble and the paternal government had promptly suspended his income. Here ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... being treated as intruders, or are acting as marauders. The after life, sexually the period of maturity, barring accidents, diseases, and shocks, will bear the same character. The kind of adolescence provides the clue to the kind of maturity, for both are effects ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... pursuit; but when they arrived at the seashore, the mysterious man and his carpet bag were no longer visible, unless a large boat which was pulling out to sea as fast as wind and tide would permit, gave a clue to his invisibility. Every eye was now cast out for the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... the building in about twenty minutes. No policeman was about to see them violate the speed laws on the way. An immediate and careful search of the room was made, to see if anyone had been there since they left and also for any clue ...
— Ted Marsh on an Important Mission • Elmer Sherwood
... another gut which he encountered across his path. There two ways presented themselves. Which should he take? Ought he to turn to the left or to the right? How was he to find his bearings in that black labyrinth? This labyrinth, to which we have already called the reader's attention, has a clue, which is its slope. To follow to the slope is ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Ehrenberg would undertake a microscopical hunt for infusoria in the underclay and shales; it might reveal something. Would a comparison of the ashes of terrestrial peat and coal give any clue? (554/3. In an article by M. F. Rigaud on "La Formation de la Houille," published in the "Revue Scientifique," Volume II., page 385, 1894, the author lays stress on the absence of certain elements in the ash of coals, which ought to be present, on the ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... meet and act, the native courts adjudicate, and native social and family life and religion prevail. All this, however, is subject to the veto and command of a European magistracy supported by a native army with European officers. The advantage of this method is that on its face it carries no clue to its real working. Indeed it can always point to certain undoubted advantages: the abolition of the slave trade, the suppression of war and feud, the encouragement of peaceful industry. On the other hand, back of practically all these experiments stands the economic ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... happiness. The waves of feeling, half self-assertive, half repentant, ebbed and flowed. One moment she yearned for the hour when Marcella was to come to her; the next, she hated the notion of it. So between dream and misery, amid a maze of thought without a clue, Letty's night passed away. By the time the morning dawned, the sharp conviction had shaped itself within her that she had grown older, that life had passed into another stage, and could never again be as it had been the day before. Two emotions, ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... me intrusive, gentlemen," he began in his sharp mode of speaking, "but you will understand I am very much upset and horribly perplexed by the terrible fate which has overtaken my poor brother. I am setting myself to search for a clue, if ever so slight, to the mystery, the double mystery, I may say, and it occurred to me that perhaps a talk with you gentlemen who are, so far, the last known persons who spoke with him, might possibly give ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... my objective, and with no further clue than the dog-collar. There were two trains, I found, at three and at nine. The first, which I proposed to take, would bring us to our destination soon after nine the next day, but our morning was to be a busy one, and it would be necessary to ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... most recent fashion of hoop-skirts or crinolines had prevailed all the way from 1840 to 1870, or thereabouts. And while these dates limited, to a certain extent the time of the mysterious happening, it did not help them very much. They felt that they must look for some more definite clue. ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... the visible, unmistakable fact that he was the only representative of his class. The whole of the rest of the business was but what he saw and felt and fancied—what he was to remember and what he was to forget. Through it all, I may say distinctly, he clung to his great Venetian clue—the explanation of everything by the historic idea. It was a high historic house, with such a quantity of recorded past twinkling in the multitudinous candles that one grasped at the idea of something waning and displaced, and might even fondly and secretly nurse the conceit ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... like a mere copying machine, to copy sheet after sheet for him, every morning from nine till four, and again every evening from five till ten. Mine was a law tutor of a superior sort. Wherever he could, he gave me a clue to guide me through the labyrinth; and when no reason could be devised for what the law directs, he never puzzled me by attempting to explain what could not be explained; he did not insist upon the total surrender of my rational faculties, but with wonderful liberality would allow me to call ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... strange events which, by some freak of fortune, I had been a witness to. What was the basis on which my friend, with two sets of names, founded his dream of inexhaustible wealth, this mission he had intrusted to Pepito? What the mission which the agent laughed at, and which to gain a clue to, others were tempting him with glittering bribes? And again, why the deceit practiced on Pepito, by assuming the guise of a doctor? Each of these facts was a text on which I piled a ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... never gained any clue to the mystery in which he had been an actor, nor did any inscription in the church, which he often visited afterwards, nor any of the limited inquiries that he dared to make, yield him the least assistance. As he kept his own secret, he was compelled to spend the ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... Pythagorean society, and it may be suggested that the significance of his teaching is not exhausted yet. As has been indicated above it is to be found clearly stated in Plato's Apology of Socrates, and it furnishes the only clue to a right understanding of the great series of Platonic dialogues down to and including the Republic in which Socrates is represented as the chief speaker. Whether Plato added much or little of his own to the doctrine of his master ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... decided to attempt to solve the problem by selecting small animals (the rat was used) and experiment with mixtures consisting of purified proteins from different sources, combined with fats, carbohydrates and mineral salts until a clue was obtained to the nature of the deficiencies. His early results in this direction confirmed the results of other investigators, animals lived no longer on these diets than when allowed to fast. What was missing? Up to ...
— The Vitamine Manual • Walter H. Eddy
... or two his lips are sure to be swollen pretty badly. Of course if you have no one in your mind's eye as being specially likely to make an attempt upon your life these little things will afford you no clue whatever, but if you have any sort of suspicion that one of three or four men might be likely to have a grudge against you, they may enable you to pick out the fellow who attempted my life. Of course I may be mistaken altogether and ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... a long story," he answered with a slight frown, "but you shall hear it all in good time. It has taken me months to find you, and I had almost begun to despair, when a fortunate chance gave me the clue to your whereabouts." ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... Annunziata? Had she escaped from her captor or captors, had she been rescued, had she perished like her ill-fated brother, or had the abduction been successfully accomplished? None of these questions could Esperance answer. One thing, however, was plain—there was no trace of her now; no clue that he could follow; therefore, further pursuit for the present was useless. Sadly he determined to wait for day and then resolve upon some plan to put into immediate execution to retrieve, as far as possible the great wrong that ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... the other cities he had known—their homespun kindliness, their human gamut of rough charity, friendly curses, garrulous curiosity and easily estimated credulity or indifference. This city of Manhattan gave him no clue; it was walled against him. Like a river of adamant it flowed past him in the streets. Never an eye was turned upon him; no voice spoke to him. His heart yearned for the clap of Pittsburg's sooty hand on his shoulder; for Chicago's menacing but social yawp in his ear; for the pale and eleemosynary ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... is to be able to send no tidings whatever," he said. "I sent to you in the hope that you might think of some possible explanation, might suggest some clue or theory. ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... of her own unreasonableness, decided now that the Browns might go one way and she another; but she was indebted to this visit for a clue in analysing the impression Trenholme made upon her. His new friends had called him noble; she knew now that when she knew him ten years before he had seemed to her a more ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... pulled into the Union Station at Omaha, where Joe's "trip" ended, he employed every spare moment while they stopped at stations or water tanks, to carefully read every hobo sign that the drifters passing to and fro over the line had left behind them, ever hoping to discover a clue to Kansas Shorty's whereabouts by finding his name-de-rail with a date and an arrow beneath it pointing in the direction he ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... her singular house up at Toft End, would be conscious of pleasure in her brisk gait, her slightly malicious but broad-minded smile, and her cheerful greeting. She was always in black. She always wore one of those nodding black bonnets which possess neither back nor front, nor any clue of any kind to their ancient mystery. She always wore a mantle which hid her waist and spread forth in curves over her hips; and as her skirts stuck stiffly out, she thus had the appearance of one who had been to sleep since 1870, and who had got up, thoroughly refreshed ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... fifteenth century, as the previous demonstration has made clear, our fragment was preceded by 47 leaves that are missing to-day. With this clue in our possession it can be demonstrated that the manuscript began with the first book of the Letters. We start with the fact that not all the 47 folios (or 94 pages) which preceded our six leaves were devoted to the text of the Letters. ...
— A Sixth-Century Fragment of the Letters of Pliny the Younger • Elias Avery Lowe and Edward Kennard Rand
... their speed till only a foxhound could have kept them in sight. I saw their pursuer laboring up the side of the mountain; saw his white shirtsleeves gleam as he entered the woods; but he returned a few hours afterward without any clue as to the particular tree in which they had taken refuge out of the ten thousand that covered the side ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... anguish as she read these stories, but they stirred her to more vigorous action. She read every newspaper carefully and followed every clue of reporter and detective ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... which is the only thing the village has ever taught him to desire though it is unable to gratify his desires itself; and in both the youth, turned man, finds himself sickening with his prize in his hands and looks about him for some clue to the meaning of the mad world in which he has succeeded without satisfaction. Sam McPherson, after a futile excursion through the proletariat in search of the peace which he has heard accompanies ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... could be as lovely as she was. But there was more to her face than beauty. It was so young and sweet and gay, and—when you looked hard at her—so sad, that I forgot I ought either to speak up or go away. Of who she was or how she came to be at La Chance, I had no earthly clue. I knew, of course, that it was she who had met me at the landing, and common sense told me she had taken me for some one else: but I had no desire to say so, or to go away either. And suddenly she ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... the flavor of assurance that she felt in her mother, as of someone who, after gently and vaguely fumbling about for a clue to her own meaning in new conditions, had suddenly found something to which she held very firmly. Imogen was rejoiced for her that she should find a field of real usefulness-were it only that of housekeeping and seeing to weekly bills; but there was certainly a ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... sensible dog. 'You always get hold of the wrong end of the stick,' Oswald said. 'You can't choose what crimes you'll be a detective about. You just have to get a suspicious circumstance, and then you look for a clue and follow it up. Whether it turns out a murder or a missing will ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit
... some relief." In these days a heroine need not be amoralist, but she must be a metaphysician. She must "wander in the not inelegant labyrinth;" and if in the midst of it she comes unawares upon the monster vice, she must not start, though she have no clue ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... against Louisbourg. This time preparation was urged on apace; and before the end of winter two fleets had put to sea: one, under Admiral Boscawen, was destined for Louisbourg; while the other, under Admiral Osborn, sailed for the Mediterranean to intercept the French fleet of Admiral La Clue, who was about to sail from Toulon for America. Osborn, cruising between the coasts of Spain and Africa, barred the way to the Straits of Gibraltar, and kept his enemy imprisoned. La Clue made no attempt to force a passage; but several ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... had occurred to me; and now, just as I had given up all hope of finding the gorge that day, here was the silver clue that should lead us straight to ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... The clue, as he thought it was, led him to Wargrove, where he obtained useful information from Mr. Beecot, who gave it with a very bad grace, and offered remarks about his son's being mixed up in the case, which made Hurd, who had taken a fancy ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... characteristic of its author, and the speculative, analytic turn of his mind is represented in many passages of the letters of the imaginary hero. Had he been writing in his own name, he could not have uttered his inmost conviction more distinctly, or have given the clue to his intellectual life more openly than in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... him who to-day takes the volume down from my shelves and reads on the fly-leaf the simple inscription, "To E.R.P. d.d. W.E.H.," in his little crooked and crabbed writing, must see in it the eloquent clue to his personality ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... wind of him at Calgary, followed up the clue past Morleyville, then along the Kootenay trail. A blizzard came on and we feared we had lost them. We fell in with a band of Stony Indians, found that the band had been robbed and ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... at the dusky canvas, as though in a final endeavor to extract from it a clue to the consolations of art. "I don't know," she said at length; "I'm afraid I don't understand pictures." She moved nearer to Mrs. Quentin and held out ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... first tell me all about this dreadful affair; for you are in the secrets of the Capitol. Have they any clue what has become of my ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... are masters of sufficient Latin to explore the ancients by the help of commentaries, Conington's translation will be of assistance. Horace is utterly untranslatable, and prose translations afford little clue to the music ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... watching efte least any boate or ship At any time, while we had slept perhaps by vs might slip. And streight with ardent fire my head inflameth shee, Eke me inspires with whole desire to put in memorie, Those daungers I haue bid and Laberinth that I Haue past without the clue of threede, eke harder ieopardie. I then gin take in hand straight way to put in rime, Such trauell, as in Ginnie lande I haue past in my time. But hauing writte a while I fall faint by the way, And eke at night I lothe that stile which I ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... way, a matter of no small importance where fifty rice-field paths branch off from your own at all bewildering angles. After having been safely guided by these stepping-stones through all kinds of labyrinths in rice valleys and bamboo groves, one feels grateful to the peasantry for that clue-line of rocks. There are some quaint little shrines in the groves along this path—shrines with curious carvings of dragons and of lion-heads and flowing water—all wrought ages ago in good keyaki-wood, [3] which has become the colour of stone. ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... distinguished allopathic author, thus writes: "Whatever may be the disease, the urine seldom fails in furnishing us with a clue to the principles upon which ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... Of solemn midnight like an elfin thing, Charm'd into being by the argent moon— Whose silver light for love of her fair wing Goes with her in the shade, still worshipping Her dainty plumage:—all around her grew A radiant circlet, like a fairy ring; And all behind, a tiny little clue Of light, to guide her back ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... have been so unobservant as to overlook this. Here was a clue worth having. Poirot delicately dipped his finger into liquid, and tasted it ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... eye so finely wrought, Beyond the search of sense, the soar of thought. Now vainly asks the scenes she left behind; Its orb so full, its vision so confin'd! Who guides the patient pilgrim to her cell? Who bids her soul with conscious triumph swell? With conscious truth retrace the mazy clue Of varied scents, that charm'd her as she flew? Hail, MEMORY, hail! thy universal reign Guards the least link of ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... how you stowed so close, Tom should have slung my own hammock for you, and then you mought have knocked down this great lubberly hurricane house. But, mayhap, you turn in double, and so you don't choose to trust yourself and your doxy to a clue ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... I'll tell you the story. I've run down every clue and here it is. You see somehow Colonel Burton got the orders mixed up that morning and addressed every one of them to ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... no clue needed,' he returned impatiently. 'Miss Hamilton is in love with her cousin, and is ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... account of what they saw, the passages to it were kept continually shut that no more might suffer by their temerity. But about fifty years since, a person of uncommon courage obtained permission to explore the dark abode. He went down, and returned by the help of a clue of packthread, and made this report: 'That after having passed through a great number of vaults he came into a long narrow place, along which having travelled, as far as he could guess, for the space of a mile, he saw a little ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... have a clue to the fact that the prophets perceived nearly everything in parables and allegories, and clothed spiritual truths in bodily forms, for such is the usual method of imagination. (122) We need no longer wonder that Scripture ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza
... the lids that remained so achingly open. In the darkness so achieved she must think out her plans; she must think how to get away from this place without attracting observation, leaving no trace of her removal, giving no clue to her destination. It was imperative that the step she decided on should be taken soon; she must form her project clearly, and there must be no blundering or mistake. But her overtired brain, refusing to work as she willed, presented only before her feverish eyes a picture of ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... lordship,' said the agent, slowly folding up a document; 'nor does it seem likely he will be. I have had the old haunts searched—I have, as you directed, promised large rewards for his apprehension, and threatened the tenants if they harbor him, but no clue to his hiding-place has yet been discovered. I am afraid ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite
... commentary of a man who had seen everything, measured much, and liked the glittering show. Both of the others, one his elder, the other his junior, felt the ready charm of the man. Both were content to listen, waiting for the clue to his intrusion which he had contrived to make not only inoffensive, but seemingly a casual act of good-fellowship. The clue was not afforded, but presently some shrewd opinion of the newcomer upon the local political situation set them both to discussion. Quite insensibly Marrineal withdrew ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... a "thirteen-year-old girl, in a brown linen dress, dark curly hair, brown eyes, and—'Oh! just too stylish for words!'" which was the description his daughter had given him. Indeed, he felt that this very "stylishness" might be a clue to the right person; since denizens of that locality, girls or women, are not apt to have that characteristic ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... Price, according to Hening, and with only a fair allowance for the orthographical inaccuracies of the time and of different copyists, it is not impossible that the Walter Priest of the text is the same person. We can find no clue to its location, but it is reasonable to suppose it ...
— Colonial Records of Virginia • Various
... his father awaiting him at the Halifax post-office. The squire had discovered his blunder, and sent the money, and the way in which Dennis immediately began to plan purchases of all sorts, from a birch-bark canoe to a bearskin rug, gave me a clue to the fortunes of the O'Moores. I do not think he would have had enough left to pay his passage if we had been delayed for long. But our old ship was expected any hour, and when she came in we made our way to her at once, and the upshot of it all was, that Dennis and I shipped in her ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... cast about vainly for a clue to the other's whereabouts; for if the night was thick in the open, here in the trench its density was as that of the pit; the man could distinguish positively nothing more than a pallid rift ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... to France, before any of my friends in England were aware of my retreat, or of my ever having accompanied the Princess. Though my letters were written and dated at Paris, they were all forwarded to England by way of Holland or Germany, that no clue should be given for annoyances from idle curiosity. It is to this discreetness, to this inviolable secrecy, firmness, and fidelity, which I so early in life displayed to the august personages who stood in need of such a person, that I owe the unlimited ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 3 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... must have been freed from their pains and sorrows here more than a week since," replied the other, fastening his horse to a tree, and proceeding to search the clothes of the unfortunates for letters or anything that might afford a clue to their identity. "We must stay here an hour or two, ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... transfer to the shore, bury, and cover up the treasure in such a manner as effectually to obliterate all traces of their operations; and on the morning of the fifteenth day after their arrival they hove up the anchor and made sail southward for Nombre de Dios, where George hoped to obtain some clue to the whereabouts of ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... gardens of the dead. The entire want of poetry in so transcendent a mind betokens the disease, and like a hoarse voice in a beautiful person, is a kind of warning." Yet Emerson says of him that "He lived to purpose: he gave a verdict. He elected goodness as the clue to which the soul must cling in this labyrinth ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... a certain amount of moisture, as of mist, and this drips during the day and so forms stalactites of ice, often a foot or more in length. "Clout" is a "dictionary word," a knock on the head, but it is pronounced differently here; they say a "clue" in the head. Stuttering and stammering each express well-known conditions of speech, but there is another not recognised in dictionary language. If a person has been made a butt of, laughed at, joked, and tormented till he hesitates ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... house got up to explore, but could see nothing, neither was anything disturbed. The door was securely locked as he had left it. After a thorough investigation, in which his wife assisted, he had to own he could find no clue to the cause of the disturbance. The couple went to bed again, and almost immediately the racket recommenced, and continued ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... to anything which appears on the surface. Instead, it seeks to find the hidden and the unknown by following up one clue after another. When the astronomer, Leverrier, found that the planets Saturn and Uranus did not come to time, he asked himself how that could be. Meanwhile, the answer to any number of "hows" must have been previously demonstrated by him and by other astronomers ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... so startled Malcolm that for a moment he forgot his watch, and when he looked again the men had vanished. Not having any clue to their intent, and knowing only that on such a night the house was nearly defenceless, he turned at once and made for it. As he approached the front, coming over the bridge, he fancied he saw a figure disappear through the entrance, and quickened his pace. Just as he reached it, he ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... eclogue we saw how, at a certain point, it began to assume a distinctly dramatic character, and in so doing took the first step towards the possible evolution of a real pastoral drama. It will be my task in the ensuing pages to follow up this clue, and to show how the pastoral drama arose through a process of natural development from the ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... the conquered countries into its own bosom, and as wealth and luxury increased, the tombs were constructed altogether of or cased on the outside with these valuable materials. And this circumstance gives us a clue to the age of ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... that," Sally told her very seriously. "But can you afford to run the risk of the police coming here to find Sarah Manvers, who disappeared last week after breaking into a house—burglarising it—leaving her discarded clothing behind her for one positive clue—" ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... appearance of a river to tell what fish are in it? In the slow sluggish stream you will find the heavy chub. In the livelier current, the trout and the pike. If a man loves prints you have an excellent clue to his character; take for instance, the inventory of mine at College:—Four views of the ruins at Rome; Charles Fox; Belisarius; Niobe; and four Landscapes of Poussin; and Claude Lorraine. These last are of constant source of pleasure. ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... from the pile of bills to Thad's sober face, as though urging him to exert himself to the limit to bring back to his mind some clue that ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... hilarity, the house became filled with gloom. There was no more laughter—no more running up and down the stairs and through the hallways—the piano's song was silent. Mrs. De Peyster sought to gain some clue to this mysterious change by listening for the talk of Mary and Jack and Mr. Pyecroft as they passed her door. But whereas the trio had heretofore spoken freely and often in liveliest tones, they now were either wordless or their voices ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... to follow up his clue with a promptness which was dictated more by a dogged will to do his utmost than by a hope of doing much. When he was out of sight, the tall and cloaked man, who had watched him, came up to the woman's door, with an appearance of ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... exhaustion nor the alterations in the brain-cells which are characteristic of the effects of trauma. On turning to the study of trauma, we at once found in the behavior of individuals as a whole under deep and under light anesthesia the clue to the cause of the discharge of energy, of the consequent physiologic exhaustion, and of the morphologic changes ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... of some note in the metropolis?) and a desire, quite apart from any mere humane interest in the event itself, to locate the intelligence back of such a desperate crime: an intelligence so keen that, up to the present moment, if we may trust the published accounts of the affair, not a clue had been unearthed by which its author could be traced, or the means employed for carrying off this petted object of a ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... that no one interrogated had any notion of truth, except John Taylor, and he knew nothing of the matter. The mass of falsehood, spite, violence, and dishonesty, that became evident, was perfectly appalling, and not a clue was to be found to the truth—scarcely a hope that minds so lost to honourable feeling were open to receive good impressions. It was a great distress to Ethel—it haunted her night and day—she lay awake ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... sacrificed two hundred and fifty dollars and not a little glory) who put him in the way of the terrible discovery that he made on that fateful day. And the funny thing about it was that the little gnome had given the clue to his benefactor and not his father who knew nothing about the frightful revelation of that morning until it was ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Mr. Craik's happy tact for seizing on the more striking points of a character or an incident, his acquaintance with our national history and biography, his love of research, and perseverance in following up a clue, were prepared to expect both instruction and amusement from his Romance of the Peerage. Nor were they doomed to disappointment. Each succeeding volume has added to the interest of the work and there can be little doubt, that the favour with which the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 • Various
... submitted to the public; and in the process of seeing the sheets through the press certain supplementary Notes suggested themselves, and form an Appendix. It has been my endeavour to render the Index as complete a clue as possible to the whole of the matter within ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... worked equally well whether Audrey were in the studio or out of it; but it seemed that Ted's powers were either paralysed or diverted into another channel from the moment she came in. The baby was trying to solve a problem which had puzzled wiser heads than his. But he had no clue to the labyrinth of Audrey's soul; he was not even certain whether she was an intelligent being, though to doubt it was blasphemy against ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... described Browning as a talker in general society so faithfully that it is impossible to improve on what he has said: "It may safely be alleged," he writes, "that no one meeting Mr Browning for the first time, and unfurnished with a clue, would guess his vocation. He might be a diplomatist, a statesman, a discoverer, or a man of science. But, whatever were his calling, we should feel that it must be essentially practical.... His conversation corresponds to his appearance. It abounds in ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... who has just time to point to the fatal weapon, still in the wound, and then falls back in his arms a lifeless corpse. The whole household are soon on foot; search is made for the murderer, but no clue is discovered. Some of the inmates fancied they had seen the figure of a woman rush down the secret stair and disappear in the woods about the time the murder took place. A variety of stories were circulated, some ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... story of a prisoner whose counsel had successfully obtained his acquittal on a charge of brutal assault. A policeman came across a man one night lying unconscious on the pavement, and near by him was an ordinary "bowler" hat. That was the only clue to the perpetrator of the deed. The police had their suspicions of a certain individual, whom they proceeded to interrogate. In addition to being unable to give a satisfactory account of his movements on the night of the assault, it was ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... way of his own. There have been such men in the police—men naturally endowed with that faculty of mental analysis which can decompose a mystery, resolve it into its component parts, and find the clue at the bottom, no matter how remote from ordinary observation it may be. But those men have died, or have retired. One of them would have been invaluable to you in the case you have just mentioned to ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... the times of the Pharaohs? Let us, then, be thankful for what we have, and take the beginnings of history in the mixed form of truth and fiction, following the lead of learned historians who are and long have been trying to trace the true clue of fact in the labyrinth of poetic story with which it ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... the hurrying course still keeps his own appointed way. What, would'st thou know? It is in truth the mighty power of tune, A power that every step obeys, as tides obey the moon; That threadeth with a golden clue the intricate employment, Curbs bounding strength to tranquil grace, and tames the wild enjoyment. And comes the world's wide harmony in vain upon thine ears? The stream of music borne aloft from yonder choral spheres? And feel'st thou not the measure which eternal Nature ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... house, but he is never in his house; and has an address where letters may be left; but only simpletons go with the hopes of seeing him.—Only a few of the faithful know where he is to be found, and have the clue to his hiding-place. So, after the disputes with his wife, and the misfortunes consequent thereon, to find Sir Francis Clavering at home was impossible. "Ever since I hast him for my book, which is fourteen pound, he don't come home till three o'clock, and purtends to be asleep when I bring ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the world at this point, and gives a fresh impulse and content to the idea of progress, is the development of science. The Greeks had founded it and, as we shall see in a later chapter, it was the recovery of the Greek thread which gave the moderns their clue. But no one before the sixteenth century, before the marvels revealed by Galileo's telescope and knit up by Newton's synthetic genius, could have conceived the visions of human regeneration by science which light up the ...
— Progress and History • Various
... but he was a Jew, and nothing would make him change. After he entered the army, he was bribed with promises of promotions and honors. He remained a private, and endured the cruellest discipline. When he was discharged, at the age of forty, he was a broken man, without a home, without a clue to his origin, and he spent the rest of his life wandering among Jewish settlements, searching for his family; hiding the scars of torture under his rags, begging his way from door to door. If he were one who had broken down ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... was to be obtained by stratagem; and it was his maxim, that to grasp our object the faster, we must go a little round about it. His life is said to have been one of intricacies and mysteries, using indirect means in all things; but if he walked in a labyrinth, it was to bewilder others; for the clue was still in his own hand; all he sought was that his designs should not be discovered by his actions. His word, we are told, was his bond; his hour was punctual; and his opinions were compressed and weighty: but if he was true to his bond-word, it was only a part of the system to give facility ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... [We have no clue to the time when this was written. It is imperfect: the second verse is not complete in the copy. But is it not true to life so far as earthly hope is concerned? Of "the hope of the gospel" our songstress would ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... second daughter of Sir Richard Pexsall, of Beaurepaire, in co. Southampton, by Ellinor his wife, daughter of William Pawlett, Marquis of Winchester, to "Anthony Bridges." That Sir Richard Pexsall died in 1571, is the only clue I have to the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... burglary was effected without noise, not a sound disturbing Miss Wardour, or any of her servants, some of whom are light sleepers, and they have not a single clue by which ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... of Peel, nor have any clue to guess his intentions; but I am clear that it would be little short of an act of direct insanity for any man not already involved in this mass of difficulty to go voluntarily and implicate himself ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... locality of this reserve cannot be determined from the official description, which gives no clue to its shape ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... hardly believe it," replied the Warden. "I remember, some dozen or fifteen years ago, it was given out that some clue had been found to the only piece of evidence that was wanting. It had been said that there was an emigration to your own country, above a hundred years ago, and on account of some family feud; the true heir had gone thither and never returned. Now, the point was to prove ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... others the labyrinth had yielded up its clue. The hunter threaded its maze; the woodman plunged confidently into its innermost depths; the peasant child gathered ferns unscared in its sunless dells. But often the child abandoned his botany in terror, the woodman bolted for home, and the hunter's ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... gold, both ought to displace the same quantity of water; but they did not do so, and therefore the gold had been tampered with. Archimedes next immersed in water 1 lb. of silver, and the difference of water displaced soon gave the clue to the amount of alloy introduced by ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... hearts and minds which have the perception of quality, though not the power of expressing it; and these are the people whom I wish to persuade of the fact that they hold in their hands a thread, which, like the clue in the old story, can conduct a searcher safely through the dark recesses of the great labyrinth. He tied it, the dauntless youth in the tale, to the ancient thorn-tree that grew by the cavern's mouth; and then he stepped boldly ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... stations anywhere. We were very anxious to see some one, in hopes of getting a hint of what the state of affairs was in the direction we were going. At length we saw a young man—apparently a scout—on horseback, but his clothes were equally divided between the blue and the butternut, as to give no clue ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... of these differences and without success. McCollum then decided to attempt to solve the problem by selecting small animals (the rat was used) and experiment with mixtures consisting of purified proteins from different sources, combined with fats, carbohydrates and mineral salts until a clue was obtained to the nature of the deficiencies. His early results in this direction confirmed the results of other investigators, animals lived no longer on these diets than when allowed to fast. What was missing? Up to 1911 the main result of these ...
— The Vitamine Manual • Walter H. Eddy
... pathological anatomy of the human skull, we might have expected that he would have received Gegenbaur's grand reform of the theory of the skull, and historical solution of the skull-problem, with the greatest interest, and have made it the clue to his own further researches. But we seek in vain through Virchow's latest contributions to the study of the human skull, for any indication of his knowing or appreciating Gegenbaur's investigations. On the contrary, we see him persistently moving, without any clear goal in ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... dialects. The place of his birth can only, however, be conjectured, from arguments indirectly derived from his writings. His constant references throughout his works to the minute customs of different nations ought to give us a clue to the solution of this question, but strange to say they do not give us a decided one. Of these references a large number, however, relate to the customs of Libya, showing a minute knowledge in regard to the political and religious customs of this land that he displays in ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick
... of Hurstley did not know what we know. They possessed no clue to the secret happiness wherewithal Simon Jennings hugged himself; they had no inkling of the crock of gold; they thought not he was going to be suddenly so rich; they saw no cause, as we do, why he should feel to be like a great heir on the eve of his majority; they ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... though reason might prove that in the river he held an infallible clue, John's senses lost themselves in the forest maze. It overlapped and closed upon him, folding him deeper and illimitably deeper. On the Richelieu he had played with thoughts of escape, noting how the canoe lagged behind its ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... good deal of indignation is felt by the law-abiding people not only of Sutton Flats, but of the county, and it is hoped that every effort will be made to discover the perpetrator. The woollen cap and slung-shot should give a clever detective a good clue to work upon. Some time ago, at the public meeting called to discuss the liquor question, Mr. Dyer, M. P. for the county, said that the authorities had been twitted by the liquor men for not enforcing the Scott Act. That reproach might have been justified ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... find him, as wave after wave raised him time and again on its irresistible summit. The men in the boat were doing their best, no doubt; but what chance of finding any one on a dark night like that, in an angry sea, and with no clue to guide them toward the two struggling castaways? Current and wind had things all their own way. As a matter of fact, the light never came near the castaways at all; and after half an hour's ineffectual search, which seemed to Felix a whole long lifetime, it returned slowly ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... in his mind he probed about for some clue to the solution. The ruling passion animating the feathery whirlwind below was the necessity for mating ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... has hitherto been effected, the clue to the labyrinth of what is yet to be done is given ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... the old house apart, a bit of siding may give a clue to the original color outside. Under the various coats of paint and paper of the interior the owner may get glimpses of the scheme of decoration used when the house was young. We may not realize it but Colonial Americans were partial to color in the home and used a number of very effective off-shades ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... printed editions of Chaucer, the two names are "Citherus" and "Proserus;" in the manuscript which Mr Bell followed (No. 16 in the Fairfax collection) they are "Atileris" and "Pseustis." But neither alternative gives more than the slightest clue to identification. "Citherus" has been retained in the text; it may have been employed as an appellative of Apollo, derived from "cithara," the instrument on which he played; and it is not easy to suggest ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... that the only way to get a clue would be to send a detective down here," exclaimed Peggy, ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... a people we have the most reliable clue to the history of their progress in culture and intelligence, for religions even when unwritten are potent to conserve old conceptions, and thus their followers advance beyond them, as does the intelligence of the twentieth century ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... heard Mr. Vincey's story, he gave himself at once with great energy to the pursuit of this clue to the discovery of Mr. Bessel. It would serve no useful purpose here to describe the inquiries of Mr. Vincey and himself; suffice it that the clue was a genuine one, and that Mr. Bessel was actually discovered ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... felt the clue in his grasp. He sought to wield his power, "Choose a-twixt us! Choose a-twixt the promise ye made ter that man—or the word ye deny ter me! ...
— A Chilhowee Lily - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... was a cool and courageous lad. He was so, and proved it now. He did not lose presence of mind. He reined in his horse, and surveyed the prairie around him with an intelligent eye. It was all to no purpose. He saw nothing that would give him a clue to the spot where he had separated from his brothers. He shouted aloud, but there was neither echo nor answer. He fired off his rifle, and listened—thinking Lucien or Francois might reply by a similar signal; but no such signal ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... the use in casting pearls before swine? For the critics in the audience arose and condemned Shelley because he was a socialist, or because he was not one. Some of these critics seized upon the word libidinous. Oh! there was their clue! The lecturer arose like an outraged moralist to repudiate the scandalous charge of libidinousness. I was so disgusted I vowed I would never ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... the other continued. "I am working almost on your own lines, Mr. Ledsam, groping in the dark to find a clue, as it were, but I'm beginning to have ideas about Sir ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... days this state of things continued. There was no longer any sound of shouting and laughter in the playground. The boys walked about moody and sullen, working at their lessons. They were fast becoming desperate. No clue had been obtained as to the destroyer of the cat, and the schoolmaster declared that if it took him months to break their ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... detective, and learned that Cowperwood was a constant visitor at the Carters', that the machine in which they rode was his maintained at a separate garage, and that they were of society truly. Aileen would never have followed the clue so vigorously had it not been for the look she had seen Cowperwood fix on the girl in the Park and in the restaurant—an air of soul-hunger which could ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... or Cosin, being Vice-Chancellor gives a clue to the date, for Cosin was chosen Vice-Chancellor on the 4th ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... glass case. At the last minute, he had a presentiment, which has been justified to-day, that the discovery of the telescope which had played so great a part in the preparation of his crime might serve as a clue to an enquiry; and he threw it into the clock-case, where, as luck would have it, it interrupted the swing of the pendulum. This unreflecting action, one of those which every criminal inevitably commits, was ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... said—at least, I gathered the idea from a remark of yours," he added hastily, as he remembered that the suggestion was his own, and a satirical one—"that it reminded you of your wife's slipper. Of course, as your wife is dead, that would offer no clue, and can only be a ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... dhrame some time ago—he dremt that a near an' dear friend of his an' of mine too, that was murdhered in this neighborhood, appeared to him, an' that he desired him to go of a sartain night, at the hour of midnight, to a stone near this, called the Grey Stone, an' that there he would get a clue to ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... you, but we follow every clue. You were both sportsmen; that, as you know, monsieur, is always a bond, and we had not long to wait, although it was too dark for us to be quite sure when you both passed me. It was the bolting of the door ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... In one case it is known that for a long time he persisted in disowning his production. His American editor—a fact which is little known—selected, from among the mass of periodical writings in the various magazines for which De Quincey wrote, those which, having no other clue to guide him than, their peculiar style, he judged to have proceeded from De Quincey's pen. In one instance,—as to the "Traditions of the Rabbins,"—after considerable examination, he still hesitated, and finally wrote to De Quincey, to set himself right. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the best schoolmasters, by what I can make out," said poor Mr. Tulliver, who, in the maze of this puzzling world, laid hold of any clue with great readiness and tenacity. "Jacobs at th' academy's no parson, and he's done very bad by the boy; and I made up my mind, if I send him to school again, it should be to somebody different to Jacobs. And this Mr. Stelling, by what I can make out, is the sort o' man I want. And I mean my boy ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... up. In certain quarters—high official quarters, I believe—a flutter of excitement had been caused at noon, when it had become known that a mystery had occurred, one which at the outset New Scotland Yard had acknowledged itself utterly without a clue. ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... kitchen with the firelight gleaming on its bright copper, its polished candlesticks, and its snowy floor, you would think her an admirable housewife, but you would get no clue to those shrewd and masterful traits of character which reveal themselves chiefly ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... and the vault entered so ingeniously, that it was evident the burglar had possessed, besides daring courage, a good deal of mechanical skill. The police scoured the city and country round about, but no clue to the discovery of the robbery could be traced. The public mind was powerfully excited. Everybody who had anything to lose, felt that daring and ingenious felons were abroad, who might probably pay them a visit; all were therefore interested in the ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... statement of what I, an entity with countless other entities, was doing here. Where had I come from, where was I going? I visited the churches within my reach. I heard the preachers and read the philosophers to obtain, if possible, a clue to the mystery of life. I studied, and prayed, and went ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... from Capt. John Runciman. Allusions to 'The Wild Goose Nation' occur in many shanties, but I never obtained any clue to the meaning (if any) of the term. The verse about 'huckleberry hunting' was rarely omitted, but I never heard that particular theme further developed. Whall gives another version (in ...
— The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties • Richard Runciman Terry
... a bit," Reynolds acknowledged. "But where am I to go? Have you any idea where Redmond is? The world is big, remember, and without any clue, the ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... be able, if you acquire this science, to wield vast power, and to find a clue which will guide you through the labyrinth of the most impenetrable heart. This will render your living together free from very many mistakes, and, at the same time, rich in the ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... surroundings, my friends of both sexes, the current in which I was living, and one of the prettiest women in Paris. I did not succeed in my foolish dream, you must understand; and now I find myself cured, it is true, but high and dry like a fish in a grain-field." This is probably the clue, and the foolish dream was for a woman to whom his brother refers as having repelled Alfred's homage with harshness, and having called forth from him some short and extremely bitter verses beginning "Oui, femme," and another called "Adieu!" in which there prevails a tone of quiet but deep feeling. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... Johnson answered. "For my part, I can't understand how the Chicago police department got wise to the whereabouts of Wagner at this time. When it was arranged to send you boys out here in quest of him, it was understood that the police had no clue whatever as to his whereabouts. In fact, we all believed that the officers had abandoned the ...
— Boy Scouts on the Great Divide - or, The Ending of the Trail • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... for my benefit, but I could prove that the explanation of the presence of the snake there was without any foundation in truth. Griffin Leeds had discovered by listening to the conversation of the mate and myself, that we were investigating the matter, and had a clue to Cobbington. Then Cornwood had sent a note to the saloon-keeper to this effect, and Captain Boomsby had bribed the invalid with a dollar to lie about ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... will understand, ere he close this narrative, my reason for concealing all clue to the district of which I write, and will perhaps thank me for refraining from any description that ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... that they had found a clue. A child answering Alice's description had stopped at a small candy store and had purchased a selection of lolly-pops. She had paid for them in pennies. Someone in the store had seen her climb upon a trolley car bound for ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... aside That I may put into his hand the clue To lead him out of this amazement. Sir, Vouchsafe your Highness from my bended knee Receive ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... is no factor, for the war against England is taking on increasingly an almost religious character; from the German point of view, it will soon be, not a war, but a crusade. I get one clue to this in the new phrase of leave-taking that has gained an astounding currency in the past few weeks. Instead of saying "Good-bye" or "Auf Wiedersehen," the German now says: "God punish England!" to which ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... investigations undertaken without proper training or proper technique. By the year 1900, not only had the ground been cleared, but the work on insect-borne disease by Manson and by Ross had given observers an important clue. It had repeatedly been suggested that some relation existed between the bites of mosquitoes and the tropical fevers, particularly by that remarkable student, Nott of Mobile, and the French physician, Beauperthuy. But the first to announce ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... fortunes did pain and suspense extort from him a question or two. Why was he brought hither? What offence had he committed? But he received no answer; the hands disappeared; and the sash was closed. Here, without beholding the face, or hearing the voice of a fellow-creature; without the least clue to his terrible destiny; fearful doubts and misgivings overhanging alike the past and the future; cheered by no rays of the sun, and soothed by no refreshing breeze; remote alike from human aid ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... inquisitive researches. She gave no explanation who she was, or what she was, or why she carried this girl about with her. If she was related to herself, if she was a dependent, nobody knew; her manner gave no clue at all to the mystery. It was very seldom that the two had any conversation whatsoever in the presence of the others. Now and then the Contessa would send the girl upon an errand, telling her to bring something, with an absence of directions where to find it that suggested the most absolute confidence ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... did glance at the note briefly, but here he felt he would find no clue. After all, a man's printing does ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... no print of shoe In all these vasty rooms I rummage through, No word at threshold, and no clue Of whence I come and whither I pursue The search of treasures lost When time ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... often intimate subjective experiences, as the quickening impulse to his imagination. We know from his own words that, while composing, he generally had some mental picture before him. Very often we are not given the clue to his thoughts, but the titles, familiar to every one, which he did use, such as the Heroic and Pastoral Symphonies, the Coriolanus and Egmont Overtures, those to several of the Sonatas, are full of import and show clearly that he was engaged in no mere abstract music making for its ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... would taste as sweet, and when you have learnt that the francolin is one of the few different kinds of partridge, you will have obtained the chief clue to the life-history of these birds. They may in a general way be defined as the representatives in various parts of Asia (as in India and the Caucasus mountains) and Africa, of the well-known family which is so diligently searched for in this country ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... something," insisted Berry jocosely. "Give a fellow some little clue, and I can piece it out for myself. What did she say? I don't ask which she was? but I have my suspicions. All I want to know is what she said. Anything like beautiful middle distance, or splendid chiaroscuro, or fine perspective, or exquisite modelling? Come now! Try to think, Barker." ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... by one of His messengers, who told me of Christian Science. I replied that I believed God could heal, but that I had no faith in the healing of Christian Science, but would like to investigate its theology, as it might aid in giving me some clue to the meaning of life. For three years I had searched the works of the most scientific writers to find the origin of life; many times I would think I had traced it to the beginning, but it would elude my grasp every time. One day in talking with my friend, she said she would like to loan me the ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... impostor, must this writer be, who can tell the public, that this hand-bill excited much apprehension! Apprehension, I believe, indeed, in him and his associates and encouragers; for it furnishes the clue to unravel all their falsehoods and to expose them to scorn and to detestation; but, it is calculated to excite 'apprehension' in nobody else. The public indignation is fast collecting and winding up to a high pitch; and it only waits the result of the present examinations ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... successful solution of this problem—if soluble with the materials available to our hands—will lie the greatest triumph that Palaeontology can hope to attain; and there is reason to think that, thanks to the guiding-clue afforded by the genius of the author of the 'Origin of Species,' we are at least on the road to a sure, though it may be ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... received that," he said. "It is anonymous, as you will see, and cleverly done. There is absolutely no clue. It was sent to my place of business, and my people there telegraphed for me in Provence. Of course I came at once. One must sacrifice everything ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... about my own emotions, as I may have to refer to them again in matters of comprehension or comparison. The whole thing is so vastly strange and abnormal that the least thing may afterwards give some guiding light or clue to something otherwise not understandable. I have always found that in recondite matters first impressions are of more real value than later conclusions. We humans place far too little reliance on instinct as against reason; and yet instinct is the ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... old-time partner of her father's she might pick up some clue to the truth about the lost money. The firm of Grimes & Morrell had been on the point of paying several heavy bills and notes. The money for this purpose, as well as the working capital of the firm, had been in two banks. Either partner could ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... any further clue, then," he replied, "let me confide in you that if there is one country in this world which I detest, it is England; one race of people whom I ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... wrath, finds only Susanna with his wife. Ashamed of his suspicions, he asks her pardon and swears never to be jealous again. All blame in the matter of the letter is put on Figaro's shoulders, but this cunning fellow lies boldly, and the Count cannot get the clue to the mystery. Figaro and Susanna, profiting by the occasion, entreat the Count at last to consent to their wedding, which he has always put off. At this moment the gardener Antonio enters, complaining of the spoilt flower-beds. Figaro taking all upon himself, owns that he sprang out ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... these included neither the physiologic exhaustion nor the alterations in the brain-cells which are characteristic of the effects of trauma. On turning to the study of trauma, we at once found in the behavior of individuals as a whole under deep and under light anesthesia the clue to the cause of the discharge of energy, of the consequent physiologic exhaustion, and of the morphologic changes ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... stole it." Her tone was significant, and it checked me. I couldn't remember what the deuce she had said that night. There recurred to me her mimicry of a woman's voice—Laura Bowman's as I believed—to determine through Chung who Thomas Gilbert's feminine visitor had been. Should that clue have been followed up before I moved on Eddie Hughes? Even as I got to this point, I heard Worth, punctuating his remarks with the whang of his rock on the bit of twig he ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... are many. Thousands of such indefinite mounds and squares and circles are to be seen scattered over the various States of the Union. Their structure, composition and contents, give us no clue by which they may be assigned a place. It is believed that many of the strange works that abound in Butler county, Ohio, and which cannot be classified, are among the incomplete works, that is, works left ...
— Mound-Builders • William J. Smyth
... yet her courage was high, like that of a seeker who has come on new signs of gold. She was going to thread life by a fresh clue. She had thrown all the energy of her will into renunciation. The empty tabernacle remained locked, and she placed Dino's crucifix ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... frequently with a tender or wistful expression, more than usual. I did not know what it meant. Mamma was pushing me into company all this while, and making no allusion to my own private affairs, if she had any clue to them. One morning I had excused myself from an engagement which carried away my aunt and her, that I might have a quiet time to read with papa. Our readings had been much broken in upon - lately. With a glad step I went to papa's room; a study, I might call it, where he spent ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... on without affording any clue to the conscientious magistrate. One day, however, he heard that a certain Durochat was arrested for a recent robbery, and was confined in the Sainte Pelagie; and remembering that Durochat was the name of the one designated by Couriol as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... "What clue have we?" exclaimed Drillford almost contemptuously. "A tall man in black clothes, muffled to his eyes! But I'll tell you what, Mr. Viner," he added with a grin: "as you're so confident, why don't you ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... conscious state outside and independent of the body, and in that state received impressions and exercised perceptive powers. For this extraordinary theory I had no other evidence than the fact of my knowledge in the moment of awaking that President Byxbee was coming up the stairs. But slight as this clue was, it seemed to me unmistakable in its significance. That knowledge was certainly in my mind on the instant of arousing from the swoon. It certainly could not have been there before I fell into the swoon. I must therefore have gained it in ...
— The Blindman's World - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... whom they decoyed into their haunts, plundered, strangled, and buried on the spot. For years they carried on their infamous trade with impunity, and no member of the conspiracy had turned informer. At last, however, a clue was found by a skilful and resolute agent of the government, and the spell of mutual dread which held together the murderous confederacy was effectually broken in India. Meanwhile, the same period of peaceful development witnessed the execution of important public works, the ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... I needed: to the Church was added the Nature-Temple; to the religious Christian life, the life of Nature; to the passionate discord of human life the tranquil peace of the life of plants. From that time it was as if I held the clue of Ariadne to guide me through the labyrinth of life. An intimate communion with Nature for more than thirty years (although, indeed, often interrupted, sometimes for long intervals) has taught me that plants, especially trees, are a mirror, or rather a symbol, of human life ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... plunged into the throng, and soon caught the clue to the quietness and the lack of movement which seemed to prevail, and which at first sight had puzzled us. For a moment the absence of the dreadful symptoms we had come to know so well—the flying and pursuing, the random blows, the shrieks ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... period he made the discovery, or what he held to be the discovery, which governed his whole future career. He laid down the principle which was to give the clue to all his investigations; and, as he thought, required only to be announced to secure universal acceptance. When Bentham revolted against the intellectual food provided at school and college, he naturally took ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... offer the most serviceable clue, and to account for them three theories were suggested. First: The robber had been caught in the act by someone who had disappeared in pursuit, after one or the other had been wounded in the struggle. Second: There was more ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... think he may know something of my father. Did you notice how excited he was about the ring? Well, that gave me a clue. He may be able to lead me to where my father is hiding. I must have ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... through the glass at the gardener, meanwhile, it suddenly dawned upon him that the face and figure were familiar. He stared more intently at the man, casting about in his memory for a clue to his identity. It came to him that the person he had in mind was a fellow named Gafferson, who had kept an impoverished and down-at-the-heels sort of hotel and general store on the road from Belize to Boon ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... Margie. "I want to note what you say of Miss Duncan's absence," and while the reclaimed mutineers were being actually driven up the stairs by Jane, Dozia and the braver element, Miss Gifford was obtaining what clue she might ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... in stating that it was a sort of steel of such surpassing value and excellence, that in the days of yore a man who possessed a mirror, or sword, of Andanic regarded it as he would some precious jewel. This seems to me excellent evidence, and to give the true clue to the meaning of Ondanique. I have retained the latter form because it points most distinctly to what I believe to be the real word, viz. Hundwaniy, "Indian Steel."[1] (See Johnson's Pers. Dict. and De Sacy's Chrestomathie ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... our own associates, are to be reckoned by scores. Yet in all these scores hardly one character is to be found which deviates widely from the common standard, and which we should call very eccentric if we met it in real life. The silly notion that every man has one ruling passion, and that this clue, once known, unravels all the mysteries of his conduct, finds no countenance in the plays of Shakespeare. There man appears as he is, made up of a crowd of passions, which contend for the mastery over him, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... one of which a second could be seen, and a third from the second, till, last of all, the emphatically holy point of the island,—the burial-place of the old Culdee,—came full in view. The unsteady devotion, that journeyed, fancy-bound, along the heights, to gloat over a dead man's bones, had its clue to carry it on in a straight line. Its trail was on the ground; it glided snake-like from cross to cross, in quest of dust; and, without its finger-posts to guide it, would have wandered devious. It is surely a better devotion that, instead of thus creeping over the earth to a mouldy sepulchre, can ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... exposed. There was also a Maze, (the name is still retained in the district,) into which the debtor could run, and through the intricacies of which it was impossible for an officer to follow him, without a clue. Whoever chose to incur the risk of so doing might enter the Mint at any hour; but no one was suffered to depart without giving a satisfactory account of himself, or producing a pass from the Master. In short, every contrivance that ingenuity could devise was resorted to by this ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... feelings of admiration created by his courageous conduct in the war in which he is supposed to have been engaged. "Brave" and "Noble Macbeth," "Bellona's Bridegroom," "Valiant Cousin," and "Worthy Gentleman," are the general titles by which he is here spoken of; but none of them afford any positive clue whatever to his moral character. Nor is any such clue supplied by the scenes in which he is presently received by the messengers of Duncan, and afterwards received and lauded by Duncan himself. Macbeth's moral character, up to the ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... darting a look full of wonder and well feigned surprise—"The duenna! By my sword, that must be our clue—I had almost forgotten that you had a duenna in your house, otherwise my astonishment would not have been so lively. Duennas are the soul of every intrigue, and you may indeed affirm, with a safe conscience, that yours has not only connived at, but even facilitated ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... mean to scare you," he said. "We can't stay here, because if you stay somewhere they find you. We can't leave the containers here, either, because if they find them it might give them a clue in tracking us." ...
— The Happy Man • Gerald Wilburn Page
... handle them. He was a man with one accomplice or who worked alone, and who was almost exactly Seaton's size and build. He was undoubtedly an expert, as he blew the safe and searched the whole house without leaving a finger-print or any other clue, however slight, that I can find—a thing I have never before seen done in ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... God! What have I done? I have cast off the clue of this world's maze, And, like an idiot, let my boat adrift Above the waterfall!—I had no message— ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... I asked him, and he could tell me nothing. Why did you not leave us some clue by which to ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... with his fingers, finally, remarkably quick-witted, for this whole ingenious story is of his concoction. Yes, Watson, we have come upon the handiwork of a very remarkable individual. And yet, in that bell-rope, he has given us a clue which should not have left us ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... of the Dweller; seek from him a clue to Throckmartin? Again, clearly as a spoken command, came the warning to forbear, to wait. ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... off by reminding the people that they have, by custom, the right to have a prisoner released at that time, and suggests that he should release Jesus. But they insist on his releasing a prisoner named Barabbas instead, and on having Jesus crucified. Matthew gives no clue to the popularity of Barabbas, describing him simply as "a notable prisoner." The later gospels make it clear, very significantly, that his offence was sedition and insurrection; that he was an advocate ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... to stand still for a second glimpse and a clue to the nest; but the mosquitos! Things have come to a bad pass with the bird-hunter, whose only gun is an opera-glass, when he cannot stand stock-still for an hour. His success depends upon his ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... incompatible objects on which his heart was set he, for a time, went irresolutely to and fro. The conflict in his own breast gave to his public acts a strange appearance of indecision and insincerity. Those who, without the clue, attempted to explore the maze of his politics were unable to understand how the same man could be, in the same week, so haughty and so mean. Even Lewis was perplexed by the vagaries of an ally who passed, in a few hours, from homage to defiance, and from defiance to homage. Yet, now ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of reluctantly dying silver in the firmament over Candle Court. He wavered; he stood still at the foot of the stairs. The next moment he was in the street. He had decided to call on Agg at the studio. Agg might have the clue to Marguerite's astounding conduct, though he had it not. He took a hansom, after saying he would walk; he was too impatient for walking. Possibly Marguerite would be at the studio; possibly a letter of hers had miscarried; letters did ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... who unable to discover anything and entirely absorbed by their preconceived idea that the crime was the work of poachers, had arrested men they knew were poachers in the vague hope of somehow discovering something or of somehow getting hold of some useful clue. ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... assistant station-master at Havre. He proved an excellent official, and the only thing against him was a suspicion that he was affected by republican principles. For three years Roubaud's married life was a happy one, until a chance lie of his wife's gave him a clue to her former relations with Grandmorin. Driven frantic by jealousy, he forced her to reveal the truth, afterwards compelling her to become his accomplice in the murder of the President in the Havre express. The Roubauds established an alibi, though slight suspicion ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... now day or night?" The learned man said, "There is no telling what he may say to us. But you know that the most foolish as well as the most wise have ideas, and a sentence uttered at random has sometimes furnished a clue by which the desired object may be attained." Meanwhile a little boy also came up, and perceiving the lunatic stopped to see his tricks. The two friends explained their case to the lunatic, who then seemed immersed in thought for some ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... it was wonderfully perfect in the harmony of its proportions; and even Rose, less perceptive than her companion, and troubled and disturbed, rather than uplifted, by an emotion to which she had no clue, was moved by the delicate, shadowed beauty of the grey walls and ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... le Marquis had indeed been foully murdered by M. de Naquet, had made a clean breast of the whole affair to her father, and he in his turn had put the minions of the law in full possession of all the facts; and since M. le Comte de Naquet had vanished, leaving no manner of trace or clue of his person behind him, the police, needing a victim, fell back on an innocent man. Fortunately, Sir, that innocence clear as crystal soon shines through every calumny. But this was not before I had suffered terrible indignities and ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Utility. Let us turn back, then, to the factor of utility, and see if we cannot put on a more satisfactory basis the relation between utility and price. The clue to the puzzle is to be found in a brief reflection on the implications of the second general law propounded in Chapter II. A rise in price, it was there stated, will sooner or later diminish the demand. This was asserted as a matter of fact, observed ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... the regret of that hour are best left untold. The number of disks gone from the bottle under the pillow gave the doctor his clue. One final effort must have been made by the desperate invalid to secure for himself the drink which would wash them down without the ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... soon gave him a clue to the mystery; but all his farther speculations upon it were arrested, by a deep groan from the wounded man, and a writhing movement in the bottom of the wagon, as the wheel rolled over a little pile ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... way towards the realisation of this plan runs through Hungary, and while without Hungary we can do nothing, with her aid we can do everything. Hungary is for Germany the clue to Turkey and the Near East, and at the same time a bulwark against a superior power ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... her hotel to pass a sleepless night, tossing by the side of her placidly unconscious husband as she passed the tragic events of the night in review and vainly sought for some clue to the mystery. The dreadful logic of the circumstances which pointed to suicide, hammered at her consciousness with deadening persistence, but she resolutely refused to give it entry. Why should Robert commit suicide? Why indeed? It was the question which had sprung to her lips ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... had left the room except Richard, who quietly took the crimson tangle on his wrists, turned and twisted, opened passages for the winder, and by the magic of his dexterous hands, had found the clue to the maze, so that all was proceeding well, though slowly, when the study door opened, and Harry's voice was heard in a last good night to his father. Mary's eyes looked wistful, and one misdirection of her winder tightened an ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... little since we had begun that ride whose end we sensed close. In the unfolding of enigmatic happening after happening the mind had deserted speech and crouched listening at every door of sight and hearing to gather some clue to ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... speaketh," he said. (Matt. 12:34). This he amplified, as we have seen, by his insistence on the weight of every idle word (Matt. 12:36)—the unstudied and spontaneous expression or ejaculation—the reflex, in modern phrase—which gives the real clue to the man's inner nature and deeper mind, which "justifies" him, therefore, or "condemns" him (Matt. 12:37). The overflow of the heart, he holds, shows more decisively than anything else the quality of the spring in ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... direction not of the kindest sort to the fraternity, but 'tis certainly a key to the clue of a pickpocket's motions, and whoever can follow it will as certainly catch the thief as he will be sure to miss if ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... shameless and presumptuous bid for immortality; but the whole point of view had vanished in 1900. Not he, but Sir Henry Maine and Rudolph Sohm, were the parents or creators of Sac and Soc. Convinced that the clue of religion led to nothing, and that politics led to chaos, one had turned to the law, as one's scholars turned to the Law School, because one could see no ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... of obtaining a clue to the traitors. The rebels had suffered considerably from treachery on their own side; had been in much danger from the treason of Doctor Church at Boston; had owed the speedier loss of their Fort Washington to that of ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... and the mate at length had to end his search with the unsatisfactory conclusion that the St. Clare, a brigantine registered from Hartpool, with cargo of lime, had been abandoned on the high seas for no apparent reason. Her skipper had taken with him the ship's papers, and had not left a single clue behind. ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... wanting the coherency and perfection of a whole. Mrs. Buxton strove to bring her to a sense of the beauty of completeness, and the relation which qualities and objects bear to each other; but in all her striving she retained hold of the golden clue of sympathy. She would enter into Erminia's eagerness, if the object of it varied twenty times a day; but by-and-by, in her own mild, sweet, suggestive way, she would place all these objects in their ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... looking at all fit for such a long run. It seems to me that Welch might know where he is. Thomson and he got well ahead of the others after the start, so that if, as I expect, Thomson dropped out early in the race, Welch could probably tell us where it happened. That would give us some clue to ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... commanding the insurgent forces as a whole, Aguinaldo had remained the center of revolt and occasionally showed his hand, as in the attempt to negotiate a peace on the basis of independence. In February an intercepted letter had given a clue to his hiding place. Funston, in spite of his new rank, determined personally to undertake the capture. The signature of Lacuna, one of the insurgent leaders, was forged and letters were sent to Aguinaldo informing him of the capture of five Americans, who ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... in surprise; but as her niece often talked in a manner that she did not comprehend, she attributed it to the improvements in education, and was satisfied. But Julia had furnished herself with a clue to what had occasioned her some uneasiness. At one time she thought Antonio ought to have left carriage, horses, every thing, and flown to her rescue, as Charles had done; but now she saw that the probity ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... of Leichardt and his companions has been involved in mystery. He was then on the Cogoon River, in Eastern Australia, at least 1500 miles from the nearest station on the western side of the continent. His last letter gives no clue to the track he intended to pursue. If a westerly course had been struck he would have nearly traversed the route which subsequently Warburton travelled; but no trace of him has ever been discovered. Several expeditions were undertaken to ascertain his fate; at various times expectations were aroused ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... afraid of growing ugly that you are saving money?" was a speech of Florine's to Mariette, which may give a clue to one cause of ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... the figure of her future mate behind her in the darkness. In the north-east of Scotland lint seed was used instead of hemp seed and answered the purpose quite as well.[600] Again, a mode of ascertaining your future husband or wife was this. Take a clue of blue yarn and go to a lime-kiln. Throw the clue into the kiln, but keep one end of the thread in your hand and wind it on to another clue. As you come near the end somebody or something will hold the other end ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... arms! Bachofen would seem to have been touched with the Puritan spirit. I am convinced also that he understood very little of the nature of woman. Conventional morality has always acted on the side of the man, not the woman. The clue is, indeed, given in the woman's closer connection with the home, and in the idea that "she raises herself by the recognition of her motherhood." But the facts are capable of an entirely different interpretation. ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... in readiness, a meeting of Catholic gentlemen was brought about under show of a hunting party to serve as the beginning of a rising. Wonderful as was the secrecy with which the plot was concealed, the family affection of Tresham at the last moment gave a clue to it by a letter to Lord Monteagle, his relative, which warned him to absent himself from the Parliament on the fatal day; and further information brought about the discovery of the cellar and of Guido Fawkes, who was charged with its custody. ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... populi vox Dei. A stupid rumour is soon set going. But you really have nothing to be afraid of. From the legal point of view you are all right, and with your conscience also. For you didn't want it done, did you? There's no clue, nothing but the coincidence.... The only thing is Fedka may remember what you said that night at Kirillov's (and what made you say it?) but that proves nothing and we shall stop Fedka's mouth. I ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... days the youths made many inquiries, but were unable to get a clue as to who had played the trick. Ritter and Coulter "laid low" and kept ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... that he did not understand her at all; he felt farther away from her than ever and loved her more devotedly than ever: a desperate state of things. If he had taken that sentence of hers—"I think it's too exciting—now—here—for me to stop and think," he would, I fancy, have found the clue to her, but he would not believe that she was so simple as that. In the two days that followed, days of the greatest discomfort, disappointment and disorder, his mind never left her for a moment. His diary for these four days is very short ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... sitting at table with them. Kendric regarded the men with interest, feeling that their scrutiny of him was no less painstaking. They were swarthy Indians and half-breeds and little else did he make of them. Their eyes met his, steady and unwinking, but gave no clue to what thoughts ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... most extraordinary," cried the general; "can you not give me any clue by which I ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... been reclaimed by the word of God from those regions that have been justly styled "the dark places of the earth." We will not mention its name; we will not even indicate its whereabouts, lest we should furnish a clue to the unromantic myrmidons of the law, whose inflexible justice is only equaled by their pertinacity in tracking ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... contents were discouraging. The Indian Agent said he had caused diligent search to be made, and he was convinced there was no white child among the tribes in that region. Uncle George persevered in efforts to obtain some clue to the report which had induced him to travel so far. But after several weeks, he was obliged to return alone, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... arms and eyes intent upon the sermon, as if their comrades had not left them. The minister thought he must have been mistaken and took up the broken thread once more, or tried to, but he had hopelessly lost the place in his manuscript, and the only clue that offered was a quotation of a poem about the devil; to be sure, the connection was somewhat abrupt, but he clutched it with his eye gratefully and ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... such a trinket? How she dared to drive about at all in the Park, the audacious wretch! All these were questions which the infuriate Zuleika put to herself, her confidential maid, her child's nurse, and two or three of her particular friends; and of course she determined that there was but one clue to the mystery of the necklace, which was that her husband had purchased it with the six hundred pounds which he had won at the Derby, which he denied having won even to her, which he had spent in this shameful manner. Nothing would suit her but a return home to her ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... framed the question in perfect innocence, but his answer (the difference in distance was insignificant) and his manner offered me a clue to the simple truth. He took the ship to a port where he expected to be confirmed in his temporary command from lack of a qualified master to put over his head. Whereas Singapore, he surmised justly, would be full of qualified men. But his naive reasoning forgot to take into account ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... a foothold, he cast about vainly for a clue to the other's whereabouts; for if the night was thick in the open, here in the trench its density was as that of the pit; the man could distinguish positively nothing more than a pallid rift where the walls ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... given to the llyn in the book is merely a rough translation of the gipsies' name for it, the 'Knockers' being gnomes or goblins of the mine; hence 'Coblynau' equals goblins. If so, the name itself can give us no clue unless we are lucky enough to secure the last of the Welsh gipsies for a guide. In any case, the only point from which to explore Snowdon for the small llyn, or perhaps llyns (of which Llyn Coblynau is a kind of composite ideal ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... the Manuscript Troano, and examine the day columns, comparing them with these four groups as I have corrected them by this single transposition, I think we shall find one clue at least to the object of the arrangement we observe on this plate. As but few are likely to have the Manuscript at hand, I will refer to Chapter VII of my work (A Study of the Manuscript Troano), where ...
— Notes on Certain Maya and Mexican Manuscripts • Cyrus Thomas
... religious and moral truth, from a free handling, in a becoming spirit, of subjects peculiarly liable to suffer by the repetition of conventional language, and from traditional methods of treatment[132]." We proceed therefore to examine his labours by the aid of the clue which he has himself supplied. For when nine editions of a book appear in quick succession, prefaced by a description of the spirit in which "it is hoped that the volume will he received,"—it ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... Hippolytus? Oh, why were you too young to have embark'd On board the ship that brought thy sire to Crete? At your hands would the monster then have perish'd, Despite the windings of his vast retreat. To guide your doubtful steps within the maze My sister would have arm'd you with the clue. But no, therein would Phaedra have forestall'd her, Love would have first inspired me with the thought; And I it would have been whose timely aid Had taught you all the labyrinth's crooked ways. What anxious care a ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... the next few days Roy rode to and fro over the park trying to sell his windmill to the ranchers. He secured two orders and the tentative promise of others. But he gained no clue as to the place where Dingwell was hidden. His intuition told him that the trail up Chicito Canon would lead him to the captive cattleman. Twice he skirted the dark gash of the ravine at the back of the pasture, but each time his heart failed at the plunge into its unknown ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... for his urgency. He believed that Clifford could give the clue to the dead uncle's wealth, of which not more than a half had been mentioned in his will. If Clifford refused to reveal where the missing documents were placed, the judge declared he would have him confined in a public ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the Three which you translated for me gives me a clue. At first I thought that they had perfected some substance, perhaps with unknown electrical properties, which nullified gravity. But that won't prove out. If the ray simply nullified gravity, the buildings down there, while weightless, would not ...
— Lords of the Stratosphere • Arthur J. Burks
... highly imaginative strain. The multitude of specific allusions to topographical names make it difficult to [Page 54] translate it intelligently to a foreign mind. The poetical units are often so devised that each new division takes its clue from the last word of the previous verse, on the principle of "follow your leader," a capital feature ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... familiar with the mystery, and baffled by it, searched again perfunctorily. Uncle Dick hunted hither and yon with feverish activity, at first confidently, then doubtfully, finally in despair. He, in his turn, could find no further clue. He gave over his efforts eventually, and stood silent beside the marshal, staring bewilderedly. About the amphitheatre formed by the pool, pines grew in a half-circle, save where the narrow channel of the stream descended. But between the barricade of the trees and the basin of ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... again at the dusky canvas, as though in a final endeavor to extract from it a clue to the consolations of art. "I don't know," she said at length; "I'm afraid I don't understand pictures." She moved nearer to Mrs. Quentin ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... look like a stranger from another world upon the business of this one; that I am among you, but not of you; that your motives and aims to me are utterly unintelligible; that you can give no account of them to which I can attach any sense; that I have no clue to the enigma you seem so lightly to solve by your religion, your philosophy, your science; that your hopes are not mine, your ambitions not mine, your principles not mine; that I am shipwrecked, and see ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... wealthy banker of the town had been murdered on the road to the golf club, no one knew why or by whom. Every clue had proved fruitless, and the list of suspects was itself so long and so impossible as to seem ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... little clump of white magnolias prevented me from seeing the girl—at the same time that it hid both myself and horse from her sight. The chirrup of the cicadas alone hindered me from hearing all of what was said; but many words reached my ear, and with sufficient distinctness, to give me a clue to the subject of the promised revelation. Delicacy would have prompted me to retire a little farther off; but the singular caution I had received from my companion, prevented me ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... 605 c) names Bacchylides in a list of writers, who after they had been banished from their native cities, were active and successful in literature. It was Peloponnesus that afforded a new home to the exiled poet. The passage gives no clue to date or circumstance; but it implies that Peloponnesus was the region where the poet's genius ripened and where he did the work which established his fame. This points to a residence of considerable length; and it may be noted that some of the poems illustrate their author's intimate ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... this clue, the contrast between the characteristics of the historical Jesus and of the rider on the white horse becomes solemn and full of warning. And the contrast between the errand of the historical Jesus and that of the Conqueror bids us ponder on the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... anguish, the regret of that hour are best left untold. The number of disks gone from the bottle under the pillow gave the doctor his clue. One final effort must have been made by the desperate invalid to secure for himself the drink which would wash them down without the ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... how high and sacred a subject was present to the poet's mind in composing this stanza; and any person who is well read in the Bible, with a clue like this may satisfy himself that all Spenser's writings are replete with similar tacit allusions to the language and the doctrines of sacred writ; allusions breathed, if we may so speak, rather than uttered, and much ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... put out the light we did not fall asleep. We were discussing the cleverness of the detective and the folly of the thief who had left a clue behind, and it was actually two o'clock when we pulled our rugs up to our necks and closed ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji
... Isaacs is his 'alias'—a man who's been suspected for a long time as a receiver of stolen goods—a fence. When I got the tip that Kit and Churn were staying in the house where we were to spot Chuff, I was sure I had the clue to you. I wish to God we'd been five minutes earlier; but I thank Him we weren't five minutes too late! If the police eventually bring the crime home to Kit (that's improbable, Denham thinks) there's nothing to link up the story with ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... look-out, Lilly, dear; you've the best eyes among us, and we must have a clue from whence last ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... midst of a maze of events there may sometimes be found one which serves as a clue, revealing hidden paths, connecting ways which seem far apart, and leading to a clear issue. Such was the attempted flight of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette to the eastern frontier of France at midsummer ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... experiment. At length, driven almost to despair, it became evident that something new must be done to still the tumult. As an expedient, I elevated a cap on a pole, which immediately attracted their attention and occasioned silence. Thus I obtained a clue to guide me, and my mind instantly perceived one of the most fundamental principles in infant teaching, in fact of most teaching, and which long experience has proved true, and that is, to appeal to the SENSES of the children. After this, every day developed something new to me, ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... fact recur, almost every day; and Pierre seemed to bring them on with a word, as if he had the clue to her strange and new disorder. He would discern in her face a lucid interval of peace and with the willingness of a torturer would, with a word, revive the anguish that had ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... the paper now, doctor," and he stooped to pick up the crumpled sheet from which the girl had read her death warrant. Together they went over it in the hope that it might furnish some clue. Mrs. Moore's eyes were the first to fall on the fatal paragraph. She read it through, then ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... passed through the gates, and walked away up the road. She was utterly alone, the only sign of life being a flock of sheep in the distance, trotting on sedately before a tall shepherd and a collie dog. Teen never saw them. She was fearfully excited, believing that she had at last discovered the clue to her ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... and the "Short of weight" gives the clue to the nature of his dealings, and also to the right ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various
... be obliged to you if you will direct the inclosed to be posted in London as I wish to avoid giving any clue to my place of residence, publicity not being ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... the police hoped to trace the footsteps of the assassin was the booty which his crime had secured to him: the contents of the pocket-book that had been rifled, and the clothes which had been stripped from the corpse of the victim. By means of the clue which these things might afford, the detective police hoped to reach the guilty man. But they hoped in vain. Every pawnbroker's shop in Winchester, and in every town within a certain radius of Winchester, was searched, but ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the subject, he had wandered to the door of Harry's room, and there the sound of voices had arrested his attention. Knowing that Harry was placed there in solitary confinement, he felt that the clue to the mystery might now be here; and so, gathering half a dozen men, he had come in upon ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... occasions for the reading of these authors with her hostess, rather perhaps than actually achieved great spans; but what they managed and what they missed speedily sank for her into the dim depths of the merely relative, so quickly, so strongly had she clutched her central clue. All her scruples and hesitations, all her anxious enthusiasms, had reduced themselves to a single alarm—the fear that she really might act on her companion clumsily and coarsely. She was positively afraid of what she might do to her, and to avoid ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... longer the unity of an Englishman trained to do one thing at a time, and to do it with his might. He sat in a kind of languor, carrying on within himself a thread of thought, to which his external occupation gave no clue; yet at the same time suffering no indication to escape him of the real condition of his mind. The three were consequently far from being good company. Mr Proctor, who was more puzzled than ever as to the true state of the case, could not unburden himself of his own intentions as ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... Granger felt, as she pondered on this serious question! To her brother? Yes, he was the only friend she would care to trust in this emergency. But how was she to find him? Brussels was a large place, and she had no clue to his whereabouts there. Could she feel even sure that he had ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... remains valid. You are at liberty to keep or destroy this new will as you choose. Nor, if you keep it, are you bound to do anything towards finding your lost brother. But should you desire to make inquiries, I am able to give you this feeble clue—that, after leaving home, he went to the bad in London in company with a companion named Fastnet, but where they lived I know not. Also, that the rumour of his death came to me from India. I can say no more, only that I am his and your ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... would have to try and work it up to its former state of prosperity. This, again, would require advantages on their part which they did not at present possess, but which Charlotte caught a glimpse of. She resolved to follow the clue, and never to rest till she had reached a successful issue. With the forced calm of a suppressed eagerness, that sends a glow of desire through every word of the following letter, she wrote to her ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... cafe are simply human beings going to it because it is a human place. They have forgotten how much is French and how much Egyptian in their civilisation; they simply think of it as civilisation. Now this character of the older French culture must be grasped because it is the clue to many things in the mystery of the modern East. I call it an old culture because as a matter of fact it runs back to the Roman culture. In this respect the Gauls really continue the work of the Romans, in making something ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... years, when he was busy surveying the lands about Saintes, in order to support his wife and little children, his thoughts were perpetually occupied with the enamelled cup, and how to make one like it. If he could only see a few more, perhaps something might give him a clue; but how was he to do that? Then one day in the winter of 1542 a pirate boat from La Rochelle, on the coast, sailed into port with a great Spanish ship in tow, filled with earthenware cups from Venice, and plates and goblets from the Spanish city of Valencia, famous for its marvellously ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... machines worked by fire, they traversed the land swift as the swallow glides through the sky, but of these things not a relic remains to us. What metal-work or wheels or bars of iron were left, and might have given us a clue, were all broken up and melted down for use in other ways when metal ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... bonnet and shawl, mute witnesses to the fate that seemed to have overtaken her. Her father alone refused to believe that his daughter had ended her life tragically. He persisted in his search for her, and was soon rewarded by a clue which threw a different and more ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... gave him a clue to the mystery; but all his farther speculations upon it were arrested, by a deep groan from the wounded man, and a writhing movement in the bottom of the wagon, as the wheel rolled over a little pile of stones in ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... thought of a little sealed up parcel of papers, my lady made me burn in her presence, about a month before she died. "They are, Pamela," said she, "such as would not concern me, let who will see them, could they know the springs and causes of them; but, for want of a clue, my son might be at a loss what to think of several of those letters were he to find them, in looking over my other papers, when I am ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... I have every reason to believe he is an Englishman. He was pro-German, as he would have been pro-Boer. What he seeks to attain we do not know—probably supreme power for himself, of a kind unique in history. We have no clue as to his real personality. It is reported that even his own followers are ignorant of it. Where we have come across his tracks, he has always played a secondary part. Somebody else assumes the chief role. ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... 1720. Saint-Simon found it "d'une fadeur a faire vomir"; its servility towards the King and Madame de Maintenon enraged him; but it exhibited facts in an orderly sequence; it might serve as a guide and a clue among his own reminiscences; on the basis of Dangeau's literal transcript of occurrences he might weave his own brilliant recitals and passionate presentations of character. Thus Saint-Simon's Memoires came ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... description—he quite jumped at it—had a sound that gratified his mental ear, so that of a sudden he had already adopted it. Pagan—yes, that was, wasn't it? what Chad WOULD logically be. It was what he must be. It was what he was. The idea was a clue and, instead of darkening the prospect, projected a certain clearness. Strether made out in this quick ray that a Pagan was perhaps, at the pass they had come to, the thing most wanted at Woollett. They'd ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... is no direct clue to the authorship of this document; but it was evidently written by a lawyer, and one who sided with the Jesuits and the governor. It is possible that this was Fabian de Santillan, appointed by that order as judge-conservator; ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... he spoke, to see the effects of his words. But if Balcom knew anything, he cunningly concealed it. Locke walked to the table and closely examined the candles and other stuff strewn about. He was looking for some clue to what had caused the madness of Brent and Flint. The crumpled anatomy chart lay on the floor, and as Locke stooped to pick it up Eva entered and came toward him. She shuddered slightly as she passed the miniature of the monster, and Balcom, with an air of satisfaction, noticed her fear. He turned ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... poor shopkeeper! what could he have to do with my father's affairs?" Reginald was not speaking to the woman, but drearily to himself. If this was the only clue to the mystery, what ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... be honest, your story does not quite convince me. There are holes in it,—but that may be clue to your not being able to remember all the details,—and I have read a few things about criminal inspirations—and I recall—h'm—but never mind. You have had your punishment, you have had character enough to admit your error, and we won't ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... "Any clue to Larry Brainard yet?" Barney whispered also out of a corner of his mouth, glass at his lips. Like-wise he seemed not to notice the man ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... it—Curtis Hidden Page, I think. Well, it was that bit of verse that gave me the clue. One day, in the window-seat near the big piano—you remember how she could play? She used to laugh, sometimes, and doubt whether it was for them I came, or for the music. She called me a 'music-sot' once, a 'sound-debauchee.' What a voice he had! ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... telegram the moment he read the documents. They confirmed legends of the Sudan in which he had been interested. Putting two and two together—the legends and Ferlini's notes—Anthony was convinced that we had the clue to fortune. At once he applied for permission to excavate under the little outlying mountain named by the desert folk "the Mountain of the Golden Pyramid." At first the spot was thought to fall within the province given up to Garstang, digging for ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... went to the theater last night—I felt the need of a little relaxation—and the sight of a picture there, a cinematograph affair, started a new line of thought. Probably the same clue brought you gentlemen. I learned a good bit from the ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... pressed against the window-sill, Margery could scarcely believe her ears. Did he really think it was funny? And then she had it. Her father was pretending! But that, after all, was only half a clue. Why was he ...
— The Hickory Limb • Parker Fillmore
... gives no clue to her mind [with an attempted lightness], save occasionally there is too ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange
... for a helpful clue, Welcoming no matter what suggestion, I have lately sounded one or two Leading doctors on this vital question; But they think I'll have to be trepanned If I wish effectively to modify the structure of my pineal gland ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... for forgery about a fortnight later, and of course he had found out that he was discovered, and made tracks at once without waiting to come to terms with Philipson. The police have tried to track him everywhere without hitting on a ghost of a clue beyond London, from which place a letter was sent to his employers. But I know the direction in which ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... The queer death of a recluse in his library is the main theme. There is absolutely no clue, and the mystery is doubled by the fact that, although the room is shot up and in the greatest disorder, both windows and door are found locked on the inside—the man dead in a pool of his own blood. The clearing up of this mystery leads the reader through many exciting adventures. "Something ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... sextet (the last six lines) followed the Italian or the best accepted English forms: this done, it is easy to determine upon a style,—which would be the one adopted at the present time by the best English and American printers (as far as recent books of both countries give any clue), as follows:— ...
— The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. - A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers • Various
... this unlooked-for disappointment, Oxley, after vainly seeking for some clue or indication by which he could continue the search, had to 'bout ship and return to the camp of the night before. ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... they crept from their galleons and stole over Pegana's silent threshold it boded ill for the gods. There in Pegana lay the gods asleep, and in a corner lay the Power of the gods alone upon the floor, a thing wrought of black rock and four words graven upon it, whereof I might not give thee any clue, if even I should find it—four words of which none knoweth. Some say they tell of the opening of a flower towards dawn, and others say they concern earthquakes among hills, and others that they tell of the death of fishes, and others ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... basket, in the latter form, was doubtless an adaptation from the ritual of the basket-born God-Child, as was the birth story of Jesus. In Diodorus Siculus (i. 25) the myth runs that Isis found Horos dead "on the water," and brought him to life again; but even in that form the clue to the Moses birth-myth is obvious. And there are yet other Egyptian connections for the Moses saga, since the Egyptians had a myth of Thoth (their Logos) having slain Argus (as did Hermes), and having ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... natural sense of justice recognised by all persons in common. They appeal, at the first meeting, not to certain symbols and watchwords privately agreed upon, like Freemasons, but to the maxims and instincts proper to all the world. They have no other clue to guide them to their object but either the dictates of the heart or the universally understood sentiments of society, neither of which are likely to be in the wrong. The flame which bursts out and blazes from popular sympathy ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... the road to become one of James the Second's judges, but always on friendly terms with John), had been undutiful, and he thought that he had done enough for them. They naturally thought otherwise, and threatened litigation. The interrogatories administered on this occasion afford the best clue to the condition of Milton's affairs and household. At length the dispute was compromised, the nuncupative will, a kind of document always regarded with suspicion, was given up, and the widow received two-thirds of the estate instead ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... know," I replied,—nor have I since been able to find the faintest clue to her whereabouts, if living, or her fate, if dead. From that moment at the door-step when she said good-by, Eunice stepped out of my life as completely as if the earth had opened and swallowed her up. Is she dead or alive? Did the unhappy girl seek self-destruction that June night, or was she ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... the flower-characters as the essential feature of Angiosperms supply the clue to phylogeny, but the uncertainty regarding the construction of the primitive angiospermous flower gives a fundamental point of divergence in attempts to construct progressive sequences of the families. Simplicity of flower-structure ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... vast unknown interval at the termination of the Palaeozoic period, and then a decreasing violence or rapidity through the Secondary period, to allow for the gradual repopulation of the earth with varied forms, and the whole of the facts are explained.[B] We thus have a clue to the increase of the forms of life during certain periods, and their decrease during others, without recourse to any causes but those we know to have existed, and to effects fairly deducible from ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... very beginning of it, and not on such a good plan as ours; that certainly she descried a new lichen on the walls, which she went to fetch, and proved herself correct; finally, that there might be some lock-up place within, giving us a clue to the former inhabitants. We accordingly searched, and found various articles of clothing and furniture, evidently of foreign manufacture. Everything was covered some inches thick with a fine sand, which caused insufferable choking and sneezing to those who were heedless. It seemed very apparent ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... in his hands, belonging to private individuals. Among his victims was Colonel S. of Baltimore, who determined to make an effort to recover his money. His first step was a visit to Halifax. His endeavors there to find Keith's whereabouts were for some time fruitless. But at last a clue was found. A girl, who had accompanied Keith in his flight, had written a letter to a relative in Halifax, and Colonel S. by some means obtained a sight of the envelope. The post-mark, plainly legible, indicated that the letter had been written at an obscure little village in Missouri. ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... Fandor, depressed. "So now I am actually a prisoner. Look here, Juve, what has become of this Frederick-Christian? Haven't you any clue ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... the history of Jesus as contrasted with the myth of Jesus in the New Testament. This description of the actual appearance of Jesus for the first time gives us a clue to the mental and physical characteristics ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... alterations in the brain-cells which are characteristic of the effects of trauma. On turning to the study of trauma, we at once found in the behavior of individuals as a whole under deep and under light anesthesia the clue to the cause of the discharge of energy, of the consequent physiologic exhaustion, and of the morphologic ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... some other obedient and already well-taxed Colony? Who has said one word on this labyrinth of detail, which bewilders you more and more as you enter into it? Who has presented, who can present you with a clue to lead you out of it? I think, Sir, it is impossible that you should not recollect that the Colony bounds are so implicated in one another,—you know it by your other experiments in the bill for prohibiting the ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... increased; I turned my back, so to speak, upon my recollections, and said to myself, with growing firmness, that all sensations of the body must have their origin in the body. Some derangement of the system easily explainable, no doubt, if one but held the clue—must have produced the impression which otherwise it would be impossible to explain. As I turned this over and over in my mind, carefully avoiding all temptations to excitement—which is the only wise course in the case of a strong impression on ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant
... not be more uneasy than necessary about George. I think I have a clue by which his address may be ascertained. If so, I will report progress to you to-night; but I leave this note for you, in order to allay the distress you will feel in learning he is not here. Rest assured ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... birth can only, however, be conjectured, from arguments indirectly derived from his writings. His constant references throughout his works to the minute customs of different nations ought to give us a clue to the solution of this question, but strange to say they do not give us a decided one. Of these references a large number, however, relate to the customs of Libya, showing a minute knowledge in regard to the political and religious ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick
... they were intended to represent, I will not run the risk of describing them wrongly. The wivern, the crest of the Herberts, did not appear; nor, so far as I could learn, does the fabric itself afford any clue to him who was the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various
... are seen to be the work of many hands in many ages. They gather up the popular traditions of the race, carry down on their slow streams fragments from such far back ages that we have almost lost the clue to their story—glacial boulders that now lie strangely out of place in the rich fields of later eras; songs of rude periods, nature myths, legends of semi-fabulous heroes, folk lore of the tribes, ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... contemporaries. There are, indeed, secret feelings which their prudence conceals, or their fears obscure, or their modesty shrinks from, or their pride rejects; but I have sometimes imagined that I have held the clue as they have lost themselves in their own labyrinth. I know that many, and some of great celebrity, have sympathised with the feelings which inspired these volumes; nor, while I have elucidated the idiosyncrasy of genius, have I less studied the habits and characteristics ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... which was annihilation. It was clear that he would never see them again. Precautions had been taken against that. They had scoured the fair-green, beginning by Nicless and Govicum, so that he should gain no clue through them. Inexorable dispersion! That fearful social system, at the same time that it had pulverized him in the House of Lords, had crushed them in their little cabin. They were lost; Dea was lost—lost to him for ever. Powers of heaven! where was she? And he had not been there ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... along the river," he reasoned. "It may lead me somewhere and it will show the way back to the plane. I may come across something in the way of a clue. Can't go exploring by air, or I'll burn up all the ...
— The Pygmy Planet • John Stewart Williamson
... memory of this great man, the entire story of his life has to be built up from the beginning. Fragments of papers, scraps of information, however slight, may therefore be of material value. A date or a name may contain an important clue, and will be thankfully acknowledged. Of course I do not wish to be referred to information contained in well-known collections, such as Thurloe, Rushworth, Whitelock, and the Parliamentary Histories, nor to the Deptford MSS. in the Tower, the Admiralty papers in the State Paper Office, or the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... case for you. When is my wife's birthday?' Wouldn't that have given Sherlock a jolt? However, I know enough about the game to understand that a fellow can't shoot off his deductive theories unless you start him with a clue, so rouse yourself out of that pop-eyed trance and come across with two or three. For instance, can't you remember the last time she had a birthday? What sort of weather was it? That might ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... of hot whisky, and felt better for it. With the second he became more communicative. He asked himself why, after all, he should not hang on to the clue he had obtained from Polly, and why Greenacre should not be ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... well," said Algar, gnawing his lip, "to shelter thyself on the spindle side, but we Saxons of pure descent think little of your kings of the North, pirates and idolaters, and eaters of horseflesh; but enjoy what thou hast, and let Algar have his clue." ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Francis I., writes the historian, "cousant, filant, lisant, ces trois fatales Parques ont tissu les maux de l'Europe" (sewing, spinning, reading, these three fatal Parcae were the misfortune of Europe), and the student of French history will follow the career of all three with interest after the clue here given them. Margaret, bitter, vindictive, and designing, seems to have had one poetic thread in her life only, namely, her passion for her husband, whose beauty lives ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... perfectly impossible day—I spent all the morning before I returned to Versailles in writing to Maurice, telling him he must find out all about Miss Sharp—Alathea—I felt if I told him her Christian name it would be a clue—and yet even to assist in that, which was, at the moment, my heart's desire, I could not overcome my personal dislike to pronounce it to Maurice!—it seemed as something sacred to me alone—which ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... would have to be some very penetrating and sincere novelist, like George Meredith, or Mr. H. G. Wells, whose "Ann Veronica" I have just been reading with delight. I would trust the fine poets and novelists because they follow the fairy clue given them in Comic Cuts. But suppose the Professor appears, and suppose he says (as he almost certainly will), "A mother-in-law is merely a fellow-citizen. Considerations of sex should not interfere with comradeship. Regard for age should not influence the intellect. A mother-in-law is ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... observations, to deduce the strength, bearing, and condition of the enemy in general, to divine the probable connection of his operations, and hence to determine the most important points and directions in which to follow up any available clue. ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... worthies having been carried on in the Indian dialect, was of course wholly unintelligible to Mrs. Younker and her husband, who were standing near; and trying in vain, for some time, to gain a clue to the discussion, the good lady at last gave evidence, that if her body and limbs were weary, her tongue was not; and that with all the warnings she had received, her old habits of volubility had not as yet been entirely superseded by ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... over Max's words, and tried to piece the fragments of our conversation with recollections of my talks with Gladys. I recalled much that had passed. I endeavoured to find the clue to her downcast, troubled looks, her quenched and listless manner. I felt dimly that some strange misunderstanding wrapped these two in a close fog. What had brought about this chill, murky atmosphere, in which they ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... desert his men, and fly to the East Indies, or stay behind in Newfoundland. The King was supposed to have, with his wonted and infallible sagacity, made the discovery of Ralegh's knavery long since. That royal hypothesis of stark imposture, and no enthusiasm, was the clue which the Lords Commissioners, with Bacon at their head, had obsequiously borrowed to hale Ralegh to the scaffold. It was the strange sophism out of which Bacon again was set to compose a sedative ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... order of existence, and that it is occasionally able to communicate, or somehow, perhaps unconsciously, transmit to the fragment in the body something of the information accessible to it. This guess, if permissible, would contain a clue to a possible explanation of clairvoyance. We should then be like icebergs floating in an ocean, with only a fraction exposed to sun and air and observation: the rest—by far the greater bulk—submerged and occasionally in ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... expressed so much regret in the above letter, had reference to a letter supposed to have been written by her friend Charlotte to Baltimore, about her clothing. It had been intercepted, and in this way, a clue was obtained by one of the owners as to how they escaped, who aided them, etc. On the strength of the information thus obtained, a well-known colored man, named Adams, was straightway arrested and put in prison at the instance of one of the owners, and also a suit was at the same time ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... confidence.' Her voice was playful for a moment. 'I have been trying to find someone—you know who I mean—who mysteriously disappeared. That interests you, I see. It's very difficult; such people don't let themselves be dropped upon by chance a second time. But, do you know, I have something very like a clue, at last. ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... horrible mixup!" cried Joe, who felt that he was being enmeshed in a net of circumstantial evidence which he might find it impossible to break. "Let me read the story first from end to end. Then, perhaps, I'll find some clue that ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... Robert and I have both of us been ungrateful enough to forget—we have turned our brains over and over and can't find the name anyhow—and who, indeed, deserves to be remembered, who writes some fresh and charmingly simple idyllic poems, one called, I think, 'Primel et Nola.' By that clue you may hunt him out perhaps in the 'Revue des Deux Mondes.' There's no strong imagination, understand—nothing of that sort! but you have a sweet, fresh, cool sylvan feeling with him, rare among Frenchmen of his class. Edgar Quinet has ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... economic obstacles and international laws, one is struck less by the unparalleled magnitude of the enterprise than by the blindness and sluggishness of its destined victims. And it is largely in these and kindred negative qualities that we have to seek for the clue to the astonishing sequence of successes scored by our enemies in their military and naval, as well as their politico-economic, campaigns. Moreover, these same defects, deep-rooted and widespread among the allied peoples, ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... brightened. Elsie had the happy temperament which is charmed with every little bit of novelty that it can find. She loved, as she had often said, to investigate things, and always caught eagerly at the slightest clue which might lead to a delightful ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... big man at police headquarters had really caused the proper thing to be done. Detectives came to Mrs. Haze's house and searched the absent man's possessions, but found no clue; and most of the newspapers had a short paragraph to the effect that Murray Davenport, "a song-writer," was missing from his lodging-house. Larcher hoped that this, if it came to Davenport's eye, though it might annoy him, would certainly bring word from him. But the man remained as ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... from his friend's discourses. How much Nietzsche owed to Wagner may perhaps never be definitely known; to those who are sufficiently interested to undertake the investigation of this matter, we would recommend Hans Belart's book, Nietzsche's Ethik; in it references will be found which give some clue as to the probable sources from which the necessary information may be derived. In any case, however, the reciprocal effects of their conversations will never be exactly known; and although it would be ridiculous ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... some clue to the law underlying these current maxims, we may see shadowed forth in many of them, the importance of economizing the reader's or hearer's attention, To so present ideas that they may be apprehended with the least possible mental effort, is the desideratum ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... to spend more time in disentangling, or rather in showing up the knots in, the ravelled skeins of our neighbours. Much more to the purpose is it to ask if we possess any clue of our own which may guide us among these entanglements. And by way of a beginning, let us ask ourselves—What is education? Above all things, what is our ideal of a thoroughly liberal education?—of that education which, if we could begin life again, we would ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... confronted with the question: "Did she expect to find a clue to the identity of the person who had stolen her scenario before she left the Red Mill?" she could have made no confident answer. She did not know what she would find when she sat down at Mr. Hammond's desk for the purpose of looking over ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... (Aside) What does he mean? What does he mean? Give us a kind of clue! What does he mean? What does he mean? What ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... he replied eagerly. "It is not your fault. I believe you did hand me a thread of a clue that might—under more fortunate circumstances—have led to ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... ever saw the lights. But the lights never seemed to want to run the course. The wives of some of the watchers claimed to have seen them from their homes in the city. This later proved to be a clue. ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... plans at his house, he would have found it difficult to suspect him. But Jake was right on one point; Kenwardine might play for high stakes, but gambling was not his main occupation. He had some more important business. The theft of the plans, however, offered no clue to this. Kenwardine was an adventurer and might have thought he could sell the drawings, but since he had left England shortly afterwards, it was evident that he was not a regular foreign spy. It was some relief to think so, and although there was a mystery ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... Stuart walked alone along the Embankment. The full facts contained in the report from Paris the Commissioner had not divulged, but Stuart concluded that this sudden activity was directly due, not to the death of M. Max, but to the fact that he (Max) had left behind him some more or less tangible clue. Stuart fully recognized that the Commissioner had accorded him an opportunity to establish his reputation—or ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... the light swallow with her airy brood Skims the green meadow, and the dimpled flood; 475 Loud shrieks the lone thrush from his leafless thorn, Th' alarmed beetle sounds his bugle horn; Each pendant spider winds with fingers fine His ravel'd clue, and climbs along the line; Gay Gnomes in glittering circles stand aloof 480 Beneath a spreading mushroom's fretted roof; Swift bees returning seek their waxen cells, And Sylphs cling quivering in the lily's bells. Through ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... is, that each elementary sound that enters into the composition of words is represented in our language by so many different combinations of letters, in different cases, that the child has very little clue from the sound of a syllable to guide him in the spelling of it. We ourselves, from long habit, have become so accustomed to what we call the right spelling—which, of course, means nothing more than the customary one—that we ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... carried to her home on the Seed ranch, delirious, all but raving, and Vanamee, with knife and revolver ready, ranged the country-side like a wolf. He was not alone. The whole county rose, raging, horror-struck. Posse after posse was formed, sent out, and returned, without so much as a clue. Upon no one could even the shadow of suspicion be thrown. The Other had withdrawn into an impenetrable mystery. There he remained. He never was found; he never was so much as heard of. A legend arose about ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... to make a number of little ornaments with her name inscribed on them, which she meant to hang round the necks of the chief men of the tribe, so that should any of them ever chance to meet with the fur-traders, these ornaments might form a clue to her ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... in Chicago this night, but how and where? A gale is rising. The wife is terrified with waiting and with love. If she had some little clue of his route homeward. She is a woman, and does not know how to proceed. ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... progress in all things; a fact which we know only after we get hold of the clue. And so, when Mrs. Mary Blyth appeared as Mrs. Mary Dodds, in room of the domesticated Jenny, it was in perfect accordance with the law of cause and effect. No doubt they did their best to be happy, as all ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... thankful, she was certainly as resigned as anybody could have been. Angelina had already been taken into grace again, at the charitable suggestion of the priest. Every one was puzzling who the thief could be (it happened to be Mr. Richards); the police had not discovered the faintest clue. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
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