"Puzzle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... led on through these relics of battle until even they were lost altogether; and it came out into a region where it was really a puzzle to say what was trench and what was not. Around one stretched a desert of shell craters—hole bordering upon hole so that there was no space at all between them. Each hole was circular like the ring of earth at the mouth of an ants' nest several thousand times magnified, and ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... and went out and home to his rooms—there to spend most of the ensuing evening in trying to puzzle out the various mysteries of the day. He got no more light on them then, and he was still exercising his brains on them when he went to the inquest next morning—to find the Coroner's court packed to the doors with an assemblage of townsfolk just as curious as he was. ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... He has shown the new guest to his room. He will join us directly. He explains that sending in his card "Baron Booteljak" is "his fun." "Such an amusing chap," says Milburd; "he has cards of all sorts of names, printed to leave on his friends, and puzzle 'em. He tells me that he's brought down a box of practical jokes with him, all labelled, numbered, ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... seemed to consider it necessary to warn me that the skipper is a somewhat peculiar man. Naturally, after such a warning, I have been keeping my eyes and ears open, and I confess that I find the man something of a puzzle. Carter quite led me to anticipate the possibility that Williams might order us down the side into our boats again, instead of which, so far as words, and even deeds, are concerned, I have not the least fault to find. But all the time that he was saying kind things to me this ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... merchant there. They won't suspect the boy. They won't bother to follow him, probably. Tell Stendhal to send Out a galliot to take Argyle off the schooner while at sea. The galliot can land Argyle somewhere on the coast. That would puzzle them rarely. She can then ply to England, or elsewhere, so that her men won't have a chance of talking. As for the schooner, she can proceed north to anchor at the Texel till further orders. At ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... bass clarinet (8 ft. tone) contrasted with the moderate length of the instrument—whose bore measures only some 42 to 43 inches from mouthpiece to bell, whereas that of the bassoon, an instrument of the same pitch, is twice that length—is a puzzle to many. An explanation of the fact is to be found in the peculiar acoustic properties of the cylindrical tube played by means of a reed mouthpiece characterizing the clarinet family, which acts as a closed ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... as the handiest place, before a week was over. They are wonderfully improved already, my wife especially being abundantly provided with her favourite east wind. Your godson is growing a very sturdy fellow, and I begin to puzzle my head with thinking what he is and what he ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... Dick said, as he and Surajah reloaded the empty guns. "Those loopholes will puzzle them, and I don't think they will care to come on again, for ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... tumble-down than all. It was the Dean's poor mother. She stood beside a tub in which she had been washing clothes, and she held a scrap of paper in both her hands, which, bony and hard with work, work, work, and scrub, scrub, scrub, were trembling violently, while she tried to puzzle out the contents of the Dean's letter (for this it was), that she held up before a face the deep wrinkles on which told of many sorrows and much suffering. The letter had arrived only a few minutes before we did, and she had only just made out that it was from the Dean, and we ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... they'd ha' done the right thing by you if they could, isn't there Them as was at the making on us, and knows better and has a better will? And that's all as ever I can be sure on, and everything else is a big puzzle to me when I think on it. For there was the fever come and took off them as were full-growed, and left the helpless children; and there's the breaking o' limbs; and them as 'ud do right and be sober have to suffer by them as are contrairy—eh, there's trouble ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... Preacher, is likewise a literary puzzle which for centuries has baffled the efforts of commentators and aroused the misgivings of theologians. Regarded by many as a vade mecum of materialists, by some as an eloquent sermon on the fear of God, and by others as a summary of sceptical philosophy, ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... the florid and graceful fancy of the Renaissance. The ruins of the amphitheatre are insignificant compared to those at Nimes and Arles, and there is no beautiful example of Roman art like the Maison Carree at Nimes; but there is an exceedingly curious monument of antiquity, which was long a puzzle to archaeologists, but which is now generally believed to be the cella of a Gallo-Roman temple dedicated to the city's tutelary divinities. It is called the Tour de Vesone, and, indeed, it was supposed for centuries to have been originally ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... the deception carried on before the higher tribunals? This would puzzle the most ingenious rascality to guess. But Botwinko was a genius in his way: he actually brought before that court, as well as before the highest criminal tribunal, another young woman; who represented herself to be the girl in question, and confessed her supposed guilt with all the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... police were coming out, walking toward him. He smiled. He had said everything he intended to say. It was a good little paradox he had coined. They would puzzle over it, ...
— The Skull • Philip K. Dick
... mournful puzzle of life demanding to be born and, once born, demanding to be fruitful ... to multiply and to live as long as possible—to do all that on a very small planet that would ...
— 2 B R 0 2 B • Kurt Vonnegut
... became more difficult. And so she never wrote and was very unhappy. And Latimer was very unhappy. But he had his work, and Helen had none, and for her life became a game of putting little things together, like a picture puzzle, an hour here and an hour there, to make up each day. ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... inexplicable puzzle! A faint radiance of hope, however, began to overspread a landscape only a few minutes before darkened by total eclipse; but construct what theory I might, all were inconsistent with many well-established and awful incongruities, and their ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... "to recover its breath," as the negroes said. In the horse-box we got along together for the most part very comfortably, accommodating ourselves to the situation. Such a picnic as we had then made it less of a puzzle to the common understanding how certain creatures are able to do with a tight-fitting shell for their house and home. If Major Girouard, R.E., had not left the direction of the Soudan military railways—which under the Sirdar he built—to join the Board of the Egyptian ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... all his apparent certainty about the guilt of the negro Perry, sensed vaguely the possibility, the hint, that this crime was even worse than it appeared to be. But he would not admit it. He preferred to keep before his mind the easier answer to the puzzle. ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... much as to say, "I am very glad, master, I have brought you something you like." The puzzle was now how to cook the bird. At first he thought of putting it in a clam shell to bake. He had actually placed it on the fire, feathers and all, when he remembered that it must be plucked. This he did in a somewhat awkward fashion. ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... pronounced like a native, and knew what was idiomatic, Sarah, with her clumsy pronunciation, had further insight into grammar, and asked perplexing questions; if she played admirably and with facility, Sarah could puzzle her with the science of music; if her drawing were ever so effective and graceful, Sarah's less sightly productions had correct details that put hers to shame, and, for mere honesty's sake, and to keep up her dignity, she was obliged ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... puzzle for me," he answered. "Five minutes ago I would have said three hundred at the utmost, ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... the little girls as she handed the letter to her brother, and he put on his spectacles and opened it. Susan watched him. It was a thin foreign envelope, and the letter inside it was short, but it seemed to puzzle him a great deal. He held it out at arm's length, frowned at it, and gave it an impatient tap with one finger. Then he took off his glasses, rubbed them, put them on, and read it again, after which he rose suddenly, and leaning across the table, stretched ...
— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton
... drinking-horn was empty and the sword gone, while the princess reported that half of her handkerchief and one of her slippers had been taken away. How the giants had been killed seemed a little clearer now, but who had done it was as great a puzzle as before. The old knight who had charge of the castle said that in his opinion it must have been some young knight, who had immediately set off to the king to claim the hand of the princess. This sounded likely, but the messenger who was sent to the Court returned with the news that ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... repairing of the house, which Amos Opie himself is to superintend. I wish I could fathom the ins and outs of the matter, which are not at present clear, but probably I shall know in time. Meanwhile, I have Maria for a winter companion, and a mystery to solve and puzzle about; is not ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... forward abruptly. "I don't know, Miss Rexford, what right I have to think you will take any interest in what interests me, but, after what happened last night, I can't help telling you that I've got to the bottom of that puzzle, and I'm afraid it will prove a very serious matter for my poor ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... brother," said Madame Tiphaine, "one might put up with him; he is not so aggressive. Give him a Chinese puzzle and he will stay in a corner quietly enough; it would take him a whole winter to find it out. But Mademoiselle Sylvie, with that voice like a hoarse hyena and those lobster-claws of hands! Don't repeat ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... because then there would be fewer thieves, successful thieving being the result of mental training. It is not necessary to follow him to his most famous doctrine, namely, that of doing nothing, by which means, he declared, everything could be done, the solution of which puzzle of left everybody to find out for himself. Among his quaint sayings will be found several maxims of a very different class, as witness his injunction, "Requite evil with kindness," and "Mighty is he who conquers himself." Of the latter, the following illustration is given by a commentator. ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... doubt and error in this subject appears to me to have been the intimate connexion between the heart and the lungs. When men saw both the pulmonary artery and the pulmonary veins losing themselves in the lungs, of course it became a puzzle to them to know how or by what means the right ventricle should distribute the blood to the body, or the left draw it from the venae cavae. This fact is borne witness to by Galen, whose words, when writing against Erasistratus in regard to ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... a scholastic doctor of the 14th century, born in Artois, and famous as the reputed author, though there is no evidence of it in his works, of the puzzle of the hungry and thirsty ass, called after him Buridan's Ass, between a bottle of hay and a pail of water, a favourite illustration of his in discussing ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... man ... before you married that bounder, Dene." Brett spoke very quietly, like a man communing with himself, fitting together the pieces of a puzzle. ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... of my plan. On Monday, the day on which the examination subjects are given out, I shall begin. My first performance will be my verses and my declamation. I shall then translate the Greek and Latin. The first time of going over I shall mark the passages which puzzle me, and then return to them again. But I shall have also to rub up my Mathematics, (by the bye, I begin the second book of Euclid to-day,) and to study whatever History may be appointed for the examination. I shall not be able to avoid trembling, whether I know my subjects or not. ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... so hidden. The large, strong, rather square jaw and chin, and smooth placid cheeks were strongly expressive of quiet decision and dignified force of will. The mouth, almost always the tell-tale feature of the face, seemed in his case rather calculated to puzzle any one who would have speculated on the meanings shadowed forth by the lines of it. It was certainly, with its large rows of unexceptionably brilliant teeth, a very handsome mouth. And it was often not devoid of much sweetness. ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... with me. I don't mean in literature, for that is nothing; and—it may seem odd enough to say—I do not think it was my vocation. But you will see that I shall do something,—the times and Fortune permitting,—that 'like the cosmogony of the world will puzzle the philosophers of all ages.'" He then adds this but too true and sad prognostic:—"But I doubt whether my constitution will ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... James Dutton wanted to go to the war was a puzzle to the few townsfolk who had any intimate acquaintance with the young man. Intimate acquaintance is perhaps too strong a term; for though Button was born in the town and had always lived there, he was more or less a stranger to those who knew him best. Comrades he had, ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... was a very pleasant-looking man, also one who took a pleasant view of other men and things; but he could not help pulling a long and sad face as he thought of the puzzle before him. Duncan Yordas had not been heard of among his own hills and valleys since 1778, when he embarked for India. None of the family ever had cared to write or read long letters, their correspondence (if any) ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... earth as resting upon the shoulders of Atlas, and Atlas as standing upon a turtle; but what the turtle stood upon was a puzzle. An acute person says that science has but changed the terms of the equation, but that the unknown quantity is the same as ever. The earth now rests upon the sun,—in his outstretched palm; the sun rests upon some other sun, and that upon some other; but what they all finally ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... seated in my lap, listened, with eyes fixed on the preacher, to every word that was said. At last one or two accounts were given which seemed to puzzle him greatly, and, casting an inquiring glance into my face, he whispered,—"Papa, papa! ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... little coz, and they wouldn't be flattered by our comparison. They are yelling what, in United States, would be 'extra!' I'll get a paper and see if I can puzzle out some of the French," and he strolled down to intercept one ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... see him in a worse fix if you live long enough," returned the leader. "Haul now on this knot. It'll puzzle him to undo that. ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... art of the ugly. His countenances are so repulsive that they attract. The psychology of the looks, and leers, and grins, and hot, hectic desires on the faces of his women is a puzzle that we can not lay aside—we want to solve the riddle of this paradox of existence—the woman whose soul is mire and whose heart is hell. Many men have tried to fathom it at close range, but we devise a safer plan and follow the trail in books, art and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... men who step back into places kept for them, the whole working population will have to be refitted with jobs. The question of women's labour will not be grave at first because there will be work for all and more than all, but the jigsaw puzzle which industry will have to put together will try the nerves and temper of the whole community. In the French army the peasant soldier is jealous and sore because he has had to bear the chief burden of the fighting, ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... Paris it is very difficult to meet with a young, beautiful, and wealthy woman of fashion who would be willing to teach me, what you women can explain so well—life. I shall find a M. de Trailles everywhere. So I have come to you to ask you to give me a key to a puzzle, to entreat you to tell me what sort of blunder I made this morning. I ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... him who has the gift, it is often a great puzzle to find out whether a man is really a friend or not. The following is recommended as a test in the case of any man about whom you are not quite sure; especially if he should happen to have more of this world's goods, either in the shape of talents, rank or ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... puzzle from all angles. He might have stayed and had his curiosity satisfied, but it was second nature with Starr to hide any curiosity he might feel; his riding matter-of-factly away, as though the girl were a logical part of the place, ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... little ones come before you and apply for church membership, do not puzzle them with big words, and expect large "experiences." It is now in the church as when the disciples of old told the mothers not to bother Christ with their babes. As in some households the grown people ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... house, I found an excited little crowd in the back garden. They were digging out an enormous shell which had plumped into the grass, taking off the Scot's hat and knocking him down with the shock as it fell. The thing had burst in the ground, and it was as good as a Chinese puzzle to fit the great chunks of iron together. At first we could not find the solid base, but we dug it out with a pick from the stiff, black clay. It had sunk 3 ft. 8 in. down from the surface, and had run 7 ft. 6 in. from the ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... her. This is the plot, but it is very little guide to the contents of the play, which is crowded with characters. There are, in addition to the three leading persons, four Warriors to discuss the condition of the army, seven Philosophers to puzzle each other with disputation and metaphysical conundrums, three Servants to deride their masters behind their backs, a General to act as Alexander's confidant and counsellor, beside some nine others and a company ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... be manifest even to the foreign offices most concerned. They must see already ahead of them a terrible puzzle of arrangement, a puzzle their own bad traditions will certainly never permit them to solve. "God save us," they may very well pray, "from our own cleverness and sharp dealing," and they may even welcome the promise ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... to the court measures appears to have been uncommonly spirited during the course of this session. The minister's motions were attacked with all the artillery of elocution. His principal emissaries were obliged to task their faculties to their full exertion, to puzzle and perplex where they could not demonstrate and convince, to misrepresent what they could not vindicate, and to elude the arguments which they could not refute. In the house of commons, lord Hervey, lately appointed vice-chamberlain of his majesty's household, made a motion for an ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... puzzle—why do the stories of the remotest people so closely resemble each other? Of course, in the immeasurable past, they have been carried about by conquering races, and learned by conquering races from ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... His own references to his own writings are too much saturated with affectation and pose to make it safe to draw any conclusions from them; there is little or no external evidence; and the book itself is rather a puzzle. Taking the Preface to the second edition with a very large allowance of salt—the success of the first before this preface makes double salting advisable—and accommodating it to the actual facts, one finds it hardly necessary to go beyond the ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... to follow me, I rode about a hundred yards or more down the nor'-westerly path. Then I turned sharply along a rather stony ridge of ground, the cart following me all the time, and came back across our own track, my object being of course to puzzle any Kaffirs who might spoor us. Now we were on the edge of the gentle slope that led down to the bush-veld. Over this I rode towards a deserted cattle kraal built of stones, in the rich soil of which grew sundry trees; doubtless one of those which had been abandoned ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... that we fear death so much, but that we miss the dead—and no wonder. Hence these prophets crying Lo here! and Lo there! That they have reassured many I know well, that they have baffled others I know also, for they have baffled me. My puzzle is that, with evidence of authenticity difficult to withstand, the things they can find to report are so trivial. The test of a revelation I take to be exactly the same as the test of a good poem. It doesn't much matter whether the thing revealed ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... your number now," he said. "I could pick you out from amongst a hundred wolves." This was merely a casual assertion, a self-congratulation over having solved the puzzle, and the Coyote Prophet made it without a thought that the day would ever come when he might have opportunity to file it among ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... do," Joan smiled at him; "I think I puzzle you terribly, but some day I am going to explain everything. All my life I have been, as I am now, in a narrow little room—peeping out and never touching others any more than I am touching"—she pointed to the right and left—"my neighbours, here. But we were all listening to much ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... a curious passage in Aubrey in which he says: "The curing of the King's Evil by the touch of the king, does much puzzle our philosophers, for whether our kings were of the house of York or Lancaster, it did the cure for the most part." Sir John Fortescue, in defending the House of Lancaster against the House of York, claimed ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... spectator that he is acting. Complaint, then, against an ironical writer on the score that he puzzles us, is a complaint against irony itself; for a writer is not ironical unless he puzzles. He should not puzzle unless he believes that this is the best manner of making his reader understand him in the end, or without having a bonne bouche for those who will be at the pains to puzzle over him; and he should make it plain that for long parts of his work together he is to be ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... fear of theft. There was a looser feeling regarding debts to traders, which we were told were sometimes ignored, partly, perhaps, owing to the traders' heavy profits, but mainly through failure in the hunt and a lack of means. But theft such as white men practice was a puzzle to these people, amongst whom ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... the evening less agreeable. Henrietta pleased grandmamma by getting her carpet-work out of some puzzle, and by flying across the room to fetch the tea-chest: she delighted grandpapa by her singing, and by finding his spectacles for him; she did quite a praiseworthy piece of her own crochet purse, and laughed a great deal at the battle that was going on between ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fine blazing fire, and plenty of hot tea, toast, and eggs, it was easy to remedy one class of these poor people's wants; but how to rig them out in dry clothes was a puzzle, till the captain bethought him of a resource which answered very well. He sent to several of the officers for their dressing-gowns; and these, together with supplies from his own wardrobe, made capital ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... But the puzzle is, who are the teachers? Not the sophists, a discredited class, nor the statesmen, who cannot teach their sons to follow them. Virtue then, not being teachable, is probably not the result of knowledge, but is imparted to ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... sorts of disguises were permitted, but it is said that two viveurs who came late, disguised in liquor, were denied entrance. The Snow Man found it very hot, and melted. Prizes were to be given away. But there was one prize, an elegant lady, closely masked and hooded, whose identity remained a puzzle to everybody. At last "she gave herself away." The happy recipient congratulated himself on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, February 4, 1893 • Various
... homely and his nod worse. He cannot kiss his hand and cry, madam, nor talk idle enough to bear her company. His smacking of a gentlewoman is somewhat too savoury, and he mistakes her nose for her lips. A very woodcock would puzzle him in carving, and he wants the logick of a capon. He has not the glib faculty of sliding over a tale, but his words come squeamishly out of his mouth, and the laughter commonly before the jest. He names this word college too often, and his discourse beats too much on the university. ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... esteem for him," she went on; "I want him to think well of me. If I am a puzzle to him, do me a little ...
— The Diary of a Man of Fifty • Henry James
... in the last scene—"and my poor fool is hanged"—caused the misapprehension until of late years[G] that Lear's court Fool was hanged—although why Edmund's creatures should have been at the trouble in the stress of their disaster to hang a Fool it would puzzle ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... fascination over Henry was a puzzle to observers. "Madame Anne," wrote a Venetian, "is not one of the handsomest women in the world. She is of middling stature, swarthy complexion, long neck, wide mouth, bosom not much raised, and in fact has nothing but the King's great appetite, and her eyes, which are ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... great cold, we are apt to puzzle ourselves to find out when it began, or how we got it; and when that is accounted for, down we sit contented, and let it have its course; or, if it be very troublesome, take a sweat, or use other means to get rid ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... studies made a little puzzle, Because of filthy loves of gods and goddesses, Who in the earlier ages raised a bustle, But never put on pantaloons or bodices; His reverend tutors had at times a tussle, And for their AEneids, Iliads, and Odysseys, Were forced ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... gone, ve found all the crackers missin' from one side of the room. Of course, ve suspected he done it, but how he done it vas as much a puzzle as the Spinks. ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... perfect puzzle to us by what process the standard of music has become so lowered, as to make what is ordinarily served up under that name be received as the legitimate descendant of harmony. There is but one step from the sublime ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... much stronger. He had color in his cheeks, and his head did not look so large. But he seemed to puzzle over things in it as much as ever, and he was just as ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... puzzle. He was almost deceived by this careless gaiety. Almost—because he did not fail to mark her eyes often fixed on nothing, and the film of light shining from her bedroom window late at night. What was she thinking and brooding over ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... another. Some went on very well, some with heavy travail, and with results that made me grateful for our pictures and furniture. Yet it became fascinating work; it was like piecing out some vast picture-puzzle, one that might be of some use when finished. I improved, too. I was several days finishing the up-stairs, and by the time I got it done I had got back some of the dash I started off with. I could slap on the paste and swing the strip to the wall so handily that ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... proof that fond passion can die, In this prosaic meeting we had! Now, ought we to laugh or to cry— Was it sorrowful, or was it sad? 'Tis a puzzle not worthy our time, So let's give ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... misgivings" of mysticism. It does this, however, without going further and filling the mind with new life. If I bid a man follow my reasoning closely, and then say, "I am the slayer and the slain, I am the doubter and the doubt," I puzzle his mind, and may succeed in reawakening in him the sense he has often had come over him that we are ignorant of our own destinies and cannot grasp the meaning of life. If I do this, nothing can be a more legitimate opening for a poem, ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... dissected a melolontha as exquisitely as Strauss Durckheim himself ever did it? So the Master, recalling these studies of his and certain difficult and disputed points at which he had labored in one of his entomological paroxysms, put a question which there can be little doubt was intended to puzzle the Scarabee, and perhaps,—for the best of us is human (I am beginning to love the old Master, but he has his little weaknesses, thank Heaven, like the rest of us),—I say perhaps, was meant to show that some folks knew as much about some ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Dan showed him tricks with cards—and then explained the mathematics of it, making the most puzzling mysteries seem only unusual applications of very simple principles. Another day, the puzzle-maker told him of curious problems of chance, by dice, by lotteries, and so forth, and almost before Eric realized what the old man was driving at, the essential ideas of insurance and actuary work were ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... or dramatic entertainments, pageants and tableaus, of varying degrees of grossness, similar to the more elaborate and polished products of the early Javanese and Peruvian drama ... one cannot help fancying must be all pieces out of the same puzzle ... I have with some pains discovered the origin of the name "Arioi." It throws a lurid light on the character of some of the Asiatic explorers who must have visited this part of the Eastern Pacific prior to the Europeans. In Maori the word Karioi means debauched, profligate, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... patents". In other words, an invention embodying some comparatively trivial, but yet really serviceable, improvement on a very widely used type of machine; or a little bit of apparatus which in some small degree facilitates some well known process; or a fashionable toy or puzzle likely to have a good run for a season or two, and then a moderate sale for a few years longer; these are the things to be recommended to an inventor whose main object is to make money. Thus the most qualified ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... is found - And the faulty scent is picked out by the hound - And the fact turns up like a worm from the ground - And the matter gets wind to waft it about; And a hint goes abroad, and the murder is out - And a riddle is guessed—and the puzzle is known - So the Truth was sniffed, and the ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... puzzle over this idiosyncrasy of her father. She retained vague memories of her early childhood, when he had surely been utterly different and would come into the nursery to romp with her. It had not been altogether ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... unprepared and desired delay. His anxiety about my servant; his evident displeasure and impatience; his sending for me at all when he must have known over and over again that I was not of his party—each detail fitted in like a puzzle. And yet I must not shew ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... sufficiently ingenious thing for all that, in proof of which we have the fact that it has completely puzzled us all for months; and I really believe, Saint Leger, that, but for your wonderful dream, it would have continued to puzzle you to the end of time. I congratulate you heartily upon ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... matches side by side on the shove-ha'penny board. The problem was to take none away and yet leave only nine. Nearly all the men in the bar were crowding round the shove-ha'penny board, some with knitted brows and drunken gravity trying to solve the puzzle and others waiting curiously for the result. Easton crossed over to see how it was done, and as none of the crowd were able to do the trick, Crass showed that it could be accomplished by simply arranging the eleven matches so as to form the word NINE. Everybody said it was very good indeed, very ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... not noble!" cried Margaret, gazing in bewilderment from Belasez to Doucebelle, as if she expected one of them to help her out of the puzzle. ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... upon the most liberal principle of franchise. "The question of female suffrage," said he, "had not then been much agitated, and I knew the community had not thought sufficiently upon it to be ready to introduce it as an element in our political system. While I am aware of that fact, I think it will puzzle any gentleman to draw a line of demarcation between the right of the male and the female on this subject. Both are liable to all the laws you pass; their property, their persons, and their lives are affected by the laws. Why, then, should ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... application in case of all the materials, the choice would present much less difficulty. Notwithstanding this, most land now has a lime requirement, or will have one as leaching, crop removal and chemical change within the soil continue, and the puzzle is no worse than a score of others that present themselves continuously ...
— Right Use of Lime in Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... likely puzzle you more than anything else to find the knock. So remember this. The wheel may apparently be tight, but should the key be the least bit narrow for the groove in shaft, it will make your engine bump very similar to that caused by too much or too ...
— Rough and Tumble Engineering • James H. Maggard
... homogeneousness of the people, complete and thorough as it was, was not marked by any monotony. On the contrary, character and individuality ran riot, appearing in such strange and attractive shapes as to puzzle and bewilder even those who were familiar with the queer manifestations. Every settlement had its peculiarities, and every neighborhood boasted of its humorist,—its clown, whose pranks and jests were limited by no license. Out of this has grown a literature which, in some of its characteristics, ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... every art and every science; hence the honour paid to their cultivators by subtle and thoughtful statesmen, who, perhaps, for themselves, see nothing in a picture but coloured canvas,—nothing in a problem but an ingenious puzzle. No state is ever more in danger than when the talent that should be consecrated to peace has no occupation but political intrigue or personal advancement. Talent unhonoured is talent at war with men. And here it is noticeable, that the class ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... and amber. All these investigations were necessary for the scheme he had in view, so he became for some time quite a familiar figure in the dusty deserted streets and in the meadows by the river. His continual visits to Caermaen were a tortuous puzzle to the inhabitants, who flew to their windows at the sound of a step on the uneven pavements. They were at a loss in their conjectures; his motive for coming down three times a week must of course be bad, but ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... future may discover the causes of this difference. I believe, however, that it does not depend upon the fact of one man having a few ounces more of blood in his veins than another. The fact lies deeper hidden than that, and may puzzle the psychologist as well as the professor of anthropology. For us it exists, and we cannot explain it, but must content ourselves with comparing the phenomena which proceed from these differences of organisation. At the present day the society ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... he, "you must alter the colour of your hair, then you must have a false nose, and put a spot on some part of your face, or a wart, or a few hairs." I laughed, and said, "Help me to contrive this for the next ball; I have not been to one for twenty years; but I am dying to puzzle somebody, and to tell him things which no one but I can tell him. I shall come home, and go to bed, in a quarter of an hour."—"I must take the measure of your nose," said he; "or do you take it with wax, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 2 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... was an enigma; but half the puzzle was already solved because there was no suggestion of weakness there. It was the best piece of sheer bluffing on a weak hand that I had ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... such admirable Cures perform'd by these Savages, which would puzzle a great many graduate Practitioners to trace their Steps in Healing, with the same Expedition, Ease, and Success; using no racking Instruments in their Chirurgery, nor nice Rules of Diet and Physick, to verify the Saying, 'qui Medice vivit, ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... straight line of backs in his front. "They'll scrap the better for being a bit hungry,—it makes them savage. Beats all, Captain, what foolish notions some of those people on the other side have of us Southerners. They seem to think we are entirely different from themselves; yet I reckon it would puzzle any recruiting officer up yonder to show a finer lot of fighting men than those fellows ahead there. 'Food for powder?' Why, there isn't a lad ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... on the good man's face remained a puzzle to me until some of the congregation asked me on the train in the morning, in a confidential kind of way, where the game was, and how high was the ante. The explanation that ensued was not a success. I think that it shook the ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... at poor Mr. Taylor as he went by. Mr. Taylor shrank from meeting his eye, and hurried along till he reached the Serpentine, where he stood still for a few minutes, drinking in the fresh breeze. But the breeze could not blow his puzzle out of his brain. Was it a crime, or merely an escapade? What had she said to the young man? What had her feelings been or become towards the young man? Moreover, what had she caused the young man's feelings to be for her? When he came to think it over, Mr. ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... left him, and he lay thinking, and gradually finding in the mist the pieces of the puzzle of his past adventure, till he seemed to ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... upon so easily. The ensuing week the brother came, and he proved to be the very pawnbroker to whom Manon formerly offered the stolen box: he knew her immediately; it was in vain that she attempted to puzzle him, and to persuade him that she was not the same person. The man was clear and firm. Sister Frances could scarcely believe what she heard. Struck with horror, the children shrunk back from Manon, and stood in silence. Mad. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... Berthelot, Berzelius, Cloez, Wohler and others these masses are not merely coated with carbonaceous matter, but are carbonaceous throughout, or are permeated throughout. How anyone could so resolutely and dogmatically and beautifully and blindly hold out would puzzle us were it not for our acceptance that only to think is to exclude and include; and to exclude some things that have as much right to come in as have the included—that to have an opinion upon ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... go armed? Where were we going, and what were we to do? I had the hint from Holmes that this smooth-faced pawnbroker's assistant was a formidable man—a man who might play a deep game. I tried to puzzle it out, but gave it up in despair, and set the matter aside until night should bring ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... I'll tell you just what he did and you'll see how it solved the puzzle. And, believe me, you'll have to admit that Westy's a pretty smart fellow. If you have an old book you don't care anything about, you can even try it and you don't even need an oar-lock. Westy turned to a new place in the book and then ...
— Roy Blakeley • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... wake you. But don't worry, or frighten yourself. Of course no one is to blame if it is a case of sleep-walking,—only it will be a great anxiety for the future. You had better get up now and dress. I will take these things down; they may help to explain what is such a puzzle to us all, ...
— Paul the Courageous • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... consisted of houses of extreme antiquity, crowded together in narrow alleys in the neighbourhood of the river. These alleys, I may note in passing, were known as "chares"—a designation which used habitually to puzzle the Judges of Assize when they had to inquire into the circumstances of one of the not infrequent riots which in those days chequered the harmony of life on the banks of the Tyne. It was towards the end of July, 1853, that the rumour ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... district, among them the Flaggs, but was a fairly representative mixture of all grades of society, including the poorest. These last were specimens under spiritual duress rather than free worshippers, and it was a constant puzzle to the reverend gentleman why, in the matter of attendance, they, metaphorically speaking, sickened and died. It had never been so in England. "Bonnets!" responded one day Mrs. Hallett Taylor, who had ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... a little like an American female of what they call good standing. A beautiful girl of seventeen entered soon after, and called her "Ma," and both mother and daughter chattered away, about themselves and their concerns, in a manner that greatly increased my puzzle. ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... paid for, and so should the corn; for the proprietor had no right to kill the beast, and it had no right to damage the field. The glorious uncertainty was therefore displayed in ascertaining the relative value of each; and the learned gentlemen managed so to puzzle the cause, that after a hearing of three days the court broke up without coming to any decision, and the cause was adjourned ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... know of. Come, Chief Inspector, this finessing with me is highly improper on your part—highly improper. And it's also unfair, you know. You shouldn't leave me to puzzle things out for myself like this. ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... upset her by an intense eagerness, a determination not to lose a syllable. Captain Filbert insisted upon hearing all before she would acknowledge anything; she hung upon the sentences Mrs. Sand repeated, and joined them together as if they were parts of a puzzle; she finally had possession of the conversation much as I have already written it down. As Mrs. Sand afterward told her husband, Miss Filbert sat there growing whiter and whiter, more and more worked ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... yesterday at church!—she must see some beauty in life, or she could not play the piano as she did. He had a theory that musicians are incredibly complex, and know far less than other artists what they want and what they are; that they puzzle themselves as well as their friends; that their psychology is a modern development, and has not yet been understood. This theory, had he known it, had possibly just been illustrated by facts. Ignorant of the ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... of Worcestershire, who made a version of Wace's Brut, in the beginning of the thirteenth century, so peculiar, however, in its language, as to puzzle the philologist to fix its exact date with even tolerable accuracy. But, notwithstanding the resemblance, according to Mr. Ellis, to the "simple and unmixed, though very barbarous Saxon," the character of the alphabet and the nature of the rhythm place it ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... and does credit to American literature. It is clear that the task of its preparation was immense, and more time must have been spent in merely collecting authorities than has been bestowed altogether on more pretentious histories. Where Mr. MacMaster found all these authorities is a puzzle, for even such libraries as those in Boston and Cambridge have not all the materials for such an undertaking. Yet even he leaves many points untouched, or cursorily disposed of. Among the subjects referred to, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... interpret each other. Yet, after giving due weight to such answers, Perugino, being what he was, living at the time he did, not as a recluse, but as a prosperous impresario of painting, and systematically devoting his powers to pietistic art, must be for us a puzzle. That the quietism of his highly artificial style should have been fashionable in Perugia, while the Baglioni were tearing each other to pieces, and the troops of the Vitelli and the Borgia were trampling upon Umbria, is one of the most striking paradoxes ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... friend of Leyden!" he soliloquized, restraining his impulse while he puzzled the problem out. "That's no mystery; suspense knocked him out when I got here first. That's no puzzle either. But how in thunder did Leyden get so solid with the ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... got her, Jack—remember that; won't you? If I hadn't I'd been burning the midnight oil yet, I reckon. 'Taint safe to make me a present of a puzzle, because I'm just dead sure to nearly split my poor weak brain trying to figger it out. And Jack, I'll never be happy till I know what was in those boxes; and why did that sly little professor believe someone wanted to steal his thunder ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... this truth just under your nose; and Andrew Undershaft's views will not perplex you in the least. Unless indeed his constant sense that he is only the instrument of a Will or Life Force which uses him for purposes wider than his own, may puzzle you. If so, that is because you are walking either in artificial Darwinian darkness, or to mere stupidity. All genuinely religious people have that consciousness. To them Undershaft the Mystic will be quite intelligible, and his perfect comprehension of his daughter the Salvationist ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... in trying," said Joe, "though compared to this a Chinese puzzle is as simple as A B C. Let's take a hack at it, anyhow. We'll each take a separate sheet of paper and try to get something out of it ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... reappearance, was apparently its praiseworthy and sober subject. The titles of the interludes of Ursus were sometimes Latin, as we have seen, and the poetry frequently Spanish. The Spanish verses written by Ursus were rhymed, as was nearly all the Castilian poetry of that period. This did not puzzle the people. Spanish was then a familiar language; and the English sailors spoke Castilian even as the Roman sailors spoke Carthaginian (see Plautus). Moreover, at a theatrical representation, as at mass, Latin, or ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... heights where special kinds die out, by those that prosper at shallower depths; otherwise it would be impossible to understand how this variety of building material, as it were, is introduced wherever it is needed. This point, formerly a puzzle to naturalists, has become quite clear since it has been found that myriads of these little germs are poured into the water surrounding a reef. There they swim about till they find a genial spot on which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... played by Ludolf, an Eskimo, well and devotionally, and the singing is further accompanied by other musicians with one clarionet, five violins, and a violoncello. The choice of tunes is such as would puzzle most congregations in England. The people are very devout in their demeanour and sing well. Their faces are mostly brown, with high cheek bones, but on the whole they are much lighter in complexion than photographs had led me ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe
... to him and, even as had Porter in the days when the sign was bright, did everything. It was a distinct relief to puzzle over a sewing machine after labouring with too easily diagnosed motor troubles, or to restore a bit of marquetry in a table, or play at a feat of locksmithing. The First-Class Garage urged him to quit fiddling round and become its foreman, but this ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... board 2 inches broad and 3 inches long has holes bored into it in the design herewith illustrated. Nails are stuck loosely in all of these holes, excepting the centre one. The puzzle is to jump all of the nails off the board so that only one nail is left, and that in the centre-hole on the board. The nails are jumped off in the same manner that men are jumped in the game of checkers. Jumping is allowed either forward, backward, ...
— School, Church, and Home Games • George O. Draper
... texts which is apt to puzzle people who do not read their Bibles carefully enough. They cannot see what the latter part of it has to ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley |
