"Cipher" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unknown to us, and then become the seat of wild chiefs of whom we know nothing, until with their axes they cut their Runic signs into a few of these stones, which then came into the calendar of time. But as for me, I had gone quite beyond all lapse of time, and had become a cipher and a nothing. Then three or four beautiful falling stars came down, which cleared the air, and gave my thoughts another direction. You know what a falling star is, do you not? The learned men are not at all clear about it. I have my own ideas about shooting stars, as ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... heart were a cipher, and if passion were calendar-making! . . ." retorted Philippus. "You are a very wise man, and your manuscripts and tables have stood like walls between ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Their Majesties were adored. Marie Antoinette, with all her beauty and amiableness, was a mere cipher in the eyes of France previous to her becoming the mother of an heir to the Crown; but her popularity now arose to a pitch ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... legal proceedings a committee had obtained from the Western Union Telegraph Company over thirty thousand of the telegrams sent by both parties during the campaign. The Republicans declared that the "cipher despatches" among these messages showed that the Democrats had offered a substantial bribe for the vote of an Oregon Republican elector. Before the dispatches were returned to the telegraph company, somebody took the precaution to destroy those that concerned Republican campaign ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... striped satin, which must have been manufactured for the express purpose of composing the American flag. The stars were embroidered in silver on a dark blue satin sky. On the reverse, a rich white satin lining bore Julian's cipher, surrounded with silver embroidery. . . . The children amused themselves with their presents all day. But first I took my new Milton and read aloud to them the Hymn of the Nativity, which I do every Christmas." "How easy it is," my mother writes of a Christmas-tree ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... itself sufficient proof! On the other hand, Suzor now went out in the daytime, going hither and thither as though transacting business for his friend. Hambledon had reported to me how he had sent three cipher telegrams by wireless from the Correo Central in the Calle Carretas, the first was to London, the second on the following noon to an address in Paris, and the third at one o'clock in the morning to Moroni in Florence. The message to the latter was in figures, ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... read and write and cipher, and to tell mushrooms from toadstools, to eschew poisonous berries, and to know the weather signs. For her part, she taught me so much more that it seems effrontery to call her my pupil. It was from her gentle, softening companionship ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... us, chosen by lot, shall go to Paris and keep the rest informed, with the cipher agreed upon, of all ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... sign portend? Linforth puzzled his brains vainly over that problem. He had not the knowledge by which a man might cipher out the intrigues of the hill-folk beyond the Frontier. Did the breaking of the pitcher mean that some definite thing had been done in Chiltistan, some breaking of the British power? They might look upon the Raj as a heavy burden on their heads, like an earthen pitcher and as ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... a marquis of Louis XV.'s time; while "Pandolphe" wears a flowing wig under his cocked hat, and sits on a throne in rococo style. A copy of the book was purchased for the royal library, and is still to be seen at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, with the crown and cipher of his Most ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... young Mr. Cipher walked into the dentist's office instead of the doctor's. "Doctor," he groaned, "I'm in bad shape. My head aches all the time, and I can't do anything with it." "Yes, yes," said Doctor Toothaker, cheerfully. "I see; big cavity in it; must be hollow; you'll need to ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... yet. Listen." She was smiling still, but it was plain she was thoroughly in earnest. "When this cipher—this nought—this zero—manages to annex to himself a million dollars that doesn't belong to him, his nothingness gains a specific meaning. The zero is an important factor in mathematics. I think we have placed a ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... a hill and routed the enemy with loss, they examined the dead bodies, and for the first time knew that Llewelyn was among the slain. A letter was found on his person giving a list, in false names, of the English nobles with whom he was in correspondence, but either the cipher was undiscoverable or the matter was hushed up ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... his stock of accomplishments. "I can write, sir, and cipher. And I've learned geography and history, and Master Swift gave I lessons in mechanics, and I be very fond of ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... one might naturally think, a savant educated in a school of high culture, or a man of the world, versed in the sciences and the literature of his time; El-kab was a scribe who knew how to read, write, and cipher, was fairly proficient in wording the administrative formulas, and could easily apply the elementary rules of book-keeping. There was no public school in which the scribe could be prepared for his ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... prophecy? He had hardly ceased speaking when an officer appeared with a telegram in his hand. This the major eagerly took and, noting that it was in cipher, read it by means of the code he carried in his ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... a telegram in cipher from our chief engineer on the territory of the option: "Young Granton has somehow given us the slip and gone home. We suspect he knows all. But we have not divulged the ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... consequence. Some of his largest and finest books were reprints of Caxton's folios. Mention has been made of his use of Caxton's original device without addition. In all of his own various devices also, the place of honor in the center is given to Caxton's initials and cipher, plainly as a mark of loyalty to the master, not an advertisement of himself as ...
— Catalogue of the William Loring Andrews Collection of Early Books in the Library of Yale University • Anonymous
... she seemed superbly attired. She saw it. "My dress has changed a little," she said, "and I also; but not to you. Hang the bag over your other shoulder, that I may see your face. You say so little that if one does not look at you you are an uncomprehended cipher." Waldo changed the bag, and they walked on side by side. "You have improved," she said. "Do you know that I have sometimes wished to see you while I was away; not often, ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... meaning, and responsible for much velvet-covered mutiny during the present campaign—with the columns in his neighbourhood which, over and above the skeleton of the New Cavalry Brigade, had concentrated that day at Britstown. A message in cipher gave an inkling of the plan which had risen phoenix-like out of the ashes of the original dispositions. De Wet, instead of being enticed south, was to be driven north into the loop of the Orange River between Prieska and Hopetown, where Charles Knox's column and a column of Kimberley swashbucklers ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... haystack—you understand? Disguises of various kinds—a suit of clothes lined with chamois-leather bags for gold-smugglin'—a good deal of the raw stuff itself, scattered all over the shop by the blow-up—and in a rusty cashbox a diary or private ledger, posted up in a clumsy kind of thieves' cipher, impossible to make out, but with the name written on it of the identical man my wife suspected and the Chief believed to be the murderer of Miss Mildare's adopted mother! And that's what you may call the Clue Direct, Saxham, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... title on earth. You go to great risks—but not to any thing which can outweigh the good you can do for this truly holy cause. Have you lived lives 'of no great account'—now is the time to rise to a position—to be some body, and make your mark. Have you been a mere cipher in the great sum of life—a neglected trifle—now is the time to raise yourself to a real value. It can never be said of a man who served in this war that he ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Judging by this test the play of "Julius Caesar" has a glowing future ahead of it. It was written by Gentlemen Shakespeare, Bacon and Donnelly, who collaborated together on it. Shakespeare did the lines and plot, Bacon furnished the cipher and Donnelly called attention to it through ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... age; remains in college to review his studies; amusing anecdote relative to Professor S. S. Smith, in the Cliosophic Society, while Burr was acting as president; letter from Timothy Dwight; from Samuel Spring; correspondence with Matthias Ogden and others, in cipher; anecdote respecting visit to a billiard-table; enters the family of Joseph Bellamy, D. D. for the purpose of pursuing a course of reading on religious topics; in 1774 determines to study the law; letter from ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... whose disagreeable duty it was to prefer it, bitterly complained that "he never received from Paris a single proof which could enlighten him." On the other hand, he did receive abundant enlightenment about the "sure source": the Russian Minister needed to send a cipher message to the American Embassy at Constantinople which was entrusted with Russian interests, and, the Hellenic Government readily agreeing to transmit it through its Legation at Pera, Prince Demidoff, with the consent of his Entente colleagues, proceeded to make use ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... incomprehensible numbers of sand-grains. The calculation is chiefly remarkable because it was made before the introduction of the so-called Arabic numerals had simplified mathematical calculations. It will be recalled that the Greeks used letters for numerals, and, having no cipher, they soon found themselves in difficulties when large numbers were involved. The Roman system of numerals simplified the matter somewhat, but the beautiful simplicity of the decimal system did not come into vogue until the Middle Ages, as we shall see. Notwithstanding the difficulties, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... must baffle at the hint And cipher at the sign, And make much blunder, if at last I ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... for information of Napoleon's plans, and that he—Fouche—played the English commander false. "On the very day of Napoleon's departure from Paris," say the Memoirs, "I despatched Madame D——, furnished with notes in cipher, narrating the whole plan of the campaign. But at the same time I privately sent orders for such obstacles at the frontier, where she was to pass, that she could not reach Wellington's headquarters till after the event. This was the real explanation of the inactivity of the British ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education. Of course, when I came of age, I did not know much. Still, somehow, I could read, write, and cipher to the rule of three, but that was all. I have not been to school since. The little advance I now have upon this store of education I have picked up from time to time under the pressure ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... about him. The chief anxiety of these men was that the official version which attributed the massacre to a Huguenot conspiracy should obtain no credence at Rome. If the Cardinal's enemies were overthrown without his participation, it would confirm the report that he had become a cipher in the State. He desired to vindicate for himself and his family the authorship of the catastrophe. Catherine could not tolerate their claim to a merit which she had made her own; and there was competition between them for the first and ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... be a cipher in b. b. plans this year and I am good and glad of it," exulted Muriel. "Professor Leonard looks to me like a person who wouldn't show favoritism. He certainly has lots of the right ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... moment, Roger," said Harry; "be not over-hasty, lad. I believe this is more important than it looks. May it not be a cipher of some kind? Let us ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... birthday I did not go to school, being taught to read and write and cipher by my father himself. But one day he set me before him on his horse and rode into Shrewsbury, where, after a solemn interview with Mr. Lloyd, the master, I was put into the accidence class at King ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... people learn to read, write, and cipher," say a great many; and the advice is undoubtedly sensible as far as it goes. But, as has happened to me in former days, those who, in despair of getting anything better, advocate this measure, are met with the objection that it is very like making a child practise the use of a knife, fork, and ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... Church had been summoned to the Gregoriev palace, its master had made his confession—fully, without reservation,—to his son. All his life lay bare before the mental gaze of Ivan, who had in his pocket the slip of parchment containing the key to the cipher of the famous map—that marvellous biographical history of Russia which must always be a fortune of untold magnitude to its possessor. For there was many a man in the white empire who would have offered ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... soporific vapors had the effect of those mathematical devices whereby restless people cipher themselves to sleep. His languid head fell to his breast. In another moment, he drooped half-lengthwise upon a chest, his legs ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... around the well, and at a level with the compass, was marked out into alternate spaces of red and black, bearing—one on each space—the figures from 1 to 36, and ending in 0, so that in all there were thirty-seven spaces, the one bearing the cipher being opposite to the strange woman who presided. As the game began again the players staked their money on one or another of these spaces. I also gathered that they could stake on either black or red, or again on one of the three dozens— ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... something of a fatalist, did not interfere. On this cockleshell of a craft, among these rude spirits of alien races, he was powerless. On land a diplomat and strategist of high order, here he was a cipher. Moreover, he was beaten to his knees, and he knew it. The arrival of the warship had upset his calculations. After many months' planning of flight, he had been forced, by the events of a few hours, into an aggressive campaign. His little cohort had done wonders, it is true, but ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... in his waistband; and as I stood above him full of meditated and most reasonable murder, I happened to see upon it, in red letters, his cipher; a coronet, and under that the initials of his name, Amadeo Giraldi. They struck me like the writing on the wall, as if they had been letters of fire. A. G., I read there—the letters of Aurelia's virgin name! A. G.—Aurelia Gualandi, untried maiden of Siena once, innocent ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... let me tell you," he added, "for your personal benefit, while examining those crescents yesterday, I put a private mark on the back of the settings with a steel-pointed instrument; it was like this"—making a cipher on a card and passing it to him. "If you should ever be fortunate enough to come across them again, you ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... made good at last. I have the Pole. Am well. Love," followed in rapid succession by one from Bartlett to his mother; and, among others, one to H. L. Bridgman, secretary of the Peary Arctic Club: "Sun," a cipher meaning, "Pole ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... honored by the members of his profession. He will be praised by all other people, and above all he will in the silent thoughts of his own mind have the satisfaction and pleasure of knowing that he is not a cipher in the vast human family. He will be pointed out as an example to those who are perhaps bowed down by discouragement. He will in all probability be called lucky when his success is really due to decisions ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... ascertained by the following cablegram which came into my hands, Napoleon's instructions for the French evacuation were in Mexico at the very time of this pathetic scene between him and Carlotta. The despatch was in cipher when I received it, but was translated by the telegraph operator at my headquarters, who long before had mastered the key ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 5 • P. H. Sheridan
... liberties of the people, and he dreaded the substitution of the worship of a military chieftain for the maintenance of that liberty, the last hope of man. Ten years later he uttered the same opinion in a conversation with Miss Martineau, and he expressed a preference for an annual president, a cipher, so that all would be done by the ministry. But in the impossibility of this plan, he would have preferred a four years' term without renewal or an extension of six years; an idea adopted by Davis in his plan of disintegration by secession. ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... very awkward," I said, despondently. "I know no more of shorthand than of Sanskrit, and though I once tried to make out a cipher, the only tangible result was ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... daily press." Just what M. Dubost did think of our achievements in that department of journalism may be gathered from a letter he addressed the very same day to his friend, Marcel Complans, director of the Bureau of Cipher Codes in ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... we need, my young friend. You shall go. Listen! We wish to secure a key to the cipher despatches, which the enemy are now sending from their signal station on Three Top Mountain. There is another Confederate Signal Station in the Valley, just beyond Buckton's Ford. [Pointing.] Your duty will be this: First, to get inside the enemy's line; then to follow a path through ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard
... three-and-twenty furlongs from here to the end of this demi-sheet. I have not a thing to say; nothing is of more importance than another. I am flatter than a denial or a pancake; emptier than Judge Parke's wig when the head is in it; duller than a country stage when the actors are off it,—a cipher, an o! I acknowledge life at all only by an occasional convulsional cough and a permanent phlegmatic pain in the chest. I am weary of the world; life is weary of me, My day is gone into twilight, and I don't think it worth the expense of candles. My wick hath a thief in ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... army has heard the sound of our locomotives. The telegraph is finished to Mining's Station, and the field-wire has just reached my bivouac, and will be ready to convey this message as soon as it is written and translated into cipher. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... give the soldier in exchange for his cotton-land? Let the soldier examine coolly, if he can, the next bullet-wound in his leg. He will perceive a puncture which will probably, when traced around the edge and carefully copied, present that circular form generally assigned to a—cipher. This represents, we believe, with tolerable accuracy, what the anti-actionists and reactionists propose to give the soldier as a recompense for that leg. For so truly as we live, so true is it that there is not one anti-Emancipationist ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... flat deficit,—verging again towards debt and Jews. The Lord Abbot at last declares sternly he will keep our accounts too himself; will appoint an officer of his own to see our Cellerarius keep them. Murmurs thereupon among us: Was the like ever heard? Our Cellerarius a cipher; the very Townsfolk know it: subsannatio et derisio sumus, we have become a laughingstock to mankind. ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... taking orders from civilians, and he depends on his own sources for information. I am here because he sent me to 'Go, look, see,' and report. I have been wiring him ever since you started from the coast, and since you became president. Your censor has very kindly allowed me to use our cipher." ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... complexion; He whose limbs are like gold (in hue); He that is possessed of beautiful limbs; He whose person is decked with Angadas made with sandal-paste; He that is the slayer of heroes; He that has no equal; He that is like cipher (in consequence of no attributes being affirmable of Him); He that stands in need of no blessings (in consequence of His fulness); He that never swerves from His own nature and puissance and knowledge; He that ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... ward of yours. I can do as I like, and neither Dr. Wade nor anybody else can prevent me. He may ADVICE me not to go: he has no power to ORDER me. I'm my father's heiress, and a person of independent means. I've been a cipher too long. From to-day I take my affairs wholly into my own hands. I 'll go round at once and see your lawyer, your banker, your agent, your tradesmen, and tell them that henceforth I draw my own rents, I receive my own dividends, I pay my own bills, I keep my own banking ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... warmth that we should retain Kandahar, although, as Hartington said, this meant, to India, an expenditure of four millions sterling a year, on local troops, for no military return.... The Queen ... at this moment was not only protesting strongly with regard to Kandahar, but also, in cipher ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... is that of truth, not of ignorance. Her father has given her what he calls 'a good old-fashioned English education;' that means, he says, that 'she thoroughly knows how to read, write, and cipher, which few girls brought up at French boarding-schools do.' As might be suspected from the practical ideas in her narrative, our young friend has had that complete development of her faculties which arises out of the necessities of country-life ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... him out to dinner, on account of his brass-buttons with the Queen's cipher, and to have the air of being well with the Foreign Office. "Where I dine," he says solemnly, "I think it is my duty to go to evening-parties." That is why he is here. He never dances, never sups, never drinks. ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... labour, or hazard, are growing rich, as their country is impoverished; they rejoice, when obstinacy or ambition adds another year to slaughter and devastation; and laugh, from their desks, at bravery and science, while they are adding figure to figure, and cipher to cipher, hoping for a new contract from a new armament, and computing the profits of a siege ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... she learned to read, but not to write or cipher; hence, books and such interests took none of her time. She was one of those uneducated countrywomen of strong natural traits and wholesome instincts, devoted to her children; she bore ten, and nursed them all—an heroic worker, a helpful neighbor, and a provident ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... Headquarters. Two came in during their long conference in the afternoon, and the quartermaster had lowered his hand long enough from that lurid welt on his sallow cheek to hurriedly write two or three in reply. One Folsom felt sure was sent in cipher. Two days before, Burleigh had urged him to protest as vehemently as he could against the sending of any money or any small detachment up to the Big Horn, and protested he had strenuously. Two days before, ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... time they are employed in surveying the mountain passes and approaches. Maps are made and grades established. For many miles on both sides of the range the country is explored, and numberless cipher annotations are placed on the charts. Much care is taken in survey of streams and the location ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... should not be held for literally real. It is AS IF they existed; but in reality they are like co-ordinates or logarithms, only artificial short-cuts for taking us from one part to another of experience's flux. We can cipher fruitfully with them; they serve us wonderfully; but we must not ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... that, either. Dark—trousseau? Hardly that. She's just married, but she didn't have her whole trousseau on. Dark—? Search me, I don't know. 'Mrs. B.' Mrs. Brown, 'l. d.' Long dress? Lawn dress? No, lavender dress, I remember. This cipher is worse than the one in the 'Gold Bug.' I wish I had written ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... he has brought upon me all my distresses, adds to my apprehensions; when I have not even a servant on whose fidelity I can rely, or to whom I can break my griefs as they arise; and when his bountiful temper and gay heart attach every one to him; and I am but a cipher, to give him significance, and myself pain!—These griefs, therefore, do what I can, will sometimes burst into tears; and these mingling with my ink, will blot my paper. And I know you will not grudge me the ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... with the legation of the United States in Madrid was conducted in cipher and by cable, and needs the verification of the actual text of the correspondence. It has seemed to me to be due to the importance of the case not to submit this correspondence until the accurate text can be received by mail. It is ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... crossing the remains of the plank bridge with some difficulty, he stood before the hideous wreck of his friend's late home, where he had spent so many glad hours listening to marvellous adventures from Paul Bevan, or learning how to read and cipher, as well as drinking in wisdom generally, from the ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... Haye, the French ambassador, was imprisoned in 1658, and his son bastinadoed in the presence of Kiuprili, for being unable or unwilling to give a key to some letters in cipher from the Venetians; and some years later, the envoy of the Czar, Alexis Mikhailowitz, was driven, with blows and violence, from the presence of the sultan, who was irritated by the incompetency of the interpreter to translate the Czar's letter! This latter outrage, however, was not till after ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... that wavest wings of gold, Thou songless wanderer mid the songful birds, With Nature's secrets in thy tints unrolled Through gorgeous cipher, past the reach of words, Yet dear to every child In glad pursuit beguiled, Living his unspoiled days mid flowers and flocks ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... silently a will of her own. She loves all her children, especially Fritz, and would so love that they loved her.—For the rest, all along, Fritz and Wilhelmina are sure allies. We perceive they have fallen into a kind of cipher-speech; [Memoires de Bareith, i. 168.] they communicate with one another by telegraphic signs. One of their words, "RAGOTIN (Stumpy)," whom does the reader think it designates? Papa himself, the Royal Majesty of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm I., he to his rebellious children ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... around, and as soon as the messenger had moved off, I tore open the envelope and read the message. Fortunately, it was not in cipher, the rules against any such use of the wires, except by ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary picture is repeated without end. It is the highest emblem in the cipher of the world. St. Augustine[691] described the nature of God as a circle whose centre was everywhere and its circumference nowhere. We are all our lifetime reading the copious sense of this first of forms. One moral we have already ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... conjecture, and although it is possible that the writer of it did not arrange the letters on this principle of alphabetical order, but on some other, and thus concealed another meaning in it: for this is so improbable [especially when the cipher contains a number of words] as to seem incredible. But they who observe how many things regarding the magnet, fire, and the fabric of the whole world, are here deduced from a very small number of principles, though they deemed that ...
— The Principles of Philosophy • Rene Descartes
... ain't going. I can read and write and cipher up to fractions. That's all I want. You fellows go and I'll stay home. You needn't be scared I'll steal anything. ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the tenth century peremptory edicts were issued to check this state of affairs, but the power of the Court to exact obedience had then dwindled almost to cipher. History records that during the Ho-en era (1135-1140), the regent Fujiwara Tadamichi's manor of Shimazu comprised one-fourth of the province of Osumi. On these great manors, alike of nobles and of temples, armed forces ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... the eccentricities of cipher, changed in the Seventeenth Century to easily read initials, sometimes interlaced, sometimes apart. Later on it became the mode to weave the entire name. An example of these is the two letters C of Charles de Comans on the galloon of Meleager and Atalanta (plate ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... anything, in the hands of the ingenious person with an idea. Coins, matches, cards, counters, bits of wire or string, all come in useful. An immense number of puzzles have been made out of the letters of the alphabet, and from those nine little digits and cipher, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... for many a joke had he; Full well the busy whisper circling round Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned. Yet he was kind, or, if severe in aught, The love he bore to learning was in fault; The village all declared how much he knew: 'Twas certain he could write, and cipher too: Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage, And e'en the story ran that he could gauge: In arguing, too, the parson owned his skill; For e'en though vanquished, he could argue still; While words of learned length and thundering sound Amazed ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... chance of getting a half dozen fish for breakfast. He always had a kind word or two for Tom, who during the winter evenings would go over to the good man's house to learn his letters, and to read and write and cipher a little, so that by now he was able to spell the words out of the Bible and the almanac, and knew enough to change tuppence into ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... into the accomplishment of what the former merely gave him the means of accomplishing.... At a very early age, Mr. Willis seems to have arrived at an understanding that, in a republic such as ours, the mere man of letters must ever be a cipher, and endeavored, accordingly, to unite the eclat of the litterateur with that of the man of fashion or of society. He "pushed himself," went much into the world, made friends with the gentler sex, "delivered" poetical addresses, wrote "scriptural" poems, traveled, sought ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... this period deals with a cipher message for Thomas. Mr. Edison narrates it as follows: "When I was an operator in Cincinnati working the Louisville wire nights for a time, one night a man over on the Pittsburg wire yelled out: 'D. I. cipher,' ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... South Carolina, and probably in Louisiana, there was a wide terrorizing of the negro Republicans. "One side was about as bad as the other," was a common feeling. A year or two later, the New York Tribune unearthed and translated a number of cipher telegrams, which disclosed that while the dispute over the result was going on, agents high in the confidence of the Democratic leaders made efforts to buy up a returning board or a presidential elector. So both parties were badly smirched, and the election and its sequel furnished ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... his superior in the Priesthood, if not in experience and ability, looked upon me as a cipher, fit for nothing. The rough treatment and slights that I received from him were more than humiliating to a man of fine feelings and a spirit such as I possessed. I said nothing to him, but I poured out my soul in secret prayer ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... of the courier who rode horseback with orders in his belt and was winged in mid-flight; and the day of the secret messenger who tried to creep through the hostile picket lines with cipher dispatches in his shoe, and was captured and ordered shot at sunrise, is gone, too, except in Civil War melodramas. Modern military science has wiped them out along with most of the other picturesque fol-de-rols of the old game of war. Bands no longer play ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... made attractive by the wonderful collection of Tanagra statuettes which he had brought from Greece, where he had formerly been minister. In one matter he was especially helpful to me. One day I received from Washington a cipher despatch instructing me to exert all my influence to secure the release of Madame ——, who, though married to a former Russian secretary of legation, was the daughter of an American eminent in politics and diplomacy. The case ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... Ignorantin friars, where the most necessary branches were taught to those of the unfortunate men who had a mind for them. He was of the number who had a mind. He went to school at the age of forty, and learned to read, to write, to cipher. He felt that to fortify his intelligence was to fortify his hate. In certain cases, education and enlightenment can ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the dismal tidings when he frowned. Yet he was kind, or, if severe in aught, The love he bore to learning was in fault: The village all declared how much he knew; 'Twas certain he could write, and cipher too; Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage, And even the story ran that he could gauge; In arguing, too, the parson owned his skill, For, even though vanquished, he could argue still; While words of learned length and thundering sound Amazed the gazing ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... him, because each note only referred to the very essence of the business it alluded to, and related only to the exact point of its then relations with France. These laconic notes proved as enigmatic to Louis, as did the letters in cipher which covered the table. Here all was confusion. An edict of banishment and expropriation of the Huguenots of La Rochelle was mingled with treaties with Gustavus Adolphus and the Huguenots of the north against ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... iron gates at the lower end of the park, and glanced at the interwoven cipher and crest of the Amelyns still above, she was conscious that the wind was blowing more chill, and that a few clouds had gathered. As she walked on down the long winding avenue, the sky became overcast, and, in one of those strange contrasts ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... gentlemen who signed in cipher the secret letter to William, Prince of Orange, were Henry Sidney, brother of Algernon Sidney (S480); Edward Russell, a kinsman of Lord Russell, beheaded by Charles II (S480); the Earl of Devonshire, chief of the Whig party; Lord Shrewsbury; Danby, the old Tory minister of Charles II; Compton, ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... was, being a woman of some education, his mother had taught him to read and write and cipher—not that he was a great adept at any of those arts, but he possessed the groundwork, which was an important matter; and he did his best to keep up his knowledge by reading sign-boards, looking into book-sellers' ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... and till this time had seemed a brave and zealous compatriot of Warren and the other leading men of the time. Soon after his appointment, he was, however, detected in secret correspondence with Gage. He had entrusted to a woman of his acquaintance a letter written in cipher to be forwarded to the British commander. This letter was found upon the girl, she was taken to headquarters, and there the contents of the fatal message were deciphered and the defection of Doctor Church established. When questioned by Washington he ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... measure: but when I hear a nugiperous gentledame inquire what dress the Queen is in this week: what the nudiustertian fashion of the Court; I mean the very newest; with egg to be in it in all haste, whatever it be; I look at her as the very gizzard of a trifle, the product of a quarter of a cipher, the epitome of nothing, fitter to be kicked, if she were of a kickable substance, than ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... much will that be apiece. Thirteen into fifty; can any of you fellers cipher that up in ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... full and complete, only a more limited sphere than older members: and all the rules and regulations and arrangements of the family should have a reference to this point. So long as a child is reckoned to be a mere cipher in creation, or at most, as of no more practical importance, till the arrival of his twenty-first birth day, or some other equally arbitrary period, than our domestic animals—that is, of just sufficient ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... though composed of the styles of the different ages when it had received additions, had a striking and imposing effect. An immense gate, composed of rails of hammered iron, with many a flourish and scroll, displaying as its uppermost ornament the ill-fated cipher of C. R., was now decayed, being partly wasted with rust, partly ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... Miss Tonk's card the small purple cipher that stood for hm—hm. "I will make enquiries about ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... barter and of bargain, Told of human gains and losses, Scared away the beasts and birdlings, Locked and dammed and bridged the rivers, Chained the rolling streams and rivers. Schools were opened, where the people Learned to read and write and cipher. Coaches linked the growing city With the busy world around it. Youths and maidens joined in wedlock, Parents knelt at family altars, Children gamboled in the playgrounds, Cats and dogs and cows and horses, Swine and animals of ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... sometimes in the air, and sometimes out to one side among the fences, and kicking up m-o-r-e dust and raising m-o-r-e racket with her coughing and sneezing and blowing her nose—and always fetch up at the stand just about a neck ahead, as near as you could cipher it down. ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... merks for an old Blue-Gown! Think on the act 1701 regulating bail-bonds!Strike off a cipher from the sumI am content to bail him for ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... of hair, of some curious foreign workmanship. A green enameled serpent, studded thickly with emeralds and with eyes of ruby, was curled around the clasp. A crystal plate covered a wide flat braid of hair, on which the letters "D.M." were curiously embroidered in a cipher of seed pearls. The whole was in style and workmanship quite different from any jewelry which ordinarily ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... is of crucial importance to Mrs. Gallup and the believers in the cipher wherein Bacon maintains that he is the legal son of a wedding between Dudley and the Queen. Was there such a marriage or even betrothal? Froude cautiously says that this was averted 'SEEMINGLY on Lord Robert's authority;' ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... families slummock along and muddle through until the children cease to be children. In the few cases when the parties are energetic and determined, the child is crushed or the parent is reduced to a cipher, as the case may be. When the opposed forces are neither of them strong enough to annihilate the other, there is serious trouble: that is how we get those feuds between parent and child which recur to our memory so ironically when we hear people sentimentalizing about natural affection. We even ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... pocket a small medallion containing her cipher, and said to Croustillac, "See what I returned to the house to seek this evening. I desired to offer you this token of our friendship; it was in bringing it to you that I overheard your conversation with Colonel Rutler. ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... who had charge; no one was hindering her. Have the marriage as soon as possible? He was a mere cipher, and there was no reason for asking his advice. But steady, shucks! He had to work; he had to go out. And when he saw Josephina leaving the studio to weep somewhere else, he gave a snort of satisfaction, glad to have escaped from this difficult ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... several notes between the United States and the belligerent Governments follow. The stars in the German note mean that as it came to the State Department in cipher certain words were omitted, probably through telegraphic error. In the official text of the note the State Department calls attention to the stars by an asterisk and a footnote saying "apparent omission." In the French note the same thing occurs, and is indicated by the footnote "undecipherable ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... compound modes—short devices for abridging these. Now 10 is the earliest number written with two digits: and the higher the multiplier, so much harder, apparently, the process. Yet here at least a great simplification offers. To multiply by 10, all you have to do is to put a cipher after the multiplicand. Twenty-seven soldiers are to have 10 guineas each, how much is required to pay all twenty-seven? Why, 27 into 10 is 27 with a cipher at the end—27:0, i.e., 270. Ergo, twelve Caesars, supposing ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... in a cipher, the subject will be found, on reference to the prefixed classification, ...
— A Classification and Subject Index for Cataloguing and Arranging the Books and Pamphlets of a Library [Dewey Decimal Classification] • Melvil Dewey
... asperity against the said minister: affirming, in proud and insolent terms, that he had, "by an abuse of his influence over the Nabob,—he, the Nabob himself, being (as he ever must be in the hands of some person) a mere cipher in his [the said minister's],—dared to make him [the Nabob] assume a very unbecoming tone of refusal, reproach, and resentment, in opposition to measures recommended by ME, and even to acts done by ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... amount of torture could make her betray her friends. They spoke of Antonoff, who was subjected to the thumbscrew, had red-hot wires thrust under his nails, and when his torturers gave him a little respite he would scratch on his plate cipher signals to ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... local agent at Delhi will act in your behalf, with both secrecy and discretion. I have already written him a private cipher letter in regard to ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... through the Board of Intermediate Education, and university teaching as directed and rewarded through the Royal University, have all in the last resort been inspired by Englishmen who thought it very desirable that Irish boys and girls should learn to read and write and cipher, and that young men and young women should equip themselves for clerkships in the civil service, but who never for one instant realised that the end of education is divergence not conformity—to elicit, whether from the race or from the individual, ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... been at a dead stand since my removal from Baltimore. I had, on the Eastern Shore, been only a teacher, when in company with other slaves, but now there were colored persons who could instruct me. Many of the young calkers could read, write and cipher. Some of them had high notions about mental improvement; and the free ones, on Fell's Point, organized what they called the "East Baltimore Mental Improvement Society." To this society, notwithstanding ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... pictures were lying about in disorder: with them were mingled furniture, and books with the cipher of the former owner, who never was moved by any laudable desire to glance into them. Chinese vases, marble slabs for tables, old and new furniture with curving lines, with griffins, sphinxes, and lions' paws, gilded and ungilded, ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... slipped rapidly away, the party at the Waldorf was not idle. There were conferences, numerous and protracted, behind dosed doors, telegrams and cablegrams in cipher flashed hither and thither in multitudinous directions, while Mr. Sutherland seemed fairly ubiquitous. Much of his time, however, was spent in the private parlors of the English party, with frequent journeys to the court-house to ascertain ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... for so great a responsibility, and the people of the United Kingdom were indignant at the jobbing and patronage to which the interests of the country were sacrificed. General Simpson while he remained in command was in every respect feeble, and a mere cipher in the hands of the French general. Lord Raglan, by his reserve, dignity of manner, and high rank, preserved influence and respect notwithstanding his inactivity and dulness; but General Simpson possessed no qualities that could set off or redeem ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... and carried one, and then, on a piece of holy script called the Grail—I mean the Chart—he placed his finger on a certain space conspicuous for its blankness and said, "Here we are." When we looked at the blank space and asked, "And where is that?" he answered in the cipher-code of the higher priesthood, "31-15-47 north, 133-5-30 west." And we said "Oh," and ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... the cosmopolite is a cipher, worse than a cipher; outside of nationality there is neither art, nor truth, nor ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... the money go? Just where all public money always goes when parasites govern a country. The inspector found out that many items of cost for supplies to the different posts had a cipher added to them. The officials told him why: 'We have to do it because the price of living has gone up ten times over.' But how did such an increase come about? The goods were sold from favourite to favourite, each man getting his wholly illegal profit, till the limit was reached beyond which Bigot ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... deed I went to work. The law would not let me gie up my schoolin' altogether. But three days a week I learned to read and write and cipher, and the other three I worked in a flax mill in the wee Forfarshire town of Arboath. Do ye ken what I was paid? Twa shillin' the week. That's less than fifty cents in American money. And that was in 1881, thirty eight years ago. I've my bit siller the noo. I've my wee hoose amang the ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... Caesar, not as here to Antipater, but to Hyrcanas, Antiq. B. XIV. ch. 8. sect. 5, has hardly an appearance of a contradiction; Antipater being now perhaps considered only as Hyrcanus's deputy and minister; although he afterwards made a cipher of Hyrcanus, and, under great decency of behavior to him, took ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... head of affairs instead of the pusillanimous Rhinegrave of Salm, the cause might have been saved. All this and other details had to be communicated to Mr. Jay, and so delicate was the business that Calvert was instructed to put the letter in cipher lest it be opened and the French Government prematurely informed of the dissatisfaction felt with ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... with singularly accurate studies and sketches, maps, plans for machines, scores for music (three volumes of these are in the Royal Library at Windsor), and some with writing, which is written—probably to serve as a sort of cipher—from right to left, instead of from left to right. One of his writings is a valuable 'Treatise' on painting; other writings are on scientific and philosophic subjects, and in these Lionardo is believed to have anticipated some of the discoveries which ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... but the fact remains that the American mother is a tedious person. The American father is better, for he is never seen in London. He passes his life entirely in Wall Street and communicates with his family once a month by means of a telegram in cipher. The mother, however, is always with us, and, lacking the quick imitative faculty of the younger generation, remains uninteresting and provincial to the last. In spite of her, however, the American girl is always welcome. ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... 'em, even in them 'ere things. As for reading, it's well enough for them that has nothing to do, and writing is plaguy apt to bring a man to states-prison, particularly if he writes his name so like another man as to have it mistaken for his'n. Cyphering is the thing—if a man knows how to cipher, he is sure to grow rich. We are a 'calculating' people, ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... — N. unsubstantiality^, insubstantiality; nothingness, nihility^; no degree, no part, no quantity, no thing. nothing, naught, nil, nullity, zero, cipher, no one, nobody; never a one, ne'er a one [Contr.]; no such thing, none in the world; nothing whatever, nothing at all, nothing on earth; not a particle &c (smallness) 32; all talk, moonshine, stuff and nonsense; matter of no importance, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... he said, "that a resume of certain of these papers should go to Berlin and Russia in cipher, but this may wait. The originals must as soon as possible ...
— A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell
... CHILTERN. [Sits down at the table and takes a pen in his hand.] Well, I shall send a cipher telegram to the Embassy at Vienna, to inquire if there is anything known against her. There may be some secret scandal ...
— An Ideal Husband - A Play • Oscar Wilde
... and very subtle news I bring with me, count," replied Count Lesle, "and of such a tender, delicate nature that we could not willingly entrust it to paper, even in cipher, but could only transmit it from my lips to your ear, and thence to the locked-up recesses of your breast. Therefore I have come to you, and need hardly say that not a breath of our conversation is to escape, and that nobody ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... later Democrates was not drinking wine at his betrothal feast, but sending this cipher letter by a swift and trusty ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... broken it up into the rays of different color that together make the white light we see. Any boy can do it with a prism, and in the band or spectrum of red, yellow, green, blue, and violet that then appears, he has before him the cipher that holds the key to the secrets of the universe if we but knew how to read it aright; for the sunlight is the physical source of all life and of all power. The different colors represent rays with different wave-lengths; that is, they vibrate ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... bring this new day I'm talking about, and to produce such Negro leaders as William Hightower. You see, J.W., it's this way: Booker Washington believed that after the Negro had been taught to read and write and cipher, his next and greatest educational need was to learn to make ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... that he might cast out of his heart, for all time, the love for a woman which had crept in. Sleep had dared not come within range of that titanic struggle. Worn with the battle which had witnessed his defeat, he had just completed his cipher message, when, following a modest knock at the door, Josef entered complacently with the pent-browed ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... in him, needed help, but the matter was delicate. In the meantime, the other waited with a smile that implied that he guessed his thoughts, until Dick, leaning forward with sudden resolution, picked up the telegram, which was written in cipher. ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... brought into the colony forty immigrants and according to a law which had been in force ever since the days of the London Company, this entitled him to a grant of two thousand acres of land. After securing the patent, he changed the record with his own hand by adding one cipher each to the forty and the two thousand, making them four hundred and twenty thousand respectively. In this way he obtained ten times as much land as he was entitled to and despite the fact that the fraud was notorious at the time, so great was his influence that the matter ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... had ever lived amongst the volatile Latins on the other side of the Pacific. Come to think of it the one man I had seen closely had been a dark type. It was just barely possible that Bryce had somehow tangled himself in something of the kind. But then that cipher business—I was fully convinced by now that it was some original kind of cryptogram—rather pointed the other way. One of the things I had noticed had been a L sign, and anything dealing with any of the Latin Republics would almost assuredly have ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... the curve of a woman's hair behind her ears. For reports he wrote verses in modern Greek, and through one of those inadvertences which make tragedy, the Minister of War down in troubled Bulgaria once received between the pages of a report in cipher on the fortifications of the Danube a verse in fervid hexameter that made ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... lovers and fond mothers doubtless still write long letters, but the business of the letter-writer proper is at an end. The writing of notes has, however, correspondingly increased; and the last ten years have seen a profuse introduction of emblazoned crest and cipher, pictorial design, and elaborate monogram in the corners of ordinary note-paper. The old illuminated missal of the monks, the fancy of the Japanese, the ever-ready taste of the French, all have been exhausted to satisfy that always hungry caprice ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... letter fell noiselessly to the floor, and the head sank on the breast, and the hands drooped upon the poor crippled limbs, whose crawl in the sunshine hard youth had grudged. He felt humbled, stunned, crushed; the pride was clean gone from him; the cruel words struck home. Worse than a cipher, did he then but cumber the earth? At that moment old Ponto, the setter, shook himself, looked up, and laid his head in his master's lap; and Dash, jealous, rose also, and sprang, not actively, for Dash was old, too, upon his ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... considerable reflection, I have come to the conclusion that my talents lie elsewhere. At lugging ledgers I am among the also-rans—a mere cipher. I have been wanting to speak to you about this for some time. If you have no objection, I should like to ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... as much speed as we could make to Amida, a city celebrated at a later period for the disaster which befel it. And when our scouts had rejoined us there we found in one of their scabbards a scrap of parchment written in cipher, which they had been ordered to convey to us by Procopius, whom I have already spoken of as ambassador to the Persians with the Count Lucillianus; its terms were purposely obscure, lest if the bearers should be taken prisoners, and the sense of the writing ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... Bourbons, this progressive, he who had been a palatine under Amadis, became a republican and a conspirator. He made frequent journeys; he received cipher letters from Paris; he went to Minorca to visit the squadron anchored in Port Mahon, and taking advantage of his former official friendships, he catechized his companions, planning an uprising ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... chief," he said, "and tell him to wire any instructions he may have for the sender in cipher if he wants to, but to give any instructions he may have for us about the delivery of the ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... moisture, the velocity of the wind, the kind, amount and speed of the clouds, and measures the rainfall and the ocean swell: all these observations are recorded, and three are daily reported to headquarters at Washington. In these telegrams a cipher is used—as much, we presume, to ensure accuracy in the figures as for purposes of secresy. In this cipher the fickle winds are given the names of women with a covert sarcasm quite out of place in the respectable old weather-prophet whom every housewife consults ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... embassy secretaries and attaches, for this purpose. About midnight between the 20th and 21st there came a loud and persistent knocking at my door in the hotel, and there soon entered a telegraph messenger with an enormously long despatch in cipher. Hardly had I set the secretaries at work upon it than other telegrams began to come, and a large part of the night was given to deciphering them. They announced the declaration of war and instructed me to convey to the various ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... said he, "are you a cipher in this game? A barony hangs on this. Are you as stubborn and unruly as ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a space for the white box upon a broad old bureau-top in her room. She put its cover on again over the message in green cipher; she would only care to look at it on purpose, and once in a while; she would not keep it out to the fading light and soiling touch of every day. She spread across the cover itself and its written sentence her last remaining broidered and laced handkerchief. ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the truth must be confessed, bald as it is, and worse than bald. It was the fashion of the day: the Reds took scalps and the Whites took scalps. It were, then, hardly fair in us to find fault with the Blacks for doing the same, especially as they could neither read nor write nor cipher, nor had been taught the absolute truths of any creed whence, as a natural consequence, proceeds that profound fixedness of belief which needs must make itself manifest in the persistent exemplification of every Christian virtue. Had they enjoyed these inestimable advantages, the Blacks—depend upon ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... is no worse than the rest, believe me. What does any master care for a man's life? Profit and loss go down in figures; but life—that's a cipher in all ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... describe "poor Mr. Russell" as little better than a fly buzzing in Manning's "spider's web of delicate and clinging diplomacy." It is not in the memory of those who were behind the scenes that Odo Russell was such a cipher. Though suave in address, he was by no means deficient in decision or force of character, as was evidenced when, some months later, he explained to Mr. Gladstone his reasons for stating to Bismarck, without instructions from the government, that the Black ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... they're opened by the censor, but who knows if there isn't a secret cipher under the guise of an ordinary letter? They may have all kinds of treasonable secrets in them. Norty might get information and send it to those friends in foreign countries, and they would telegraph it in code through a ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... you posted," cried my father, with unusual animation; "I did not know it was allowed. I'll wire you in the office cipher, and we'll make it a kind of partnership business, Loudon:—Dodd and Son, eh?" and he patted my shoulder and repeated, "Dodd and Son, Dodd and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... small thing to say of the missionaries of the American Board, that in less than forty years they have taught this whole people to read and to write, to cipher and to sew. They have given them an alphabet, grammar, and dictionary; preserved their language from extinction; given it a literature, and translated into it the Bible, and works of devotion, science, and entertainment, etc. They have established schools, reared up native ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... smiled, but evidently his appetite was flagging also, and he soon went out to send and receive some cipher despatches. ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... to him almost before the ink was dry. The reply came by return of post: "It is almost, or quite, as good as can be. Send me another." So forthwith I sent him 'God's Garrison', and it was quickly followed by 'The Three Outlaws', 'The Tall Master', 'The Flood', 'The Cipher', 'A Prairie Vagabond', and several others. At length came 'The Stone', which brought a telegram of congratulation, and finally 'The Crimson Flag'. The acknowledgment of that was a postcard containing these ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... hour I began to feel confoundedly uncomfortable. I was a mere cipher in the room; and what with the appalling bulk of Mr. Tims, the attention the ladies bestowed upon him, and the neglect with which they treated me, I sunk considerably in my own estimation. In proportion as this feeling took possession of me, I experienced an involuntary respect for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 13, No. 359, Saturday, March 7, 1829. • Various
... all to know, you all to know, Dare's light on de shore, Says little Bill to big Bill, There's a li'l nigger to write and cipher.' ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... announcement, lest some other astronomer might intervene. How, then, was he to secure his priority if the discovery should turn out correct, and at the same time be enabled to perfect it at his leisure? He adopted the course, usual at the time, of making his first announcement in cipher, and accordingly, on March 5th, 1656, he published a tract, which contained ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... their opinion by liberal promises of help. Thus fortified by the sympathy of his people, Louis began to break up the coalition. He made terms with the Duc de Bourbon and the House of Anjou; his brother Charles was a cipher; the King of England was paralysed by the antagonism of Warwick; he attacked and reduced Brittany; Burgundy, the most formidable, alone remained to be dealt with. How should he meet him?—by war or by negotiation? His Court was divided in opinion; the King decided for himself in favour of the way ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... it abundantly clear to him that the people occupied the royal mind so much that his nobility was like to be forgotten. The restored dynasty, moreover, was surrounded by triple ranks of eligible old men and gray-headed courtiers; the young noblesse was reduced to a cipher, and this Victurnien guessed at once. He saw that there was no suitable place for him at court, nor in the government, nor the army, nor, indeed, anywhere else. So he launched out into the world of pleasure. Introduced at the Elyess-Bourbon, at the Duchesse ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... exclaimed, "would like always to be in the same place? Such a person is a mere cipher. We establish an intellectual superiority when we show ourselves superior to place. A genuine man is always a citizen of the world. It is your vegetable man that can not go far without grumbling, finding fault with all he sees, talking of comforts and such small matters, and longing to get ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... Readers who have any tincture of Psychology know how much is to be inferred from this; and that no man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad. How much lies in Laughter: the cipher-key, wherewith we decipher the whole man! Some men wear an everlasting barren simper; in the smile of others lies a cold glitter as of ice: the fewest are able to laugh, what can be called laughing, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... millions of our citizens in ignorance, and at the same time limiting the rights of citizenship by educational qualifications. This is unjust. Half the black youth of the land have no opportunities open to them for learning to read, write and cipher. In the discussion as to the proper training of Negro children after they leave the public schools, we have forgotten that they are not yet decently ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... however, is too serious to admit of a jest even between two persons who understand, so well as you and I do, the secret cipher by which each other's outward style of jest is to be gravely interpreted into the irony which says one thing and means another. My dear boy, you are very young; you are wandering about in a very strange manner, and may, no doubt, meet with many ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his work was done, he would bend his huge six-foot-four frame close down by the firelight to write and cipher ON THE ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... sports, and manifesting an unusual repugnance to the confinement and labors of the school-room. He has since declared that the only books he remembers using at school were the New Testament and the spelling-book. The result was, that he merely learned to read, write, and cipher, and that imperfectly. He was passionately fond of the water, and was never so well pleased as when his father allowed him to assist in sailing his boat. He was also a famous horseman from his earliest childhood, and even now recalls with evident pride ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... penitentiary for such treason, and turn the price of public honor to fairy-money, whose withered leaves but mock the possessor with the futile memory of self-degradation. Let every man remember, that, though he may be a nothing in himself, yet every cipher gains the power of multiplying by ten when it is placed on the right side of whatever unit for the time represents the cause of truth and justice. What we need is a thorough awakening of the individual conscience; and if we once become ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... worthy friar was really a mere washer of souls, a confessor who listens and absolves without even remembering the impurities which he removes in the waters of penitence. And Pierre, finding him really so poor and such a cipher, did not insist on an intervention which ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the utter Rim turned a page that was numbered six in a cipher that none might read. And as the golden ball went through the sky to gleam on lands and cities, there came the Fog towards it, stooping as he walked with his dark brown cloak about him, and behind him slunk the Night. And ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... Atkinson—is better remembered by Punch readers, perhaps, by his pencil-name than by his common cipher. In 1864 he was in the General Manager's office at Derby, pleasingly varying his clerical duties by drawing caricatures for the amusement of his fellow-clerks, and designing cartoons for the local satirical journal, the "Derby Ram," which appeared spasmodically ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann |
